School teens ask: do guys always want to have sex?

"Guys always want to have sex." True/False.

It may seem debatable, but there was only one correct answer in the quiz asked of all students in a Sexual Consent Awareness Day at Mt Roskill Grammar School today: "False."

"The idea that guys always want to have sex removes the whole purpose of consent," explained Year 11 student Jordan King, 15.

In other words, guys need to be asked first too, and they can say no.

"It's very common for people to think that guys always want to have sex, said a Year 11 girl, Maitreyi Chakrapani. "If we have this here we can debunk a myth."

The school's unusually open approach to the issue is its response to recent cases of teen males boasting about sexual conquests by getting girls drunk or drugged, as in the West Auckland Roast Busters case in 2013 and at Wellington College this year, which led to a march against rape culture by hundreds of school students.

Another true/false statement in the Mt Roskill quiz was: "If someone is drunk, they cannot consent to sexual activities."

Year 13 Mt Roskill student Josette Xu said she helped initiate the school's first Consent Awareness Week two years ago in response to widespread discussion about the issue on social media.

Since then, guidance department head Margaret Hoogendoorn has picked a dozen senior students each year to run awareness activities such as a skit at the school assembly, daily messages for all students, and the quiz handed out in the school quad with support from Rape Prevention Education and Auckland Sexual Abuse Help.

The Peer Sexual Support Programme team also take health classes on consent for Year 10 students, supported by a teacher at the back of the class.

"Because we are student-led, it makes it a lot easier for students to talk to us," Josette Xu said. "It's a bit awkward asking about sex with teachers."

She said it was important to start talking about consent at a young age so that students absorbed the message as part of their "morality", rather than just thinking that it was something they had to do legally.