Hold the sex, please: the discursive politics between national and local abstinence education providers

Hess, Amie

doi:10.1080/14681811.2010.491632

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…To some, the rise of ‘affirmative consent’ in sex education seems an entrenchment of gendered notions of activity and passivity whereby young men ask for consent and young women give or withhold their ‘yes’ (Halley, 2016; Kipnis, 2017). Is this another lesson grounded in fear; an echo of an older sex education that cast all sexuality as a site of potential danger and degradation, especially for young women (Hess, 2010; Irvine, 2004; Luker, 2007)? For others, the move towards affirmative consent allows for a set of possibilities that may once have seemed unimaginable: that young people, and girls in particular, might want to have sex, that sex might be freely chosen and pleasurable, and that sex education ought to help prepare young people for that reality (Coy et al, 2016; Waites, 2005).…”

Section: What We Talk About When We Talk About Consent: Jen Gilbert (Scholar Of Sexuality Education)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical health education studies: Reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium

Fitzpatrick

Leahy

Webber

et al. 2019

Health Education Journal

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In May 2018, a group of scholars gathered in the icy and sunlit grandeur of Queenstown (Aotearoa New Zealand) to talk, debate and share ideas about health education. The conference aimed to trouble and disrupt traditional kinds of health education and, instead, suggest possibilities for the critical study of health education – both in terms of theory and practice. This introduction to the special themed symposium is a reflection by the six authors on that new conference – Critical Studies in Health Education (CHESS) – and what it aimed to achieve. The authors discuss and define the intent of critical approaches to health education, and reflect on their experiences of the conference, as well as the future of the field. Papers in this special themed symposium of Health Education Journal are also introduced.

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Section: What We Talk About When We Talk About Consent: Jen Gilbert (Scholar Of Sexuality Education)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Critical health education studies: Reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium

Fitzpatrick

Leahy

Webber

et al. 2019

Health Education Journal

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Nancy Lesko similarly argues that seemingly polarized curricular options in this debate are actually “traditions and resolutions [that] incorporate each other” (2010, 281). And ethnographic research (Fields 2008; Hess 2010) traces this incorporation in sexuality education classrooms, where, though policies and curricula may suggest discrete curricular options, both abstinence‐only and comprehensive sexuality educators contribute to the regulation of young people and their sexuality.…”

Section: Shared Commitments: the Regulation Of Sexuality And Youthmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These shared ideas across a seemingly polarized public debate suggest that sexuality education policy and debates are sites of profound conflict and significant ambivalence and ambiguity. While national policy discussions and representations of those discussions often suggest a monolithic abstinence-only agenda, local providers of abstinence-only education are often quite resistant to and ambivalent about funding requirements and streams (Hess 2010). Feminists who strive for a sexuality education that fosters agency and subjectivity among girls and young women and recognizes the importance of intimacy and egalitarianism also grapple with the messiness and difficulty of the sexual relations in which youth and adults are similarly involved (Schalet 2009).…”

Section: Risking Ambiguity and Ambivalencementioning

confidence: 99%

Sexuality Education in the United States: Shared Cultural Ideas across a Political Divide

Fields

2012

Sociology Compass

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“Sexuality education”– broadly defined as teaching and learning about a range of issues related to puberty, sexuality, and relationships – occurs all day every day, formally and informally, intentionally and unintentionally. Nevertheless, adults organize policy and instruction for young people around a constrained set of concerns: first, that the sexuality education youth receive does not help them navigate an increasingly sexualized and dangerous world and, second, that the lessons are themselves damaging, exacerbating the risks youth and children already face. I discuss sexuality education’s entanglement with these conventional cultural ideas about youth, sexuality, and education. I consider the ways that abstinence‐only and comprehensive school‐based sexuality education rest on a series of a discursive framings, including a commitment to regulating sexuality and youth, a contemporary “moral panic” that renders all talk about youth and sexuality provocative, and normative and instrumental conceptions of teaching and learning about sexuality. I conclude by discussing the implications of these discursive framings for classroom practice and imagining an alternative model in which sexuality education might embrace ambiguity and ambivalence as a necessary and even welcome condition of young people’s sexuality and education.

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“…Based on interviews with 21 abstinence education coordinators and observations at two conferences focused on abstinence education, Hess (2010) finds that the hybrid language of morality and science is appealing to some AOE teachers because it is synonymous with the professional language of social work and offers a script that glorifies the effectiveness of abstinence with the authority of words that sound like evidence and data. In contrast, other AOE teachers have different interpretations which include treating abstinence as one point on a continuum of sex education methods and providing students with references to CSE educators and/or program directors when their own pedagogies are not effective or appropriate.…”

Section: Sbse At the Cultural Levelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reading Sociology into Scholarship on School‐Based Sex Education: Interaction and Culture

Smith

2012

Sociology Compass

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School-based sex education (SBSE), an institutional attempt to interrupt and correct the sexual socialization of young people, operates at the levels of structure, interaction, and culture. At the structural level SBSE has been found to endorse a particular set of cultural messages about sex and sexuality that reinforce patterns of inequality. This is often the case regardless of program type (e.g., abstinence versus comprehensive). However, there is little empirical focus on the actual classroom practices and other social interactions that constitute SBSE in the United States. In this paper, I will provide an overview of the field of SBSE research, reading the findings at the interactional level. In particular, I will review findings on curricula, stakeholder perspectives, and effects in a discussion of the importance of both interaction and culture in SBSE practices. Finally, I will use criticisms raised in existing SBSE scholarship to pose opportunities for sociological research into the topic. Sociology Compass 6/7 (2012):

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Hold the sex, please: the discursive politics between national and local abstinence education providers

Cited by 9 publications

References 12 publications

Critical health education studies: Reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium

Critical health education studies: Reflections on a new conference and this themed symposium

Sexuality Education in the United States: Shared Cultural Ideas across a Political Divide

Reading Sociology into Scholarship on School‐Based Sex Education: Interaction and Culture

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