‘It's got to be about enjoying yourself’: young people, sexual pleasure, and sex and relationships education

Abstract

Pleasure as a component of sexualities and relationships education has been much rehearsed recently. Arguably, theoretical debate and critique been more prominent than practitioner perspectives on how to persuade stakeholders of the value of implementing pleasure into learning about sexualities and relationships. This paper offers a rationale for positive SRE that includes pleasure. A series of theoretically and empirically supported suggestions are offered to encourage curriculum gatekeepers that SRE premised on a right to pleasure is warranted because of its potential to achieve safer sexual health outcomes and contribute to gender equality. Challenges faced by some sex educators are acknowledged by historicising the often uneasy associations between sexuality, education and youth in relation to some political and academic dimensions of debate, before offering a rationale on ways forward. Analysis focuses on young women. Policy developments relate to the UK but issues raised have relevance for SRE in other contexts.

Adolescents’ conceptions of learning and education about sex and relationships

“…In contrast, research suggests that sex and relationship education with an emphasis on danger prevention affects adolescents in ways that could be counterproductive to encouraging disease and pregnancy prevention (Allen, 2007a). Programs focusing on negative consequences of sexual activity fail to meet students' needs for information about pleasure, desire, and the practice of sexual activity and do not afford young people the kind of agency necessary to make empowered decisions about their sexual health (Aggleton & Campbell, 2000;Allen, 2007a;Helmer, Senior, Davison, & Vodic, 2015;Hirst, 2013;Macintyre, Montero Vega, & Sagbakken, 2015). A systematic review of abstinence-plus programs in high-income countries (Underhill, Operario, & Montgomery, 2007) showed that students receiving comprehensive sex or HIV education had a lower risk of pregnancy and STIs than adolescents who received "abstinence-only" or no sex education in the United States and in other high-income countries (Underhill et al, 2007).…”

In defense of danger: Sex, schools and the politics of discourse

“…Sexual risk rhetoric is also routinely heterocentric, often effacing lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender teens' experiences (Fields, 2008). In addition, research has shown that in both comprehensive and abstinence only sex education classrooms, female sexual desire is evaded while male desire and female risk are emphasized (Fine, 1988;Fine and McClelland, 2006;Hirst 2013) and when female desire and pleasure are actually included in curricula, they are routinely coupled with sexual danger discourses (Lamb et al, 2013). In place of what psychologist Michelle Fine calls the 'missing discourse of desire,' discourses about girls' (hetero)sexual victimization are institutionally speakable in schools and have been found to transform 'socially distributed anxieties about female sexuality into acceptable, and even protective, talk' (Fine, 1988: 55).…”

Video-Conference Interviews: Ethical and Methodological Concerns in the Context of Health Research

“…Pleasure as a possible pedagogical strategy has brought into question what it even means for SRE to be effective (Fine, 1988). Much of the recent scholarship in SRE has pointed out the overwhelming focus on 'sexnegative' disease and pregnancy prevention and argues for SRE that educates first for pleasure and enjoyment in sexuality (Sundaram and Sauntson, 2015;Hirst, 2013;Ma, 2016). However, Cameron-Lewis and Louisa Allen have recently challenged this dichotomy, and along with a number of scholars they have shown the importance of teaching both pleasure and risk (Cameron-Lewis and Allen, 2013).…”