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

Abstract

“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.

Sexting, power, and patriarchy: Narratives of sexting from a college population

“…Even if risks are higher for girls or women than for boys or men, there may be problems in the cultural focusing of “danger” messages around risks to women. This may contribute to the policing of female sexuality, reinforce “purity” hierarchies, and continue to position girls as “gatekeepers” and boys as “predators” (Elliott, 2014; Fields, 2012). Individuals that send sexts can sometimes be talked about as if they are perpetrators of a sexual assault regardless of whether the receiver of the sext wanted the sext (Berlatsky, 2015).…”

How to Provide Sexual Education: Lessons from a Pandemic on Masculinity, Individualism, and the Neoliberal Agenda

“…The neoliberal approach may be embedded in the curriculum or expressed through the way schools carry out the curricula [ 43 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. Blaming of the individual is clear in school-based sex education to the extent that the focus is on teaching students about risks and giving them strategies and tools to reduce risk in needed moments, “you play, you pay” [ 43 ].…”

“…When teens get pregnant in richly resourced areas, where contraceptive access and sex education may be more available, there are opportunities and resources to work with the teen, even if she is still blamed for her pregnancy. Girls of color who become pregnant are positioned as oversexed and underparented [ 47 ], adultified, as they have been in the school system when they have gotten “in trouble.”…”

Comment on: HigginsA., SharekD., NolanM., SheerinB., FlanaganP., SlaicuinaiteS. & WalshH. (2012) Mixed methods evaluation of an interdisciplinary sexuality education programme for staff working with people who have an acquired physical disability. Journal of Advanced Nursing68(11), 238–238.

“…I have heard stories from nurses who have been asked questions involving sexuality after a patient had a debilitating accident without any idea about what to tell them or who to go to for information. Often this is also a result of the practitioners' never having anyone discussing sexuality with them growing up (Fields ). It is an international issue.…”

“…Between a physical therapist and a sexuality educator, the rehabilitation that would be required of most patients, a multitude of resources, and a variety of activities could have been planned and presented. Having an experienced sex educator would also prevent the possible shying away from uncomfortable topics in sexuality, like lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer‐oriented individuals (Fields ) or non‐monogamous relationships.…”