U.S. communities have long expected schools to train young people in the skills necessary to a participatory political citizenry. Accordingly, school-based sex education provides training in what I call "sexual citizenship." While adolescents may not learn in school-based sex education to abstain from sexual activity or to prevent pregnancy and STDs, they do rehearse sexual citizenship-debating and acting on the sexual norms defining their community. Using participant observation and interview data from three middle schools, I consider how race, class, gender, and sexuality informed lessons and practices of sexual citizenship in the curricula mandated by 1995 North Carolina legislation requiring public schools to "Teach Abstinence until Marriage" (TAUM). For example, TAUM required educators to teach that homosexuality was illegal and thus denied lesbian, gay, and bisexual people sexual citizenship in the classroom and community. Students' displays of repulsion when shown illustrations of female sex organs were additional lessons in who counted as sexual citizens and who was a sexual "alien." Finally, student-citizens enjoyed varying access to information about sexual health and pleasure: teachers often assumed that African American girls were already-sexual and -pregnant and offered half-hearted lessons in pregnancy and disease prevention and heteronormative and racialized lessons in sexual morality. Abstinence-only education too often denies women, people of color, sexual minorities, and disabled people sexual citizenship. My research explores how school-based sex education might consider sexuality broadly and teach students different lessons about variations in sexual identities, desires, and about difference, privilege, and domination.
Learning Objectives: At the end of this presentation, learner-participants will 1. be able to define "sexual citizenship"; 2. recognize the sex education classroom as a site in which in which teachers and students rehearse the terms and conditions of sexual citizenship; 3. list three lessons that abstinence-only curricula offer in sexual citizenship; and 4. identify and evaluate the consequences of those lessons for social inequality and health.
Keywords: Sexuality, Community
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.