Sex education as a disciplinary
technique: Policy and Practice in England and Wales,
Nicki Thorogood
Sexualities, 2000, vol. 3, No. 4, ps.
425-438.
Abstract
The education of young people about 'sex' remains a
contentious area. It is suggested that this is because of the socially symbolic
nature of sex and the necessary policing of the boundaries of heterosexuality.
It is argued that sex education is a technique of governance. Forms of Sex
Education are considered in relation to legislation over the last two decades
and two models of sex education are proposed, that of 'restricted information'
and of 'empowerment'. This latter seeks to challenge the normativiry of
functional sex education and to validate the experience of the 'sexual other'.
It is suggested that by so doing these alternatives also become subject to
regulation and monitoring.
Keywords: heterosexuality, regulation, schools, sex
education
Nicki Thorogood Dept of Public Health and Policy
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Introduction
This article seeks to address the governance of sex
education in England and Wales. Issues raised by Sex Education legislation have
been the subject of fierce political debate for over a century (Mort, 1987) and
remain a highly contested area (Allen 1987; Harris 1996; Melia 1989; Redman
1994; Stanley 1995). The consensus is still that sex education is 'a subject of
considerable controversy' (Harris, 1996:12).
This article addresses the relationship between sex
education and social regulation. Sex education, as used here, refers to that
teaching about 'sex' which constitutes part of the formal education system. It
should, however, be noted that what is formally imparted both produces and is
produced by the informal exchange of knowledge taking place in other sites,
e.g. playground, TV or home.
Indeed, various pieces of legislation point to the
increasing statutory regulation of this part of the curriculum (DES, 1987; DoE,
1988; DfE, Circular 5/94; OFSTED, 1995) and to the general climate of fear
engendered by Section 28 of the 1988 Local Government Act (DoE, 1988) which
placed restrictions on the 'promotion of homosexuality'. Of course, policy
documents are not simply straightforward statements of values and intents but
are the outcome of negotiation and compromise and may remain contested. Neither
are policies the only (or even the main) route through which social norms are
achieved and enforced, as they may be supposed to reflect current ideas about
what is socially acceptable or desirable. Therefore, although 'social
regulation' is not only to be found in the statute book, perhaps these formal
articulations of social norms might be taken as indicative of the wider
discourse which seeks to produce and endorse particular social behaviours.
All formal education is subject to policy and
legislation and many aspects are highly contested (for example the teaching of
reading and writing). Why then should sex education be set apart from other
curriculum subjects, even other parts of the personal and social education
curriculum, to the extent that it should demand such precise and particular
legislative attention? It is argued here that sex education is implicitly (and
also, for the most part explicitly) about producing 'normal'
(hetero)masculinity and (hetero)femininity and that these are core categories
in the regulation of the social world. That is, sex education is a technique of
governance in the Foucaldian sense (Foucault, 1979b). Any changes which might
significantly disturb this 'balance' are, therefore, highly contentious and, in
policy terms, unlikely to be forthcoming.
The 1986 Education (No 2) Act (DES, 1987) was the
first legislation to formally regulate the provision of sex education in
schools, although teaching about 'sex' has been part of the curriculum for much
longer. Since then, governing bodies have had responsibility for determining a
school's Sex Education Policy (that is, whether it should have one and, if so,
what it should be). In 1988 sex education was not specifically included in the
newly produced National Curriculum (DES, 1988) but this was amended in the 1993
Education Act (DfE, 1994). Since then, those parts of 'sex education' which
occur in National Curriculum core subjects have been deemed compulsory, and the
parental right to withdraw children limited to those aspects which fall under
the remit of PSE or other areas outside of the core curriculum.
The increasing statutory attention to sex education
and the consequences of this for the regulation of sexuality have been well
explored in Redman's (1994) chapter 'Rethinking Sexuality Education'. He
concludes that what is needed is a new agenda for sexuality education based on
four factors: 'the need to address sexual diversity, relations of power, the
construction of sexuality in schooling processes, and pupil sexual cultures'
(p.147). Whilst I would agree whole-heartedly with this as an aim, the argument
here is also that the 'explosion of discourse' around sex education indicates
its centrality as a site for surveillance, monitoring and regulation and that
to increase the remit of sex education will simultaneously increase the
'policing' of those boundaries (Steinberg et al., 1997).
This article was conceived whilst I was working
(from 1987-92) as a developer and then co-ordinator of the CHYPP (City &
Hackney Young People's Project) (Thorogood, 1992). This is a Health Authority
funded sex education project that developed from a government pilot scheme
which funded and evaluated three very different approaches to its aim of
reducing teenage pregnancies. Although Healthy Alliances were being pursued as
part of the Health of the Nation strategy this was a Health Authority run
education project and this was in itself fairly radical. Justifications
necessarily both medicalised and problematised the sexual behaviour of young
people and the main rationale for funding was cited as the
above-national-average rates of teenage pregnancies and the consequent numbers
of terminations or births in the area. Renamed CHYPS (service, not project) the
organization is still in existence, providing, amongst other things, sex
education workshops on request for primary and secondary schools (both staff
and pupils) as well as training for Health Service staff.
Almost ten years on it is interesting to note what has,
or has not, changed. Teenage pregnancies, terminations and births remain a
cogent political concern. As recently as July 1999 we have seen the publication
of the Social Exclusion Unit's report Teenage Pregnancy which outlines a
detailed policy strategy with the aims of reducing both conceptions and the
social exclusion of young parents (HMSO, 1999). The generally problematising
thrust of this has been more clearly articulated in the media reports of the
Prime Minister's response to news that two 12-year-old girls were pregnant. In
the same week newspapers also reported the 'bragging' claims of paternity from
an 11-year-old boy. The fact that these far from unusual events were deemed
media worthy suggests that this remains a highly sensitive policy area.
The statutory legislation which has most inhibited a
liberal approach to sex education (Section 28 of the 1986 Local Government Act)
remains a statute despite the current Government's pledge to repeal it. The
reluctance of this government to repeal Section 28 (DoE, 1988), the Fairness at
Work Act (1998) and the emphasis on marriage in the recent Revised National
Curriculum (DfEE, September 1999) all point to the way that the current
government still privileges married heterosexual relationships as the preferred
site for bringing up children. This is illustrated by the comments made by the
Home Secretary, Jack Straw, defending this position at the launch of the
Government's Green Paper on 'Supporting Families':
"What we know from the evidence is that generally
speaking that stability is more likely to occur where the parents are married
than where they are not." (Today Programme, BBC, Radio 4, 4.11.98)
A further example is given by David Blunkett's
comment that:
"The commitment that is made by people through marriage
is a way of emphasising. . . stability to children." (Education and
Employment Secretary David Blunkett, Radio 4's Today Programme, 9.9.99)
These policy statements and accompanying
pronouncements from ministers sit uneasily within a generally more liberal
approach to family and education policy that encourages respect for diversity,
see for example the non statutory framework for PSHE which aims, amongst other
things to '. . .help pupils form relationships which are essential to life and
learning, which recognize common humanity and respect the diversity and
differences between people' (revised National Curriculum, PSHE: 3).
Perhaps the greatest change over the last ten years
has been the lessening of the 'explosion of discourse' around HIV/AIDS, which
in itself was the impetus for many innovative approaches to health education
and promotion. It is clear that there remains a tension between a commitment to
equalities and diversity and the need to actively regulate behaviour in keeping
with 'acceptable' social norms. This is particularly apparent in the debate
around sex education.
What is 'sex'
and why must we be educated in it?
It is worth here briefly problematising 'sex
education'. How does the concept 'sex' come to be constructed as a category of
behaviour? And why should this apparently 'natural' phenomenon be so
precarious, so necessarily subject to regulation and training? As has been well
documented (Foucault, 1984; Mort, 1987; Weeks, 1986) 'sex' is symbolic of the
social order in a highly condensed way. That such a slim segment of an
individual's formal education should generate such a vast discourse is
testament to its significance. As the recent sociologies of the body have
shown, socially constructed bodies are a site of modern forms of regulation and
monitoring. 'The body' is the object par excellence of disciplinary power
(Armstrong, 1983; Foucault, 1979a; Martin, 1989).
This fabricated body is 'gendered' by the
construction of 'male' and 'female' (hetero)sexual desire, which is then inscribed
upon it in an apparently natural way (Zita, 1998). The regulation of individual
bodies is therefore central to the production of 'sexualities' and 'sexuality'
becomes subject to surveillance and regulation, thereby disciplining otherwise
unruly bodies {Foucault, 1984; Steinberg et al., 1997). Sex Education is the
formal expression of the training and disciplining of bodies in this most
crucial arena, for Sex Education both constructs and confirms the categories of
'normal' and 'deviant' that are central to the regulation of social life (Zita,
1998).
From this perspective it is easy to see why
education in 'sex' exists and why it is invariably controversial (Meredith,
1989). It is also clear why it focuses on 'young people'. Teenagers are a
socially marginal group who inhabit that dangerous moral territory between the
acknowledged roles of 'childhood' and 'adulthood'. 'Teenage' is allocated as
the space for notoriously wild and socially deviant behaviour, it is also the
space most in need of policing. This is seen to be particularly true for
sexuality, which is thought to be emergent but as yet not conclusively fixed,
and therefore subject to influence, both 'desirable' and 'undesirable' (Weeks,
1986). This too is only a construction; there is nothing biologically given
about the period of 'teenage' or about the precarious formation of sexuality.
But modernity deems it such {Mort, 1987; Weeks, 1986) and as a consequence it
becomes vital to educate to produce appropriate sexual behaviour.
In this article it is suggested that there are two
models of sex education, the 'restricted' and the 'liberal'. This mirrors the
central tension of many aspects of modernity: that is, between state regulation
and individual liberty. On the one hand, state regulation (e.g. the banning of
smoking in public places) is deemed profoundly anti libertarian and is decried
by conservative thinkers {and pursued by democratic liberal thinkers). On the
other hand, when it comes to matters such as sex and drugs, the moral conservatives
are reluctant to leave this in the hands of the untrustworthy general public
and are more likely to argue for strong state interventions where liberals,
conversely, prefer a relaxed regulatory approach {Thorogood and Jessopp, 1990).
In the case of sex education, both perspectives claim to be about producing
sexually responsible citizens, albeit their definitions of this goal are very
different, as are their preferred means for achieving this. This article goes
on to describe both models and concludes that, despite claims to the contrary,
both also act as forms of monitoring and surveillance, as disciplinary
techniques.
Forms of sex
education
The form that sex education should take is
necessarily a site of struggle and there are a range of possible approaches to
it. These can be loosely grouped into four categories, which, whilst not
discrete or unchanging in practice, can serve analytical purpose here. First,
there are those who feel that any sex education is potentially dangerous in
terms of (a) the values expressed; (b) the 'appropriateness' of such education
for each individual child; and (1) in terms of it spoiling the supposed
'innocence' of childhood and possibly even inciting sexual activity which is
deemed 'wrong'. These fears have been expressed by groups such as Family and
Youth Concern and other organizations which, during the 1980s, formed part of
the Moral Right's campaigning over sex and sexuality in schools (Redman, 1994:
132). This moral traditionalism is still a potent political voice, apparent,
for example, in the recent debates over the lowering of the age of consent for
gay men.
Second, there are others who see sex education as
essential for promoting the 'right' values and behaviours. This takes a more
pragmatic line which recognizes that 'if they are going to do it anyway' an
education strategy could influence this behaviour to remain within socially
acceptable bounds. Third, there are those who take a more liberal humanist line
and regard education about sex as a right and as a means of achieving a more
personally fulfilling experience of life, albeit implicitly within a stable
heterosexual relationship. Finally, there is the 'empowerment' model which is a
refinement of the humanist approach. This suggests a sex education which makes explicit
its values; which acknowledges the experiences of the students and of the
educators and which seeks to 'empower' its participants to make their own
sexual choices, regardless, in theory at least, of what these choices are.
There is, however, little likelihood of this latter
being formally adopted within the present education system. As previously
discussed, even the current Labour Government, at the level of both ideology
and legislation, espouse the view that married heterosexuality is the preferred
form of sexual relationship (particularly for the bringing up of children) and
that although no blame is to be attached to those who fall short of this ideal,
'alternatives' are certainly not to be encouraged.
The four approaches to sex education outlined can be
further grouped into two basic analytical categories: the 'restricted
information' perspective, (the first three, and almost certainly the most
widespread practice), and the 'liberal model' (the fourth, in which Redman's
views would be incorporated). Let us consider the forms of the 'restricted
information' model first.
The 'restricted
information' perspective
During the 1960s and 1970s 'youth' became the focus
of the moral panic/debate over 'permissiveness':
". . .violence, drugs and sex, three major
moral preoccupations of the 1960s and 1970s blended symbolically in the image
of youth revolt. . . . Here then was one area of social life that posed the
question of control. . ." (Weeks, 1986: 212)
For the moral conservatives, control is best exercised
by removing sex education from the school curriculum and entrusting it to 'the
family'. This is, of course, problematic in two ways - at a conceptual and at a
practical level. First, 'the family' is never defined. It presumably invokes
the ideological 'normal, stable, nuclear family', but what will become of the
children raised and educated in sex in families other than these? What values
will be imparted to, for example, Jenny who 'lives with Eric and Martin'?
(Bosche, 1983) Second, at a practical level, research evidence demonstrates
that leaving parents responsible for sex education is a dismal failure in terms
of quantity, relevance and accuracy (Weeks, 1986).
'Restricted information' sex education is frequently
set within a scientific discourse (e.g. biology, human development, health
education, even physical education, etc.) but, despite this, is clearly about
the transmission of social values. So 'traditional pragmatists' favour limited
sex education with an explicitly normative function.
From a more 'progressive' perspective, effective
control of youthful sexuality would include more formal and more relevant sex
education. Sex education in this approach is seen to have two major functions
-that of imparting 'basic scientific facts' and that of setting these
'objective facts' into a 'moral' framework. This approach shares the goals of
sexual normativity held by the moral traditionalists but feels they are best
achieved through open and frank discussion. That is, children have a right to
be educated about sex in order to allow them to make socially desirable
decisions regarding their sexual and reproductive relationships. It is this
view which underpins the sex education legislation and much current sex
education in schools and is evidenced in the recent ministerial statements.
Sometimes the moral aspect is made more explicit, for example the eugenic-based
sex education in the 1920s, cited by Mort (1987) and in 'A Moral Framework for
Sex Education' (DES, 1987) and also Tony Blair's recent call for 'Britain to
rediscover its sense of morality' (a statement made in response to the news of
the pregnant 12-year-olds mentioned above). Sometimes scientific objectivity
takes precedence:
"The aims of a programme of sex education
should be to present facts in an objective and balanced manner so as to enable
pupils to comprehend the range of sexual attitudes and behaviour in present day
society." (DES, 1987: Para. 19)
But this 'objectivity' sits uneasily with moral
obligation, so the above quoted circular also went on to recommend that 'pupils
should be helped to appreciate the benefits of stable married and family life'
(DES, 1987: Para. 19) which demonstrates the unresolved contradiction between
objectivity and moralism. This was reiterated in the 1994 DfE Circular (Para.
8) which stated that 'Pupils should accordingly be encouraged to appreciate the
value of stable family life, marriage and the responsibilities of parenthood'.
The contradiction underlying the desire to help
people to appreciate that which is hailed as naturally superior has not been
lost on those engaged in challenging these presumptions.
As might be expected from this approach, scientific
objectivity is taken as unproblematic and ignores any theorizing of 'science'
itself as a value system with its 'objectivity' a myth it has created about
itself (see, for example, Kuhn, 1970; Mulkay, 1979; Thorogood, 1997). This
critique is, of course, no less relevant in the arena of sex and gender. As
Meredith points out:
". . .the history of sexology has revealed how
conventional scientific methods have served an ideological purpose under the
guise of objectivity . . . ideology has everywhere been disguised as fact;
[that] sex education has incorporated a masculine view of sexuality defined in
reproductive terms in which the male is seen as active and the female passive
and receptive." (Meredith, 1989: 55)
Thus, normative, 'limited information', sex
education, whether in its traditional or permissive, moral or scientific guise,
serves to promote heterosexual monogamy, and to render invalid and invisible
all who exist outside: the 'normal' stable, married, heterosexual unit (Melia,
1989; Redman, 1994).
The emphasis on sex as synonymous with reproduction
implied within this framework is the regulation of reproduction, and often the
emphasis of sex education is on reproduction. Meredith, for example, urges
European Governments to: 'equip young people with the means to understand and
protect their own reproductive health'
(1989: 1, my emphasis). This focus persists as the 1993 Education Act (DfE,
1994) made 'knowledge of how sexual reproduction takes place' a target at Key
Stage 3 and this is retained in the new PSHE guidelines where the only
references to human sexuality are within the context of reproduction and the
avoidance of disease. Indeed, rising numbers of teenage pregnancies are:
frequently cited as the reason for increasing regulation of this part of the
curriculum (i.e. the rationale for continuing and expanding sex education), and
the 1999 report from the Social Exclusion Unit states that 'New sex education
guidance for primary and secondary schools will be produced by DfEE in
consultation with PSHE Advisory Group by end of 1999'. This confirms government
interest in the monitoring of sexual activity amongst young people and of any
resultant pregnancies and parenthood (Harris, 1996: 2).
Historically, the conflation of 'sex' with
'reproduction' might be seen as emerging from a eugenic interest in sex
education. From theories of Charles Darwin and Francis Galton in the latter
part of the 19th century through to the doctrines of the Fabian Society in the
first part of the 20th century, 'birth control' and 'family planning' have been
regarded as the bedrock of 'racial hygiene'; literally a way of improving
society through improving the 'stock', or the 'gene pool'. This has been well
documented in the work of Kevles (1986) and Mort (1986). It is important to
note that these arguments have been used to support both conservative and
liberal viewpoints. Sex education in this model, therefore, becomes concerned
with contraception, and by implication hetero-sex, fertile sex and
childbearing. This of course marginalizes all other forms of sexuality and
defines them as against the 'norm' of monogamous, heterosexual, married,
fertile and penetrative sex. Thus, in this model, sex education is at least one
of the means by which 'normal' heterosexual women and men are produced
(Carabine, 1991; Bibbings, 1996).
The 'liberal'
perspective
More recently, however, there has been a shift away
from the traditional and functional 'restricted information' approach to the
regulation of sexual (and social) behaviour towards a more liberal pluralist
model. This emphasizes 'rights' as opposed to 'duties' and might be located as
part-of an emergent liberal humanist framework, as characterized by the
'permissive' and 'liberation' movements of the 1960s and 1970s (Weeks, 1986).
During the 1970s and 1980s an emergent liberal educational consensus took a
more radical approach to the issues of class, gender and ethnicity within the
classroom and the curriculum. Following on from this (although at least a
decade later) were a number of sex education initiatives which took this
further, seeing 'rights' within the school curriculum as necessarily to be
extended to include 'sexual minorities' (see Redman, 1994 for a full
discussion) as they had been to 'ethnic minorities' and to girls and
working-class children.
This liberalism is also articulated in the so-called
'new teaching methods' which privilege participation and individual
responsibility for learning over didactic approaches (Tones, 1986). The
educator's role in this model is to facilitate learning by creating access to
its processes, that is, by empowering the participants. I shall call this the
'empowerment model'. Of course, as with all patterns of social behaviour, it is
not universally present at any one time and there will be resistances to it.
This was apparent (see above) in the 19805 with the New Right challenges to the
liberal humanist perspective in many arenas, including education. This was also
highlighted by the manner in which the 1986 Education Act (DES, 1987) and Local
Government Act (Section 28) (DoE, 1988) addressed sex education, where, as we
have seen, an obligation to retain and emphasize a particular moral framework
for the teaching of social values was felt to be necessary. However, by 1994
the contradiction between the demand for 'a moral framework' and the
requirement to acknowledge pupils' diversity was apparent and the 1994 DFE
Circular (Para. 8) also went on to exhort: 'Teachers need to acknowledge that
many children come from backgrounds that do not reflect such values or
experiences' and to avoid 'causing hurt or offence. . . and to allow such
children to feel a sense of worth'.
The tone of this caution was both patronizing and
clearly privileged dominant cultural values but it did at least provide the
potential for a shift in the focus of sex education. However, this was unlikely
to impact on the majority of teachers as the overriding effect of Section 28
has been to produce amongst them a tendency towards self-censorship (Thomson
and Scott, 1992). Such an ambivalent recommendation was therefore unlikely to
produce the confidence to change.
Nevertheless, as has been documented elsewhere (see,
for example, Thorogood and Jessopp, 1990), the advent of HIV and AIDS as social
and medical phenomena necessitated simultaneously more explicit discussion of
sexual behaviours, both 'normal' and 'deviant', and more pervasive forms of
control. Particularly since sexual identity in adolescents is not considered
'fixed', and therefore, possibly subject to the influence of others, sex
education had a duty to be more 'morally responsible' as well as more explicit.
Thus, although the explosion of the discourse around sex during the late 1980s
and early 1990s prompted by HIV /AIDS made visible 'lifestyles' and sexual
practices not previously acknowledged in sex education, it simultaneously
invoked a desire for more explicit moral regulation. Meredith, although
seemingly in favour of the empowerment approach, warned against 'going too
far':
It is the task of the school to assist in the
process of enabling the young person to understand and where necessary to
survive society's conflicting signals, to recognise and absorb its higher
values, and to value its more durable structures (e.g. the family). (Meredith,
1989: 58, my emphasis)
This clearly demonstrates how it was felt that the
'liberal approach' also needed to be tempered by an emphasis on the 'moral
framework' and the value of stable married family life and, as noted earlier,
this tension remains today. Further, where the concept of 'safer sex' had to be
embraced in this arena it was restricted to exhortations about condom use. Once
again, this construction privileged penile penetration (overwhelmingly presumed
to be heterosexual), regarding this as synonymous with 'sex' and thereby failed
to challenge dominant sexual relations (Segal, 1989).
However, the need to inform and educate about 'safer
sex' also made possible discussion of other sorts of sexual relationship and/or
activity. These aspects of the discourse have taken place largely within the
'empowerment' model. This model allows for a less prescriptive or proscriptive stance
and suggests the possibility of individuals being 'empowered' to make a range
of sexual choices. Melia, for example, favoured this approach as the preferred
alternative to the 'moral framework' of the DES:
"Sex Education should promote discussion of a
wide range of different lifestyles and make explicit reference to the ways in
which various institutions and groups seek to mould and prescribe our social
and sexual roles. Such education should be used to counteract some of the
racist, sexist, heterosexist and classist elements which characterise young
people's education today and should be designed to equip young people with the
knowledge and skills with which to take control of their own lives."
(Melia, 1989: 229-30, my emphasis)
Patton also addresses the concept of empowerment as
a means of making explicit the values held in so-called morally neutral
science:
"We do not educate in a neutral environment.
People have more than a right to know, more than a right to choose, people have
a right to understand the ideologies of science education as processes to which
they are subjected." (1990: 15-16)
Empowerment in these examples implies resistance to
dominant forms of knowledge and techniques of control. Similarly, Hendrikson
(1990) argues that the practice of safer sex, because it challenges accepted
notions of 'real' sex and because it constructs alternatives, acts as a form of
resistance. This is perhaps borne out by the HEA's advertising campaign in the
early 1990s which was explicit about alternatives to penetrative sex when
targeting gay men, but restricted itself to recommending condom use when
addressing a heterosexual audience (Hart, 1992).
Nevertheless, we might also see the 'empowerment
model' as located within another framework; one which characterizes
contemporary discourse as that of the 'urge to confession' (Rose, 1990). This
constant drive to reveal through talking the 'truth ' about ourselves can be
seen as a subtle technique of control. It renders visible and public parts of
our lives which previously remained hidden and offers them up to scrutiny
(Green and Thorogood, 1998). Thus, all our sexual behaviours, dreams and
fantasies are revealed and are regulated by our peers, our educators and
ourselves, as well as by statute. In this way, empowerment is constructed as a
micro-technique of surveillance and control, a form of governance, as well as a
discourse of resistance.
Conclusion
In conclusion, sex education, as any education, does
not take place in a neutral environment. It is always about the transmission of
values and by implication acts as a form of control. This is most clear in the
traditional, 'restricted information' approach, which uses the twin bases of
'objective scientific fact' and 'moral frameworks' to achieve the 'sexual socialisation
of young people' (Meredith, 1981:1). This approach has rightly been criticized
for omitting, invalidating and rendering invisible the experiences of all
lesbian and gay young people, any children of single parents, including the
divorced, the separated and the unmarried, or others who live in forms of
household which do not meet the heterosexual, monogamous, nuclear family
criteria. In response to this, 'empowerment' models of education seek to
redress the balance by validating these 'others', thereby creating the
potential for resistance. But, I suggest, the very act of rendering these forms
of experience valid and visible simultaneously also constructs them as sites
for monitoring and regulation, as the objects of disciplinary power. Liberal pluralist
'empowerment' models of sex education have the unintended consequence of
producing micro-techniques of power and are not unequivocally liberating or
resisting.
I have argued that sex education in both models is
implicitly (and mostly explicitly) about producing 'normal' (hetero)masculinity
and (hetero)femininity and that these are core categories in the regulation of
the social world and that sex education is therefore a technique of governance.
This is no less apparent in the most recent flurry of political activity around
sex 'education and the need to educate for morality.
However, as has been demonstrated elsewhere
(Epstein, 1994; Steinberg et al., 1997; Thorogood, 1995; Zita, 1998),
'heterosexuality' has to be constantly (re) produced through the articulations
of (hetero) masculinity and (hetero) femininity. For those of us working, if
not always thinking, within the modernist discourse of equality, it might be
encouraging to see the continued resistance at a political level to these
technologies of empowerment as evidence of the fragility of heterosexuality as
an institution.
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Biographical
Note
Nicki Thorogood PhD is Senior Lecturer in Medical
Sociology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has had a
long-standing interest in the social regulation of sexuality and once worked in
a Health Authority funded Sex Education Project (the inspiration for this
article) and is a member of the BSA Lesbian Studies Group. She is currently
working on the sociology of mouths as boundary and on the feminisation of
dentistry. Address: Health Promotion Research Unit, Dept. of Public Health and
Policy, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London
WCIE 7HT.
[email: nicki.thorogood@lshtm.ac.uk]