User:Monkamyth/sandbox

equally not a hedgehog

I am a undergrad at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky, enrolled in a course about writing and editing Wikipedia articles. The focus of this course is gender.

Articles Considered for Course Focus

Sex education

Sex education in the United States

Sex-positive feminism

Sex education curriculum

Chosen Article

Sex education in the United States

Practice Citation

Jillian Grace Norwick's master thesis examines the responses of female college students to questions about their experiences with abstinence-only education, describing the ways these programs discriminated by gender.

not a hedgehog

Annotated Bibliography

“Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Policies and Programs: An Updated Position Paper of the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine.” Journal of Adolescent Health, vol. 61, no. 3, 2017, pp. 400–403.

John Santelli, one of the main authors of this study is a medical doctor and holds a master’s degree in public health. The scientific community has had concerns with the ethics and effectiveness of AOUM policies for teenagers because while theoretically a valid choice, teenagers who intend to practice abstinence often fail. Scientists have found that these policies neither delay the age of first sexual encounter nor minimize risk behaviors. They willingly mislead students about the effectiveness of contraceptives and STI protection methods rendering the lessons medically invalid and unethical. This source has been peer-reviewed by the Journal of Adolescent health. This article will be useful in my exploration of gender in sex ed because it discusses the way gender is handled in AOUM education.

Allen, Louisa. “Denying the Sexual Subject: Schools' Regulation of Student Sexuality.” British Educational Research Journal, vol. 33, no. 2, 2007, pp. 221–234., doi:10.1080/01411920701208282.

Louisa Allen’s research was done in partnership with the Foundation for Research Science and Technology (New Zealand). This article argues that within school cultures, teachers and other school faculty create a normalized sexuality and create boundaries for self expression. Technically, this article is written about the British school system by a British researcher. However, I believe this source is still relevant to the subject of gender roles in sexual education within schools regardless of the country, especially since Britain and the United States share many cultural similarities. The work is peer reviewed by the British Educational Research Journal. I will use this source to identify how school culture greatly impacts the way students view sexuality.

Bay-Cheng, Laina. "The Trouble of Teen Sex: The construction of adolescent sexuality through school-based sexuality education," Sex Education, vol. 3, no. 1, 2003, pp. 61-74, DOI: 10.1080/1468181032000052162

In 2003, Laina Y. Bay-Cheng earned her doctorate from the University of Michigan. This article examines the ways teen sexuality is “normalized” within SBSE. It argues that SBSE fails to discuss teen sexuality that is not white, cis-gendered, heterosexual, and middle-class. The intersections of race, class, sexual orientation, and and gender identity play a role in the manifestations of sexuality and the SBSE systems fail to recognize these intersectionalities. Instead, many of the examined systems enforce conventional gender roles, monogamy, heterosexuality, and limit the definitions of sex to penile-vaginal intercourse. These programs misinform students about the diversity of sexuality. I can use this article as evidence of critiques of SBSE for not discussing gender in an equal or intersectional way.

Frieh, Emma C, and Sarah H Smith. “Lines of Flight in Sex Education: Adolescents’ Strategies of Resistance to Adult Stereotypes of Teen Sexuality.” Sexualities, Aug. 2017, p. 1-20.

Emma C. Frieh is a graduate student of Sociology at Indiana University. Sarah H Smith holds a PhD and studies intersectionality and sexual health. This article looks at the way SBSE influences the ways adults feel about sex. It consists of interviews with adults from the same school district discussing how stereotypes are played out in the lessons they were taught about sexuality, particularly the risk-focused and sex-negative ones in this particular sexual education program. This is through a theoretical framework focused on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, and so its main concert is not with the effects of SBSE but with the way students react to and reject their teachings. This article will be useful in outlining the ways sex ed can focus on stereotypes.

Gabrion, Karlee E. “An Examination of the Effects of Sexual Education on American College Students: Sexual Knowledge, Sexual Behaviors, and Sexual Opinions.” Texas A&M University, May 2016. Accessed Sept. 2017.

Karlee Gabrion is a master’s student at the Texas A&M University who examined studies that researched the effects of different types of sexual education. This article concludes that when students receive more sexual education, they become more open-minded and positive about sexual topics (what I would refer to as “sex-positive). However, when students receive limited education, or educators choose to withhold information about sexuality, as is the case in some abstinence-only programs, students are less likely to have positive views on sexual topics.

Kleinert, Paul Dale. "Sex education programs, motivation, and the seeking of educational versus erotic material: A comparison of abstinence only until marriage and comprehensive programs." Published Doctor of Philosophy dissertation, University of Northern Colorado, 2016.

Pale Dale Kleinert is a doctorate student at the University of Northern Colorado. Kleinert’s article explores the connection and correlation between increased sexual education and increased desire to learn more about sexuality. It also discusses the difference between the way gender is handled in comprehensive sexual education and abstinence only sexual education, within the constructs of societal standards for gender roles. This research was done through literature review. Because it was so recently written, the article has not yet been published in a scholarly journal. I will use the article as proof that there are gender differences in sex ed.

Martin, Karin A., and Katherine Luke. “Gender Differences in the ABC’s of the Birds and the Bees: What Mothers Teach Young Children About Sexuality and Reproduction.” Sex Roles, vol. 62, no. 3-4, Dec. 2010, pp. 278–291., doi:10.1007/s11199-009-9731-4.

Karin A. Martin works at the University of Michigan in the Department of Sociology. This article looks at how mothers discuss issues of sexuality with their young children. In my contribution to Sexual Education in the United States, I will use this in comparison to what parents feel about SBSE and the types of curricula they support being taught to their children. The authors conclude that gendered sexuality comes from sources like SBSE, parents/family, and the media.This article also differentiates between what mothers tell to their daughters and what they tell to their sons, which I can connect to the gender differences in SBSE.

Norwick, Jillian Grace, ""Don't Have Sex, You'll Get Pregnant and Die!": Female University Students' Experiences with Abstinence-Only Education" (2016). Theses and Dissertations--Family Sciences. 35.

This article focuses on the opinions of women who have been educated by school systems that teach abstinence only sexual education, rather than the effectiveness of these programs. The author of this thesis conducted interviews that explored the experiences of these women. The interviews encourage them to reflect on the various successes and failures of abstinence-only education to prepare them for adulthood and sexuality.

Draft of Contribution

Gender

Like all topics relating to sexuality, gender is a fundamental part of sexual education. Ideas of gender and sex are closely related in American culture. However, there is evidence of gendered messages within school-based sex education that may lead to the continued existence of harmful stereotypes in gender and sexuality.

Abstinence-Only

The Journal of Adolescent Health conducted a study entitled “Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage: An Updated Review of U.S. Policies and Programs and Their Impact.” This study found that abstinence-only sex education reinforces harmful gender stereotypes regarding female passivity and "rigid masculinity," both of which are associated with decreased use of condoms and birth control. Because of this association, the researchers concluded that these stereotypes "undermine adolescent sexual health." Additional research by Jillian Grace Norwick in 2016 found that in interviews with female college students who had abstinence-only sex education some participants reported that they received messages about sexual "purity" aimed at girls.

Gender Roles

A study from the University of Michigan conducted by Laina Bay-Cheng explored how school based sex education sometimes enforces traditional gender roles due to the “normalization” of heterosexual penile-vaginal intercourse in monogamous relationships with socially accepted gender roles and fails to discuss the diversity of human sexual activities. The study also suggested that these programs can portray girls as sexual victims and evoke such popular phrases as “boys will be boys” when discussing sexual assault and rape, leading students to believe that girls should be more responsible. Other studies, such as Karin Martin’s article “Gender Differences in the ABC’s of the Birds and the Bees: What Mothers Teach Young Children About Sexuality and Reproduction” explore the different ways adolescents learn about sexuality from various sources, such as the media, religion, and family culture, specifically parents. This study asserts that gender roles are emphasized at adolescence. Paul Dale Kleinert also conducted research regarding this topic. His dissertation reviews the ways that school based sex education are rooted in societal structures such as gender roles, but the type of program, comprehensive, abstinence-only, or abstinence-plus, can greatly affect how strict or traditional gender roles within sexuality are portrayed.

Sexuality in School Culture

Another influence on perception of sexuality is school culture, as illustrated by Louisa Allen’s study “Denying the Sexual Subject: Schools' Regulation of Student Sexuality.” This study outlines how school culture can lead students to perceive themselves as having varying levels of sexual agency based on gender while also creating a normalized sexuality similar to that in the Bay-Cheng study.