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26 - The Fertile, Thorny, and Enduring Role of Desire and Pleasure in Sexuality Education

from Education

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

By
Sarah Garland-Levett  and
Louisa Allen
Edited by
Sharon Lamb  and
Jen Gilbert
Sharon Lamb
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Boston
Jen Gilbert
Affiliation:
York University, Toronto
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Summary

This chapter explores how desire and pleasure do and do not appear in sexuality education research and practice. The authors assert that the inclusion of desire in sexuality education can support young people to challenge gendered scripts and can empower young women to have safer and more pleasurable sexual experiences. They assert that the inclusion of desire has the potential to reconceptualize sexual health in a way that goes beyond disease prevention. The authors also point to several theoretical and practical challenges to incorporating a discourse of female desire in sexuality education that arise from educational cultures that privilege the protection of young people from sexuality. They warn that when pleasure is a curricular outcome it becomes a normative expectation rather than a site of possibility. They point to this tensions that come with the privileging of pleasure and desire above other kinds of influences on sexuality (for example, cultural, spiritual, and ethical) as a future site of debate and scholarly inquiry.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Sexual Development
Childhood and Adolescence
 , pp. 521 - 536
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2018

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