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This article focuses on South African teenage girls' engagement with pornography. Using a decolonial approach and drawing upon new feminist materialism, this study focuses on the ways in which bodies, gender and sexuality configure to produce and constrain girls' capacities for sexual expression. The paper makes three claims. First, the article turns away from a one-sided representation of girls as only possible to know through the lens of sexual suffering while challenging childhood sexual innocence. Second, the online pornographic field is situated in a gendered and racialised system of organisation whereby the perfect body is naturalised as an esteemed object of desire. Third, the desire for the perfect, slim, blemish-free, hairless body through self-surveillance constricts capacities in line with normative standards of female beauty. A decolonial porn assemblage is harnessed to illustrate the contradictions produced as girls both desire and object to idealised bodies that are naturalised through heterosexual and racialised hierarchies. The paper concludes by considering the implications of approaching girls' engagement with pornography in relation to the expansion and limitation of their capacities and the body as an intense site of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The adult-centric concept of 'age-appropriateness' is an arbitrary signifier and yet it commands a powerful common-sense appeal in governing the shape of sexuality education. The visibility of LGBTQ+ lives in primary schools is deeply impacted by the cis-heteronormative ways in which age-appropriateness is commonly understood and mobilised; very often resulting in silence and delay. The concept of age-appropriateness also becomes entangled with moral panics about 'promoting' LGBTQ+ lives, or children being somehow 'recruited' to identify as LGBTQ+. This paper draws on findings from a study with the parents of eleven trans and gender diverse children (then aged between 5 and 13) conducted in 2017, as well as a follow-up study conducted with seven participants from the same group of parents and children in 2022. The paper explores how the politics of age and agency intersect and become intensified as trans and gender diverse children and their parents navigate and make decisions about their bodies, lives and everyday worlds in primary schools. These stories of trans and gender diverse children provide an arresting invitation to adults to attend closely to the rich stories of children themselves in (re)considering the potential of sexuality education across contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Situated in Hong Kong's considerably limited discourse on sexuality, this paper aims to examine how introducing the topic of masturbation into our college's gender-and sexuality-related course created pedagogical conundrums (in the words of Kathleen Quinlivan). We discuss how attempts to confront these conundrums enabled us to begin the journey of understanding and breakthe silence about having sexual desire discussed in the classroom and written assignments. Drawing on our earlier classroom discussion of sexual topics, which resulted in moments of silence, and the written assignments of 10 students on the topic of masturbation, this paper borrows Quinlivan's discussion of the possibilities in 'uncomfortable analytic reflexivity' to explore how education can be a highly contested space carved out by students to express, both 'silently' and 'openly', their perceptions of masturbation. Classrooms can be flipped to discover the cracks that allow the journey towards breaking the silence to begin and to provide space for students to discuss sexual desires and pleasures that were previously deemed negative and unspeakable in their previous classroom experience. Remembering and reflecting on such silence can allow it to be reconceptualised as illuminating and meaningful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing sexting in sexual health education classrooms is one way of supporting young people to become good sexual citizens and to emphasise respect and consent in their sexual practices and in their lives. While a fair amount of research has worked with youth to understand their motivations for sexting, less research has been conducted with in-service teachers to understand their perspectives, pedagogical approaches, and beliefs regarding young people and sexting. Set in this context, this paper discusses findings from interviews with Canadian teachers who were teaching a new Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum that included discussions of sexting. Our findings suggest that many teachers are still engaging discourses of risk, shame and blame when they talk to their students about sexting. Likewise, longstanding gender norms and stereotypical sexual scripts are evident in the ways in which many teachers both understand and teach sexting. Some teachers, however, are engaging in more promising pedagogical practices that frame sexting as having a range of uses, outcomes, and purposes, painting a more holistic picture of young people's sexting landscapes. Findings from this paper may be useful for educators and policymakers creating sexting curriculum for young people in educational settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores relationships and sexuality education (RSE) in New Zealand secondary schools. After conducting a nationwide survey of teachers and producing a report on the challenges reported by RSE teachers, we began to develop a paper exploring the perennial issues faced by RSE teachers as they enact curriculum policy. Given that these issues endure, we considered how else we could approach the paper: in particular, what different questions could we ask of our data; and what alternative analytics offer potential for thinking in new ways about the perennial issues, and move us beyond telling the same old story? Asking these questions led us to Bacchi’s What’s the problem represented to be? (approach to policy analysis. Using data from our survey to focus our attention on key issues for teachers, we work with extracts from national government guidance for schools and teachers on RSE to apply this approach. Under five headings developed through the data analysis, we present five ‘provocations’ – or deliberately provocative proposals for the future of RSE in New Zealand. We hope the ideas in this paper may spark different ways of thinking about RSE policy and practice, with the ultimate aim of delivering meaningful and responsive RSE in secondary schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically evaluates societal reactions to integrating LGBTQ+ content into the Relationship and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum in England and Wales. Utilising Stanley Cohen’s theory of moral panics, it examines the roles of media, moral entrepreneurs, authorities, and the public in shaping debates around educational reforms. The paper highlights the complexities of balancing traditional values and inclusivity in education, emphasising the necessity of a considerate and comprehensive RSE approach. The study employs mixed methods, combining qualitative and quantitative analyses, to explore the multifaceted nature of this societal issue and its wider implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents findings from a literature review on relationships and sexuality education for primary (elementary) school programme effectiveness. Using a theory-generating approach informed by realist evaluation, the review takes a deep dive into the literature to identify contexts, mechanisms and outcomes likely to influence the effectiveness of programmes. This paper will be of interest to researchers, evaluators, RSE programme designers and practitioners as findings provide a catalogue of factors (variables) that can be considered for application in future programme evaluations and for inclusion in programme logic models. It identifies areas of opportunity to incorporate children's voices into research and points to the need for longitudinal studies to address the context- and time-sensitive nature of relationships and sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sexuality and relationship education (SRE) for trans young people is fraught with ongoing institutional and informational erasure, even as trans young people display considerable agency in navigating their SRE needs. This paper reports on a survey of 112 Australian trans young people, who shared their experiences of SRE (in terms of delivery and content), and their views on three story completion tasks where they were asked to respond to prompts about three fictional stories focused on trans young people (and for some their cisgender partners) and intimacy. Participants reported that SRE was delivered in class and focused on puberty and anatomy, although many participants accessed SRE information informally. Participants overwhelmingly reported the erasure of trans-specific SRE content and suggested that SRE content should include a trans focus. Responses to the story completion task emphasised the agency of the fictional trans young people in asserting their boundaries, deserving respect, being knowledgeable about their bodies and ensuring their safety. Fictional cisgender young people in the story completion tasks were expected to be respectful, and to be guided by trans people (but also to educate themselves). The paper concludes with recommendations for harnessing trans young people's agency in the context of SRE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on the retrospective accounts of eight LGBT+ students aged 18–21 attending a university in Northern England. Using interpretivist methodology, qualitative research was conducted to explore how their sex and relationships education impacted upon their needs as a sexual and/or gender minority. An under-researched aspect of experience was also investigated: namely, how LGBT+ people learned about sex and relationships if not in a formal school setting. Two focus groups were used to examine these areas of interest and similar patterns in both groups were apparent. Themes such as the impact of heteronormative value systems, pornography as an educational resource, and the use of online Blogs and search engines as a source of alternative education were highlighted. Findings demonstrate how participants' experiences of sex and relationships education were largely non-inclusive and irrelevant to their needs. The paper concludes with practical suggestions to ensure subsequent generations of LGBT+ pupils receive a more inclusive educational experience, supported by approachable teachers who are comfortable and competent teaching the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this autoethnography I present three narratives exploring how I understood and experienced my identity as a gay beginning teacher working in a rural Australian secondary school, where my sexuality was generally not accepted. Reading these narratives through a phenomenological lens highlights how my subjectivity as a gay man was entangled in my embodied identity as a teacher and how students' homophobic attacks attempted to disempower this identity. I explore how colleagues' responses to these incidents advocated for a disembodied understanding of practice which positioned my sexuality as the issue and attempted to straighten me as a teacher. As a result, this paper argues that being an effective ally to queer beginning teachers starts with respecting and valuing our embodied subjectivities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shares a rhizomatic unfolding of how a creative, post-qualitative praxis for becoming adventurous in the field of Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) can unfold in a conducive policy and practice context (Wales, UK). Specifically, we focus on the making and mattering of what we call 'Crush-Cards'. These are a suite of illustrated data calling-cards designed to re-animate research findings and stay close to the ways in which children and young people are entangled in, and navigate their way through, complex human and more-than-human gender and sexuality assemblages. Each section progressively provides a glimpse at how our art-ful rhizomatic praxis has evolved and how the resource and emergent CRUSHing pedagogy is becoming resourceful in unexpected ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex education rarely covers disability. This paper uses autoethnography to reflect on how being epileptic impacted the author's understanding of sex and sexuality. The paper grapples with disability narratives and internalised ableism surrounding sex. The paper seeks to engage with conceptions of who sex education is for, and how disabled people are treated when it comes to sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homophobia is an enduring issue within schooling contexts internationally. This paper attempts to rethink homophobia from the perspective of heterosexual students' accounts of bearing witness to it. Within the existing literature it has been LGBTQ students who have held the responsibility for naming and recounting homophobia. This paper re-orients this conventional account by positioning heterosexual students as its narrators to see what this might reveal about homophobia's operation at school. While this strategy does not disrupt the 'othering' and 'victimization' of LGBT youth in these stories, it has other effects. When heterosexual students name homophobia as unjust, it is possible to see the instability of the victim/perpetrator binary that typically structures these accounts. Narratives of participants in this study did not fit neatly into this binary, revealing its inability to capture the complexity of homophobia's operation. To have any hope of effectively addressing homophobia at school, we need to move beyond the victim/perpetrator binary. This is because it masks some of homophobia's more nuanced moves, such as targeting difference, rather than sexual identity exclusively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with two overarching questions: why is engaging with queer theologies potentially valuable for sex education, and how can we carry out this kind of work without rendering sex education an expression of queer theological commitment? In responding to the first of these questions, I argue that working with queer theologies can offer sex education researchers another way of thinking about, and with, theology – one that resists positioning theology as inevitably heteronormative through its attention to the body, embraces the multiple possibilities of queer subjecthood, and attends to the importance of context in understanding how heteronormativity is both reproduced and resisted. Following this, I turn to the second question animating this paper, suggesting that if we are to avoid sex education sliding into an inevitable expression of queer theological commitment, what is needed is a methodology for the translation for sex education research, in which queer theologies can 'meet' with sex education without at the same time 'merging' with it. I demonstrate how this might be enacted through the symbol of the 'Abrahamic threesome', a queer symbolic device of my own design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an extensive literature review of current approaches to sexual consent and demonstrates their insufficiency for teaching higher education students about healthy sex. Their overemphasis on the giving of consent to the detriment of attention to the process of gaining consent, as well as their inappropriate utilisation of incomplete legal frames, make them inadequate for preventing rape in a world shaped by gendered social norms. Additionally, these inadequacies make current approaches even less appropriate for the more aim of teaching the broader and vital topic of healthy sex. The goal of this paper is to challenge the way sexual consent education is currently framed in the USA, recommend a paradigm shift regarding perspectives on sexual consent education, and provide suggestions for formative research concerning the provision of university-level, interdisciplinary healthy sex education courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Awareness of culturally diverse young people's rights and needs to sexuality education has been raised internationally. However, existing literature has generally focused more on how culturally diverse young people navigate western mainstream societies, leaving the Asian context underexamined. This paper explores the experiences and views of South Asian minority youth of sexuality education at home and in school in Hong Kong, informed by rights-based and cultural competence perspectives of sexuality education, and using a qualitative descriptive methodology. The findings identified four themes: (1) the double silence experienced at home and school; (2) marriage within the same religion and caste; (3) gender role expectations to be caring women and protective men, and (4) the need for culturally targeted sexuality education. This paper contributes to scholarship on sexuality education by advancing the knowledge base by means of a case study conducted in Hong Kong, an Asian multicultural context that differs from western multicultural societies. It elucidates the meaning of cultural sensitivity and cultural competence by stressing the negotiability of cultural norms and taboos and identifying the practical implications for conducting sexuality education in a multicultural city like Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politically expedient approaches to difficult knowledge about sexual violence have included educational practices that create conditions for 'safe' spaces, such as announcing content in advance, trigger warnings and other pedagogical practices that make care allowable and smooth out the sharp edges of violence that can knowingly invoke trauma. This paper is about the power of curricular materials charged with violence in educational practices that cannot guarantee safety. I draw from feminist new materialisms to analyse the thing-ness of clothing in an art installation that was curated as a sexual violence prevention curriculum at my university. I consider the clothing as mattering as the substance of affect and thought. The starting point is that pedagogies of affectively charged encounters in education produce relations of danger and repair with important implications for victims' and survivors' knowledge, memory and trauma. The goal is to question the hope for pedagogical guarantees concerning difficult knowledge and understand what more precarity might mean for pedagogical responsibility in sexual assault curricula. The paper concludes by considering the curricular possibilities of difficult affective knowledge for a kind of queer healing and collective attention to sexual violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a discourse analysis of 12 Swedish sexuality education texts intended for preschool practitioners and published between 1969 and 2021. Using Fairclough's framework, we identify three discourses about children's sexual play in relation to children's sexual agency in the texts: child sexuality as encouraged and entangled with adult sexuality; child sexuality as conditioned by what is perceived as normal or abnormal in children; and child sexuality as repressed. These three discourses mainly appear chronologically, but also overlap and connect with one another. When analysis begins from children's position and a theoretical understanding of children's and adults' agency as interdependent, it becomes possible to see how the child is construed as agentic, and how the adult role changes from encouraging sexual play to regulating and monitoring behaviour so that it does not occur. Over time, discourse on young children's sexual play has changed our understanding of both adults and children. Adults are increasingly construed as less knowledgeable in relation to young children's sexuality, and young children have become understood as more dangerous and in need of having their sexuality constrained and civilised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed growing acceptance of gender and sexuality diversity in Australia; yet, its inclusion in the school curriculum remains contentious. Despite evidence to the contrary, there is a commonly held belief that parents consider the inclusion of such topics inappropriate. In the light of this, this paper focuses on an analysis of three qualitative items from an Australian national survey of parents of children attending government-funded schools. Informed by the responses to these questions, we sought to better understand the concept of age-appropriateness present in the discourses deployed by a (minority) number of Australian parents who did not support gender and sexuality diversity-inclusivity in the curriculum. Thematic data analysis identified three key themes used by parents to warrant gender and sexuality diversity curriculum exclusion based on age inappropriateness: namely, inclusion is 'confusing'; children are too 'immature'; and children are too 'easily influenced'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper illuminates how teachers are influenced by age, gender and sexuality in teaching about sex and relationships. In this analysis grounded in feminist theory, age, gender and sexuality are considered to be enacted as doings. Six interviews with teachers working with sexuality education in K-12 schools in Sweden were chosen from of a larger body of material consisting of 21 interviews with professionals engaged in school-based sexuality education. The six interviewees were selected because they explicitly addressed how teachers' age, gender and/or sexuality come to matter in the classroom. Findings show how male and female teachers organise their teaching in relation to normative expectations of age, gender and sexuality. In sexuality education, the diverse life-courses of (hetero)sexual women offer a wide range of pedagogic possibilities for female teachers to address issues of sexuality, consent and relationships whereas male teachers are constrained to doing safe(r) forms of masculinity by directing attention away from their bodies and experiences. In understanding these results, I argue that the figure of the tant has been key in forming the pedagogic backdrop to Swedish sexuality education, hence embedding a normative 'who' in the 'how' to teach sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The inclusion of pleasure in school-based sexuality education remains a controversial issue despite a long-standing body of scholarship which argues for its importance. While recent studies reveal sexual pleasure remains missing in school programmes, it appears to be in abundance in the Netflix series Sex Education. This paper examines the series as a potential source of learning about sexual pleasure and the types of messages it offers young people on this topic. It argues that Sex Education’s treatment of sexual pleasure differs from school-based programmes in the way it often disrupts dominant meanings of sex and sexuality. While schools typically take a risk-reduction approach to young people’s sexuality, Sex Education treats sexual pleasure as a legitimate, positive and commonplace pursuit which can be experienced through diverse practices and relationships. Much of what Sex Education is able to achieve in its treatment of sexual pleasure is attributable to the series being outside formal schooling and its deployment of tools associated with the televisual medium. Given the rise of regressive gender and sexual politics globally, programmes like Sex Education offer an increasingly important source of learning and counter narratives to politically conservative understandings of sex and sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior publications on sexuality education experiences have often focused on cisgender students. Few have studied transgender students' experiences, particularly in East Asia, and none have addressed these issues in the Hong Kong Chinese context, where transgender human rights are a hotly debated issue, and injustice towards trans youth persists. Using the concepts of transprejudice and rights-based sexuality education, this paper identifies the non-inclusive and inclusive sexuality education experiences of Chinese transgender students as reported in data from qualitative interviews with eight trans students aged 16–20 years from secondary schools and a community college. We identified the following themes: 1) Left Out – being omitted and silenced; 2) Terrified and Distressed – being misgendered and misinformed; 3) Outraged – being pathologised and bullied; 4) Empowered: connecting trans-Inclusive and rights-based education; 5) Affirmed and Supported – engaging in trans-inclusive dialogue. The paper argues that rights-based gender diversity content needs to be included in the sexuality education curriculum to reduce transgender students' feelings of marginalisation. It also speaks to the need for advocacy for non-prejudiced and inclusive sexuality education in Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of policy documents and textbooks, this paper contributes to the growing field of research on the role of schools and schooling with regards to the construction of gender and sexuality by focusing on school practices and educational spaces. We argue that the nation-state in the Islamic Republic of Iran is a religious biopolitical state and its official discourse in the realm of gender and sexuality relies on heteronormative as well as gender normative belief systems. School spaces are therefore constituted as strongly heteronormative, and non-heterosexuality is not recognised as a legitimate subject position. Through its everyday practices, the education system upholds the state's ideology, by which the ideal/normal student is read as being heterosexual and cisgender, adhering to Islamic/state values, and constituted on the axis of strict gender binaries. Education about sexuality-gender diversity is therefore excluded and/or silenced. This paper aims to explore school discourses and practices in terms of gender and sexuality and how schools construct and regulate sexual and gender identities, with the aim of producing the ideal Islamic/Iranian subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at how shame functions in the teaching of sexual and reproductive health and rights in the classrooms for 13–19 year-olds in secondary schools in Bangladesh. Using the theoretical framework of affect, the paper looks at shame and other experiences of discomfort and hesitation among teachers while teaching these topics to young people. Drawing insights from 25 in-depth interviews with teachers in secondary schools in urban, semi-urban and rural settings, the paper explores how teachers deemed teaching certain topics as 'excessive', unnecessary and inappropriate in school settings. Teachers experience reluctance and discomfort in discussing culturally sensitive sexual and reproductive health and rights topics, and a persistent fear of being ridiculed and excluded from their community. By exploring how affect can be understood to initiate critical reflection about classroom norms, pedagogy and the role of teachers, the paper highlights the challenges for teachers who are seen as gatekeepers of sexual and reproductive health and rights knowledge, and brings forth a more nuanced reflection on the knowledge production process in classrooms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive sexuality education is increasingly being employed on a global scale, with controversies arising regarding the content of such education and the rights of children to access sexuality education versus parents' rights to decide the moral education of their children. In this paper, we utilise crip theory and a critical disability studies lens to analyse controversies surrounding parents' rights versus children's rights in the context of comprehensive sexuality education in Ontario, Canada. Using a disability studies perspective, this paper discusses the erasure of disabled children and youth in debates over children's and parents' rights while problematising the liberal humanist and legal frameworks often employed in comprehensive sexuality education and children's rights. As such, we theorise how a more relationally attuned version of both children's rights and comprehensive sexuality education can avoid oppositional politics and the reification of liberal humanist and ableist ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented to the issue of the journal that discusses topics such as pleasure in sex education, sexual health, and teacher education.

In many contexts, there has been a rapid increase in the visibility of trans* lives in the public sphere. Much educational research has focused on how to make life better for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper moves sideways from this concern to explore how public discourses around trans* lives and the individual labour of bodies are changing the shape of gender in schools and society. Ireland offers an insightful site for this inquiry because, following the Gender Recognition Act (2015) and the Marriage Equality Act (2015), trans* lives have become more visible in the public sphere and there has been a heightened concern for trans* children and young people in schools. This paper draws on an analysis of how trans* people are represented in the media as well as in a selection of accounts from the primary school community of a trans* child. Framed by debates about gender intelligibility, normativity and transgression, the paper elucidates how, as trans* visibility increases, the disciplinary terms of gender are reproduced with ambivalent effects. It argues against individualised and simplistic approaches to trans* identities in schools and raises questions about new gender possibilities in schooling contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How teachers respond to, and interact with, learners of diverse genders and sexualities is critical to ensuring their safe and inclusive schooling experiences. This paper examines the perspectives and responses towards learners of diverse genders and sexualities of a selected group of teachers in a primary school in South Africa. Twelve teachers were interviewed for this qualitative study, and the findings reveal that teachers had a limited understanding of diverse genders and sexualities and mostly held heteronormative and moralistic views. They also considered children as deficient and innocent and were awkward about acknowledging and responding to diverse genders and sexualities with primary school learners. To create a safe and supportive environment for children to understand and construct their genders and sexualities, teachers need to improve their understanding of gender and sexuality, critically reflect on their conservative socialisation and moral judgements, and address their discomfort concerning diverse genders and sexualities among children. Teacher education must prepare teachers in a manner that recognises the complex ways in which gender and sexuality infuse all aspects of learners’ lives. This education should prepare all teachers to adopt a non-judgemental approach to gender and sexuality inclusion in ways that challenge heteronormativity in the primary school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore how social work students can support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning (LGBTQ+) young people in schools. Drawing on the reflective practice portfolio documents of four students who worked with LGBTQ+ young people in a school as part of a social workers in school (SWIS) student placement project, the article uses thematic analysis to identify how the students were able to support young people identifying as LGBTQ+. The article subscribes to a poststructuralist theoretical framework which sees gender and sexual identities as multiple, fragmented and constructed in relation to others and within the systems of knowledge and power that exist in schools. The article demonstrates the benefit to schools of having social work students on practice placement. The students' own reflections critically contemplate the way in which they were able to spend more prolonged periods of time with young people than the teachers could, both with individuals and LGBTQ+ groups. The students' reflective portfolios show the value of the school placements to their own development of knowledge and skills [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers in Lady Agatha's Boarding School (Lady Agatha's) find teaching Sex and Relationships Education (RSE) uncomfortable. This paper investigates one aspect of the discomfort that they feel, namely the impact RSE has on their professional status as teachers. I use focus group data to reflect on the professional and personal location of teachers at Lady Agatha's and to explore their understanding of RSE through the recurring themes of professionalism and professional reputation as symbolic capital; deprofessionalisation and risk as symbolic violence; and the connects and disconnects between the doxa and illusio of the school. Findings suggest that by interrogating the sites of symbolic violence which generate RSE discomfort, we can start to unpick the fabric which creates discomfort about RSE, allowing both for a deeper understanding of RSE discomfort in teachers and an opportunity to address this discomfort as a barrier to RSE delivery at Lady Agatha's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper theorises the ways in which non-binary gender is rendered invisible through binary Yes/No sexual consent education. Judith Butler's framework of gender intelligibility is drawn upon to consider the absenting of non-binary youth from consent education. We suggest that the undoing of the hegemonic colonial gender binary also be a project of consent education. Consent education is often taught through a highly gendered lens underscored by the 'miscommunication hypothesis,' which posits normative binary gender roles as the underlying cause of sexual violence and fails to account for how non-binary youth experience and navigate consent. Furthermore, we examine how binary Yes/No consent education negates non-binary gender by rejecting the grey area of consent. The dismissal of grey area experiences is problematic for non-binary youth as ambiguity around consent may be more prevalent amongst non-binary people due to increased experiences of trauma and the common experience of gender dysphoria. Despite this invisiblisation, non-binary people have formulated their own modes for navigating sexual pleasure and consent. We call for more research into how non-binary youth are invisibilised by binary consent education as well as how these youth are challenging normative consent and reimagining sexual cultures that centre interdependence, mutual pleasure, and care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on critical theorisations to examine kindergarten teachers’ approaches to sexuality education. A qualitative study was carried out using semi-structured interviews with ten teachers and classroom observations in four classrooms in Quebec, Canada. Data analysis revealed that the teachers in the study agreed that sexuality education in kindergarten was important and beneficial. However, narrow perceptions of kindergarten children’s capacities to engage with sexuality content informed classroom approaches in ways that limited children’s access to comprehensive and critical forms of sexuality education. We conclude by recommending a theoretical shift away from relying exclusively on developmental frameworks and to engage with critical theory when designing and implementing sexuality education with young learners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on findings from a survey conducted within a larger collaborative project, working with primary school teachers and parents to normalise conversations about LGBTQ+ issues in four English primary schools. Survey data from 96 teachers and parents highlight different perspectives on the inclusion of LGBTQ+ issues. Existing research shows teachers are often reluctant to address such issues, signalling various concerns, including fear of a negative parental reaction. Using quantitative analysis of Likert items combined with a qualitative analysis of open-ended comments, the study shows differences in perceptions between teachers and parents, and among participating parents. The findings show teachers are willing to address LGBTQ+ issues within the primary school curriculum with support from the majority of parents. Parental opposition to teaching about LGBTQ+ issues appears to be associated with some parents’ religious views and limited engagement with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Parents’ concerns largely focused on notions of childhood innocence and perceptions of age-appropriateness for teaching about/engagement with LGBTQ+ issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores teenage girls' responses to general advice, and formal prevention messages, designed to reduce sexting-related risk and prevent harm. We conducted workshops with seven groups of girls (28 in total), aged 16–17 years, in a New Zealand city. Each group participated in a series of three workshop sessions. Drawing on a Freirean 'problem-posing' approach, we designed the workshops as spaces in which girls were invited to observe and critically discuss norms related to sharing nudes as well as harm prevention messages. Girls noticed the problematic gender and sexual politics that shape abstinence-based models that target girls (implicitly) to not send nudes, but which leave boys who distribute or otherwise misuse them out of the picture. Participants navigated a careful path between attending to risk and protection on the one hand, and endorsing their right to freedom of expression on the other. We argue for a subtle, but significant, shift away from a focus on sexting safety to a focus on the prevention of image-based sexual coercion, harassment and abuse. This reframing would help to direct prevention efforts to the gendered drivers and dynamics of harm perpetration, and the ways in which they are problematically socially ignored or condoned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Novel forms of social media created 'by-and-for' women offer potentially new ways of communicating and constructing sex education. In this paper, we consider how Instagram is being used by sex educators to deploy discourses of resistance and erotics to educate about sex. Our method consisted of a combined critical discourse (CDA) and content analysis of Instagram posts (n = 200) from a small sample of influential feminist/queer sex education accounts that use informative text and illustration-based posts. Framed by Carmody's concept of ethical erotics, we identify four discursive categories in such Instagram content: pleasure positivity; communication and dynamic consent; sex as an experience not a performance; and challenging heteronormative constructions of sex. We argue that the affordances of Instagram provide a platform for the promotion of sex education that centres pleasure and ethical erotics to rectify limited and harmful heteronormative representations of sexuality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have the right to access appropriate and comprehensive sexuality and relationship education (SRE), but face a long history of exclusion from SRE in the USA due to myths about the sexuality of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, biases against people with disabilities, and segregationist educational policies. Additionally, people with autism/autistic people are more likely to report having an LGBTQIA+ identity, and need comprehensive SRE content to become socially competent members of their communities. Teachers and other practitioners are often placed in the uncomfortable position of addressing many SRE topics while feeling unprepared, trying to stay aligned with educational policies, managing caregiver expectations, and providing scientifically accurate fact-based information in an increasingly politicised social climate. This paper provides recommendations on how to teach about LGBTQIA+ issues to students with intellectual and developmental disabilities including recommendations for modifying existing SRE curricula, identifying effective instructional strategies, and outlining a process for including LGBTQIA+ identities in SRE content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To gain an understanding of how students perceive the messages they receive in their K-12 school-based sex education (SBSE) courses, it is important to talk with students who have recently taken these courses. This paper explores the curricula, messaging and environments of sex education courses delivered in schools in Ohio through twenty in-depth interviews with undergraduate college students. Three main themes became apparent from the data: (1) sex negativity in the messages being communicated to students, (2) the unique experiences of LGB students, and (3) missing pieces in the curriculum that students must fill in on their own. SBSE was found to impact cultural norms concerning sex and sexuality which had an effect on students' interpersonal and intrapsychic sexual scripts. We discuss the implications of students' experiences for how policy and practice change, particularly in Ohio, can move towards ensuring that school-based sex education is more inclusive, sex positive and thorough for the next generation of students and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children's experience of harm and abuse has a profound impact on their health and well-being. In response, school-based prevention programmes have been developed and delivered by external organisations with the aim of improving children's awareness and understanding of forms of harm and abuse which may affect them, encouraging them to seek help if needed. In September 2020, Relationships Education became statutory within the primary school curriculum in England and this ratification is likely to increase demand for externally delivered classroom-based programmes, which address the broad range of topics to be covered within this field. However, evidence is required to understand the impact and acceptability of such programmes. This paper presents qualitative findings from a larger mixed-methods study. Focus group discussions with 29 children explored their responses to one Healthy Relationships programme delivered to primary school children aged 10 and 11 in England. Analysis focuses specifically on responses to the topics of sexual abuse prevention and help-seeking. Children's widespread support for the programme indicates that topics are relevant and the opportunity to explore these issues is valued. However, for effective programme implementation, schools and parents need to be prepared, and prevention messages should continue to be embedded throughout children's school lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically explores the pedagogy of Science World in creating disciplined, birthing patients within the sexuality education BodyWorks gallery on display in Vancouver, Canada. Using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, I explore the ways in which power/knowledge circulates to regulate and de-agentalise bodies in a science museum encounter. I consider the regimes of truth that emerge regarding the good/right/correct way to give birth and to be a woman: that is, as White, heteronormative, slender, conforming, always a mother, but and mostly a uterus. In exposing regimes of truth within the encountered curriculum of the science museum, the hope is that sexuality educators might (re)consider space for the unruly and awe-ful within pedagogies of childbirth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sex and sexuality curricula in the USA should acknowledge the structural conditions racialised young people navigate to make sense of their sexual experiences and more explicitly recognise the political power of gender and sexuality. This paper suggests educators use women of colour feminism and decolonial studies to offer a historicised approach to understanding and engaging with gender and sexuality. Such an approach acknowledges how European colonisation has constructed white middle-class masculinity, femininity and heterosexuality as normative and pathologises other forms of gender and sexuality expression. It encourages educators to address state investment in colonial hierarchies by foregrounding how national legislation and associated discourses support the institutionalised pathologisation of racialised sexuality. Using a feminist of colour and decolonial approach, the article examines how US national policy further disciplines racialised sexuality by employing discourses of 'anchor babies' to justify the passing of new laws. It draws on the author's experience as an educator of colour to show how historicising gender and sexuality can teach racialised students there is nothing pathological about their sexuality. A transformed sex and sexuality curriculum is proposed to teach students about the political power they wield, and what critical understanding and action they can achieve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School-based sex education has been a controversial issue in the province of Ontario, Canada. When an updated sex education curriculum was introduced by the provincial government in 2015, the media heavily covered negative reactions to the curriculum, and one distinct genre of reporting became modestly popular: the fact-checking article. These listicle-style articles presented and debunked common misunderstandings surrounding the curriculum and while they tried to appear as a neutral response to misinformation, fact-checking articles are no less value-laden than other responses to the curriculum. By examining two examples of these 'fact-checking' and 'myth-busting' articles published in The Toronto Star in 2015, I argue against the assumption that simply exposing the facts of a curriculum's content is enough to dispel the deep anxieties that surround sexual values in a pluralistic democracy like Canada. This paper instead suggests that the reassurance provided by fact-checking obscures the ways that conflict and uncertainty might present opportunities rather than obstacles to creating and sustaining inclusive comprehensive sex education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fisting is a sexual practice that is almost always left out of sex and sexuality education. It elicits strong reactions, both from practitioners who describe it as a highly pleasurable, safe, and even spiritual activity, and from critics and clinicians who condemn it as dangerous. Fisting has attracted little scholarly attention but has ignited conservative outrage and censorship. Education about fisting is largely confined to nonformal delivery outside of mainstream sex education, mostly through queer sexuality educators and porn producers. This paper analyses the politics and pedagogy of fisting to identify what fisting can teach us about sexuality education. I argue that fisting is a generative topic for thinking about safer sex and pleasure in sexuality education, and that a pedagogy of fisting can advance a queer, unruly vision of sexuality education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When sexuality educators bother to think about gay anal sex, it is usually to consider, 'What can we – or should we – teach about it?' Rarely is the question asked, 'What might gay anal sex teach sexuality education?' Inspired by Kathleen Quinlivan's suggestion that we work together to 'create new possibilities for what else sexuality and relationships education could become', this paper explores the educative potential of the anally penetrated male. By engaging with the work of the Indigenous philosopher of education Carl Mika, while attending to a scene of gay anal sex in Witi Ihimaera's novel The Uncle's Story (2000), it seeks to expose notions of wellbeing – commonly conceptualised within sexuality and relationships education in Aotearoa New Zealand as hauora – to the destabilising metaphysical entities of darkness and nothingness, thereby opening sexuality education up to what Mika calls the '(il)logic of mystery'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on a single lesson created as part of a year-long comprehensive sex and sexuality programme for youth (9–12-year-old) of refugee and immigrant backgrounds. Utilising the concept of youth agency, we analysed the process of art-making with the students and its product to explore how the creation of penises and vulvas out of craft materials allowed young people to interrogate stereotypical assumptions about their bodies and about gendered expectations. We contend that although gendered engagement with the project reflects societal expectations of how boys and girls relate to their genitals, the activity created a space in which to imagine sexed and gendered symbols differently and explore a world outside of the traditional cis-hetero construction of their meanings Our findings reflect the importance of centring sex and sexuality education on ideas of pleasure and playfulness in order to engage young people's full selves in the learning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore moments in past research when my sense-making faltered, my confusion/joy/longing proliferated, and my own feelings got the best of me. I discuss the generative potential of these 'analytical conundrums' via a queer map of messy 'complaints'. Within/across these complaints, I playfully attune to the sonic frequencies of happily ever after with/in diverse, intersecting dimensionalities. As I imagine them here, complaint mappings are provocations that invite us to sense/queer/reimagine educational research/practices/pedagogies that encourage subjects to live in one world – where having 'a life' becomes synonymous with having the right kind of intimate life. Specifically, I map out how literacy events are more-than-human scenes of entanglement, wherein gender/sex/uality/desire do not reside within individuals or things, but rather emerge via complex, entangled, and 'mobile' processes of attaching↔relating. It is my hope that mapping these 'complaints' will help tell these moments otherwise by generating a kind of un/happiness that embraces relationality, chance, possibility and wonder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of excess is often used to exclude or render deviant marginalised individuals and groups, reifying hegemonic structures of control and domination. Feminists and other critical scholars, however, have utilised the concept of excess to resist such normalising efforts. In conversation with these critical scholars, this paper advances the concept of bodily excess as a tool for reimagining the project(s) of sexuality education towards capaciousness and curiosity. Specifically, we wonder about the practices, body parts, desires and discourses that exceed formal knowledge production efforts in the sex education arena. We outline five definitional features that serve as touchstones for the pedagogical possibilities of embracing bodily excess: overflow, uncertainty, the sensory, the political, and affective complexity. From our scholar-practitioner positions, we argue that bodily excess is an important conceptual tool for including and centring the fullest range of embodied experiences within a given learning community, and for stretching our politicised and relational bodily imaginaries. In other words, we ask for more. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the rich and detailed sex life stories of two self-identified cisgender gay men. Both recalled in retrospect their romantic and sexual experiences with their respective close in age first cousins during their adolescence. Both men described their experiences as voluntary and a positive influence on their emotional and sexual development as self-identified gay men. The men were born and raised in contrasting contexts: the first in a small town in Jalisco, the second in Mexico City. Both men participated in a larger study that gave life to experiences of incest as documented through storytelling, and the stories men shared speak for themselves. However, they also provide insightful reflections on cultures of family intimacy in Mexico. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In our conversations about sexuality, Kathleen Quinlivan and I mused over how a subject as potentially vibrant and life-enhancing as sexuality education could so often be taught in uninspiring and disembodied ways. Students' existing critique of much sexuality education is that it is typically disease and danger focused, marginalises the sensuous body and fails to address their lived experiences. Motivated by the wildness and adventure that Kathleen inspired in her work, this paper is offered as a provocation that attempts to attend to sexuality education's pedagogy differently. Employing the idea of 'smellwalks' as an educational activity, it proposes a reconceptualisation of the subject in ways that endeavour to engage the body and the sensuous. The notion of smellwalk pedagogy challenges the conventional aims of sexuality education and how these are mobilised in the classroom. In the spirit of Kathleen's interest in unruly aspects of sexuality and gender, smellwalks seek to reconfigure the purpose and pedagogy of sexuality education and the nature of sexuality itself. The point of thinking about such a pedagogical experiment is to capture the sense of playfulness and adventure currently missing from most sexuality programmes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw from elements of a study that sought to examine how teenage South African girls, both white and black African, articulate their relationship with online sexually explicit materials (SEM). The study contributes to the literature by resisting the dominant discursive practices underlined by the construction of sexuality as an exclusive realm of danger for teenage girls. Challenging this static version of femininity, we focus on the ways in which teenage girls, aged between 13 and 18 years old in two elite private schools, use online SEM to expand their sexual knowledge and engage in pleasurable forms of sexuality. By drawing on individual interviews, focus group discussions and open-ended visual elicitation research methods, we show how girls embrace online SEM in ways that expand the definition of femininity beyond fearing sexuality whilst demonstrating the entanglement with gender inequalities. Girls' relationship with online SEM, whilst tenuous, disrupts normative assumptions around femininity. However, an ambiguous relationship with online SEM is evident as their challenges to dominant femininity are mediated by concerns about respect and innocence, as well as by persistent evidence of male power within online SEM. Implications for school-based sexuality education concludes the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Notions of 'participation' in sexuality education has gained considerable traction in recent years - with participation being regarded as a fundamental right and a critical means to empower young people. However, the notion has increasingly been subject of debate, with critics problematising the manner in which participation is operationalised, and questioning the assumed impact of participation in relation to sexuality education goals. This paper contributes to these debates by examining the under-researched gendered dimensions of participation of young people in sexuality education. It utilises data from a qualitative study conducted in 2015 on young women and men's (10-15 years old) perceptions of their participation in the dance4life programme, an in-school sexuality education programme in Jinja district in eastern Uganda. The paper highlights subtle but important differences between young men and women's participation in the programme, which are arguably reflective of existing gendered hierarchies. We conclude by providing recommendations on how to address gender differences in participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]