Sex ed community assignment home

Who is in this community?

What are their interests?

How do they communicate?

 

(III) How and under what circumstances do members of the sex education community communicate with one another?

In my informal online survey of 29 people, the top method of communicating with others, both online and offline, in the sex education community was through online social networking. There are numerous online social networking Web site groups devoted to sex education and I counted at least 15 groups on Facebook.
When asked about the seemingly greater online presence of Web sites and organizations that favor comprehensive sex education over abstinence-only, RH Reality Check blogger Emily Douglas said she “wouldn’t be surprised” if abstinence-only groups don’t have as much of a presence online.

“My sense is that, in general, the progressive movement has used the Internet more to its advantage than the conservative movement has,” Douglas said. “They’re [conservatives who favor abstinence-only education] the dominant educational mode in schools, so why would they need to be online? People go online when they don’t have the community elsewhere, which is why so many progressive organizations and blog sites have sprung up during the Bush administration. That’s where sex education went because there was nowhere else for it to happen.” (Bush supports abstinence-only-before-marriage sex education.)

Some of the advocacy sites maintain discussion boards. But the boards aren’t always easy to find and don’t always have much participation or regular updates. This may be one deterrent to participation. In my survey, a slight majority of people said they don’t participate in online conversations about sex education that occur on discussion boards or social networking sites. So while community members may largely look to online social networking sites as ways of communicating with others interested in similar topics, they are not always willing to post or engage in the discussions themselves.
Katie Guilfoyle, a health education administrator at Northwestern University, said she does not take enough advantage of online communities and wishes she felt more connected. While she says it may not be the fault of these communities, she added that “These communities, while I’m sure they exist, aren’t very well-known.”
Emily Raymond, a coordinator of the sexual health event, Sex Week, at Northwestern University, said she believes there is a lot of discussion going on in the Internet about sex education, but that she tends to network online with people that she already knows in person through student organizations.
Raymond makes a distinction between online networking for sharing opinions versus sharing information and resources.

“I’m always a little bit leery to trust people on the Internet because I have no idea what their qualifications are or what their background is or if they even are who they say they are,” Raymond said. “So I think that’s something that impedes networking for me. Talking about your opinions is one thing, but asking for actual advice on stuff is something else entirely.”

Raymond said that while the Internet is a great resource, “It does not replace personal interaction with people that are interested in the same thing,” especially when it comes to uniting the community through activist work. In my survey, nearly one-third of the responses favored organizations and meetings for communicating with others interested in sex education.
For organizations that want to better engage the sex education community online, Raymond suggests that major advocacy organizations have special sections on their Web sites for college students or people very interested in activism. Raymond said the Web sites could have message boards and contact lists for activists to get in touch with other local activists. Raymond suggested the section could be restricted to students with .edu e-mail addresses, so there may be a greater sense of a secure, connected community.
Offline, there are conferences that allow members of the sex education community to network and to participate in further discussions. Conferences include the following:

• American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) Annual Conference
• National Abstinence Education Association’s members conference
• Sex Ed Conference, hosted by Planned Parenthood New Jersey’s Center for Family Life Education
• Sex Tech Conference, hosted by Internet Sexuality Information Services Inc., and focuses on sexual health outreach to youths using technology
• Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality conferences

When asked about ways to improve the ways of meeting and communicating with others about common interests in sex education, survey respondents offered a variety of suggestions:

• “I’d encourage more bloggers to meet up face-to-face, encourage more local-oriented one-day conference events.”
• “There should be more discussion boards or online organizations (Not the expensive professional organizations) that people can communicate with. Unfortunately, it is not something that is widely expressed in an appropriate way. I feel most of the talk of sex on the Internet is from one extreme to another, i.e., porn to extreme religious or conservative biases. Sex education should be more informational and should be accessible to people with questions and concerns.”
• “Perhaps it’d be nice to not have talk about sex stigmatized so much.”

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