Dec 12 2007
Who is in the sex education community?
| Sex ed community assignment home | Who is in this community? | What are their interests? | How do they communicate? |
(I) Who is in the sex education community?
The sex education community consists of people with diverse backgrounds who are interested in this topic for a variety of reasons. The community includes the following:
- Child development and psychology professionals
- Feminist organizations
- Ideologically-based advocacy organizations (support abstinence-only versus comprehensive sex education, etc.)
- Medical/health professionals, including those who educate about sexually transmitted diseases
- Parents
- Religious organizations
- Reproductive rights and sexual health organizations or educators
- Sexual assault prevention organizations or educators
- Sexuality organizations or researchers
- Teen pregnancy organizations
- Youths and students (including middle school, high school and college)
The sex education community tends to overlap heavily with people interested in reproductive issues. “I think that most people who are interested in sex education classify their interests more generally as being interested in reproductive health and rights,” said Stephanie Gross of Sexual Health and Assault Peer Education (SHAPE), a student organization at Northwestern.
Most of the people involved in the sex education community tend to be female, at least in Emily Raymond’s experience. Raymond is a coordinator of Sex Week, a sexual health event at Northwestern University that seeks to stir dialogue and educate students through health fairs and events.
“Men aren’t expected to think about sexuality as much so they don’t enter into that conversation as much as women do,” said Ross Wantland, coordinator of sexual assault education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a blogger who writes about sexuality. “Women have a lot more at stake in comprehensive sex education and in challenging a patriarchal society,” Wantland said.
Katie Guilfoyle, a health education administrator at Northwestern University who helped to start SHAPE, said she was surprised by the age range of people interested in sex education. “I think it definitely transcends age barriers,” Guilfoyle said. She said the community ranges from college students to parents to clinic doctors in their sixties. Guilfoyle said there is an especially “huge interest” among parents with young children.
Guilfoyle also said the audience is changing as students are realizing earlier that sex education affects them. Kids are comparing their experiences with those of kids at other schools, even before reaching college, and thinking more broadly about the topic. “Younger kids are getting a better idea of this whole debate and the fact that their sex education in their school might be limited,” Guilfoyle said.
People who are actively involved in the sex education community tend to be towards the extremes rather than the middle ground, Raymond said. “I think they’re either quite liberal or quite conservative in their beliefs.”
Liberals tend to support comprehensive sex education, which can include abstinence education but also discussion of contraceptives, while conservatives tend to favor abstinence-only-before-marriage sex education.