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2 Sex education and the condom This chapter analyses the social effects of sex education for adolescents. Focusing on the period post-1986, the chapter examines the impact of AIDS education, and in particular safer sex education in the classroom. The main point of concern is the framing of sexual knowledge of the condom in public secondary high schools. By comparing and contrasting the provision of sex education in the US, UK and Australia the chapter draws attention to the differences and similarities in present and past histories of sex education. In so doing
For sex educators, audiences are a central concern. This is obvious as the very purpose of sex education is to communicate knowledge about sexuality to people who, for various reasons, are considered in need of this knowledge. Through history, sex educators have striven to expand their audiences and increase the influence of their messages in different ways, not least by using mass media such as film, radio and television
During the Khrushchev thaw, from the early 1950s to the early 1960s, the Soviet state launched a campaign on sex education, publishing a whole series of manuals on the subject. This represented a significant shift in the official Soviet policy towards sex: from prevailing silence on sex issues of the Stalin era to their examination in sex education brochures aimed at Soviet young people. These manuals were introduced in the hope of restricting the sexual activity of Soviet young people and in order to raise their awareness of venereal diseases, abortion and
In 1974 the British Board of Film Censors refused to grant a certificate to the Swedish documentary More About the Language of Love (Mera ur Kärlekens språk, 1970, Torgny Wickman, Sweden: Swedish Film Production), due to its explicit sexual content. Nevertheless, the Greater London Council granted the film an ‘X’ certificate so that it could be shown legally in cinemas throughout the capital. This article details the trial against the cinema manager and owners, after the film was seized by police under the charge of obscenity, and explores the impact on British arguments around film censorship, revealing a range of attitudes towards sex and pornography. Drawing on archival records of the trial, the widespread press coverage as well as participants’ subsequent reflections, the article builds upon Elisabet Björklund’s work on Swedish sex education films and Eric Schaefer’s scholarship on Sweden’s ‘sexy nation’ reputation to argue that the Swedish films’ transnational distribution complicated tensions between educational and exploitative intentions in a particularly British culture war over censorship.
During the mid-1980s, the object of the condom became associated with the prevention of HIV/AIDS. This book investigates the consequences of this shift in the object's meaning. Focusing on the US, British and Australian contexts, it addresses the impact of the discourse of safer sex on our lives and, in particular, the lives of adolescents. Addressing AIDS public health campaigns, sex education policies, sex research on adolescence and debates on the eroticisation of safer sex, the book looks at how the condom has affected our awareness of ourselves, of one another and of our futures. In its examination of the condom in the late twentieth century, it critically engages with a range of literatures, including those concerned with sexuality, adolescence, methods, gender and the body.
This book considers the policy of the George W. Bush administration towards issues such as abortion, sex education, obscenity and same-sex marriage. It suggests that, although accounts have often emphasised the ties between George W. Bush and the Christian right, the administration's strategy was, at least until early 2005, largely directed towards the courting of middle-ground opinion. The study offers a detailed and comprehensive survey of policy making; assesses the political significance of moral concerns; evaluates the role of the Christian Right; and throws new light on George W. Bush's years in office and the character of his thinking.
TBA_C04.qxd 08/02/2007 11:20 AM Page 102 4 ‘Pet your dog . . .’: sex education, abstinence and contraception The development and growth of sex education programmes was tied to the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s and 1970s. The Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), the principal nationwide advocacy organisation and a major curriculum provider, was established in 1964. As Janice Irvine records: school sex education expanded through the sixties. Emboldened by the times . . . many communities initiated programs or amplified those
ideology in a positive way: as a means to counteract violence and to aim for equality’ (Shepherds 2013 ). They appeal ‘to institutions responsible for Polish education not to yield under pressure from the few but very loud groups with not inconsiderable financial resources, which in the name of modern education carry out experiments on children and young people’ (Shepherds 2013 ). By ‘experiments’, they meant sex education based on WHO standards, as well as a sex and equality education curriculum for pre-school prepared by feminists. On another
often noted, the most devout president since Jimmy Carter. However, while faith added a sense of innocence to representations of Carter’s character and personality, Bush’s beliefs and ties have almost always been portrayed in a more threatening way. Indeed, it has been said that he is driven by messianic notions. From this perspective, White House policy towards both foreign affairs and domestic issues such as abortion, sex education and gay rights and the nomination of federal judges has been dictated by faith. In essence, some of the least restrained commentators
designed to make up for the (sex) education that women were denied by society and the state. Gilman and Grand were, throughout their writing lives, exercised by the social and economic costs of the enforced ignorance of women and girls in matters of sexual hygiene. The association between the ill-health of the individual and the nation were, they contended, intimately connected with the paucity of educational opportunities for girls. Even where formal education did exist, moral and social imperatives impeded the real development of the woman’s intellect and her capacity