‘Too many assumptions’: cultural diversity and the politics of inclusion in sexuality education

ABSTRACT

For more than a decade, the international and national literature has established that sexuality education does not adequately speak to the broad range of cultural and religious diversities present in classrooms. These persistent obfuscations speak to long-standing questions around normativity, Othering and ‘inclusion’. In this paper, we turn to a recent project that asked young people from a broad range of cultural and religious backgrounds to reflect on their experience of sexuality education. Across a fascinating set of observations, the participants argued that sexuality education rests on ‘too many assumptions’, a range of assumptions that continue to mark them as Other in the classroom. More importantly, they identified a tricky problematic – on the one hand, they want more diversity represented, along with opportunities to explore their views and perspectives. One the other hand, they felt unsure about how this could occur in a safe way, without making them feel ‘on display’, misunderstood, or judged. In the face of this tricky problem, we present a series of insights not only for Australian educators, but for countries across the globe who face similar problems resulting from the obfuscations of largely normative sexuality education frameworks.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexuality education
• cultural diversity
• critical race theory
• whiteness

Introduction

For more than a decade, the international and national literature has established that sexuality education does not adequately speak to the broad range of cultural and religious diversities in classrooms (Allen 2021; Haggis and Mulholland 2014; Mukoro 2017; Sanjakdar 2018). While some approaches to sexuality education focus on biological topics related to sexual and reproductive health, the more recent best practice approach – comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) – covers a much broader range of topics related to how sexual practices are shaped and understood, such as consent, respectful relationships, gender and sexual identities, pornography and pleasure. Regardless of the approach, sexuality education has received sustained criticism for overlooking religious and cultural interpretations of gender, sex and sexuality in sexuality education policy, curriculum and pedagogy (Allen 2021).

This oversight is especially significant in the face of national and international statistics. In Australia, according to the most recent census, 51.5% of the population is comprised of first and second generation migrants, with 29.3% born overseas (see https://www.abs.gov.au/census 2022). Importantly, this diversity is repeated across the globe, in European nations with multi-generational and newly arrived migrant populations, in settler-colonised countries such as the USA, Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand, and in low and middle income countries (Quinlivan et al. 2014; Mukoro 2017; Coultas et al. 2020). Exploring ways to better address this diversity in sexuality education curricula is imperative not only to contribute to social justice agendas, but also because research suggests that young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds continue to experience poorer sexual health outcomes than their non-migrant counterparts (Botfield, Newman, and Zwi 2015).

In the face of such diversity (Mukoro 2017; Bittner and Meisert 2021), the implications for curriculum content and pedagogy seem daunting. In this paper we argue these persistent obfuscations speak to long-standing critiques from a range of sexuality education scholars around normativity, Othering, diversity and inclusion (Rasmussen 2015; Roodsaz 2018; Quinlivan et al. 2014), critiques that reveal the predominantly Western logics underpinning CSE (Rasmussen 2015). We are also inspired by Ahmed’s (2012, 1) study On Being Included in which she raises a number of cautions in relation to ‘the appealing nature of diversity’ and asks ‘whether the ease of its incorporation by institutions is a sign of the loss of its critical edge’. With regard to sexuality education, there is also a need to be cautious about the ways in which diversities might be ‘included’ in problematic ways. How might diversities be represented in ways that avoid over determining the differences of ‘cultural Others’, for example, and how can diversities be addressed without tacking-on or adding-in cultural Others?

These tricky questions challenge researchers, teachers and sexual health practitioners to centre the needs, experiences and perspectives of young people who are too often silenced in academic theorising, policy and curriculum design. Indeed, in the Australian context, there is very little empirical, qualitative work with young people from a broad range of cultural and religious backgrounds and more importantly, little work that ‘flips the script’ and asks those commonly identified as Other within the classroom to reflect back on their curricular experiences of sexuality education (see for exception Rasmussen et al. 2015; Sanjakdar 2018). Because of this, in this paper, we turn to a recent project that explores the lived experience of first generation, second generation and recently arrived migrant students who completed their secondary schooling in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with young people aged 18–25 from a broad range of cultural and religious backgrounds. The interviews asked young people to reflect on their experiences of sexuality education, and consider how useful it was in reflecting their needs and experiences.

We begin with current critiques which argue that despite claims to best practice, objectivity and ‘inclusion’, sexuality education is frequently structured around a series of Western logics. We then move to reflect on the voices of young people, insights that reveal the specific ways in which the normative logics and ‘inclusionary gestures’ of this kind of sexuality education rest on a range of assumptions that reinforce and reproduce cultural Othering in the classroom space. In particular, we turn to a ‘tricky problem’ identified by the students: namely, while they would like to see a broader range of diversity represented to address the exclusions they are experiencing, they simultaneously feel concerned about being made ‘too visible’ through these representations. This tricky problematic raises a series of important questions for educators and researchers: is more representation and ‘culturally appropriate’ pedagogy an adequate response in the face of these concerns, precisely because ‘inclusion’ can place young people in a problematic position? And if culturally appropriate pedagogy is needed, what is the best way for this to be designed, by whom, and on what basis?

Normativity, Othering and the Politics of Inclusion

The dominant approach in Australia to dealing with diversity is to seek to ‘include’ and ‘incorporate’, often in an ad hoc way, different cultural and religious viewpoints into existing sexuality education frameworks (Mukoro 2017). In Australia, the national curriculum asks students to develop ‘intercultural understandings as students learn to value their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others’ (see https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/). Notwithstanding differences in national and policy frameworks, this inclusionary position is replicated globally. For example, the UK has a well-established commitment to cultural inclusivity and faith sensitivity (Sell and Reiss 2022). In recent years, Sweden has also focused on ‘inclusive and anti-discriminatory’ education (Bengtsson and Bolander 2020, 155), while in Nigeria, ‘inclusionary’ approaches to a degree have become more popular (Mukoro 2017). This inclusionary paradigm is associated with allied processes encapsulated by terms such as cultural competency, cultural sensitivity, intercultural competence and faith sensitivity (Allen 2021; Mukoro 2022; Bittner and Meisert 2021).

While these inclusionary gestures are well-meaning, this style of work has received several critiques. Firstly, because comprehensive sexuality education claims to be ‘best’ practice due to a supposedly objective, human rights, secular, and evidence-based approach, a problematic binary is established between frameworks such as this and the values and norms of different cultural communities. Secondly, it is also assumed that because CSE is evidence based, it is therefore ‘neutral’ to cultural concerns and universal in its appeal and application. However, as argued by Rasmussen (2010, 2015), many forms of sexuality education are more narrow in their appeal precisely because of the underpinning secular logics. These logics tend to be based on Western, liberal, individualistic frameworks of ‘sexual freedom’ and agency – and while we do not wish to argue human rights approaches have no merit – as argued by Roodsaz, dominant constructions of ‘human rights’ are nonetheless framed as a process of liberal, individual freedoms and autonomous choice-making (Roodsaz 2018). As such, sexuality education is highly particular, since it emerges from Western, Eurocentric norms of choice and ‘healthy’ sexual subjecthood (Quinlivan et al. 2014; Carrera-Fernández et al. 2021). As such, it does not explicitly address collective concerns, nor ‘the complex role of kinship networks, culture, religion and spirituality in student’s decision-making’ (Roodsaz 2018, 110).

Claims to best practice also overlook the fact that notions of subjectivity, ‘rights’ and agency may differ within and between communities and as we will see below, some experiences of sex and relationships may not sit easily within Western, individualistic traditions of ‘choice making’. As argued in Le Grice and Braun’s important study from the NZ context, Maori interpretations of gender, sex and sexuality differ markedly from those informed by liberal choice because they are multidimensional encompassing spiritual, ecological and human domains, and disruptive of liberal logics by seeing ‘reproduction as a practice of cultural rather than just personal significance’ (Le Grice and Braun 2018, 181). In addition, liberal modalities ignore a whole range of factors and experiences that structure ‘choices’ related to sexual and gendered practices, such as poverty (Coultas et al. 2020) or the lived experience of migration (Mulholland et al. 2021). As argued by Coultas et al. (2020, 8), it is clear that sexuality education instructs individuals about ‘right choices’ and ‘responsible behaviours’ rather deconstructing the normative framework that underpins notions of ‘right sexuality’ and ‘right choice’.

In addition to problems associated with universal neutrality, a related concern rests on the ways in which sexuality education frameworks express and reproduce colonial logics. In ‘The West and the Rest’ (Hall 1992) Stuart Hall elucidated how colonial and orientalist discourses came to construct the West as the yardstick of civility and progressive modernity (Hall 1992) – and within this binary, the ‘Rest’ were viewed in abject and deficit terms as backward and uncivilised. These logics are reproduced in the contemporary landscape through discourses of development – and for those that have migrated or have familial connections to countries marked as ‘Undeveloped’, ‘Developing’ or ‘Third World’, colonial and orientalist logics continue to mark this Otherness in visceral ways. Indeed, Hage speaks specifically to the Australian context, in which diverse migrant populations come to be viewed as ‘Third World-looking people’, who are decontextualised through an internalised orientalist logic and constructed as ‘threatening’ to the White Nation fantasy (Hage 2000).

Other current literature notes the ways in which cultural Others are set up as ‘inadequate and dangerous’ (Carrera-Fernández et al. 2021, 3) or seen as sources of conflict in the sexuality education space because their views on gender and sexuality are seen as ‘backward’, conservative or out of touch (Bengtsson and Bolander 2020; Honkasalo 2018). In this way, certain groups are in danger of being cast as ‘the Rest’ in relation to the supposedly best practice approach which, as argued above, despite claims to neutrality, rests squarely on the frameworks and modalities of the ‘West’.

Study and methods

The voices of young people from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds are persistently overlooked in sexuality education policy making and curriculum design. In the light of this, the research design and methods used in this study sought to centre young people’s lived experience.

The study was informed by data from semi-structured interviews with 12 young people aged 18–25 from a range of cultural and religious backgrounds (Iran, Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, Somalia, Turkey, Lebanon). The interviews lasted around one hour in length, and took place in a university meeting room, or online through Zoom. Participants were recruited by advertising in University topics Facebook account, through a sexual and relationships education service and via snowballing. The advertisements asked for participants who were born overseas and had attended school in Australia, or who came from second generation migrant families. Six of the participants had moved to the Australian cities of Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne from their country of origin while aged between 3 and 13, and went to government funded schools, except for one who had attended a private school. The other 6 participants were born in Australia – two of them attended government funded schools, and 4 attended Islamic Schools. Those that attended secular government funded schools offered the most germane insights into focus of this paper – namely, the politics of normativity and Othering experienced in ‘mainstream’, secular school settings. While it is not within the scope of this paper to compare secular and religious school contexts, we have used where relevant insights from participants from students in Islamic Colleges to show how religious and cultural experiences may be overlooked and/or assumed in the mainstream settings.

Throughout the study, we were mindful of the ways in which assumptions about ‘cultural and religious difference’ are too often predetermined by researchers (Haggis and Mulholland 2014), and indeed, assuming ‘cultural difference’ as a fixed category falls very much into the problems surrounding normativity and Othering that this paper aims to address. It is vital to note that the identities of our interview subjects are not shaped by ‘race and culture’ alone, but by a complex intersection of gender, sexuality, age, class, and ability that shapes their experiences. In addition, it is important to stress that genders and sexualities are not ‘fixed’ – rather, they are better understood in a multitude of forms, and thus practices and norms are expressed in different ways within and between different communities. Because of this, we employed an emergent methodology that attempted to avoid pre-determining or assuming what their experiences of sexuality might be might be. Questions were presented in an open-ended way, so topics could be explored on participants’ own terms. The interviews asked young people to reflect on their experience of sexuality education through three main frames: 1) what did they learn, and what was useful; 2) what was overlooked and what did they want to learn; and 3) can sexuality education better address their needs and experiences, and if so how? The study protocol was reviewed and approved by the Flinders University Ethics Committee (Approval number 2262).

The interviews were analysed using Braun and Clarke’s (2006) approach to thematic analysis. Specifically, we aimed to identify what was occurring at the semantic level (what is explicitly stated) and the latent level (looking beyond what is said to identify ideologies, assumptions and discourses). Semantic analysis focused on reflections about specific curriculum oversights, and latent analysis examined how these concerns were informed and structured by colonising and universalising discourses that impacted the sexuality space. In relation to the analysis, for the purposes of this paper we have collapsed together religious, racial and ethnic differences and talk instead about how the participants experienced racial Othering in a more general sense. As will be seen in the next section, this was in large part because participants described themselves in this way, as Other to their ‘Aussie’ counterparts. In addition, as indicted above, Hage points to a long history of collapsing complex and nuanced identities into ‘those that are Third-World looking and those that are not’ (Hage 2000). However, in making this decision, we recognise there are differences along religious, racial and ethnic lines, and where applicable we note specific racial ethnic or religious identities, and how these might result in specific observations about difference and Othering. In addition, we did not disaggregate interviews by gender, class and other axes of difference, and doing so may have revealed forms of exclusion and Othering not discussed here.

Too many assumptions

Across participant reflections, the overwhelmingly response was that sexuality education only spoke to a very specific range of students. As stated by Divan,

They should have more variety, they are coming in with a more Judaeo-Christian and Western perspective.

(Divan, Male, Sri Lanka)

Similar sentiments advanced the idea that sexuality education might be particular in its appeal, through phrases such as ‘White’, ‘Anglo’, or the ‘Australian way’

I think maybe stereotypically that’s like the Australian way. Whatever that means anymore …There’s individuals from different areas as well that don’t get the same knowledge … I went to a very Anglo school and I was the only Muslim in the school.

(Sara, Lebanon, Female)

From the outset, the use of terms such as ‘Aussie’, ‘Australian’, ‘Western’ and ‘Anglo’ across all participant narratives was striking for the ways young people spoke to the marking of difference in school spaces. Despite being Australian citizens and, for some, despite living in Australia for all or most of their lives, young people did not automatically connect with these terms. As noted above, colonial mentalities continue to construct those viewed as non-Western as racial Others, positioned as ‘the Rest’, or ‘Third World-looking people’, in relation to ‘white’ Western subjectivities (Hage 2000; Stratton 2020). Indeed, as evident in in Lan’s reflection below, despite living in a ‘multi-cultural country’, she does not connect to the term ‘Australian’.

There are more kids and teenagers from other cultures. Australia is such a multi-cultural country and a lot of us can’t relate to that information that’s been given to Australian kids and you need that inclusion. Obviously, there are so many programmes for inclusion, but you just don’t feel it that much, because you feel like the way Australian people approach race from a very Australian perspective. Like you have certain assumptions and expectations for people from other cultures and their parents, but you really don’t know … they need to speak to a lot more culturally diverse people to be able to have a grasp or an understanding for how to approach sex for kids who are not Australian.

(Lan, Vietnam, Female)

We can’t relate to the examples used: “one shoe size”

More specifically, participants outlined the range of ‘assumptions and expectations’ that Lan points to above – assumptions which underpin sexuality education and simultaneously obfuscate, misunderstand or make difference ‘too visible’. The first assumption was that all students could relate to the ‘relationship’ scenarios and examples used as class content in sexuality education – as well as the associated practices that accompany these examples. Padma, described this as the ‘one shoe size’ approach.

It’s the one shoe size where the bar scenario, where you see in movies growing up, that’s all I would say. A relationship would be, going to a bar, asking someone out, and that’s it. That’s all the representation I would get.

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

As Lan also stated, the examples used did not adequately reflect the broad range of experiences of young people from different cultures:

You can’t keep making examples like that because more and more there are kids and teenagers from different cultures.

(Lan, Female, Vietnam)

This ‘one shoe size’ was characterised by the assumption that all young people were openly and freely choosing relationships, such as by participating in what Divan (Sri Lanka, Male) called ‘dating around’, and more specifically, what Padma describes above as ‘bar dating’, which was completely different from anything he had experienced as ‘being Muslim first’. Padma went on to reflect on the normative acceptance that young people could meet a stranger in a bar, for example, and this interaction might instigate a romantic or sexual relationship:

Yeah, so the norm – normality for I guess being a Muslim first. So religious wise, it’s arranged marriages. Getting your parents involved. But of a sense quite different to the Western aspect. Which stereotypically would be, go to … someone in a bar for instance, and say hey, do you want to chat for instance? Which is completely different from anything that I’ve – I’ve experienced on my culture …

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

Relatedly, many participants noted there was an assumption in the sexuality education curriculum that young people had sex before marriage, and that expressions of sexual affection were open and public. In the following excerpt, when reflecting on the norms shaped by his Sri Lankan ethnicity, Divan (Sri Lanka, Male) expressed his surprise about PDAs (what he calls public displays of affection) in Australian culture, and in particular, the assumption that PDAs are normatively expressed by all young people:

The intimate part, that they don’t have much PDA there … or like, you would kiss on the cheek or hold hands, but there’s not much PDA … Like here I would see people announcing to the – not announcing it, but they want to show the world they’re together and they’re in love, like I think, which is great, but I wasn’t exposed to that as a child, you know.

(Divan, Male, Sri Lanka)

In addition to assumptions that relationships were ‘choice based’, open and publicly expressed, young people argued that the ‘one shoe size’ approach fails to notice the depth and breadth of relationships young people more generally in Australia might experience, such as arranged marriages, or the ways in which communities and families are involved in choosing and/or condoning relationships. More specifically, sexuality education might also fail to notice the range of ‘relationship issues’ young people face, such as the need to wait for ‘financial stability’ or university education being complete to undertake a relationship (Divan, Sri Lanka, Male), or having to wait until marriage before sexual activity occurs. As Kamran (Iran, male) stated, as a Muslim, ‘that’s one of the big things is definitely no sex before marriage’, as similarly noted by Pooja:

It [sexuality education] is catered for a white audience. Because in cultural backgrounds, for example take my background, having sex before marriage is quite something. It is frowned upon.

(Pooja, Female, India)

Across religious and cultural differences, the most significant assumption concerned the difficulties associated with dating or marrying outside of the respondents’ own cultural group, an issue that Divan (Sri Lanka, Male) talked about.

They [the school] need to also cover something like interracial relationships as well, like there was, I think there were – I don’t want to say a white wash, but they would talk, like they didn’t talk about someone, dating someone outside your culture or- …

Guys who are dating outside my, their culture. If you are doing that, it’s like how did he do that, like tell us, like give us a step by step guide - like, how did you navigate that with the parents, because we – we, like the thing is it’s really hard, in a sense, to get your parents to accept someone from outside the culture. Okay, usually it’s like you are excommunicated from the family.

(Divan, Male, Sri Lanka)

Pooja (Female, India) noted how easy it seemed for her ‘white friends’ to bring partners back to their room – ‘I cannot dream of that day’. Lan too spent a lot of time discussing the difficulties of bringing her partner home to meet her Vietnamese parents:

And my partner is Australian and my Mum can’t speak a lot of English but […] there’s a huge cultural gap in between my boyfriend and my parents so it makes it have much harder for them to connect and that’s why you know with an Australian family if I was Australian, I had an Australian boyfriend and I take them home to my Australian parent, would be such a smoother transition now, even if my parents, my Vietnamese parents were open as people … . So, it is so like oh I just don’t know, you can’t keep making examples like that because more and more there are more kids and teenagers from different cultures.

(Lan, Female, Vietnam)

In addition to the inadequacy of the relationship ‘examples’, a fascinating reflection on period information revealed the cultural and religious specificity of a ‘one shoe size’ approach to sexual health knowledge – which in regards to menstruation was presented as a primarily biological process. Sara (Female, Lebanon) reflects on the religious practices around menstruation in Islam, and Lan also notes, in Vietnamese culture ‘there are so many cultural things’:

It’s weird, periods are a thing like oh there’s so many cultural things around periods as well for example, like just a very small example we have small shrines for our ancestors at home and if you are on your period it’s taboo, you can’t walk past that area because it’s not pure [to do so].

(Lan, Female, Vietnam)

In the main, these compounding failures to represent multiplicity had the effect of further Othering students who didn’t see themselves or their lives reflected. As noted by Sara, the normative assumption that all young people ‘date’ made her wonder ‘what’s wrong with me’, which as she implies, is already happening ‘outside the classroom’.

So I don’t think there should be any pressure … even like general consensus that like you should be doing this [dating], because apparently you’re excluding people who choose not to do that, whether that is people who can’t do that or don’t have the option of doing that, or people who choose not to do that … I think then people who are … like me, it’s like then what’s wrong with me, why aren’t I allowed to do that, why can’t I do that? And then you’re questioning your whole identity, which is already happening at that age anyway, but the last thing you want is to go into a classroom and for teachers to be questioning your identity, when it already happens outside of a classroom.

(Sara, Female, Lebanon)

Learning about sexuality is not a safe space

One of the most talked about assumptions in this study was that the classroom is a ‘safe space’. As the above sections reveals, a feeling of cultural Otherness was produced through the range of omissions and obfuscations identified by students. In this section, students reveal that cultural Otherness was also produced through invitations to discuss sex and sexuality in class – invitations that produced feelings of fear and discomfort about being misunderstood by peers and teachers. As noted by Reza, despite the best of intentions by the teacher, invitations to ask questions or discuss issues is ‘not that easy’ for students that have the experience of being marked out as Other in the classroom space:

Cause in our sex ed class, it was very like ‘this is a safe space’ … but it’s like not really! (laughs) … ‘Cause the teacher was a nice guy, and he did say you can ask me any questions, but it’s not that easy.

(Reza, Male, Iran)

Several participants stressed that in their home country talking about sex was far from a safe thing to do – not only with family but with friends as well. In consequence, some students didn’t know where to begin – or, as Divan (Sri Lanka, Male), put it, ‘I didn’t even know where to start what to ask’.

Another concern rested on the fear of being judged, and therefore further spotlighted as Other in ‘open’ class discussions. Students could feel embarrassed about their perceived lack of knowledge in contrast to their ‘Aussie’ counterparts. Padma explained,

From our experience we – any question that we wanted to ask we would be very fearful of what our fellow peers would say. And also [fearful] if the teacher would make fun of us for asking that question.

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

This fear of being perceived as lacking in knowledge ties to the colonising logics described above, in which the ‘Rest’ is marked in deficit terms in relation to the assumed ‘knowledge’ and progressive modernity of the ‘West’. As Stratton argues, an ‘experience of abjection’ marks those placed on the borders of national identity (Stratton 2020). For some informants, this fear of Othering created an urgent desire for anonymity. As Padma explained, anonymity is vital in order to feel safe and able to ‘dig away from the one shoe size’:

Yeah I think in that sense it would be creating an environment where you’re able to speak about these things. Like I mentioned in the school environment you’re aways very fearful of judgement from your peers, from your teachers. So, for the teachers to take initiative, and say, hey this can be anonymous. Or in any way, or online, you’re free to ask questions. So create that environment, and yeah really dig away from the whole one shoe size fits all … And so you have to really ensure that the diverse perspectives, and experiences are catered for.

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

In the next excerpt, Kamran’s (Iran, Male) visceral fear of ‘standing out’ is expressed through his insistence that even the smallest of details in an anonymous exercise might lead to identification. When asked about the idea that students could use an anonymous question box to ask questions of the teacher, Kamran stated that this could also be problematic and elicit discomfort;

Kamran: And I think that because it [questions}needs to be so anonymous, that even the teacher might change the wording. Even small details, students pick up on. It needs to be so detailed, changing the wording of the question so that no one student can be identified. Does that make sense?

Q: Absolutely.

Kamran: I think it needs to be done sort of like that because the anon … Anonymity needs to be the big factor there.

This fear of Othering is made more poignant through Padma’s comment on deportation. In Australia, migrant and refugee people are persistently represented as ‘invaders’, ‘trouble makers’ and threats to national culture and identity (Haw 2023). In the early 2000s the then Prime Minister John Howard successfully reinvigorated the fantasy of Australia being a great ‘White Nation’ (Hage 2000), a symbolic imaginary that persists, expressed in attempts to control borders through measures such as deportation, detention centres and the intense scrutiny of migrants (Hage 2000; Stratton 2020). While the above section elucidates a generalised fear of Othering, Padma’s reflection speaks to the representational politics identified by Hage, which for Padma is experienced as a very specific fear of punishment, and a very real sense of fragility in the country:

I’m Muslim, so I come from a religious capacity. Being South Asian you don’t talk about mental health, or anything at all. It’s … taboo. And also political as migrants, we all – we all have this traditional mindset of – be as conservative as possible, so you won’t run into trouble and, essentially, get deported …

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

Talking to parents is not easy

Another assumption rested on the idea that that young people can go home and talk to parents about the issues discussed in class. Indeed, across the narratives, young people all stated that it was not possible to discuss sex and sexuality with parents:

It’s, if you think it’s [talking about sex] taboo in Australian culture, it’s completely taboo in the Middle Eastern culture. You don’t speak about it at all. I’ve never had a conversation about it with my parents. I’ve never had a conversation with any family members or anyone in general that I know that’s Persian or Middle Eastern at all.

(Kamran, Iran, Male)

Faten reflected on the discomfort she felt about uttering the word ‘sex’ at home, and by extension, when asked to do so in class.

Yeah, with the game it was just we were talking about sex education and it was like we had to literally say sex – and it had to be a thing that was just coming out. It’s not – you shouldn’t be embarrassed of that, and a lot of us were very embarrassed, you know? And a lot of us probably were even, you know, coming back from multicultural backgrounds and … it’s not spoken about at home. So it was very, very daunting for us.

(Faten, Lebanon, Female)

Comments such as these help us to understand the affective responses which might occur in the face of normative terms and phrases underpinning sexuality education content. As noted above, CSE makes the claim that it is ‘objective’ because it is evidence based, and by extension, culturally neutral. However this claim overlooks the fact that students have vastly different levels of sexual health literacy, and differing familiarity with sexual health terms and terminology. For example, the young people mention their embarrassment that some base-line knowledge about sex had already been covered, such as pubic hair, masturbation and wet dreams, periods and LGBTQI+ sexualities. Indeed, Divan (Sri Lanka, Male) talked about how embarrassed he was not to know what the teacher meant by ‘the birds and the bees’, revealing an additional shame that he ‘wasn’t even aware’ of the gaps in knowledge:

I think the parents would have covered that, but you know, at home, my parents didn’t cover anything, so when the hair started growing out, I had no-.

(Divan, Male, Sri Lanka)

Padma further reflected on the kinds of paralysis and fear that can occur in a school environment because sex wasn’t spoken about at home.

I come from a very, very conservative background. And so we’ve never ever spoken about this ever. Or even mentioned it, yeah. So I think that’s where the fear comes from. You feel like I’ll never be able to be open or ask questions in your home environment. So what does that [mean] – why – why am I … to ask these questions in the school environment?…

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

While the argument that talking about sex is taboo in migrant families is by no means new (Botfield, Newman, and Zwi 2015), these reflection alert us to a more complex set of issues – namely, the assumption that young people want to speak about sex and sexuality in public settings, or that they feel comfortable to do so. As Padma and Faten reveal, it is not enough to simply provide information in a school context because it is lacking at home. Rather, young people’s responses in this study ask educators to more deeply consider what it is possible to mention, to explore and ‘to say out loud’ in a public space, and how this might occur in ways that avoid exacerbating the forms of cultural Othering that some young people fear.

All students may not connect with a liberal ‘human rights’ approach

One of the most uncomfortable but vital set of reflections for sexuality educators, curriculum designers and policy makers to consider rests on a challenge to the human rights/‘best practice’ claims of compulsory education explored above. As Roodsaz (2018) argues, the claim that compulsory sexuality education is ‘best practice’ extends to a conviction that it is an ‘emancipatory project’ – the argument goes that because comprehensive sexuality education aims to fills a knowledge gap, and because it uses ‘evidence’ to counter misconceptions around issues such as consent, sexual diversity, gender norms and gender diversity, it will by extension provide more choices, options, and pathways for exploration. However, as argued above, claims to emancipation and human rights rest on liberal notions of choice and agency that downplay the importance of broader community, kinship and religious concerns.

For some young people, school-based explorations of consent did not adequately explore how ‘consent’ might be negotiated in different ways and by different communities. As Reza put it, consent is more than a ‘one fit thing’:

Well I guess like … in like multicultural communities, consent is probably different to what consent would look like in like clubs or whatever, or in online dating or something. So I wouldn’t think it’s a one fit thing.

(Reza, Male, Iran)

In a more extensive set of observations, for some students talking opening about LBGQTI+ issues was confronting – as was the idea that gender and sexuality diversity might be something they could explore. In reflecting on this, young people were unequivocal that they wanted to learn more, respected other people’s sexual and gender identities, and believed the curriculum should cover these topics. However, some noted their personal discomfort, and more importantly, wondered if something might be wrong with them because they felt uncomfortable, or did not understand, or had religious or cultural views that ran counter to the issues being discussed. Isa explained

Most of us were actually curious I would say … .They would ask oh how are we supposed to react to this; how are we supposed to treat this matter. So they were more interested do you think in like okay this a part of the world we live in; how do we just make sense of it? How do we navigate this?

(Isa, Male, Turkey)

Other young people felt that exploring sexuality diversity was ‘at the edge of the tolerable’ (Roodsaz 2018, 118) – or as Kamran noted, ‘impossible’.

Impossible. You’d never come across that in Iran. It’s impossible. You’ll never see that. Not even, no one, even if they have a sense of attractedness to another gender, it’s never mentioned …

(Kamran, Male, Iran)

In saying this, it is important to stress that young people in this were in no way opposed to issues of gender or sexuality diversity, or to queer sexuality, rather their responses were driven by fears transmitted to them by their parents:

… it’s like you trust your parents and you trust that they know what’s best and they … If they’re scared of something, then it must be scary.

(Reza, Male, Iran)

Students may not want their culture included

A final assumption we leave until last, because in many ways it is the most tricky to engage with. Throughout the study, the young people we spoke with urgently expressed the desire to see more diversity, and to feel multiplicity rather than Othering. In short, they wanted to see themselves reflected, valued and understood so they could ‘imagine themselves in it’. As Pooja put it,

Different people, different experiences, and different understandings about the subject would be more easier to focus [on and] to understand …

(Pooja, Female, India)

On the other hand, however, and perhaps more urgently, they did not want their particular experiences spotlighted, for fear of being judged, Othered and made to feel ashamed. The problematic here was beautifully expressed by Sara. When asked if she would like the curriculum to reflect her religious and cultural understandings, she stated, ‘I don’t know necessarily how, where the line is, but yeah’:

I think to a certain extent it may be worth mentioning … but who does that benefit, if there is only one or two Muslims, and that might be embarrassing the student … . I think if I was in year 9, if I take myself back there, I don’t know if I would want all my peers knowing about the Islamic perspective on contraception, even though it’s the same. But as in like other things, masturbation, like whatever it might be, like do I really want, because it might be personal to me … and maybe I don’t even know it at that time, do you know what I mean, so I don’t know necessarily how, where the line is? But yeah.

(Sara, Female, Lebanon)

The line that Sara speaks of reminds us of the problem Ahmed identifies in On Being Included, when she invites caution on the appealing nature of inclusion given how inclusion is so closely connected to ‘stranger making’, or the ways in which ‘ … some more than others will be at home in institutions that assume certain bodies as their norm’ (Ahmed 2012, 3).

As she goes on to argue, diversity and inclusion become complicit in the process of stranger-making because strangers are either made to sit in the shadows, or through the invitation of inclusion, risk becoming ‘too noticeable’. This process of stranger-making sits at the heart of Sara’s reflection above – and asks where precisely is the line that might decentre the normative assumptions of contemporary sexuality education, and avoid the kinds of ‘stranger-making’ that occur for a large part of the Australian school student population?

Conclusion: walking the line?

The line we refer to above is a tricky place to sit on in terms of thinking about pedagogy and the comprehensive sexuality curriculum, and raises two key sets of issues for educators going forward.

The first concerns whether change is, in fact, needed. Participants in this study wished to see greater diversity in sexuality education pedagogy and practice but did not wish to be further spotlighted. In addition, they noted an affective discomfort when speaking openly about sex and sexuality in a public space – be this because they were unused to doing so, or because there was little room in a school context for religious or cultural nuance. This raises the question: would the best approach be to keep delivering sexuality education in its current form, despite the problems identified? After all, participants argued that notwithstanding the ‘whiteness’ of CSE, they valued learning about much of its content.

Despite this, we argue a culturally responsive curriculum is necessary – and as such, a second consideration rests on how, and on what terms, this can be developed. Across the interviews, the young people expressed the desire for a more representative form of sexuality education in schools, but noted this could only occur in a safe way if they had input into re-designing the curriculum. As aptly argued by Padma, the only answer is ‘co-design’ so as to avoid ‘tokenistic consolations’:

The only solution I see is co-design – so whenever you are changing a programme or curriculum, having young people from diverse backgrounds as part of the decision making process, saying hey what are your solutions, having consultations with them, saying your free to keep your opinions or things that would benefit … which we don’t see. You see one or two tokenistic consolations there, but we need more diverse perspective part of the process. To say, this is existing, people are suffering, so what can we do about facilitating this programme or module.

(Padma, Male, Bangladesh)

Through co-design, it may be possible for sexuality education in Australian schools to be redesigned in ways that better represents diversity without making young people feel fearful or judged. More specifically, drawing on the insights of this paper, young people might explore how a multiplicity of ‘relationship scenarios’ can be reflected and engaged with in a safe way. They are also best placed to think through how the topics explored in CSE – such as consent, respectful relationships, gender norms, queer sexualities and pleasure – can be undertaken in ways that complicate and open up diverse representations and expressions of sex, sexuality and relationships, rather than close them down. In this way sexuality education might be reimagined through the lived experience of young people, rather than simply ‘including’ cultural difference into the existing normative frameworks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the College of the Humanites Arts and Social Sciences, Flinders University.