Laughing to sexual education: feminist pedagogy of laughter as a model for holistic sex-education

ABSTRACT

This paper describes and analyses the ‘feminist pedagogy of laughter’ deployed in an original sex education presentation for college students, entitled Sexual Pleasure, Health, and Safety (SPHS). This work seeks to advance scholarship on liberatory education and humour in education by emphasising how we can use laughter to casually and joyfully deconstruct sexism, racism and heterosexism as they concern sexual stigma, violence, health and pleasure. This style of pedagogy also defuses discomfort around stigmatised topics and identities, disrupts oppressive norms about sex and bodies, and builds communities that enhance learning. We position the feminist pedagogy of laughter as a technique that may be replicated to empower participants to pursue sexual pleasure and wellbeing despite sexist, racist and heterosexist obstacles. Educators may apply the feminist pedagogy of laughter to create sex education lessons and curricula that participants can enjoy, learn from and apply in real life. The pedagogy may be especially useful in supporting high-impact lessons within the time constraints of university life.

KEYWORDS:

• Laughter
• pedagogy
• sexuality
• education
• LGBTQIA

Acknowledgments

We thank the WGSS faculty and staff who have supported the programme’s success with generous funding and labour. We are especially grateful to Lynaya Elliott, Elysse Jones, Jackie Stotlar, Tess Pugsley, Shannon Winnubst, Guisela LaTorre, Wendy Smooth and Cynthia Burack for their contributions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We recognise that this joke may read as exclusionary for straight students. However, we have never received feedback suggesting that straight students felt mocked. In reality, the presentation is highly applicable for straight people. By mocking heteronormativity, we invite straight students to ‘try on’ a low-stakes queer experience of the world during our presentation, while signaling to queer students that their experience matters here.

2. See McWhorter 2009 for a deeper discussion of eugenics discourse as it relates to sexuality, morality, family structure, and race.

3. The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the USA.

4. Preventing participants’ access to information about pleasure limits how they will ask for and provide consent in sexual situations. People who cannot recognise their own pleasure or their partner’s pleasure are likely to struggle in giving and receiving consent.

5. To our knowledge, SPHS is the only presentation on this campus that informs students about PEP.

6. This survey was developed to improve SPHS, and is administered for that purpose.

Additional information

Funding

The authors received no grant funding for the preparation of this paper.