Escaping oppositional thinking in the teaching of pleasure and danger in sexuality education

ABSTRACT

Sexuality education and preventative sexual abuse education are often taught as separate subjects in secondary schools. This paper extends the argument against this separation by highlighting flaws in the logic that manifests this separation. Diffracting critical sexuality education theory with the monist logic of new materialism, I rethink sexuality as an array of intra-acting¹ bodies that are always in a process of becoming anew. Realising the belonging together of dualist terms [Bergson, Henri. 1896 [1911]. Matter and Memory. Translated and edited by Nancy Margaret Paul and W. Scott Palmer. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.] and how the reductive structure of dualist logic affirms an original ‘One’, I argue that the feminist push for pleasure-based, sex-positive education affirms sex-negative attitudes. Embracing Barad's [Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.] notion of ethics as inescapable entanglement woven through all matter(ing), I suggest that rather than any particular ‘aspect’ of sexuality being emphasised in sexuality education it would be more useful to centre classroom discussions on ethics, as inescapable entanglement.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexuality education
• intra-action
• diffraction
• pleasure
• difference

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. ‘In contrast to the usual term interaction, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action’ (Barad 2007, 33).