Cripping sex education: reflections on a public pedagogy project

ABSTRACT

In response to recent calls for ‘cripping sex education’, we describe and reflect on an 11-week public pedagogy project in Canada that paired five community sexuality educators with 78 undergraduate students to make digital sexuality education tools for disabled, Deaf, and queer children and youth. From a perspective that argues for a genealogy of crip desire in childhood, we reflect on the possibilities and limitations of an intellectual partnership project, called Cripping Sex Education: Creating Digital Tools for Disabled, Deaf, and Queer Kids. This public pedagogy project centred crip theory, coalition building, and critical digital pedagogy in its aim to discover how cripping sex education might be feasible within the parameters of our institutions, vocations and lives. The work required all partners to consider new pedagogical formations of sexuality education, including through ethical engagements, relational rights, and expansive approaches to access. Interviews with three student participants reveal that cripping sex education involves thinking broadly about accessibility, challenging normalcy and, as disability justice principles attest, centring those who are most impacted. We close with recommendations for future cripping sex education pedagogical work that honours already existent crip desires, childhoods, and futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Cripping sex education
• crip theory
• coalition building
• public pedagogy
• critical digital pedagogy

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by Co-operative Education and Work-Integrated Learning Canada.