Navigating Sexualization as a Sexuality Professional: Recommendations from Sexuality Educators at the 2016 National Sex Ed Conference

ABSTRACT

Sexuality professionals are likely to experience unwanted sexualization based solely on their profession. Sexuality professionals are sexualized by various groups of people including strangers, colleagues, or even friends and family. The research literature discusses how sexuality researchers experience and navigate this sexualization but includes little information about the ways in which sexuality educators are sexualized. At the 2016 National Sex Ed Conference, we facilitated a workshop for sex educators to discuss how they are sexualized and how they would suggest navigating such experiences. Through this workshop proceeding, we examine how educators echoed many of the same strategies used by sexuality researchers found in the literature along with some unique population concerns and strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• sexualization
• sex educators
• sexuality professionals
• sexual harassment
• mentoring

Acknowledgment

Thank you to all of the participants who chose this workshop to help advance the understanding of the sexualization of sexuality educators.

Notes

1 While there is debate over the terms “sexuality” and “sex” educator, we use the words interchangeably for this article. Because the National Sex Ed Conference, the event from which this article was derived, uses the term “Sex Ed” in the title, we wanted to discuss this topic as broadly as possible, avoiding concerns about semantic jargon.