TY - JOUR
T1 - Transgender young people’s narratives of intimacy and sexual health: Implications for sexuality education.
AU - Riggs, Damien
AU - Bartholomaeus, Clare
PY - 2018/7/4
Y1 - 2018/7/4
N2 - Sexuality education as pedagogy is often fraught by the perceived requirement to balance the informational needs of young people with an investment in notions of childhood ‘innocence’. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in sexuality education that seeks to be inclusive of transgender young people, often resulting in the failure of such education to address the needs of such students. In an attempt at addressing the relative dearth of information about what transgender young people would like to see covered in sexuality education, in this paper we explore transgender young people’s accounts of intimacy and sexual health and consider what this means for school-based sexuality education. To do this, we analyse discussions of intimacy from the perspectives of transgender young people as narrated in a sample of YouTube videos. We conclude by advocating for an approach to sexuality education that largely eschews the gendering of body parts and gametes, and which instead focuses on function, so as to not only address the needs of transgender young people (who may find normative discussions of genitals distressing), but to also provide cisgender young people with a more inclusive understanding of their own and other people’s bodies and desires.
AB - Sexuality education as pedagogy is often fraught by the perceived requirement to balance the informational needs of young people with an investment in notions of childhood ‘innocence’. Nowhere is this perhaps more evident than in sexuality education that seeks to be inclusive of transgender young people, often resulting in the failure of such education to address the needs of such students. In an attempt at addressing the relative dearth of information about what transgender young people would like to see covered in sexuality education, in this paper we explore transgender young people’s accounts of intimacy and sexual health and consider what this means for school-based sexuality education. To do this, we analyse discussions of intimacy from the perspectives of transgender young people as narrated in a sample of YouTube videos. We conclude by advocating for an approach to sexuality education that largely eschews the gendering of body parts and gametes, and which instead focuses on function, so as to not only address the needs of transgender young people (who may find normative discussions of genitals distressing), but to also provide cisgender young people with a more inclusive understanding of their own and other people’s bodies and desires.
KW - bodies
KW - gender
KW - school
KW - sexuality education
KW - social media
KW - Transgender
UR - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681811.2017.1355299?journalCode=csed20
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85025141489&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/14681811.2017.1355299
DO - 10.1080/14681811.2017.1355299
M3 - Article
SN - 1468-1811
VL - 18
SP - 376
EP - 390
JO - Sex Education: Sexuality Society and Learning
JF - Sex Education: Sexuality Society and Learning
IS - 4
ER -