An IASH Work-in-Progress seminar, delivered by Dr Jane O'Neill (University of Edinburgh:
Constructions of consent: gender, risk and responsibility in sex education since the 1960s
Abstract:
The topic of consent has received widespread discussion in recent years, particularly in the wake of the #MeToo Movement, which has encouraged a re-evaluation of what ‘normal’ or acceptable sexual intimacy looks like and critiqued gendered power relations across a number of fields. Campaigns for the compulsory inclusion of consent in school sex education have been building for over a decade, and after a series of failed attempts, MPs finally voted to make this mandatory, as part of a new Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) curriculum which is currently being implemented in all English secondary schools across 2020-21. These recent campaigns critiqued sex education as being too heavily focused on exercising restraint, and failing to reflect the realities of sex as experienced by young people. This project seeks to analyse the ways in which ideas about sexual consent have been constructed in sex education materials in Britain from the 1960s onwards, and evaluate how these have been received and negotiated by young people.
While the terminology of consent was largely absent from sex education initiatives for much of this period, these nonetheless invoked a particular depiction of sexual interactions, typically drawing on narrowly-defined, heteronormative sexual scripts which demarcated active sexual roles as male and passive as female. In particular, I will examine the presentation of sex and its meanings, and trace developments in the portrayal of gender roles, responsibility and agency in sex education materials. The development of these themes will be charted from the period of ‘sexual revolution’ onwards, a time when gender norms in sexual behaviour were becoming more widely questioned and challenged, to assess how far the messages sex education offered to young people shifted across this time of alleged significant social and sexual change. The messages evaluated include the gendered construction of sexual urges and agency, the consequences of sex and ‘losing virginity’, and any references to sexual pressure and coercion. The implications of such messaging raises questions as to who was able to show desire and exercise initiative, who was supposed to control this, and who bore the risks. Contemporary sociological studies of young people’s attitudes to sex and relationships and their experience of sex education shed light on the perceptions and expectations of sex which might arise from such teachings, and how these might contribute to preparing, or not preparing young people for negotiating their early sexual experiences. This research will form part of a wider project on narratives of sexual consent in 20th-century Britain.
Please email iash@ed.ac.uk for a link to join the session.