Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education pp 137–155Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

The Cultural Politics of Sex Education in the Nordics

  • Chapter
  • First Online:

Abstract

This chapter discusses the cultural politics of sex education in the Nordic context, where comprehensive sex education (CSE) has strong political support and is integrated in primary and secondary education. The chapter suggests that Nordic sex education should be understood in light of the region’s longstanding self-image as the beacon of sexual progressiveness, but also its history as the kernel of Whiteness in Europe. The chapter points out that CSE in the Nordics separates between “objective” sexual health education and moral and political issues in ways that continue to suggest that traditional Northern European sexual norms are scientifically based, good, and developed as opposed to those of other cultures. The inclusion of queer critiques in social science curricula has so far not disturbed this order.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Notes

  1. 1.

    See Addams 1996.

  2. 2.

    The practice was initiated in the 1930s and would persist into the 1975 in Sweden, and 1977 in Norway.

  3. 3.

    My translation from the Norwegian. See http://kfuk-kfum.no/aktiviteter/ressursmateriell/samtaleopplegg/samtaleopplegg-om-seksualitet-fra-risk

References

  • Adams, V., & Pigg, S. L. (Eds.). (2005). Sex in development: Science, sexuality, and morality in global perspective. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Addams, J. (1996). On the political role of urban women. In M. B. Norton & R. M. Alexander (Eds.), Major problems in American women’s history (2nd ed.). Lexington: D. C. Heath and Company. pp. 258.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alldred, P., & David, M. E. (2007). Get real about sex. The politics and practice of sex education. Maidenhead: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Allen, L. (2012). Pleasure’s perils? Critically reflecting on pleasure’s inclusion in sexuality education. Sexualities, 15(3–4), 455–471. doi:10.1177/1363460712439654.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bangstad, S. (2011). Saba Mahmood and anthropological feminism after virtue. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(3), 28–54. doi:10.1177/0263276410396914.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Benedict, R. (1983). Race and racism (Newth ed.). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolander, E. (2009). Risk och bejakande. Sexualitet och genus i sexualupplysning och sexualundervisning i TV. (PhD), Linköpings Universitet.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bolander, E. (2015). The condom works in all situations? Paradoxical messages in mainstream sex education in Sweden. Sex Education, 15(3), 289–302. doi:10.1080/14681811.2015.1010075.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bredström, A. (2005). ‘Love in another country’—‘Race’, gender and sexuality in sexual education material targeting migrants in Sweden. Sexualities, 8(4), 517–535. doi:10.1177/1363460705056624.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Bredström, A. (2008). Safe sex, unsafe identities: Intersections of ‘race’, gender and sexuality in Swedish HIV/AIDS policy. Linköping: Linköping University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bromseth, J. (2009). Learning the straight script: Constructions of queer and heterosexual bodies in Swedish schools. In J. Bromseth, L. Folkmarson Käll, & K. Mattson (Eds.), Body claims (pp. 154–185). Linköping: Linköping university.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bromseth, J., & Darj, F. (Eds.). (2010). Normkritisk pedagogik. Makt, lärande och strategier för förändring. Uppsala: Uppsala Universitetstryck.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bromseth, J., & Wildow, H. (2007). Man kan ju inte läsa om bögar i nån historiebok. Skolors forändringsarbete med fokus på jämställdhet, genus och sexualitet. Retrieved from Stockholm.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, W. (2006). Regulating aversion: Tolerance in the age of identity and empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, J. (2009). Frames of war. When is life grievable? London: Verso.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carter, J. B. (2001). Birds, bees, and venereal disease: Toward an intellectual history of sex education. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 10(2), 213–249.

    Google Scholar 

  • Challis, D. (2013). Archaeology of race: The eugenic ideas of Francis Galton and Flinders Petrie. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Danbolt, M. (2013). Touching history. art, performance, and politics in queer times. Ph.D., University of Bergen, Bergen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Duggan, L. (2003). The twilight of equality? Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • El-Tayeb, F. (2012). Gays who cannot properly be gay: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city. European Journal of Womens Studies, 19(1), 79–95. doi:10.1177/1350506811426388.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eng, D. (2010). The feeling of kinship. Queer liberalism and the racialization of intimacy. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, D., & Johnson, R. (1998). Schooling sexualities. Buckingham/Philadelphia: Open University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Essed, P., & Trienekens, S. (2008). Who wants to feel white? Race, Dutch culture and contested identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(1), 52–72. doi:10.1080/01419870701538885.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, R. A. (2004). Aberrations in Black. Toward a queer of color critique. Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ferguson, R. M., Vanwesenbeeck, I., & Knijn, T. (2008). A matter of facts … more: An exploratory analysis of the content of sexuality education in The Netherlands. Sex Education, 8(1), 93–106. doi:10.1080/14681810701811878.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fine, M. (1988). Sexuality, schooling, and adolescent females: The missing discourse of desire. Harvard Educational Review, 58(1), 29.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fine, M., & McClelland, S. (2006). Sexuality education and desire: Still missing after all these years. Harvard Educational Review, 76(3), 297–338.

    Google Scholar 

  • Foucault, M. (1995). The history of sexuality. New York: Vintage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldberg, D. T. (2009). The threat of race: Reflections on racial neoliberalism (Kindleth ed.). Oxford/Malden: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gressgård, R., & Jacobsen, C. (2008). Krevende toleranse. Islam og homoseksualitet. Tidsskrift for kjønnsforskning, 32(2), 22–39.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gullestad, M. (2007). Misjonsbilder. Bidrag til norsk selvforståelse: om bruk av foto og film i tverrkulturell kommunikasjon. Oslo: Universitetsforl.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haritaworn, J. (2012). Women’s rights, gay rights and anti-Muslim racism in Europe: Introduction. European Journal of Women's Studies, 19(1), 73–78. doi:10.1177/1350506811426384.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hekma, G., & Duyvendak, J. W. (2011). Queer Netherlands: A puzzling example. Sexualities, 14(6), 625–631. doi:10.1177/1363460711422303.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Honkasalo, V. (2014). Exceptionalism and sexularism in Finnish sex education. Global Studies of Childhood, 4(4), 286–297.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hübinette, T., & Lundström, C. (2011). Sweden after the recent election: The double-binding power of Swedish whiteness through the mourning of the loss of “Old Sweden” and the passing of “Good Sweden”. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 19(1), 42–52. doi:10.1080/08038740.2010.547835.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, N. (2012). Sex education debates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keskinen, S., Touri, S., Irni, S., & Mulinari, D. (Eds.). (2009). Complying with colonialism. Gender, race and ethnicity in the Nordic region. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kontula, O. (2010). The evolution of sex education and students’ sexual knowledge in Finland in the 2000s. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 10(4), 373–386. Retrieved from http://www.informaworld.com/10.1080/14681811.2010.515095.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lewis, J., & Knijn, T. (2002). The politics of sex education policy in England and Wales and The Netherlands since the 1980s. Journal of Social Policy, 31(04), 669–694. doi:10.1017/S0047279402006761.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martin, E. (1997). The egg and the sperm. How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male–female roles. In C. Logan (Ed.), Counterbalance. Gendered perspectives for writing and language (pp. 159–178). London: Broadview Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGarry, M. (2008). The quick, the dead, and the yet unborn: Untimely sexualities and secular hauntings. In J. R. Jakobsen & A. Pellegrini (Eds.), Secularisms (pp. 247–280). Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mepschen, P., Duyvendak, J. W., & Tonkens, E. H. (2010). Sexual politics, orientalism and multicultural citizenship in the Netherlands. Sociology, 44(5), 962–979. doi:10.1177/0038038510375740.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30, 61–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moran, J. P. (2009). Teaching sex: The shaping of adolescence in the 20th century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Myerson, M., Crawley, S. L., Anstey, E. H., Kessler, J., & Okopny, C. (2007). Who’s zoomin’ who? A feminist, queer content analysis of “interdisciplinary” human sexuality textbooks. Hypatia, 22(1), 92–113. doi:10.1111/j.1527-2001.2007.tb01151.x.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Oyewumi, O. (2002). Conceptualizing gender: The Eurocentric foundations of feminist concepts and the challenge of African epistemologies. Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, 2(1), 1–9.

    Google Scholar 

  • Petersen, M. N. (2011). “…med et regnbueflag i hånden”: Fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalisme. Lambda Nordica, 16(1), 41–68.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poynting, S., & Morgan, G. (Eds.). (2012). Global connections: Global Islamophobia: Muslims and moral panic in the West. Farnham/Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Puar, J. (2007). Terrorist assemblages. Homonationalism in queer times. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, M. L. (2010). Secularism, religion and ‘progressive’ sex education. Sexualities, 13(6), 699–712. doi:10.1177/1363460710384558.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rasmussen, M. L. (2012). Pleasure/desire, sexularism and sexuality education. Sex Education, 12(4), 469–481. doi:10.1080/14681811.2012.677204.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Reddy, C. (2012). Freedom with violence, race, sexuality and the US State. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røthing, Å. (2008). Homotolerance and heteronormativity in Norwegian classrooms. Gender and Education, 20(3), 253–266.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røthing, Å., & Svendsen, S. H. B. (2009). Seksualitet i skolen. Perspektiver på undervisning. Oslo: Cappelen Akademisk Forlag.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røthing, Å., & Svendsen, S. H. B. (2010). Homotolerance and heterosexuality as Norwegian values. Journal of LGBT Youth, 7(2), 147–166.

    Google Scholar 

  • Røthing, Å., & Svendsen, S. H. B. (2011). Sexuality in Norwegian textbooks: Constructing and controlling ethnic borders? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 34(11), 1953–1973.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rudling, P. A. (2014). Eugenics and racial biology in Sweden and the USSR: Contacts across the Baltic Sea. CBMH/BCHM, 31(1), 41–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. W. (2007). The politics of the veil. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Scott, J. W. (2011). The fantasy of feminist history (Kindle ed.). Durham/London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sedgwick, E. K. (1994). Tendencies. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sherlock, L. (2012). Sociopolitical influences on sexuality education in Sweden and Ireland. Sex Education, 12(4), 383–396. doi:10.1080/14681811.2012.686882.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherlock, L. (2015). Inclusive sex education. Narratives of good practice from Ireland and Sweden. Ph.D., Trinity College Dublin, Dublin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stoler, A. L. (1995). Race and the education of desire. Foucault’s history of sexuality and the colonial order of things. Durham/London: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Svendsen, S. H. B. (2012). Elusive sex acts. Pleasure and politics in Norwegian sex education. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 12(4), 397–410. doi:10.1080/14681811.2012.677209.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Svendsen, S. H. B. (2014). Learning racism in the absence of ‘race’. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 21(1), 7–22.

    Google Scholar 

  • Svendsen, S. H. B. (2015). Alt annet enn sex? Om to pedagogiske tilnærminger til ungdom og seksualitet. St. Sunniva, 24(1–2), 62–74.

    Google Scholar 

  • Weeks, J. (2014). Sex, politics and society: The regulations of sexuality since 1800. Oxon: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zimmerman, J. (2015). Too hot to handle: A global history of sex education. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Mary Lou Rasmussen and Elisabeth Stubberud for valuable feedback on drafts of this chapter.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Programme for Teacher Education, Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, 7491, Trondheim, Norway

    Stine H. Bang Svendsen

  2. Network for Feminist Research, Department of Media, Culture and Society, University of Stavanger, 4036, Stavanger, Norway

    Stine H. Bang Svendsen

Authors
  1. Stine H. Bang Svendsen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand

    Louisa Allen

  2. School of Sociology Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia

    Mary Lou Rasmussen

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Svendsen, S.H.B. (2017). The Cultural Politics of Sex Education in the Nordics. In: Allen, L., Rasmussen, M.L. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Sexuality Education. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-40033-8_7

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-137-40032-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-40033-8

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation