Sexuality Education Re- imagined? Relinquishing the Disease and Pregnancy Prevention Focus

Abstract

In this chapter the theme of ‘re- imagining sexuality education’ is revisited by rethinking the disease and pregnancy prevention focus of programmes. Its content differs from previous chapters, in that it does not present empirical findings. Instead, discussion is premised on participants’ calls for including desire and pleasure in programmes as delineated in Chapter 5. Taking young people’s call for inclusion of these issues seriously, this chapter speculates on how education including pleasure and desire might be re- conceived. Such a re- imagining moves beyond the insertion of a discourse of desire and pleasure in sexuality education, to a shift in the philosophy and conceptualisation of programmes. With the aim of re- imagining sexuality education, I ask what might happen if we were to relinquish the disease and pregnancy prevention focus that currently preoccupies most programmes? This question engages debates about what has historically constituted effective sexuality education in countries like New Zealand, England, Australia and North America and what might constitute future measures of ‘effectiveness’.