Sophomoric sex ed: Sexism through definition in collegiate sexuality education textbooks

Abstract

Abstract The majority of adolescents in the United States receive formal sexuality and sexual health education, making it important that information presented therein is accurate and unbiased. Sexual education presents a pattern of describing men as active and sexually driven and women as passive victims of men’s sexual urges. Our research found that this pattern manifests in sexual health textbooks, when female anatomy is described only in terms of male anatomy. We read and analyzed anatomy chapters in ten of the most common sexual education textbooks used in American high schools and colleges to determine how bodies of each sex were defined and found a statistically significant correlation with a large effect size between the sex of anatomy and the incidence of description of that anatomy from the perspective of another sex. This analysis shows that sexual health textbooks continue to depict women as sexual tools for men, contributing to the sexism in American society. Sexism has negative psychological effects on women from an early age. Our research highlights the frequency with which women receive sexist messages in education, compounding these negative psychological effects.