Taking Sex Seriously: Challenges in Teaching about Sexuality

Abstract

Teaching a course that is about sexuality but also about larger cultural themes, social processes, and political struggles poses many challenges. These include: 1) choosing readings from a sexuality literature that is ever-expanding; 2) negotiating student expectations that the course will focus on the sexual behavior of individuals when much of it is on sexual ideologies and sexual regimes; 3) allowing multiple voices to be heard in class, not just those of sexual libertines, sexual extraverts, and those with nonstigmatized sexual identities; 4) creating a safe classroom climate that allows personal disclosures about sexuality; 5) navigating the emotional intensity of discussing sexual violence and other issues cloaked in normativity, anxiety, and pain; 6) balancing student interest in the local with attention to the historical, comparative, and global; and 7) underscoring the potential for change in sexual scripts, sexual violence, and sexual regimes. This article explores these challenges and some strategies to address them.