Everywhere and nowhere simultaneously: The ‘absent presence’ of sexuality in medical education

Abstract

A comprehensive history of medical sex education in the USA is missing from the literature, and much of the recent literature on sexuality education within medical training in the USA relies on survey research, which reveals little about the nature and content of medical sex education, and the meanings of sexuality that are produced and transmitted within it. In this article I provide a brief historical overview of medical sex education in the USA to provide context for my ethnographic study of the ways in which sexuality education was conceptualized and executed at a top-twenty American medical school. Although faculty members at this medical school believed that sexuality was important to medical practice and thus important to teach about within medical education, teachings about sexuality were fragmented and did not produce a consistent set of messages about what sexuality means or how it might matter to medical practice. I show how formal knowledge about sexuality has been and continues to be as elusive within medical education as anywhere else, and discuss historical continuities in the perceived barriers to providing medical sex education. In addition to increasing our understanding of how medical knowledge about sexuality is produced and transmitted, this research expands the study of sex education beyond contexts in which its intended purpose is to influence the personal behavior of its subjects.