“You Don't have to take Anyone's Bullshit when it comes to Sex.”: How Access to Feminist and Queer Sex Education Shapes Latinas’ Subjectivities

• In Event: Liberatory Pedagogies: Understanding Holistic Approaches to Sexuality in Educational Research

Abstract

Feminist scholars have found that educational institutions can challenge or reify pathologizing discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality via their sex education. This work has also found that the impacts of sex education, or lack of it, are vast and can include a lack of knowledge around comprehensive queer and heterosexual sex, unplanned pregnancies, the transmission of sexually transmitted infections, and the hindering of sexual exploration. This project extends existing feminist scholarship on sex education by examining the ways in which access to sexuality education shapes the subjectivities of low-income, first-generation Latinas. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 53 college-going Latinas, digital and in person ethnographic observations with 7 of them, and a discourse analysis of 78 Tik-Tok videos utilizing the hashtag “#hotcheetogirl,” I show how middle and high schools in California fail urban girls of color by providing them with little to no sex education and upholding discourses that construct them as hypersexual, unruly, and unintelligent. Additionally, I examine the consequences this has for Latina girls, including their lack of sexual exploration and modification of aesthetics. Lastly, I reveal how public college universities in California facilitate Latinas’ access to sexuality education. Through campus programming, health services, coursework, and social networks, Latinas learn about safe queer and heterosexual sexual practices, consent, various sexual orientation categories, and that there is nothing inherently pathological about their sexualities, which are often depicted as sites of deviancy, never of healthy sexual development. Overall, this research provides empirical evidence that holistic approaches to sexuality education rooted in feminist of color and queer approaches are necessary for urban girls of color to view themselves as worthy and capable of having various types of sexual desires and to ensure that they have the knowledge needed to engage in safe and consensual sexual practices.

Author

• Michelle Gomez Parra, San Francisco State University