Does legalizing same-sex marriage change the ideology of gender and sexuality behind the curriculum?

• In Event: 40820 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 13: Gender and Education

Abstract

Feminist analysis has shown that even if relationship education is not explicitly taught as a teaching subject, gender relations are still being continuously imparted to students in hidden curricula. As the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in Asia, Taiwan compressed the experiences of the progressive movements of feminism, sexual liberation, and LGBTQ+ rights; it also experienced backlash from conservative right-wing religious groups. Such changes are explicitly reflected in the curriculum guidelines and textbooks and exert their impact on students. The paper aims to examine the ideology behind relationship education to analyze how different social forces exert their impacts.

The paper aims to examine the gender and sexuality ideology behind relationship education in the National Curriculum Guideline and junior high school textbooks before and after same-sex marriage legalization in Taiwan. Since 2011, anti-LGBT groups have excessively focused on and criticized the materials of non-heterosexuality and diverse family structures in textbooks and tried to ban sexuality-related concepts in school. The debates had gotten heated when LGBTQ movements pursued same-sex marriage in 2017. The debates ranged from sexuality to the acceptable construction of intimate relationships. Competing discourses were shown in social propaganda, the National Curriculum Guideline formulation, and the content of textbooks. The curriculum committees with different opinions on sexuality fought throughout the review process. The textbook editors changed the content in different versions because of the pressure of the conservative groups. Therefore, the final versions of relationship education in the National Curriculum Guideline and textbooks are, to some extent, the result of social wrestling among various parties. This article will compare and contrast the differences in the content in the National Curriculum Guideline and textbooks to analyze the impact of the advocating and backlash of LGBTQ movements in the educational system.

Author

• Yen-Jung Roni Tseng, University at Albany, SUNY