Facing negative reactions to sexuality education through a Multicultural Human Rights framework

Abstract

Sexuality education, its protocols and planning are contingent on an ever-changing political environment that characterizes the field of sexuality in most countries. In Brazil, human rights perspectives shaped the country's response to the AIDS epidemic, and indirectly influenced the public acceptability of sexuality education in schools. Since 2011, however, as multiple fundamentalist movements emerged in the region, leading to recurrent waves of backlashes in all matters related to sexuality, both health and educational policies have begun to crawl backwards. This article explores human rights-based approaches to health, focusing on a multicultural rights-based framework and on productive approaches to broadening the dialogue about sustained consent to sexuality education. Multicultural human rights (MHR) approaches are dialogical in two domains: the communication process that guarantees consent and community agreements and the constructionist psychosocial-educational methodologies. In its continuous process of consent, the MHR approach allowed for distinct values translation and diffused the resistance to sexuality education in the participant schools/cities, successfully sustaining notions of equality and protection of the right to a comprehensive sexuality education that does not break group solidarity and guarantees acceptability of differences.

O direito à prevenção da Aids em tempos de retrocesso: religiosidade e sexualidade na escola

“…A large proportion (42%) of teenagers aged between 15 and 17 years had contacted people unknown to them and a significant percentage had exchanged sex messages (16% among 11 to 17-year-olds) on the internet. Although such information was not covered by the questionnaires in the present study 33,34 , the consumption of online pornography was observed by the ethnographic study and future research should address this issue 57 .…”

“…A comparison of our results with those of previous national studies 27,35,36 shows that the differences of opinion between boys and girls regarding what is desirable for each sex are less pronounced. Support for homosexual sex has also grown -especially among young people who are not Evangelicals/Protestants 33,34 . However, condom use was greater among boys and girls were less likely to receive condoms from parents/ guardians, who, as shown in another paper about this project, are more concerned with their daughter's virginity than their son's 34 .…”

“…In the midst of Aids policy reversals, the debate about the results (moments 1 and 2, box 1) demonstrated the range of opinions and behaviors in the school community and played a crucial role in obtaining consent and sustaining permanent dialogue with parents and teachers 33,34 . This debate ensured adherence to and support for the prevention education project developed between 2013 and 2017.…”

“…A detailed description of the project is beyond the scope of this paper , . As previously described, the data analyzed below 33,34 was debated in the schools when the baseline was presented. It represents the key elements of young people's discourses on sexual initiation and the range of opinions and behaviors influenced (or not) by religion and religiosity, where the latter is a central theme of the debate initiated by the government elected in 2019.…”

Sexuality Workshop For Adolescents: Participative Strategy For Collective Knowledge Construction

“…This vulnerability decreases with orientation; however, it is noticed that there are many factors in the relationship between parents and adolescents that prevent or hinder conversation about sexuality, such as lack of education, parents' unpreparedness, shame and freedom about the subject with their children, or also the belief that a conversation about sexuality could anticipate their children's sexual practice [27,28].…”