Lines of flight in sex education: Adolescents’ strategies of resistance to adult stereotypes of teen sexuality

Abstract

Can school-based sex education (SBSE) that reproduces structural inequalities simultaneously hold possibilities for meaningful and transformative experiences? In this article, we situate students' perspectives on stereotypes encountered in their school-based sexual education classes in the context of Deleuze and Guattari's work. The analysis is based on 63 interviews with high school students at two schools in the same district in the USA, one high-poverty/low-ranked, and the other, low-poverty/high-ranked. Our analysis reveals how adolescents attempt to resist stereotypes in SBSE while simultaneously creating meaning in their encounters. Deleuze and Guattari's concepts 'lines of flight' and 'deterritorialization and reterritorialization' allow us to examine resistance in a way Foucault's interpretation of power and discourse does not. We expand on these concepts and how they are significant in explaining adolescents' resistances in our analysis.

La indocilidad de Santiago: la experiencia escolar de un estudiante trans* en el sistema educativo chileno

“…Asimismo, se aprecia en Santiago una capacidad para elaborar y adaptar sus propios códigos en virtud de su entorno social (Cassar, 2017;Frieh y Smith, 2018). Esto ocurre con su posicionamiento frente al uso de categorías y con relación al lenguaje inclusivo.…”

“…Existe una tendencia investigativa de posicionar a niños, niñas y jóvenes como sujetos pasivos de una educación totalizadora que los despoja de capacidad de resistencia. No obstante, diversos estudios dan cuenta de la agencia del estudiantado para posicionarse como actores válidos en la toma de decisiones sobre su sexualidad (Whittington, 2019), además de dar cuenta de su capacidad para elaborar espacios y códigos culturales propios en la materia (Cassar, 2017;Frieh y Smith, 2018), para resistir al binarismo imperante de manera cotidiana (Atkinson, 2020; Francis y Kjara, 2020) y para la conformación de colectividades de acción política (Lillo, 2020). Tal desafío involucra una aproximación sobre la experiencia escolar, entendida como la manera en que cada estudiante articula las diferentes lógicas de acción del mundo escolar y produce una subjetividad al respecto de sus posiciones, tensiones y configuraciones que escapan del control totalitario de la institución escolar (Dubet y Martuccelli, 1998).…”

“We Kind of do not Dare to Tell Everybody that we are in a Program for Disabled Students, Because Some are Afraid that they will be Made Fun of”

“…Our focus will mainly be on the resistance to disciplinary power since we are focusing on students with intellectual disabilities in upper secondary schools who have, through disciplinary power, been categorized and normalized as such. Disciplinary power is the bearer of discourse, according to Foucault (1982Foucault ( , 1995, and the form of power that normalizes and makes subjects or, in a Deleuzian and Guattarian term, it 'territorializes' (Frieh & Smith, 2018). The power of the discursive norm involves identity normalization that affects all of us and has the effect that those who deviate from the norm are seen as abnormal (Clarke, 2008;Lilja & Vinthagen, 2014).…”

“…Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) concept of line of flight and deterritorialization are useful and do in fact connect to Foucault's ideas of power relations (Avolos & Winslade, 2010). Line of flight involves resisting, although not escaping the normalizing practices of society (Goodley, 2007a), since creating a line of flight means reconstructing or going against prevailing social structures through deterritorialization and becoming (Deuchars, 2011;Frieh and Smith, 2018;Ringrose, 2011;Tambouku, 2010). Line of flight also offers an opportunity to be constantly on the move between territorialization and deterritorialization, where people escape or free themselves of the rigid structure of the system.…”

Assembling Citizenship: Sexualities Education, Micropolitics and the Becoming-Citizen

“…This bottomup approach to citizenship offers an alternative to a top-down conception founded in the normative, legal and governance frameworks of nations or communities; and substitutes a citizenship macro-politics of social groups, laws and government with a micropolitics of localised interactions. It replaces concern with belonging with an open-ended becoming (Braidotti, 2013: 169), and suggests new possibilities for citizenship, in place of boundaries and closure (Alldred and Fox, 2015;Frieh and Smith, 2018).…”