Where is the discourse of desire? Deconstructing the Irish Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) resource materials

Abstract

Inspired by poststructuralist insights and the critical literature on the topic of school-based sexuality education, this paper is derived from a close examination of the Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) resource materials devised for teachers involved in delivering the programme in Irish schools. It seeks critically to uncover how students are expected to come to know themselves socially and sexually. It is argued that the liberal individualist discourse, which is very pronounced in the RSE discursive framework, promotes a narrow kind of sexual subjectivity, which obscures sexual pleasure and desire. Some suggestions are made as to how a discursive space might be created in the classroom in the interests of facilitating students' exploration into how they can be sexual, safe and ethical in their relations and activities.

‘Pleasure has no passport’: re-visiting the potential of pleasure in sexuality education

“…Such proposals are, however, still considered as contentious and vigorously contested in some contexts as they were 23 years ago (see Kiely (2005) for debates in Ireland). What has changed, however, is that previous feminist proponents of pleasure and desire in sexuality education have reached a critical pause.…”

“…Such a discourse would release females from a position of receptivity, enable an analysis of the dialectics of victimization and pleasure, and would pose female adolescents as subjects of sexuality, initiators as well as negotiators. (Fine 1988, 33) Much of this ensuing research has sought to uncover the absence of this discourse globally in, for example, Ireland (Rolston, Schubotz, and Simpson 2004;Kiely 2005), Canada (Tolman 2002;E. Connell 2005), England (Measor, Tiffin, and Miller 2000;Forrest, Strange, and Oakley 2004;Alldred and David 2007), Australia (Harrison, Hillier, and Walsh 1996;Rasmussen, Rofes, and Talburt 2004;Beasley 2008) and New Zealand (Allen 2001(Allen , 2004Abel and Fitzgerald 2006).…”

Orgasmic Bodies

“…This 'missing discourse of desire' has been found to characterise sex education in a range of differing policy and political contexts, including New Zealand (Allen, 2007), Australia (Hillier, Harrison and Bowditch, 1999 ), United Kingdom (Measor, Tiffin and Miller, 2000), Canada (Connell, 2005), and Ireland (Keily, 2005), although The Netherlands appears to be a rare exception in offering comprehensive sex education which routinely addresses topics of pleasure and desire (see Ferguson, Vanwesenbeeck and Knijn, 2008). These absences are important since sex education is a route for the cultural transmission of sexual values and norms to young people (Bay-Cheng, 2001 ;Haywood, 1996).…”

Feminist Ideals for a Healthy Female Adolescent Sexuality: A Critique

“…In addition to empirical researchers working on sexual subjectivity, those who would reform sex education, in the United States and elsewhere, also advocate subjectivity, desire, and pleasure (Allen 2007a, b;Bay-Cheng 2003;Carmody 2005;Kiely 2005). Bay-Cheng (2003) describes SBSE (School Based Sex Education) in the U.S. as saturated with morality and fear-based messages and asks for a more sex-positive approach in her work.…”

“…Bay-Cheng (2003) describes SBSE (School Based Sex Education) in the U.S. as saturated with morality and fear-based messages and asks for a more sex-positive approach in her work. Kiely (2005) examined the "silences" in Irish Sexuality Education programs to reveal a curriculum that almost wholly emphasizes the negative consequences of sex. For girls in particular, these negative consequences were physical disease and psychological vulnerability.…”