Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has been recognised globally as key to helping young people assert their sexual and reproductive rights. In India too, there is growing awareness of the importance of providing CSE not only to reduce sexually transmitted infections, unintended pregnancies and abortions but also to teach important life…

Heterosexism and heteronormativity are pervasive in the South African society, but to what degree are they present in Life Orientation (LO) textbooks? This question, explored through a content analysis of widely used Grade 10 LO textbooks, was framed by queer theory. The paper quantitatively examines the coverage of sexualities, and qualitatively…

Parents' contribution to sex education is increasingly receiving research attention. This growing interest stems from recognition of the influence that parental attitudes may have both on young people's sexual attitudes and behaviour, and on school-based sex education. Studies regarding parental attitudes towards sexuality are, however,…

Sexuality education forms part of the national school curricula of most sub-Saharan African countries, yet risk-related sexual behaviour among young people continues to fuel the HIV pandemic in this part of the world. One of the arguments put forward to explain why sexuality education seems to have had little impact on sexual risk-taking is that…

Menarche is a significant milestone for young women, representing an important juncture between girlhood and maturation. The limited literature that exists suggests that a mother's reaction to her daughter's first periods can shape her experiences and perceptions of menstruation which, in turn, may impact on her self-image and,…

Despite rising levels of safe-sex knowledge in Australia, sexually transmitted infection notifications continue to increase. A culture-centred approach suggests it is useful in attempting to reach a target population first to understand their perspective on the issues. Twenty focus groups were conducted with 89 young people between the ages of 14…

In Ethiopia, as in many other countries, moral discourses about female sexuality in general, and pre- and extramarital sexual experience in particular, create an environment that discourages women from engaging in open dialogue about their sexuality and their past or future sexual experience. In the study of induced abortion among unmarried women…

Through an analysis of gay protest music (1975) and an educational kit for students (1978), both sponsored by the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in the UK, this paper brings into focus a history of gay rights activists' efforts to marshal popular culture in the development of informal sex education for young people in the second half of the…

This paper examines the "coming out" decisions at work of four lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) teachers in England. It argues that such decisions are complicated by heteronormative discursive practices within schools that render LGB sexualities silent while simultaneously demanding that they are spoken. This double bind for LGB teachers…

The "bullied" gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex and otherwise Queer (GLBTIQ) student is a fairly recent figure in the sexuality education research literature. GLBTIQ students have previously been problematised by sex education research in a range of different ways and have been the subjects of varying methodological…

Homosexuality is widely perceived among many Muslims as a "western disease", a natural outcome of the West's secularity and cultural degeneracy. In spite of the emergence of more liberal attitudes towards sexual differences in modern times, moral issues have not lost their relevance in polemical discourse against homosexuality among…

Educators from a variety of disciplines include the concept of transgender and multiple gender identities in course curricula. The "T" (denoting the specific inclusion of transgender) in the popular acronym LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) often is given less pedagogical attention than is sexual orientation, and the transgender…

This study investigated the attitudes of 43 teachers and school administrators towards sex education, young people's sexuality and their communities in 19 secondary schools in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and how these attitudes affect school-based HIV prevention and sex education. In interviews, teachers expressed judgemental attitudes…

Most people, school teachers and children included, are altogether too sure about what gender is: there are two "opposite" sexes, man and woman, and gender is the inevitable categorical expression of natural sex. Like all commonsense views, however, the gender binary has been socially constructed through normalising discourses that frame…

For many lesbian teachers and students there are issues and dilemmas that challenge them being "out" in school environments. The purpose of this paper is to describe and explore the experiences of two lesbians in this context. This is a descriptive case study involving semi-structured interviews and conversations. The teacher and a student in the…