“Something that is so overlooked”: joyfully exploring queer bodies and sexualities in sexuality education with teachers in New Brunswick, Canada

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we seek out the possibility of joyful and queered spaces of sexuality education. The sexual lives of queer and transgender youth are often passed over in sex and sexuality education classrooms. In this study, we were interested in exploring how sexual and bodily diversity make an appearance in these often-normative spaces. Through participatory visual research methodologies, we created art and media alongside 40 teachers in the province of New Brunswick, Canada, to look at the ways in which queer sexualities and bodies are made possible and impossible in their sex education practice. In three workshops, we found teachers negotiating the presence of 2SLGBTQI+ sexuality in their classrooms and a missing discourse of queer pleasure – mimicking the province’s tired sexuality education curriculum. We notice that artmaking helps diffuse the discomfort that often accompanies talking (and teaching) about sex in workshop spaces. We argue that sexuality educators need additional professional learning and resources to tend to the sexual lives of young people – and ultimately, a queering of sexuality education that is more intersectional, pleasure-centred, and joyful.