Who am I? The Role of Health Promotion and School Education in Young People’s Sexual Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

Who am I? This age-old question has become increasingly complex for young people as issues of gender, sexuality, identity and relationships dominate both the intimate and public domains. This chapter discusses concerns and debates regarding educating young people, gender and sexuality, and the connection between sexuality education and respectful relationships education. A post-structuralist theoretical approach is used. Gender is discussed as socially constructed and multiple, rather than as a fixed, masculine/feminine binary. Sexuality is approached as a complex, lifelong process that involves attraction, behaviour and identity, which starts at birth, rather than as a development stage that emerges in adolescence as a transition to adult sexual maturity. Just as sexuality is complex, so is identity, particularly as it relates to gender and sexuality. Debates about gender and sexual identity often assume an essential, inherent core. However, rather than being stable, identity can be multiple and shifting; of making meaning from a variety of social categories. While identity is wide-ranging and incorporates many ways of being in the world, this chapter will focus on identity as it relates to gender and sexuality. Rather than assuming gender and sexuality is either pre-determined biologically or socially constructed, the approach is that both biological and social elements are always intertwined when it comes to gender, sexuality and identity. In education and health promotion, adolescent sexuality is often approached as a problem to be controlled and has focused on preventing teen pregnancy, the transmission of STIs and blood born viruses though abstinence or using protection. This chapter advocates a strengths-based, sex positive approach to school health promotion sexuality and relationships education programs through the use of critical thinking and ethical sexuality approaches. It also discusses the role of the school and the family in communicating about sexuality and relationships with children before they reach adolescence.