Sex-Ed, The Patriarchy, & “Don’t Say Gay”

On March 8th of this year, the Florida legislature passed a controversial bill that would essentially ban school districts from incorporating any conversation on gender identity or sexual orientation to the curriculum through certain grades. The bill, as has been dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, also extend to school counselors in an earlier version of it, requiring school personnel to directly give parents information relating to a student’s mental, emotional, or physical well-being. The latter amendment of the bill didn’t pass, but obviously, the bill will still cause a disproportionate amount of harm to LGBT students, especially students who, unfortunately, have abusive or less than understanding parents. It would, first, cause schools to essentially stigmatize queer identity, relegating it to a taboo that causes students to either not understand that part of their identity, or put themselves in the closest again — at least in their classes. If the earlier version of the bill passed, and this is the scary thing, it would have also required schools to out kids to their parents, and if that’s something that the child didn’t want to happen, or couldn’t for one reason or another, then that could’ve been downright dangerous depending on their environment at home.

This type of legislation is a continuation of the trend of Republican state legislators increasingly trying to control what can be taught in schools and what can not be. Whether it’s critical race theory, topics on gender and sexual identity, or “divisive topics” in general, there have been quite a number of bills proposed that would ban the teaching of certain “questionable” topics in schools. A lot of these efforts are spearheaded by parents, a lot of the time conservative parents who have too much time on their hands, and who have a predilection to control the type of information their child receives. It’s a type of control that is normalized to a certain extent by our society, with it being thought of as something that is not too destructive on the children who are subjected to it. It’s also something that isn’t new. Speaking from a U.S. perspective, conservatives, and the parents they allied with, have often sought to gauge material that could be deemed as being acceptable or not for children. Even though now the concern is largely directed against anti-racist curricula or education that seeks to include discussions of LGBT people in general, the specter of sexual education also has been, and continues to be so, the concern for conservatives in the U.S..

The United States, and largely the world, is by far a patriarchal society, which pretty much means that men, especially privileged men, hold a tremendous amount of power over women and anyone who doesn’t conform to the expected gender roles. For instance, in the United States, there’s an expectation, even if it’s indirect in some cases, of heteresexuality, of monogamy, with women having to be inherently demure and subservient to men, while men have to be dominant and bashful leaders of the household and greater society. Of course there are caveats to this arrangement, with the Patriarchy not conferring benefits to all of men, and even actively hurting them in some cases. Additionally, some women can even benefit from the patriarchy and actively work to uphold it (Marjorie Taylor Green and Amy Coney Barrett are examples of that). The patriarchy can, also, extend to parts of our lives that seem to be the most private — our sex lives. And, one way it can do so is by controlling the sexuality of women, of people who are queer, and even of straight men, basically controlling the type of information they get so that they are not empowered to fully discover and act out on their sexualites. In a sense, the patriarchy actively works to break sex-ed under it.

Part 1. Sex-Ed in the U.S.

This article will largely focus on the U.S. for a couple of reasons. First, I was born in the U.S., causing me to operate out of an American framework generally. Second, the history of sex-ed in the U.S. is well documented, and also fairly easy to track. The united states, as previously been mentioned, is also a fairly patriarchal society, causing certain assumptions regarding sex to still be prevalent — irrespective of the amount of social progress achieved. Additionally, regardless of the work done, historically and now, to further LGBTQ rights in the states, there’s still an assumption of heterosexuality being the “normal” thing in a lot of spaces, causing expectations of sex to follow along those lines in a performative sense also. In a sense, then, the U.S. is a ripe place for analysis, and an interesting one at that, and that mostly stems from the contradictions that surround the U.S. when it comes to sex. For example, the U.S. is famously considered a hypersexed country, with it using that as a method for advertisement for products; in contrast to that, the U.S. is also a society that’s woefully undereducated when it comes to sex.

In the U.S., only 39 states and D.C., require sex education to be taught in schools, and from those, only 18 are required to have that sex education be medically correct. In addition to that, only 11 states require sex education to have some kind of discussion on consent. Because of that, it’s not that surprising to know that teens and young adults, and even some adults, often don’t have the appropriate knowledge needed before they engage in some sort of sexual activity. That’s also something that’s quite evident. From a fact sheet compiled in 2017 by the Guttmacher Institute — a research and policy institute that seeks to advance sexual and reproduction health worldwide — only a half of adolescents and young adults received any formal instruction on contraception. Additionally, only about 6% of LGBT+ students reported that their health classes had positive representations of LGBT topics. In terms of the type of content that is offered through any sex-ed curriculum by state, 39 states and D.C. require information on abstinence, with 29 states requiring abstinence to be stressed in the curricula, and 19 states requiring information on the importance of sexual activity only being engaged in the context of marriage.

This heightens the contradictions in the U.S. that I spoke about earlier when thinking of its relationship to sex. Even after social progress has been achieved in some areas, the values brought about from the kind of sex-education that is taught, if at all, still means that highly conservative values are propagated. And, since this type of sex-education omits pertinent information in a lot of states, the primary way that adolescents, and maybe even some adults, get their information can be through the media. That’s actually troubling because, a lot of the time, media doesn’t always have healthy depictions of sex, especially when it comes to ideas of consent or what entails truly gratifying sexual experiences. Those depictions, in of themselves, might not be inherently problematic, especially if there’s a firm understanding of them belonging in the realm of fantasy; but, if they’re not treated as fantasy, but are instead used as a crux for learning — especially if students don’t have adequate access to comprehensive sex-ed — then that can be problematic, especially when thinking of the type of depictions that are shown.

Of course, now, there are avenues for sex-ed that are quite helpful, and also comprehensive, and which seeks to provide accurate information. For instance, on social media, there are avenues for people to get comprehensive information regarding sex readily. On tik tok, as a 2021 study by Fowler et al. shows, sex education on that app most frequently showed content that focused on topics that ranged from female anatomy, sexual pleasure that did center on female pleasure and arousal, and also contraceptives and sexual health. These topics are quite different from the content that institutionalized forms of sex-ed can talk about, and perhaps show what audiences seeking this information find the most useful. However, there is a caveat to this more democratic form of knowledge gathering, and that is that tik tok doesn’t usually scan for misinformation as best as it could, causing some videos that talked about sex to not have entirely factual information. In a real sense, then, institutionalized forms of sex-ed in the U.S. doesn’t necessarily provide the type of information that adolescents find the most helpful as they embark on their sexual lives. Institutionalized forms of sex-ed may even provide limiting forms of information that specifically sets to pass on deeply conservative values of sex. Obviously, since teenagers want to have sex, and are generally curious by it, they would actively try to seek information from elsewhere, and that can, especially in this age, often lead them to social media. Whereas social media, or the internet in general, can provide immensely helpful information to these adolescents, there’s a chance that some sources can be rifed with misinformation, causing more unhealthy attitudes about sex to get propagated. While at other times, the purposeful disregard of certain types of information can seek to cause actual harm to people in marginalized communities.

I’ve already mentioned how sex-ed in the U.S. is highly heteronormative, which means that it seldoms provides pertinent information when it relates to LGBT people and their sexuality. Especially now, explicit legislation has been considered, or even been passed, that bars teachers from essentially discussing any or all matters relating to sexuality. This causes a score of negative effects on LGBT youths in schools. For instance, these kids can become isolated from their peers, be subject to harassment, and it might even cause teachers to not be prepared to deal with bullying towards LGBT youths. There’s also a gap in sex education for these youths, which can sometimes lead them to engage in dangerous sexual behaviors, causing them more harm in that part of their lives. This purposeful shadowing of topics can also cause students to internally feel ashamed of their sexuality, maybe even causing them to suppress it at stages of their lives. Which, if I can be frank, is one of the intended goals of a heteronormative and patriarchal society. From outright criminalization of LGBT people to more implicit forms of violence that leads to social otherization, the things outside of the normative bounds of a society often gets regarded as deviant that shouldn’t be promoted or talked about. Why they shouldn’t be talked about often has to do with power, whether that’s the power of a state, or the power of the usual hierarchy that can’t be infringed upon. Which is why the silencing of those groups is so purposeful. In an explicit sense, that silencing seeks to ensure that children don’t have access to appropriate knowledge and labels that can liberate them from the norm; it ensures that a patriarchal and heteronormative superstructure stays intact, so that children don’t question it, or move beyond it. If they do seek to, they either get punished, or get bombarded by campaigns that make their identity inherently politicized. And, in a sense, that’s exactly what the patriarchy intends to keep doing.

Part 2. Why the State Seeks to Control Sex-Ed

There are many aspects of control that the Patriarchy engages in, whether that includes control of the family, of politics, or of sexuality. The latter aspect, even if it’s not talked about as much, is an aspect of control that is insidious in of itself, and one way sexuality is controlled is through the information that’s presented through sex-ed. Sex-ed is uniquely controlled in American society, to the point where, depending on where a person resides, there’s a chance that someone can go through their entire lives without a mouticoum of accurate sex-ed information at their disposal. In fact, statistically speaking, there’s a chance that a good size of the audience reading this sat through abstinence-only education, causing some of us to be wholly unprepared to engage in our sex lives. This sort of ignorance is purposeful, as I would argue, in the patriarchy. The seeking to control sexuality, especially the sexuality of children (with the goal being to “protect” them), is one of main hallmarks of a system that strives to give ultimate power to the Patriarch. It’s the reason why parent’s rights to education is a rallying cry for conservative parents and politicians in recent months, and even over the years; it essentially paves the way for explicit recognition of the child being at the mercy of the parent, in pretty much all cases.

Sex-Education, as it is now in the U.S., is merely a crux to maintain the values that are so common under the Patriarchy. It’s a crux that seeks to maintain heteronormative structures centered around some men’s domination, doing so through the weapon of ignorance. Simply put, Sex-ed is maintained in its current stage as such because it allows for the normalization of an aspect of a society that keeps gender lines as rigid as possible, and not conducive to change. Like, there’s a reason why my health classes were separated by gender when they dived into the topics of sex. It was simply to ensure that certain information, which was supposedly given to the girls of the class, could be regarded as some kinds of taboos that men shouldn’t have access to. That, in a sense, maintained a perception of otherness when it came to the split between men and women, and it did nothing but cause some people to internally think of women as some kind of other creatures that should only be talked to when seeking sex or a relationship in a heteronormative sense. I also remember one of my woman friends, who sat in on the other side of those health classes, telling me that the information taught to them was incredibly centered on abstinence only, and that it sometimes went as far as slut-shaming, through the material, women who had sex before marriage. And even though the supposed goal of that sex-ed was to decrease the amount of contraction of STDs and pregnancies among adolescents, the consequences of that was immensely more different than intended.

In the book “Beyond Birds and Bees” by Bonnie Rough, Rough outlines her experience of navigating the sex-ed curriculum in the Netherlands with her kids, comparing that to her experiences with the curriculum in the U.S.. In the book, she speaks about how sex-ed in the Netherlands starts from an extremely young age, at times even from birth, and how that sex-ed is fully comprehensive and vast that it often touches on topics such as consent, anatomy, and even in some instances, pleasure. That led to the Dutch being much more knowledgeable when it came to sex in general when compared to their American counterparts, leading to much more safer sex among them, and also a more lax society when it came to discussions of sex. For instance, Rough writes about how the sex-ed curriculum in the Netherlands leads to a more equal society along gender lines, and also leads to more tolerable attitudes towards LGBT people in the culture; she also writes how it’s common for women to be less sexualized, with some women even drying clothes topless on their balconies, and she also writes about how men in the Netherlands are given the opportunity to be good fathers, especially to their daughters, not being looked at weirdly if they play in the park with them for instance. This, in a real sense, leads to a society that is, ironically, not as sex-obsessed as the one in the U.S. and not as sex-repressed. It also leads to a society where men and women don’t view each other as distant strangers; rather, they can be more comfortable around each other because there are very little heteronormative expectations between them. Additionally, it also leads to a society where young men (as per a study by Dodge et. el in 2005) are less prone to use inadequate contraception, to contract STDs, and to unintentionally impregnate a partner.

If you think about it, a lot of the outcomes that the U.S. wants out of their sex-ed is achieved by the Dutch’s sex education curriculum. There’s also no indication that Dutch kids have sex earlier than their American counterparts; rather, they both seem to first engage in any kind of sexual activity at roughly the same ages. The Netherland’s curricula also shows how, even if a society is greatly open to sex, if they’re able to provide accurate and comprehensive information, then it can dramatically lead to young adults engaging in sex in a more safer way. Which brings up a contradiction because, if the Dutch do sex-ed better, showing how comprehensive sex-ed can lead to better outcomes, then why don’t the U.S. implement a more comprehensive sex-ed curriculum at home? That’s actually quite simple to answer, and the reason why is because sex-education in the U.S. is not used to help the child, but instead to reassure the parents, particularly conservative parents, that they still have a tremendous amount of access to their kids’ sexuality. Simply put, sex-ed, as I’ve mentioned earlier, serves as a way for parents to keep control of their kids, to essentially ensure that they’re not being taught the things that they “shouldn’t be”. It’s a microcosm of a larger problem in the U.S., and in the patriarchy in general, which seeks to maintain a relationship where children are kept vastly more subservient to their parents. They’re not able to, and should not under any circumstances, come across information that “harms’’ them, and they should always listen to their parents for guidance. They should also fit into the image of their parents, and not diverge from a path that has been set for them by their parents.

There’s a reason why there’s been a strong backlash against LGBT people in recent weeks, especially LGBT youths and the parents who affirm their identities. From the erasing of LGBT people in schools to the criminalization of parents who follow the wisdom of their children and understand that gender-affirming care might be the best for their children, any discussion relating to sexuality or gender is being taken away from children right now in various states, along with parents’ abilities to help them. Invisibility and acceptance of a silent genocide are the policy of the day when it comes to LGBT people, especially when it comes to the youth, and all that stems from the insistence and emotional outrage from some parents who don’t want to change their attitudes for their children. It also stems from conservative politicians who are openly embracing fascism, and are actively seeking approval from an increasingly fascistic base, because they don’t want to legislate to improve the material conditions of their constituents. In a sense, the culture war serves as a way to receive votes from parents “concerned” about their children’s “wellbeing”, which basically means parents who want to limit the autonomy of their children, to “protect” them. Essentially, parental rights, and the constant longing to protect children, serves as gateways to control education to ensure that the patriarchy is upheld, and additionally, those concepts allow citizens to embrace fascist ideologies if it means that their children will be “safe”.

Part 3. “Would somebody think of the children?” & How that leads to fascism

It is perhaps of no coincidence that the biggest fascist movement in the U.S. right now, the QAnon movement, is a movement that ostensibly seeks to “protect” children, and often in fierce ways. They are often, as far as self-perception goes, a bulwark of the “save the children’’ movement, and their entire political motivations seem to come from that statement. There are, however, severe contradictions when thinking of QAnan because, even as it proclaims to fiercely, and with great tenacity, fights to “save the children’’, the movement’s lore still thinks of Trump as a savior of some sorts who will dismantle the deep state and expose its lies. The thing is, if you’re someone who knows of Trump’s history, he is someone who has scores of accusations levied against him of sexual harassment and more, including allegations from minors. Matt Gaetz, another leading Republican figure of the far-right, is also under investigation for allegations of trafficking a minor. However, these Republican figures are closely linked by the fact that the QAnon movement doesn’t regard them as enemies on their quest to “save the children.” And, the reason why they don’t is because this movement is highly partisan and immensely fascistic in nature, claiming that liberal politicians and celebrities are a part of a global p*dophile ring. In other words, “they’re’’ the other, and “they” can be used as a self-insert for any type of group that the far-right hates in general.

One way to make fascistic policies, or rhetoric, more palatable is to wrap them in a bubble that claims to protect children. It gives suburbanites, more narrowly suburban, white women, an excuse to engage with those policies and rhetoric in a justifiable sense. It also causes some of them to engage with a more extremist ideology, threatening acts of violence on actual legislators for going against their wills, or for even considering policy that goes against their wishes for their children. Which leads us to people like Amelia King, a Virginian mom who threatened her local school board over mask mandate policies for schools. It also leads us to people in Loudoun county, a Virginia suburb in Northern Virginia, which saw an increase in the Republican vote share in the 2021 gubernatorial election that saw Glenn Youngkin, and an upper ticket of Republicans, come into office. Youngkin is perhaps most famous for his touting of anti-crt and anti-mask mandates stance for public schools in the state; and he’s also famous for running on a campaign that emphasized increased parental involvement in public school education. Which is a decidedly conservative policy point in recent years, with states like Florida even going so far to allow parents the right to sue teachers if they think their kids have been taught “critical race theory” in their schools.

This gift-wrapping of fascist and conservative rhetoric and policies, to present it in more palatable ways so that it’s more digestible to a suburban elite, is not anything necessarily new sort of to speak. In the 1980s, the satanic panic saw its rise in the Reagan era in the U.S., along with a rise of the moral majority that helped to get Reagan elected in the first place. The Moral Majority largely grew because of backlash against the social upheavals that were a staple of the 1960s and 1970s, social upheavals that included the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, the gay rights movement, and the increasing of abortion rights due to Roe V. Wade. It was led by evangelists, and was given a voice by evangelist pastors like Jerry Falwell, who gave momentum and popularity to the Moral Majority movement, allowing vast mobilization after Roe that culminated in the defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment and the election of Reagan. Even though Reagan wasn’t as religious as evangelists would have liked to see, and he didn’t achieve all of the social goals that the movement wanted, himself largely focusing on economic matters, Reagan was still able to carve out a strong conservative base of support (along with a liberal base because of his economic policies), decidedly allowing the far-right to get a foothold within the Republican party. At the same time, the satanic panic allowed conspiracy theories to spread far and wide, all in the name of “saving the children”.

Now, y’all might be asking, “what does Sex-ed have to do with any of this?” My answer is that there’s a link between social progress and blowback culminating in far-reaching conservative policies to be fought for in a more militant fashion. The usual battleground for that blowback is in schools, and I believe that’s mostly the case because fascists seek a superstructure of state control that looks increasingly like the patriarchal structure of the nuclear family, which starts by acknowledging the role of the child as always subservient to the parent. Hence, the reason to control kid’s sexuality through the information that gets presented in sex-ed, and hence the reason why abstinence only sex-ed grew in the 1980s at the onset of the Aids epidemic and the panic it caused. A whole new era of basing sex around the concept of fear — fear of the act itself, and fear of homosexuality — grew with the Moral Majority and grew with Reagan. It also grew with the rise of a new kind of conservatism that became more rabid, and a breeding ground for more direct fascist policy to be acceptable. The restriction of sex-ed is, as I believe, a microcosm of a type of control that gets granted to parents over their children, and it’s also a microcosm of the way that increasingly right-wing political movements and politicians can get political relevancy to effect policy that ultimately harms children and the parents who listen to them. It serves as a mirror as to what’s going on in regards to the backlash in public school education today, and it shows us how a fight in this nature ultimately serves to “otherize ‘’ certain marginalized groups. Additionally, it also shows us how the information that gets taught through sex-ed can ultimately serve the patriarchy.

Conclusion

In this article, I hope that I was able to outline the connection between sex-ed, parental control of education, and how that can get used to further fascistic or deeply conservative policy points in a way that’s ultimately destructive to children, especially children who are apart of marginalized groups. I also hope that I was able to provide some perspective into the seemingly recent attack on public school education, and the blowback that’s occurring about the subject material taught through it. This was a deeply disturbing and eerie topic to delve into, and that’s mostly because I became familiar with a playbook of radicalization that’s uniquely geared towards suburbanites. If I can provide some words of optimism near the end of this, then I will just say that, even though all of this can seem distressing to think about, now more than ever, youths and young adults (and even some adults) are able to gather empowering knowledge about sex and sexuality through social media and the internet. It’s by no means a perfect way, as they’re still scores of misinformation and easily accessible right-wing and predatory spaces and content out there, but there are also genuine left-wing spaces that seek to provide accurate information that’s empowering to a large number of people. They also provide spaces that seek to fully dissociate the shame and taboo surrounding sex, and let people connect to create communities that can help them to not feel so alone. Also, the only reason why this round of blowback seems so severe is because we are winning; polls suggest that people are way more socially progressive now than they have ever been in the past, and this desperate push to move us backwards is only because reactionaries are scared. Yes, things are bleak, but that doesn’t mean we have to give up; rather, it means that we have to make our voices louder than theirs.