How to Provide Sexual Education: Lessons from a Pandemic on Masculinity, Individualism, and the Neoliberal Agenda

Sharon Lamb, Marta Pagán-Ortiz and Sara Bonilla
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Sharon Lamb: Counseling and School Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA 02125, USA
Marta Pagán-Ortiz: Cambridge Health Alliance, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Sara Bonilla: Counseling and School Psychology, College of Education and Human Development, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA 02125, USA

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-15

Abstract: Sex education in the United States is often approached through an individual lens that focuses on personal protection, safety, and rights. This focus on personal responsibility and care-for-self reflects national values and permeates governmental systems and actions, including generalized public health approaches. This issue has been most recently highlighted in the individual and systemic attitudes, beliefs, and responses towards the recent, ongoing crisis following the global surge of COVID-19. In this paper, we provide examples and discuss lessons gleaned from the public health response to this crisis, particularly in the areas and intersections of gender, individualism, and neoliberalism, and the parallels of these issues in sex education. We make an appeal for a collectivist and community-oriented approach to sex education, which would focus not only on prevention and protection, but on inequities, ethics, and care for others.

Keywords: sex education; neoliberalism; pandemic; health; citizenship; condoms; masculinity; individualism; collectivism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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