School Based Sexuality Programs: Cultivation of Power through Emotion

The relationship between emotions and political power is a messy one. A common viewpoint of many is that politics are performed through rationality. What do we associate with rationality? Objectivity — from an objective perspective, it seems that acting rationally in political situations entails logical thought, such as taking the time to closely analyze every available option and determine which would be most beneficial. The association of objectivity with rationality seems to presume that there is a lack of emotion involved within politics, because emotions are associated with subjectivity. This is frowned upon, for making emotionally charged decisions soaked in subjectivity implies an aspect of unfairness. Making decisions from an objective standpoint should guarantee fairness for all lives that are and will be affected by said decisions, but this simply does not happen. This leads to the question, then, of which group(s) of people politicians have in mind when making “rational,” political decisions. For instance, President Donald Trump’s recent pick for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, has sparked a lot of controversy; a big portion of her campaign involves voucher programs, through which public schools can be privatized and taught under a conservative Christian ideology. This threatens the separation of Church and State, and leads me to question who DeVos is really seeking to benefit in virtue of her deep Evangelical roots. Seeing the constant news headlines surrounding DeVos’ educational views ignited my interest in the topic of emotion within political power, and has led me to ask the question of what role emotions play in cultivating and maintaining powerful political institutions. Specifically, I would like to focus closely on the extent to which emotion within conservative Evangelical culture affects sex and sexuality education in the United States, and how this extent affects the adolescents involved in these education programs.

A hostile environment has been cultivated through the multitude of debates over sexuality and sex education here in America. In what ways is this hostility taking place, and why? I would like to begin analyzing this issue of hostility through the work of Irvine, in “Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotion.” The cultivation of this environment has culminated to a “sex panic.” Forms of interpersonal hostility such as physical explicit violent acts have been brought about from sex panics because of the conflicting ideologies that constitute them, and this is one major way in which physical and/or emotional damage occurs. However, violence and hostility can also arise in a much more insidious fashion when it is manipulated through the political sphere, and the ways in which sex panics have contributed to a belligerent political environment is what will be focused on in what follows.

Irvine invokes a term coined by anthropologist Carole Vance in 1984, known as a “sex panic.” What exactly is meant by a sex panic? Vance uses the term to explain “volatile battles over sexuality” (p. 1), which Irvine expands on, claiming that the significance of sex panics lies within their politicization of sex (p. 2). An essential aspect of this politicization is public emotion. Irvine describes this emotion within the sex panics as a “powerful catalyst” in effecting the political moment (p. 2), and this analysis of emotion is striking — though it is not my purpose for this paper to dive in too deeply on this subject, it is important to recall the usual purported dichotomy between emotion and rationality (Solomon, 1977), as mentioned prior. Within the philosophical domain, particularly that of epistemology, the role of emotion is often downplayed. Irvine even points out that sex panic scholars often deem public feeling as hysterical and/or irrational (p. 2). However, this appears to be unjustifiable; rationality is actually dependent on the emotional states of an agent (Lance and Tanesini, 2013). This notion is supported through Irvine’s investigation of the relationship between public emotion and sexual politics, for she states that overt emotion is not only becoming more acceptable, but is seemingly required to participate in contemporary politics. (p. 2).

Although the academic acknowledgement that emotions do seem to play a significant role in making the types of logical decisions often required within the political field is a mild relief, this conjures up other issues. Referring to public emotion as a powerful catalyst is apt — Irvine’s analysis illuminates how, as a catalyst, public emotion creates political tension, which in turn leads to the manipulation and control of political power in many cases. It is obvious that emotion shapes the panic of the general public. What is less obvious is how emotion shapes the reactions of those in control, which again prompts the overarching question: to what extent has the conservative Evangelical ideology contributed to political manipulation regarding the debates of sexuality and sex education for adolescents?

To begin this discussion, Moslener’s book entitled “Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence” comes much in handy, in which she focuses on the effects of the sexual purity movement brought about by conservative Evangelicals. The sexual purity movement takes on preemptive healing capabilities that supposedly protect each practitioner from the physical and emotional traumas that purity advocates presume accompany premarital sex (p. 6). Those most affected by this movement are adolescents, especially by the time the 20th century rolled around. The term “adolescence” became more significantly employed at this point in time, defined by G. Stanley Hall as a “cultural category [representing] a new stage of human development and [creating] a space for anxieties of a culture transitioning from innocence to maturity” (p. 5). Although the sexual purity movement promises relief from these transitional anxieties, the movement seems to conversely contribute to them. This overworked definition of adolescence is literally creating anxieties for teens growing into young adults, and only offering one mode of protection from them: abstinence. The anxieties are created in virtue of sexual desire and religious belief being placed into oppositional moral spheres in Evangelical culture (p. 6).

This movement became its most powerful after the Cold War. During the Cold War, there was a widespread fear of national decline, especially significant declines in Evangelicalism, leading to a powerful form of religiosity: a religion of fear. Moslener describes this religion of fear in the context of the Cold War era, during which politicians, religious leaders, and academics framed the so-called problems of sexual deviance and juvenile delinquency as national security issues (p. 77). It is defined as a rhetoric of sexual purity that alerted teenagers to their crucial role in facing the threats of the post-Cold War era (pp. 8–9). Historian Jason Bivins actually provides this term, however, claiming that the religion of fear produces representations that share imagery and structure with those of prior eras (2008). Though he is not referring to the same context that Moslener is, for our purposes this analysis of the effects of a religion of fear helps emphasize the threat that the declining population of evangelicals were feeling after the war. It grew out of conflict between Evangelical imaginings of Christian America and a growing modern resistance to those imaginings (p. 77). Thus, an Evangelical religion of fear resists changes in moral values as a result of instilling fear in those most susceptible to it: adolescents.

Bay-Cheng draws in G. Stanley Hall’s notion of adolescence as well in her article “The Trouble of Teen Sex,” in which she discusses the construction of adolescent sexuality through a school based sexuality education (SBSE). Since his discovery of this notion, adolescence has been treated as an essential and inherent feature of existing as a teenager (p. 62). Recall another important piece of Hall’s definition: his analysis features adolescence as a space for anxieties due to the transition from innocence to maturity. What does this transition entail? Bay-Cheng sheds light on this entailment, which surrounds the topic of sexuality. As stated previously, the 20th century was a game changer for adolescence as a notion. Since this group of young adults began to function more independently at this point in time, sexual purity became a larger and more unique task for purity advocates — this is due to the fact that adolescents were seen as one of the greatest hopes for American civilization because of the fear evoked after the Cold War (Moslener, 2015). One thing that requires a more expansive analysis, however, is the question of why maintaining the sexual purity movement and restraining the sexuality of adolescents is so necessary within the Evangelical community. Maintaining sexual purity involves maintaining a certain moral system. Moslener points out that because of the significant declines in Evangelicalism, a religion of fear helped to set this group apart — away from the brewing “chaos” created by the cultural revolutions (p. 78). The line of thought here seems to be that if sexual purity is not ingrained in the minds of adolescents, the Evangelical identity will become more threatened than it already is. Furthering the threat to Evangelicalism led to more advanced moral absolutes; their moral code became more concretized due to responding to their own anxieties about the place of Evangelicalism in the world. An important fact to point out here is that due to this anxiety, Evangelicals sought as many political avenues as possible for making cultural impact — their focus was mainly placed on national politics, how to raise children, and how to deal with budding adolescent sexualities (p. 78). This political route was, for the most part, a success, especially through SBSE. I believe this to be at least one of the aspects as to why teaching abstinence is so prominent in education. From here-on out, the extreme commitment to and preaching of abstinence will be focused on, centering on these discussions within American school systems.

Bay-Cheng sheds important light on how adolescence has come to be represented in the public eye. It has been thoroughly ingrained in both colloquial conceptualizations of adolescence as well as those within the academy that this time frame is necessarily tumultuous, or distressing. Bay-Cheng posits that when this common characterization becomes combined with the biologically deterministic perspective that presents sexuality as instinctual and overpowering, the conclusion is reached that teens and young adults are hypersexual; they are simply unable to exhibit self-control (p. 62). This belief system regarding adolescence contributes to the goal of the sexual purity movement — though Evangelicals hold these beliefs as true, they also believe that imposing a concrete belief system for adolescents, or a set of behavioral practices that exclude those which are sexual, will outweigh the curiosities and demands of this inherent teen sexual desire. This is an exemplification of how anxieties are created and then suppressed by conservative Evangelicals in hopes of cultivating nearly flawless moral codes in their adolescents. This aspect of the purity movement led to what is referred to as a new psychology of adolescence: a cultural project seeking to ensure sexual purity as well as heterosexual development (Moslener, 2015). The concept of heterosexual development will be returned to later, as Bay-Cheng has much more to say on the subject of sex and sexuality education under the umbrella of abstinence.

According to her, only 14% of public SBSE programs are comprehensive. A comprehensive aspect of SBSE programs refers to the inclusion of information regarding all methods of contraception and STI prevention (p. 63). A much larger portion of schools are either abstinence-centered programs (51%), or abstinence-only programs (35%). These statistics display a political popularity of abstinence based school programming. I found this popularity to be striking, given that there are no actual published evaluations of abstinence-only programs delaying sexual behavior in adolescents (Kirby, 2002). Despite this information, organizations that advocate for broader sex and sexuality education curricula as well as raise similar issues to those being raised now — Bay-Cheng provides an example of the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States — receive hostile backlash at community, state, and federal levels (p. 63). Thus, it is easy to see here that SBSE is largely founded on the essentialized notions of sexuality and adolescence discussed previously (p. 64).

With reference to the discussion question posed earlier, I would now like to discuss further Irvine’s notion of political manipulation. While reading Bay-Cheng’s statistics on SBSE programs, and the negative reactions received when attention is called to them, it is fairly easy to grasp that something bigger is going on here. Why ignore evidence provided by educators and scholars? It seems that the essentializing of sexuality and adolescence, since these notions are so publically ingrained, overpower most contradictory evidence thrown in the way, and this overpowering process has far more of an impact than may initially meet the eye. A powerful example of this is as such: as part of the welfare reform of 1996, $250 million in federal funds were allocated toward abstinence-only programming; when it became up for renewal under the Bush administration, a $33 million increase for this abstinence-only SBSE was recommended (p. 63). It seems as though moral values take precedence over empirical evidence, even in situations where we may expect empiricism to be most crucial, and I would like to bring in an important point from Moslener. In order for suppression of sexuality under Evangelicalism to be successful, attempts were made to translate religious belief into discourses of mental health and psychological development (p. 7). Thus, the ideologies that impact adolescents enter the public sphere under a guise of mental health and therapeutic discourses, giving unfair and unjustifiable credibility beyond a religious context. These two examples connect back to my prior point; though sex panics may provoke explicit anger-filled acts, they also incite insidious violence causing psychological and emotional harm to adolescents through systematic manipulations of power, and this is why Irvine posits emotion as a powerful catalyst.

The political manipulation taking place regarding abstinence-only SBSE programs results in a crucial misrepresentation of sexual experiences to adolescents, invoking a discourse of sexual danger. Bay-Cheng informs us that abstinence-only programs must teach that “sexual activity outside of the context of marriage is likely to have harmful psychological and physical effects,” and that “bearing children out-of-wedlock is likely to have harmful consequences for the child, the child’s parents, and society” (p. 64). These notions are supported through Rubin’s discussion of reformulating concepts of sexual injustice. Here, she posits sex negativity, which refers to the perception of sex under Western cultures — sex is considered to be dangerous, destructive, and a negative force (1984), particularly in conservative Evangelical traditions. Sex is see as inherently sinful, though individuals may redeem themselves if sex is performed within marriage (1984). An ethnographic study was performed of SBSE programs in New York City, which resulted in the appearance of three driving discourses: Sexuality as Violence, Sexuality as Victimization, and Sexuality as Morality (Fine, 1988). Bay-Cheng discusses these discourses in depth. Sexuality as Violence is defined as the belief that sex is inherently damaging and coercive; Sexuality as Victimization, though not positing inherent violence, is the idea that sexual behavior is ripe with possibilities for physical and/or psychological victimization; Sexuality as Morality posits moral values such as self-control, willpower, and purity (pp. 64–65). These discourses were also appealed to in a book written in 1997 by Joshua Harris, entitled “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” which is a book founded on purity culture, encouraging men and women to remain abstinent until their wedding day. It was not just this encouragement that called so many men and women to report on their terrible experiences with purity culture; it was the notion that receiving and giving love before marriage made one less of a person. Liz Lenz wrote an interesting article about the harmful effects that this book, and purity culture altogether, had on her and many others. She states that this culture uses fear to mask bodies and needs (2016), which fits nicely alongside the prior analysis of a religion of fear. Public emotion contributes to sexual discourses of danger particular in virtue of those in control of the SBSE programs.

As promised, the new psychology of adolescence will be examined in further detail in light of the manipulation of heterosexual development and emotions regarding sexual purity within the political sphere. Irvine posits public emotion as deeply socially constructed (p. 3), which is a statement I wholeheartedly concur with. Although this may be the case, this does not take away the effects of the legitimizing power that public emotion can cultivate, these effects being detrimental for adolescents. One of these consequences is that of establishing certain sexualities as normal, while establishing others as unspeakable or disgusting (p. 3). It goes without saying that heterosexuality is what has been instituted as the norm, and other gender expressions and sexualities are viewed as deviations from the norm, thus warranting harmful consequences for those who identity as non-conforming. This speaks to the notion of cisgendering reality: this is a process by which religious leaders construct and maintain cisnormative interpretations of the world (Sumerau, Cragun, & Mathers, 2016). Cisnormativity refers to the assumption that individuals are cisgender; in other words, that the sex they were born with matches up with their gender identity. Evaluating religious constructions of gender is imperative for understanding religion — particularly conservative Evangelicalism. Again referring to Moslener’s assertion that religious ideologies disguise themselves as mental health and/or therapeutic discourses, obtaining more credibility than is justifiable, the work of Sumerau et al. emphasizes how scientific, legal, medical, and other sex and gender categorizations are posited in relation to religious social construction and authority (p. 295). In contrast to this devotion to religious authority, Irvine claims that many of the emotions contributing to a sex panic are not really authentic expressions of moral outrage as often depicted by religious conservatives (p. 4). In the 1960’s, leaders of the Christian right-wing recognized that sexuality could be exploited in order to consolidate political power with regard to sex education, using an emotionally powerful rhetoric (pp. 4–5), and this can be seen within SBSE programs. Concerns about new sexual attitudes and gender roles were made explicit within the sexual purity movement as well as those about the replacement of religious belief with scientific inquiry (Moslener, 2015). From this information, it is clear that emotion has been manipulated within the public and political sphere to cultivate a desired sex and sexuality education under conservative Evangelicalism.

This point has also been supported by Rubin. Western societies are known to appraise sex acts according to what she refers to as a hierarchal system of sexual value, which deems those who are in marital, reproductive, heterosexual relationships as the highest tier (1984). Unmarried, monogamous, heterosexuals come next, and then “most other heterosexuals” (p. 11). This structure of hierarchy aligns with the political manipulation of emotion regarding sexuality and sex education within the purity movement, for it is constantly perpetuated in quotidian life. For example, Bay-Cheng contends that the values and norms that are implicitly conveyed to adolescents within sexuality education classrooms have been ignored (p. 63). SBSE plays a very significant role in constructing adolescent sexualities, and the public emotion so saturated with conservative Evangelical thought is shaping the misrepresentations of sexual experience discussed prior.

In order to move away from these misrepresentations, there needs to be a significant increase in comprehensive sex and sexuality education programs. Without a change in SBSE programs, I do not seeing it being possible that a healthy environment could be cultivated to support adolescents who do participate in sexual activity before marriage, especially if they are queer and/or gender non-conforming. Even those who wish to remain abstinent until marriage but do not conform to the Evangelical standard of heteronormativity will be harmed through abstinence-centered or abstinence-only SBSE. What will certainly decrease sexual risk for adolescents is being given all-inclusive information so that they can make their own informed choices regarding sexual activity. Allowing adolescents their deserved independence that has been feared since the Cold War will help to cultivate a healthier environment. In providing comprehensive SBSE programs, students will be safer in how they are having sex, and they will have a better understanding of other sexualities and genders, which will lead to a more accepting school environment. Another aspect that leads to an unhealthy school environment is the suppressive rhetoric of sexual purity that has been shaping the development of so many young minds. With this rhetoric removed, students will feel more comfortable confronting their parents, guardians, peers, and other authoritative figures when faced with a challenge in sexual health.

References

Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2003). The Trouble of Teen Sex: The Construction of Adolescent Sexuality Through School-Based Sexuality Education. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 3(1), 61–74.

Bivins, J.C. (2008). Religion of Fear: The Politics of Horror in Conservative Evangelicalism. Oxford University Press.

Fine, M. (1988). Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire, Harvard Educational Review, 58, 29–53.

Irvine, J. M. (2008). Transient Feelings: Sex Panics and the Politics of Emotions. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 14(1), 1–40.

Kirby, D. (2002). The Impact of Schools and School Programs Upon Adolescent Sexual Behavior. Journal of Sex Research, 39(1), 27–33.

Lance, M., & Tanesini, A. (2004). Emotion and Rationality. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 34(sup1), 275–295.

Lenz, Liz. (2016) “‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ Told Me to Stay Pure until Marriage. I Still Have a Stain on My Heart.” Acts of Faith: n. pag. Web. 5 Apr. 2017.

Moslener, S. (2015). Virgin Nation: Sexual Purity and American Adolescence. Oxford University Press, 1–141.

Rubin, G. (1984). Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality. Social Perspectives in Lesbian and Gay Studies; A Reader, 1–44.

Soloman, Robert C. (1977). The Logic of Emotion. Noûs, 11(1), 41–49.

Sumerau, J.E., Cragun, R.T., & Mathers, L.A. (2016). Contemporary Religion and the Cisgendering of Reality. Social Currents, 3(3), 293–311.