Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning
The Media’s Evolving Role in Sex Education
Guest Editors: Alan McKee, Sara Bragg, and Tristan Taormino
The entertainment media have long been identified as having a key role to play in education about sex and relationships.
All too often, however, in studies of sexual learning the media have been assessed for their potentially negative effects on young people. For example, studies have correlated consumption of particular media forms with early sexual intercourse or teenage pregnancy, while parents and schools have been seen as providing a positive corrective.
Empirical research shows that this simple binary is not always accurate: in some instances entertainment media may offer positive information and representations while school or parents often offer more moralizing or conservative perspectives. For example, a young person growing up in a homophobic family may see happy queer characters in a sitcom; or young people attending a school that emphasizes young women’s role as gatekeepers and controllers of men’s sexuality may find helpful TV dramas that explore women’s active sexual agency.
This Special Issue of the journal Sex Education will engage with these and related concerns, pausing to take stock of where we are now, especially with respect to the positive role that old and newer forms of media can play in learning about sex.
Papers may focus on any aspect of the entertainment media, and on any aspect of healthy sexual development – including, but not limited to, open communication about sex, assertiveness, sexual agency, sexual identity, or an acceptance that sex can be pleasurable.
Submission Procedures
Submission Deadline: 24th October, 2014
Articles for the Special Issue will be subject to normal peer review in line with the procedures of the journal. For more information on how to submit your paper, please visit the instructions for authors tab on the journal website.
When you submit your paper will be asked whether you are submitting for a Special Issue. Please use the pull-down menu to note that you are submitting your paper for the Special Issue The Media’s Evolving Role in Sex Education. Please also note in the manuscript of your article that you are submitting it for this Special Issue.
If you are not sure whether your article is appropriate for this Special Issue, please feel free to send an abstract in the first instance to Alan McKee.
