Sex, Ethics, and Young People

219 Pages·2015·2.753 MB·English

by  Moira Carmody (auth.)

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN’S

CRITICAL STUDIES IN GENDER, SEXUALITY, AND CULTURE
Highlighting the work taking place at the crossroads of sociology, sexuality
studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, this series
offers a platform for scholars pushing the boundaries of gender and sexual-
ity studies substantively, theoretically, and stylistically. The authors draw on
insights from diverse scholarship and research in popular culture, ethnogra-
phy, history, cinema, religion, performance, new media studies, and techno-
science studies to render visible the complex manner in which gender and
sexuality intersect and can, at times, create tensions and fissures between one
another. Encouraging breadth in terms of both scope and theme, the series
editors seek works that explore the multifaceted domain of gender and sexu-
ality in a manner that challenges the taken-for-granted. On one hand, the
series foregrounds the pleasure, pain, politics, and aesthetics at the nexus of
sexual practice and gendered expression. On the other, it explores new sites
for the expression of gender and sexuality—the new geographies of intimacy
being constituted at both the local and global scales.
Series Editors:
PATRICIA T. CLOUGH is Professor of Sociology and Women’s Studies at
Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Clough is on the editorial
boards of Women’s Studies Quarterly, Body and Society, Subjectivity, Cultural
Studies/Critical Method, Qualitative Inquiry, and Women and Performance.
Clough is the coeditor of Beyond Biopolitics: Essays in the Governance of
Life and Death (with Craig Willse, 2011); author of The Affective Turn:
Theorizing the Social (with Jean Halley, 2007); Autoaffection: Unconscious
Thought in the Age of Teletechnology (2000); The End(s)of Ethnography: From
Realism to Social Criticism (1998); Feminist Thought: Desire, Power and
Academic Discourse (1994); and The End(s) of Ethnography: From Realism to
Social Criticism (1992).
R. DANIELLE EGAN is Professor and Chair of the Gender and Sexuality
Studies Program at St. Lawrence University. Egan is the author of Dancing
for Dollars and Paying for Love: The Relationships between Exotic Dancers
and Their Regulars (2006) and coauthor of Theorizing the Sexual Child in
Modernity (with Gail Hawkes, 2010), both with Palgrave Macmillan. She
is also the coeditor of Flesh for Fantasy: Producing and Consuming Exotic
Dance (with Katherine Frank and Merri Lisa Johnson, 2006). She is on the
editorial board of Sexuality and Culture.
Titles:
Magnus Hirschfeld and the Quest for Sexual Freedom: A History of the First
International Sexual Freedom Movement
Elena Mancini
Queer Voices: Vocality, the Uncanny, and Popular Music
Freya Jarman-Ivens
On the Literary Nonfiction of Nancy Mairs: A Critical Anthology
Edited by Merri Lisa Johnson and Susannah B. Mintz
Antarctica as Cultural Critique: The Gendered Politics of Scientific
Exploration and Climate Change
Elena Glasberg
The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets
Jean O’Malley Halley
Positioning Gender and Race in (Post)colonial Plantation Space:
Connecting Ireland and the Caribbean
Eve Walsh Stoddard
A Critical Inquiry into Queer Utopias
Edited by Angela Jones
Young People and Pornography: Negotiating Pornification
Monique Mulholland
Juliet Mitchell and the Lateral Axis: Twenty-First-Century
Psychoanalysis and Feminism
Edited by Robbie Duschinsky and Susan Walker
Women on the Role of Public Higher Education: Personal Reflections
from CUNY’s Graduate Center
Edited by Deborah S. Gambs and Rose M. Kim
Sex, Ethics, and Young People
Moira Carmody
Sex, Ethics, and Young People

Moira Carmody
SEX, ETHICS, AND YOUNG PEOPLE
Copyright © Moira Carmody, 2015.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2015 978-1-137-42911-7
All rights reserved.
First published in 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-49169-8 ISBN 978-1-137-40597-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137405975
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Carmody, Moira, 1953–
Sex, ethics, and young people / Moira Carmody.
pages cm.—(Critical studies in gender, sexuality, and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Sex crimes—Prevention. 2. Youth—Sexual behavior. 3. Sexual
ethics for youth. I. Title.
HV6556.C37 2015
176(cid:25).40835—dc23 2014043566
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2015
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For young women and men beginning their sexual lives and
those who work with them
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Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Part I Young People, Sex, and Sexual
Assault Prevention
Chapter 1
Thinking Critically about Sexuality Education 3
Chapter 2
Listening to Young People’s Experiences of Sexuality 17
Chapter 3
Negotiating Sex 39
Chapter 4
More than Plumbing: Sexuality Education 59
Chapter 5
Sexual Assault Prevention Education—an International
Overview 83
Part II Educating about Sexual Ethics
Chapter 6
Why Sexual Ethics? 103
Chapter 7
The Sex & Ethics Education Program 121
Chapter 8
Sex & Ethics in the Lives of Young Women and Men 139
Chapter 9
Becoming a Sex & Ethics Program Educator 155
viii CONTENTS
Chapter 10
Building Ethical Communities 177
References 183
Index 199
Acknowledgments

A
research and education project of this size that has been ongo-
ing since 2005 would not have been possible without the support of
many individuals and organizations. First, I wish to thank the young
women and men who opened up their sexual lives and relationships to
reflection during the interview stage of my research. The young peo-
ple who participated in the Sex & Ethics Education Program made
the research ideas come alive. Without their involvement, there would
have been no project. I am extremely grateful to them for sharing
their wisdom with their educators and me.
A number of organizations have provided funding of different
aspects of this work, and I am very grateful for all their support. The
Australian Research Council provided the initial funding (2005–2008)
as part of a Linkage grant. The Management Committee of Rape and
Domestic Violence Services, Australia (formerly NSW Rape Crisis
Centre), provided funds and in kind support as part of this initial grant
and provide an ongoing commitment. Karen Willis, executive officer
of the services, has been a generous and enthusiastic supporter of the
approach to Sex & Ethics since its inception, and continues to advocate
and promote the ideas and the importance of evidence-based primary
prevention of violence at state and national levels. We have had the
pleasure of training educators together over the last ten years and con-
tinue to learn much from each other. The New Zealand Ministry of
Justice provided additional funding in 2009–2011 for the Sex & Ethics
Program to be implemented and evaluated in Wellington; the former
Australian Department of Families, Housing, Community Services
and Indigenous Affairs provided two rounds of funding for a rollout of
the Sex & Ethics Program in NSW and in Queensland in 2009–2010.
The University of Technology also provided funding in 2012–2013.
I have had many invitations to present my ideas on Sex & Ethics at
universities across Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom
and at national and international conferences. I have also spoken
at dozens of community organization conferences and professional
meetings and run master workshops. All of these settings have been