Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies pp 183–203Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Teaching It Straight: Sexuality Education Across Post-State-Socialist Contexts

Abstract

This chapter explores how sex education is navigated in post-socialist sites in relation to discourses of purity, childhood innocence, and nation-building. We examine how the politics of sexuality education render students sexual subjects through official, evaded, and hidden curricula, in a municipal secondary school in Yekaterinburg, Russia and a Polish diasporic immersion school in Alberta, Canada. We argue that education and sex education are involved in what we describe as “teaching it straight”—the continued insistence on (and frequent failure of) straightening students into heteronormative life paths and desires. Drawing on the works of queer theorists and our own autobiographical voices, we develop an oppositional method of “telling it slantwise”—looking at contradictions, silent moments, and queer possibilities within normatively ordered school life.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Notes

  1. 1.

    The school and city will remain unnamed out of consideration for the community.

  2. 2.

    An example would be a teacher using an outdated and degrading term “fallen woman” when referring to Sonia, a prostitute, from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment novel.

  3. 3.

    For the other waves of immigration, see Baker, 1989; Burrell, 2009; Drozdzewski, 2007; Mlynarz, 2008.

  4. 4.

    At the time Adam Mickiewicz published the national epic poem in 1834, Lithuania and Poland were linked nationalities under Poland-Lithuania. The story is set in 1811–1812, a time when Poland was under the partitions, and its territory was occupied by Russia, Prussia, and Austria so that it “disappeared off the map.” To recite this poem is thus an exercise in Polish émigré nostalgia: a longing for a homeland stolen.

References

  • AAUW. (1992). How schools shortchange girls. Washington, DC: American Association of University Women Educational Foundation. Retrieved from http://history.aauw.org/files/2014/02/HSSG5-Part4.pdf.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ahmed, S. (2006). Queer phenomenology: Orientations, objects, others. Durham: Duke University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. London: Verso Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Anzaldúa, G. (1987). Borderlands/la frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Baker, K. J. (2016, October11). Cruelty and kindness in academia. Chronicle Vitae. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/news/1572-cruelty-and-kindness-in-academia

  • Baker, R. P. (1989). The adaptation of Polish immigrants to Toronto: The Solidarity wave. Canadian Ethnic Studies= Etudes Ethniques au Canada, 21(3), 74.

    Google Scholar 

  • BBC News. (2016, October 6). Poland abortion: Parliament rejects near-total ban. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37573938

  • Burrell, K. (2009). Migration to the UK from Poland: Continuity and change in East–West European mobility. Farnham: Ashgate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. W., & Hernandez, K. A. C. (2010). Living autoethnography: Connecting life and research. Journal of research practice, 6(1), 1.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chervyakov, V., & Kon, I. (2000). Sexual revolution in Russia and the tasks of sex education. In J.-P. Moatti, Y. Souteyrand, A. Prieur, T. Sandfort, & P. Aggleton (Eds.), AIDS in Europe: New challenges for the social sciences (pp. 119–134). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Connell, R. W., & Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity rethinking the concept. Gender & society, 19(6), 829–859.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Denzin, N. (2014). Interpretive autoethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Drozdzewski, D. (2007). A place called ‘Bielany’: Negotiating a diasporic Polish place in Sydney. Social & Cultural Geography, 8(6), 853–869.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Farquhar, S., & Fitzpatrick, E. (2016). Unearthing truths in duoethnographic method. Qualitative Research Journal, 16(3), 238–250.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Fields, J. (2008). Risky lessons: Sex education and social inequality. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gopinath, G. (2005). Impossible desires: Queer diasporas and South Asian public cultures. Durham: Duke University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Grabowska, M. (2012). Bringing the Second World in: Conservative revolution (s), socialist legacies, and transnational silences in the trajectories of Polish feminism. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 37(2), 385–411.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Hall, S. (2003). Cultural identity and diaspora. In J. E. Braziel & A. Mannur (Eds.), Theorizing diaspora (pp. 233–247). Malden, MA: Blackwell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Healey, D. (2014). The sexual revolution in the USSR: Dynamics beneath the ice. In G. Hekma & A. Giami (Eds.), Sexual revolutions (pp. 236–248). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Koobak, R., & Marling, R. (2014). The decolonial challenge: Framing post-socialist central and Eastern Europe within transnational feminist studies. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 21(4), 330–343.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Kendall, N. (2013). The sex education debates. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kincaid, J. (1998). Erotic innocence: The culture of child molesting. Durham: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lukovitskaya, E., & Buchanan, D. (2012). Reproductive health knowledge, attitude, and behaviors of technical college students in Velikye Novgorod, Russia. International Quarterly of Community Health Education, 32(2), 115–134.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Martinez, A., & Andreatta, M. M. (2015). “It’s my body and my life” A dialogued collaborative autoethnography. Cultural Studies? Critical Methodologies, 15(3), 224–232.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • McClintock, A. (1993). Family feuds: Gender, nationalism and the family. Feminist Review No. 44, 61–80.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mishtal, J., & Dannefer, R. (2010). Reconciling religious identity and reproductive practices: The church and contraception in Poland. The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care, 15(4), 232–242.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Mlynarz, M. (2008). “It’s our patriotic duty to help them”: The socio-cultural and economic impact of the ‘Solidarity wave’on Canadian and Polish-Canadian Society in the Early 1980s. Past Imperfect, 13, 56–83.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Norris, J., Sawyer, R. D., & Lund, D. (2012). Duoethnography: Dialogic methods for social, health, and educational research. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pascoe, C. J. (2011/2007). Dude, you’re a fag: Masculinity and sexuality in high school. Berkeley: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Penn, S. (2005). Solidarity’s secret: The women who defeated communism in Poland. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Przybylo, E. n.d. Asexual Erotics. [Forthcoming/In Progress].

    Google Scholar 

  • Renold, E. (2000). ‘Coming out’: Gender, (hetero) sexuality and the primary school. Gender and Education, 12(3), 309–326.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Regushevskaya, E., Dubikaytis, T., Nikula, M., Kuznetsova, O., & Hemminki, E. (2009). Contraceptive use and abortion among women of reproductive age in St. Petersburg, Russia. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 41(1), 51–58.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Rich, A. (1980). Compulsory heterosexuality and lesbian existence. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 5(4), 631–660.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Robinson, K., & Davies, C. (2008). Docile bodies and heteronormative moral subjects: Constructing the child and sexual knowledge in schooling. Sexuality & Culture, 12(4), 221–239.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shapiro, B. Y. (2001). School-based sex education in Russia: The current reality and prospects. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning, 1(1), 87–96.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Snarskaya, O. (2009). Seksual’noe obrazovanie kak sfera proizvodstva gendernyh razlichij i konstruirovanija predstavlenija o «nacii» [Sex education as production of gender differences and construction of perceptions about the “nation”]. In E. Zdravomyslova & A. Temkina (Eds.), Health and trust: Gender approach to the reproductive medicine (pp. 51–90). St. Petersburg: European University.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stella, F., & Nartova, N. (2015). Sexual citizenship, nationalism and biopolitics in Putin’s Russia. In F. Stella, Y. Taylor, T. Reynolds, & A. Rogers (Eds.), Sexuality, citizenship and belonging: Trans-national and intersectional perspectives (pp. 17–36). London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stewart, K. (2007). Ordinary affects. Durham: Duke University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Stockton, K. B. (2009). The queer child or growing sideways in the twentieth century. Durham: Duke University Press.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Suchland, J. (2011). Is postsocialism transnational? Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 36(4), 837–862.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Tait, R. (2016, September 18). Thousands protest against proposed stricter abortion law in Poland. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/18/thousands-protest-against-proposed-stricter-abortion-law-in-poland

  • Trudell, B. N. (1993). Doing sex education: Gender, politics, and schooling. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walia, H. (2013). Undoing border imperialism. Oakland: AK Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walford, G. (2000). Gender and sexualities in educational ethnograpies (G. Walford & C. Hudson, Eds.). New York: JAI/Elsevier.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walters, A. S., & Hayes, D. M. (1998). Homophobia within schools: Challenging the culturally sanctioned dismissal of gay students and colleagues. Journal of Homosexuality, 35(2), 1–23.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Wood, J. (1984). Groping towards sexism: Boys’ sex talk. In A. McRobbie & M. Nava (Eds.), Gender and generation (pp. 54–84). London: Palgrave Macmillan.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Yuval-Davis, N. (1993). Gender and nation. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 16(4), 621–632.

    CrossRef  Google Scholar 

  • Zaborowska, M. J., & Pas, J. M. (2011). Global feminisms and the Polish “woman”: Reading popular culture representations through stories of activism since 1989. Kritika Kultura, 16, 15–43.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC, Canada

    Ela Przybylo

  2. Toronto, ON, Canada

    Polina Ivleva

Authors
  1. Ela Przybylo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Polina Ivleva
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Iveta Silova

  2. Faculty of Education, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Nelli Piattoeva

  3. Institute for Advanced Social Research, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland

    Dr. Zsuzsa Millei

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Przybylo, E., Ivleva, P. (2018). Teaching It Straight: Sexuality Education Across Post-State-Socialist Contexts. In: Silova, I., Piattoeva, N., Millei, Z. (eds) Childhood and Schooling in (Post)Socialist Societies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62791-5_10

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62791-5_10

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62790-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62791-5

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

search

Navigation