Week 5 - Sex and the (Techno)Politics of Reproduction
This weeks readings pertaining to the cultural biases present in texts about the reproductive organs and their parts (Martin) and films covering the process of conception (Bryld & Lykke) have got me thinking about the cultural biases present in our sexual education programs.
When I think back to Grade 9, my first year of highschool, and at the physically awkward age of 14, I remember being in heavily gendered version of sex ed. Firstly our classes were split by gender, which may have been to teach specific biological information to each group, but ended up only exaggerating the heavily biased approaches to our lessons on sexual health.
While the "boys" (men) were assigned the gymnasium, a vast open and well lit space central to the school where issues were discussed loudly and jovially, the "girls" (women) were assigned to a portable a short walk from the main building, seemingly hidden, dark and dreary, a secluded environment where sexual issues were whispered and serious.
The "boys" curriculum, I was to hear later, was focused on "avoiding the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases and infections" where they were taught quirky jingles, and handed copious amounts of condoms. The "girls" curriculum was far more serious, discussing sex scientifically with a generous focus on pregnancy prevention and skewed explanation of sexual organs.
This is where I began to first question the gendered nature of my surrounding, perhaps without being able to recognize or name it. I remember feeling very angry at our seclusion and felt a mounting anger at the material covered. While my phys ed teacher described safe oral sex practices as "using condoms" and the important pressure of the female role as "keeping track of ones cycle" as to aid in "avoiding pregnancy" - I was shocked at the exclusion of oral sex as being an activity that can be mutually reciprocated and the complete lack of same-sex education (it was 2001 - but we did have a growing number of openly queer individuals at our school, and I couldn't help but feel empathetic.
The straw that broke the camels back, so to speak, was when I heard my instructor write off the clitoris as having "no reproductive use". This statement deemed an entire part of the female anatomy "useless" and "not worth attention" - a part that I was beginning to consider as having some value.
Looking back on this experience, it is clear how gendered and heteronormative my experience of sexual education was, and though there are slowly (in Canada at least) a growing number of programs to correct this such as Queering Sex Ed.
But on another level, I worry about the generations of adults who lack certain biological knowledge (or whose biological knowledge is outdated, sexist and heteronormative) and are now parents. What programs are on offer for them?
Enter Cliteracy - a project by New York-based artist Sophia Wallace which is focused on educating the masses about the clitoris through art installations, street art, public events and merchandise. She even has a TUMBLR!
According to a 2011 post by Museum of Sex blogger Ms. M, the internal clitoris (highlighted in yellow in the images above) is a complex erectile structure consisting of two corpora cavernosa (that are said to wrap around the vagina when erect), two crura (erectile bodies that branch out from the clitoral body), clitoral vestibules or bulbs, and the clitoral glans (the part that you can see).
In response to:
Martin, Emily The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles in Signs (April 1991), 16 (3), pg. 485-501.
Bryld, Mette and Nina Lykke “From Rambo Sperm to Egg Queens: Two Versions of Lennart Nilsson’s Film on Human Reproduction” in Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology pp. 79-93. Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke (eds.). Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2008.