The frictional politics of comprehensive sexuality education: opposition and resistance in perspective

Abstract

Comprehensive sexuality education (CSE) has been shown to improve health outcomes, increase condom use and more respectful relationships, delay sexual initiation and reduce teenage pregnancy. Yet opposition to CSE remains strong. Oppositional actions or resistance to CSE can take many forms–from a teacher skipping a lesson deemed sensitive to social media reaction, to sustained anti-CSE lobbying during United Nations deliberations. To come to a deeper understanding of resistance to CSE, we engaged with Fakhoury’s taxonomy of resistance and McEwen and Towns’ conceptual trilogy and anti-gender rhizome to ask questions about the who, the what and structures of resistance, thereby creating greater clarity as to the nature of resistance to CSE and the connections between its diverse forms across time and place. While we acknowledge that young people’s access to sexuality education has been undermined by CSE opponents, we draw on scholars such as Tsing and Laclau to conceive of friction, which may result from oppositional actions to CSE, as a fundamental aspect of any political process. Crucially, we seek to draw attention to the generative properties of friction and its potential to prompt new questions, alliances and approaches.