Some Reflections on Sexuality, Gender and Education

Opinion

To speak of sexuality is to speak of the human species, from our birth to our disappearance. Sexuality influences our entire life, being at its base sex, a primary distinction that provides the human species with a means of reproduction, but that influences beyond the limit of sexual activity itself [1]. For the World Health Organization (WHO), human sexuality is defined as: a central aspect of the human being, present throughout his life. It encompasses sex, gender identities and roles, eroticism, pleasure, intimacy, reproduction, and sexual orientation. It is lived and expressed through thoughts, fantasies, desires, beliefs, attitudes, values, behaviors, practices, roles and interpersonal relationships. Sexuality can include all these dimensions, however, not all of them are always experienced or expressed. Sexuality is influenced by the interaction of biological, psychological, social, economic, political, cultural, ethical, legal, historical, religious and spiritual factors [2].

Reducing sexuality to pure biology is a culturally widespread error and, therefore, the biological aspect is perhaps the most studied and treated of all of them. As a consequence, we find that a large part of sexual education programs obey a mere physiological information of the human body at the genital level, without working sexuality in all its aspects and dimensions. In the same way it happens with the procreative aspect, sexuality is much broader than the action of reproduction. Sex and reproduction are not synonymous, but heterosexual activity includes the possibility of conception, whether desired or not [3]. The psychological aspect interests us given its influence on the constitution of the personality of each individual as a sexual being. Psychological sex supposes the intimate, robust and firm conviction of belonging to a certain gender. This conviction involves the self, which in a certain way configures as a sexed self in this gender, but at the same time, it is reconfigured, grounded and planned from the self itself [4].

Within the relational aspect we find the constitutive elements of communication and relationship with others, with ourselves and with the environment itself. We are a being for contact and bonding, which means, inexorably, that if we do not come into contact with others and bond with some people, we can die. Among these elements we find affectivity [6]. clarifies that the objects form alignment with the self, interweave with it, affect it. This is the inaugural experience of our affective dealing with reality. The subject is in the feeling, lives sentimentally, illuminates the world with his sentimental light. Affectivity is a complex or set of emotions, feelings, passions and motivations that are qualified by rationality, cultural, ethnic and biographical knowledge. However, terms such as emotion, feeling, affection, affective bond, etc., do not have a sufficiently precise meaning, accepted by all science professionals [5].

The decisions and actions undertaken by individuals in the development and explanation of their sexuality are conditioned by the ethical-moral aspect, and may reduce the freedom and/or autonomy of sexuality. Cultural and social elements define learning in any field, so it is important to acquire a critical sense to define which socio-cultural aspects should remain and/or eradicate, as well as which are the result of fashion or which are circumstantial, therefore that should not be presented as determining elements of our own conduct. Once we are born, being a man or a woman, society (cultural, political, religious, moral elements...) defines the way we behave based on our sex. Moreover, the interactions that occur from birth are impregnated with elements that cause ascription to gender [7]. define gender as a scheme that regulates the manifestation of life, thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Unlike sex, gender is neither universal nor static, it fluctuates and evolves depending on the variables of space and time.

Sex is, while gender is made, and they are differentiated concepts [8-10] on the contrary, it affirms that within the sexgender dichotomy, under no circumstances should it be understood that sex refers only to the biological and gender only to the social. Towards the middle of the 20th century, as a consequence of the triumph of the democracies, the extension of the industrialization processes with all the changes that this entails, a wide liberation of sexual customs took place in the United States and a large part of Western Europe that brought with it numerous effects. positive and at the same time negative. It made possible the appearance of the first sociological studies on sexuality, it changed the legislation on family and marriage with the laws of divorce and abortion, the generalization of the use of contraceptive methods was favored... However, since there is no Sexual Education of population, led to an increase in unwanted pregnancies among adolescents and young people, spreading sexually transmitted diseases and developing pornography [11].

In this context, Sex Education appears as a social need to avoid the risks that sexual activity entails, giving rise to a preventive model in this sense. The objective of this model would be to avoid risks inherent to sexual activity itself. The World Health Organization urges countries to consider Sex Education within their educational systems. Educational intervention in Sex Education is a necessity that exists in our educational system, it is not explicitly legislated in non-university education, being relegated to the arbitrariness of educational centers, groups of teachers or teachers individually that they do altruistically, with the best psychopedagogical intention, but sometimes they lack evaluative proposals, or in their case, implementing existing programs without the pertinent contextualization.

But the same happens in university education, where the curricula of the different Degrees do not contemplate content on the sexual dimension, there are few Universities and few degrees that do, and those that do address it do so within the theme “gender”, leaving aside aspects that are also relevant to the sexual dimension. There is empirical evidence on the feasibility of introducing training in sexual and affective education into teaching and learning processes in university contexts, either through the official curriculum of undergraduate degrees related to care for human groups or through specific degrees in Postgraduate [12]. Sexuality is something vital in the individual and that must be accepted and integrated into his total personality, which presupposes an objective knowledge of the facts and an adequate management of the sexual potential inherent in the person. It is currently accepted that the knowledge learned through a continuous educational process for health can contribute to strengthening personality and self-esteem, achieving identity and facilitating the adoption of positive attitudes towards affectivity, relationships with others, sexuality, etc., [13].

References

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