Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Current affiliation: Brook, Bristol, UK. Email: ester. There are a number of persuasive arguments as to why sexual pleasure should be included in sexual health work with young people, including the suggestion that this would provide young people with accounts of gender and sexuality that are more critical and holistic than those presented in the popular media, pornography and current sex education curricula.
The paper provides a reflexive account of one focus group conducted with a group of heterosexual young men and two youth educators. Although there are some opportunities for critical work that move beyond limited public health or school-based sex education agendas, there is also space for collusion and the reinforcement of oppressive social norms.
The paper concludes by imagining possibilities for future research and practice. Keywords: masculinity, sex education, young people, sexual pleasure, focus groups. For over three decades, researchers and practitioners have argued that sexual pleasure should be included in sexuality education and sexual health services for young people Fine ; Ingham ; Centre for HIV and Sexual Health ; Allen and Carmody Broadly, these arguments suggest that a more positive and holistic model of sexual health that foregrounds the emotional and physical pleasures of sex and relationships, would produce more favourable and gender equitable sexual health outcomes for young people.
Increasingly, however, critics have argued that the inclusion of pleasure in sex education and sexual health services could also be potentially transformative for young men by creating opportunities for them to explore accounts of gender and sexuality that are more critical, diverse and equitable than those presented in popular media, pornography and current sex education curricula Allen ; Beasley The paper focuses on one focus group that I conducted as part of a broader mixed-methods study with a group of young, heterosexual men, a youth worker and a sexual health outreach worker.
Why would a researcher or a practitioner want to do this and what would be the challenges and benefits of doing this for young people, for researchers and for practitioners? In this influential article, Fine offers an analysis of the public discourses of sexuality that characterise debates about sex education in the USA, summarised as sex as violence , sex as victimisation , sex as individual morality and the discourse of desire.
