How Sex Ed Battles Helped Ignite the Right
20th Anniversary Edition
Praise for Talk about Sex:
“Must reading for scholars, sexuality researchers, activists, and public policy and public health planners engaged in efforts to promote education on sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV infection prevention for adolescents in schools.”—JAMA
This 20th Anniversary Edition includes a new preface and epilogue by the author that examines current controversies over public education on sexuality, gender, and race.
Demonstrating how the right wing draws on the cultural power of sexual shame and fear to build a political movement, Talk about Sex explores the complex entanglements of sexual knowledge, politics, and discourses.
“A riveting account of how the Christian Right came to control much of the sex education curriculum taught in public schools. . . . In chilling detail, Irvine shows how the Christian Right’s provocative, often distorted depictions of secular sex education heated emotion.”—Gail Bederman, Women’s Review of Books
“Judicious and perceptive(,) . . . Irvine explores the clash between professional sex education advocates and politicized Christian evangelicals that has played out on the stage of local communities and school systems since the 1960s. She illuminates a significant yet largely unknown story of the politics of sexuality.”—Kathy Peiss, author of Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture
“A remarkable acute work, with great insights for historians interested in post-1960s politics, issues of free speech, and the history of sexuality.”—Helen Horowitz, Journal of American History
“Must reading for scholars, sexuality researchers, activists, and public policy and public health planners engaged in efforts to promote education on sex, sexually transmitted diseases, and HIV infection prevention for adolescents in schools.”— JAMA ( Journal of the American Medical Association)
Disorders of Desire
Janice M. IrvineSexual Cultures and the Construction of Adolescent Identities
Edited by Janice M. Irvine