Doing it with words: Discourse and the sex education culture wars

Critical Inquiry

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 58-75

  Irvine, Janice M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 31444444865     PISSN: 00931896     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/448998     Document Type: Review

References (70)

1. Abraham Kaplan, "Obscenity as an Esthetic Category," Law and Contemporary Problems 20 (Autumn 1955): 550
2. quoted in Felice Flanery Lewis, Literature, Obscenity, and Law (Carbondale, Ill., 1976), p. 245
3. See Janice M. Irvine, Talk about Sex: The Cultural Politics of Sex Education (New York, forthcoming)
4. The existence and nature of the culture wars has been the subject of some debate among sociologists. See, for example, James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991)
5. and the collection Cultural Wars in American Politics: Critical Reviews of a Popular Myth, ed. Rhys H. Williams (New York, 1997)
6. James Dobson and Gary Bauer, Children at Risk (Dallas, 1990), p. 218
7. quoted in John Detweiler, "The Religious Right's Battle Plan in the 'Civil War of Values,'" Public Relations Review 18 (Fall 1992): 252
8. See Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), p. 195
9. See Marc Steinberg, "Tilting the Frame: Considerations on Collective Action Framing from a Discursive Turn," Theory and Society 6 (1998): 1-28
10. See also M. M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, trans. Vern W. McGee, ed. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin, Tex., 1986)
11. See, for example, J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1962)
12. Shoshana Felman, The Literary Speech Act: Don Juan with J. L. Austin, or Seduction in Two Languages, trans. Catherine Porter (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983)
13. and Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York, 1997). These two strategies correspond to Austin's two dimensions of performatives, the perlocutionary and illocutionary, which have been further amplified and debated by scholars
14. Merrimack School District, "Prohibition of Alternate Lifestyle Instruction," policy 6540, Aug. 1995, n.p
15. Tamara Lush, "Merrimack Teachers, Parents File Lawsuit over Policy on 'Gays,'" Manchester (N. H.) Union Leader, 16 Feb. 1996, p. A4
16. Statement of Mary Bonauto, Esquire, Civil Rights Director, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, press release regarding filing of Walker et al v. Merrimack School District, 15 Feb. 1996, p. 1, press release
17. Chris Ager, letter to the editor, Merrimack Village Crier, I Aug. 1995
18. Quoted in Allan M. Brandt, No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (New York, 1985), p. 28
19. Edward W. Eichel, "Heterophobia: The Kinsey Agenda in Sex Education," in Judith A. Reisman et al., Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People, ed. J. Gordon Muir and John H. Court (Lafayette, La., 1990), p. 117
20. Eichel and Muir, "The Kinsey Grand Scheme," in Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud, p. 214
21. E. A. Siciliano, letter to the editor, Newton Graphic, 27 Jan. 1993, "Newton Schools Would Be Spreading Gospel of Immorality."
22. Connie Marshner, Decent Exposure: How to Teach Your Children about Sex (Brentwood, Tenn., 1988), p. 35
23. See evaluations such as Douglas Kirby, No Easy Answers: Research Findings on Programs to Reduce Teen Pregnancy (Washington, D.C., 1997)
24. see also Anne Grunseit et al., "Sex-uality Education and Young People's Sexual Behavior: A Review of Studies," Journal of Adolescent Research 12 (Oct. 1997): 421-453
25. James Townsend, quoted in William Martin, With God on Our Side: The Rise of the Religious Right in America (New York, 1996), p. 106
26. See Child Abuse in the Classroom, ed. Phyllis Schlafly (Alton, Ill., 1984)
27. Melvin Anchell, "Psychoanalysis vs. Sex Education," National Review, 20 June 1986, p. 38
28. Randy Engel, Sex Education: The Final Plague (Gaithersburg, Md., 1998), p. 8
29. See Gloria Lentz, Raping Our Children: The Sex Education Scandal (New Rochelle, N.Y., 1972)
30. Quoted in Liz Galst, "Fear of Sex Ed.," Boston Phoenix, Mar. 1994, p. 10
31. The Gay Agenda in Public Education, produced by The Report, 35 min., 1993, videocassette
32. Felman, The Literary Speech Act, p. 12
33. See Catharine A. MacKinnon, Only Words (Cambridge, Mass., 1993)
34. Ken Plummer, Telling Sexual Stories: Power, Change and Social Worlds (New York, 1995), pp. 35, 113
35. James R. Kincaid, Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting (Durham, N.C., 1998); hereafter abbreviated EI
36. See Joel Best, Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern about Child-Victims (Chicago, 1990)
37. See John M. Johnson, "Horror Stories and the Construction of Child Abuse," in Images of Issues: Typifying Contemporary Social Problems, ed. Best (New York, 1989), pp. 5-19
38. and Best, "Dark Figures and Child Victims: Statistical Claims about Missing Children," in Images of Issues, pp. 21-37
39. See EI, chap. 3. See also Best, "Dark Figures and Child Victims,"
40. and Johnson, "Horror Stories and the Construction of Child Abuse."
41. Quoted in Philip Jenkins, Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America (New Haven, Conn., 1998), p. 133
42. Charles R. Lawrence III et al., introduction to Words That Wound: Critical Race Theory, Assaultive Speech, and the First Amendment, ed. Mari J. Matsuda et al. (Boulder, Colo., 1993), p. 1
43. See Carole S. Vance, Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality (Boston, 1984)
44. especially her introduction, "Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality," pp. 1-27, and afterword, pp. 431-39
45. See also Lisa Duggan and Nan D. Hunter, Sex Wars: Sexual Dissent and Political Culture (New York, 1995)
46. MacKinnon, Only Words, p. 68
47. See Donileen R. Loseke, Thinking about Social Problems: An Introduction to Constructionist Perspectives (New York, 1999)
48. U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (Washington D.C., 1986), p. 31
49. John Leo, "Sex and Schools," Time, 24 Nov. 1986, p. 54
50. Reisman, at "What's Wrong with Sex Education Anyway?" a forum sponsored by Newton Citizens for Public Education, Newton, Mass., 31 Mar. 1993
51. See Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, Mass., 1991)
52. and Jacob Torfing, New Theories of Discourse: Laclau, Mouffe, and Žižek (Oxford, 1999)
53. See Ann Swidler, "Cultural Power and Social Movements," in Social Movements and Culture, ed. Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Minneapolis, 1995), pp. 25-40
54. Shelly Ucsinski, interview with author, tape recording, Merrimack, N.H., 26 July 1996
55. Dolores Ayling, in Why Parents Should Object to the Children of the Rainbow, HIV K-6 Curricula, produced by Concerned Parents for Educational Accountability, n.d., videocassette
56. Lillian Lopez, interview with author, tape recording, Brooklyn, N.Y., 31 Jan. 1995
57. "The Rainbow Curriculum," 60 Minutes, 4 Apr. 1993
58. See Jean Hardisty, "Constructing Homophobia," The Public Eye, Mar. 1993
59. Ballot Measure 9, produced and directed by Heather MacDonald, 80 minutes, Oregon Tape Project, 1994, videocassette
60. Steinberg, "Tilting the Frame," p. 17
61. See also Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York, 1978)
62. and Butler, Excitable Speech
63. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, p. 34
64. Jeffrey Merritt, "Many Students Say Gay Policy Unwelcome," Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, 31 Aug. 1995, p. I
65. Merritt, "Opponents of Gay Policy Plead with Board to Rescind Vote," Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, 6 Sept. 1995, p. 1
66. See Merritt, "Homosexual Policy Triggers Lawsuit," Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph, 16 Feb. 1996, p. 1
67. See Don Botsch, "Meanwhile in the Parking Lot," Merrimack (N.H.) Village Crier, 22 Aug. 1995, n.p.
68. Merritt, "Enforcement of Gay Policy Stirs Concern," p. 13
69. Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity (Chicago, 1998), p. 126
70. John Shotter and Michael Billig, "A Bakhtinian Psychology: From out of the Heads of Individuals and into the Dialogues between Them," in Bakhtin and the Human Sciences, ed. Michael Bell and Michael Gardiner (London, 1998), p. 18