TY - JOUR TI - The construction of an anti-feminist pedagogy in an abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum DO - https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3TT4P2H PY - 2014 AB - Sexuality, sexuality education, and teaching about sexuality are inherently feminist topics. There is a way in which to teach sexuality education that deconstructs dominant power structures, empowers students, and that has life-long positive impacts upon the young people in the classroom. In short, utilizing a feminist pedagogy is extremely important when teaching about sex, sexuality, and sexual health. Recently, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) placed an abstinence-only-until-marriage curriculum, Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education, on a list of endorsed curriculum with evidence-based comprehensive or abstinence-plus sexuality education curriculum. Much has been written about the false information in Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education. However, less has been written about the gendered implications of this curriculum and what a curriculum such as this means in the context of feminist pedagogy. My project will not just focus on a gendered reading of Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education using an intersectional approach, but will also examine the ways in a curriculum such as Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education works against feminist pedagogies in dangerous ways. The theories I believe will be most pertinent to my project and will inform and frame this paper include Nel Nodding’s ethic of care, as well as, bell hooks’ theories on feminist pedagogy, engaged pedagogy, and critical thinking. Through a review of the popular literature around Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education, the Heritage Keepers Abstinence Education curriculum itself, and theoretical texts I hope to achieve a more nuanced critique of this curriculum and its implications for the students it is taught to when it comes to important identity categories, with special regard to gender, but at once not leaving out race, class and sexual orientation, as well as in the context of education and the impact that a curriculum such as this can have on the learning outcomes and future learning of students when it comes to sexuality. KW - Women's and Gender Studies KW - Feminist theory--United States KW - Sex instruction--United States KW - Sexual abstinence--United States LA - eng ER -