Please number your answers, and write a well-written paragraph to respond to all three questions in the prompt. I expect that it will take you around 400 words to thoroughly answer all questions. Please show your understanding and engagement with course material by quoting or directly mentioning all of the week’s assigned texts. Submit your reflection as a Word document or PDF.
- How do this week’s texts challenge, confuse, confirm, and/or expand your previous understandings of sexual education, bodily autonomy, sexual agency? Please specifically mention at least three assigned texts from this week.
- For your second question, choose one of the following three options:
- Have an in-depth conversation about some of the material from this week with at least one other person of your choice. As you talk, you can think about how your own families and communities talked (or didn’t talk) about sex, pleasure, and consent, your own attitudes toward sexual pleasure, and your own understandings and experiences with consent. Spend some time reflecting on your conversation before answering the following question: Who did you talk to, what was your conversation like for you, and what did you learn from the experience that relates to this class? Please specifically mention at least two texts from this week.
- Set a timer for fifteen minutes and find a time and place to privately reflect and journal. You will not share your private journaling in the assignment you turn in, only your reflections on the experience! Write down your answers to the following questions: 1) What would your ideal sexual/sensual/romantic experience be like? Try to think as specifically as possible about what your ideal encounter would be like in terms of partner(s), physical sensations, specific acts, safety practices, relationship status, emotional state, etc. 2) If you think about your answer to the first question as a sort of “sexual goal,” what choices would you need to make in order to be able to achieve this goal? For example, if someone’s ideal encounter occurs within a specific type of relationship, or with the blessing of their family, community, or religious beliefs, they may choose to delay or decline other sexual experiences. Or, if your ideal encounter involves not worrying about pregnancy, that may necessitate discussing, choosing, and practicing contraception. Reflect on your experience of journaling and how it relates to sexual pleasure, consent, education, bodily autonomy, sexual agency, and sexual health and safety, and then answer the following question: What was this experience of self-reflection like for you, what did you learn from it that relates to this class? Please specifically mention at least two texts from this week.
- How do some of this week’s texts relate to Peggy Orenstein’s TED Talk and to Audre Lorde’s essay? Please specifically mention at least three texts from this week.
- For the assigned texts that you have not yet discussed in detail in your answers to other questions, what stood out to you most?
Assigned Texsts:
- WC: “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power” by Audre Lorde (205–209)
- WC: “An Immodest Proposal” by Heather Corinna (210–214)
- “What Young Women Believe about Their Own Sexual Pleasure (Links to an external site.)” by Peggy Orenstein (17:01)
- “Required Reading: 10 Things You Need to Know about Consent (Links to an external site.)” by Latoya Snell
- “Teaching Consent from an Early Age . . . (Links to an external site.)” (2:17)
- “Nadia Bolz Weber on ‘Purity Culture’ and Owning Your Sexuality (Links to an external site.)” (3:34)
- “How the Dutch Do Sex Ed (Links to an external site.)” by Bonnie Rough (Rough PDF)
