Introduction to the Special Issue (original) (raw)

Abstract

Just over a decade ago, Waskul and Plante (2010) called upon sociologists to recognize the myriad of ways sex and sexualities shape and find voice within every social context, structure, and interaction. Rather than a singular or niche subject limited to specific portions of social life, they echoed prior theorizing within and beyond sociology concerning the importance of how people negotiate sexed and/ or sexual norms, beliefs, assumptions, desires, and expectations throughout their everyday lives, interactions within themselves, encounters with others, and interactions with broader social structures (see also Dubois 1928; Foucault 1976; Goffman 1977; Plummer 1995; Rubin 1984; Warner 1999). Further, they called for systematic examination of the role of sex and sexual meanings in the reproduction, challenging, and/or maintenance of societal inequalities along lines of race, class, sex, gender, sexuality, religion, nationality, and other social locations (see also Duggan 2003; Schrock, Sumerau, and Ueno 2014; Ward and Schneider 2009). The combination of these insights reveals the importance of sex and sexualities in all domains of social and sociological life. In this special issue, we endeavor to encourage the continuation of such consideration within the context of sociological teaching. To this end, this special issue draws inspiration from prior works by sexual-minority teachers concerning the negotiation of sexual topics and coming out in classrooms (see, e.g., Adams 2010; Connell 2014; Miller and Lucal 2009). We also draw inspiration from Attwood and Hunter’s (2009) special collection of journal articles in Sexualities focused on strategies for teaching sexual media and politics in college classrooms. We further draw inspiration from sociological teachers writing about, for example, teaching statistics in ways more inclusive of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations (Nowakowski, Sumerau, and Mathers 2016); coverage of sexuality in sociology textbooks (Suarez and Balaji 2007); teaching about the relationships between gendered symbols, embodiment, and homophobia (Edwards 2010); strategies for understanding the impact of sexualization on girls and women (Moloney and Pelehach 2014); and the use of community-based research techniques in sexualities instruction (Bach and Weinzimmer 2011). In line with these previous endeavors, this special issue seeks to extend and encourage the further expansion of sociological teaching on sex, sexualities, and social life. As a result, we sought to create a collection of articles that both (1) highlights innovative strategies for teaching sexualities and (2) complements, rather than replicates, other recent collections geared toward teaching and studying sexualities sociologically. In the first case, we sought to highlight techniques sociology teachers are utilizing to deliver lessons about sex and sexuality in relation to both positive and negative impressions of the subject within and beyond a given sociology department or classroom. In the second case, we considered submissions that went beyond the scope of many sociological volumes for teaching and studying sexualities with an eye toward granting space to aspects of teaching sexualities or strategies for such instruction that are less visible. Further, we sought to be inclusive of a diversity of authors in terms of race, gender identity and expression, and career stage. As such, we see this special issue as complementing and expanding the conversations in existing collections on sex and sexualities. To this end, we also encourage sociology teachers to explore other recent edited collections concerning sex, sexualities, and the teaching of such topics. Currently in its fifth edition, for example, Sex Matters (Stombler et al. 2018) represents a long-standing text for teaching sexualities that curates a collection of essays and studies on a wide 1025826 TSOXXX10.1177/0092055X211025826Teaching SociologyEditorial research-article2021