Empowering Youth to Make Vrijen Gewoon

I've been reading a lot of information about the creation of adolescence, and how this grey area between childhood and adulthood has been constructed, particularly with regard to sexuality education. Being both a self-disclosed sex nerd and naval-gazer, it's caused me to be reflective about my own upbringing; my introduction to sex and sexuality; the narratives & identity construction that took place around those first young, dewy moments of lust; the paths that branched out from each additional experience and how they led me to where I am today. It doesn’t help that I’ve been terribly sick the past few days and, being stuck in bed, I finally submitted to starting to watch my girlfriend’s copy of the American version of Queer as Folk–what can I say, I watched the original in England & I’ve found that so many of these shows get lost in translation (*never* see a British production of Rent, let me tell you), so I resisted!

In any case, I’ve been reflecting on my experience and trying to place that knowledge into making connections between the readings on adolescent sexuality and sexuality education, and the readings I’ve been doing on program planning and community involvement—specifically around Roger Hart’s modification of Sherry Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Participation’ (1969). Arnstein originally wrote about how people with power frequently touted manipulation as participation, and how there were many different levels of nonparticipation (manipulation & therapy), tokenism (informing, consultation, & placation) & participation (partnership, delegated power, & citizen control).

Hart modified this model for youth, placing at the top rung ‘Young people & adult share decision making,’ but not classifying the top rung as absolute control in the hands of young people. I personally like this model/idea better even outside the realm of youth work, because while I believe that the people should have the power, I also believe in the pedagogy of liberation education—wherein the teacher is not absent from the classroom completely, but sets up the safe space, facilitates (but does not lead) the discussion, and acts as an expert that can be consulted as needed/requested by the community to assist in competency building. I firmly believe that we all need teachers—but then again, I’m a huge nerd and my definition of ‘teacher’ is probably broader than most people.

In any case, back to Hart. In almost all the readings we’ve been doing about sexuality education in schools, young people have, for the most part been completely manipulated by adults wanting them to conform or be regulated by some form moralistic or fear-based agenda. The majority of sex ed programs have not even gotten beyond the ‘Young people consulted & informed’ rung to any of the higher rungs where they share the decision-making with adults in some capacity.

Then this week, we read a sociological study by Amy Schalet comparing the approaches of Dutch and American parents’ approach to adolescent sexuality. In many ways it made me reflect back to my early adolescent experiences  (and not just because I’m Dutch!) because my parents approaches to my early exploration of sexuality were very different. My mother’s approach was much more similar to the Dutch model of normalization of sexuality, but my father was very much following the American model of dramatization & fear mongering.

I nearly laughed out loud when I read the section wherein the parents forbid their children to be alone together in a room, because my father did exactly the same thing. In fact, we weren’t even allowed to go to the mall together unsupervised! And what happened? The boy I had a crush on & I ‘went to the store’ and ended up making out at the tennis courts both on the way there and back. Had we simply gotten permission to hang out in the house, we probably actually would have been much ‘better’ behaved, because we would have been treated like responsible people capable of self-regulating. This tendency remained true throughout my adolescent explorations of sex.

In any case, although I realize it is anecdotal evidence, it seems to fit into the larger picture being painted by current research about adolescent sexuality and youth empowerment. When youth are viewed as ‘out of control,’ untrustworthy, and in need of regulation by adults, the manipulation of experience breeds dissent and ‘untrustworthy’ actions. If we can strive for involving youth at that top rung of the ladder, making sexuality gewoon, enabling young people to feel empowered to make decisions they felt comfortable with regarding any activity on the vrijen continuum, and raising young adults to truly be adults who can make authentic & informed choices about sexuality.