Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870-1924

by Robin E. Jensen

Overview

Dirty Words: The Rhetoric of Public Sex Education, 1870-1924, details the approaches and outcomes of sex-education initiatives in the Progressive Era. In analyzing the rhetorical strategies of sex education advocates, Robin E. Jensen engages with rich sources such as lectures, books, movies, and posters that were often shaped by female health advocates and instructors. She offers a revised narrative that demonstrates how women were both leaders and innovators in early U.S. sex-education movements, striving to provide education to underserved populations of women, minorities, and the working class. Investigating the communicative and rhetorical practices surrounding the emergence of public sex education in the United States, Jensen shows how women in particular struggled for a platform to create and circulate arguments concerning this controversial issue.
 
The book also provides insight into overlooked discourses about public sex education by analyzing a previously understudied campaign targeted at African American men in the 1920s, offering theoretical categorizations of discursive strategies that citizens have used to discuss sex education over time, and laying out implications for health communicators and sexual educators in the present day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780252077661
Publisher:	University of Illinois Press
Publication date:	11/01/2010
Edition description:	1st Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Robin E. Jensen is an assistant professor of communication at Purdue University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

1 Engaging Ambiguous Discourse 1

2 Championing the Chicago Experiment 36

3 Propagating Wartime Sex Education 67

4 Speaking for Women at War's End 91

5 Campaigning for "Separate but Equal" 115

Conclusion: Making the Case in the Twenty-First Century 149

Notes 161

Bibliography 179

Index 195

Editorial Reviews

Distinguished Book Award, Health Communication Division, National Communication Association (NCA), 2015.

"Approaching the early struggles over sex education in the public schools from the fresh angle of rhetorical analysis, Jensen provides a useful guide to contemporary debates on this important issue. This book is of special interest to students and scholars of history, education, women's studies, communications, and rhetoric."—Jeffrey P. Moran, author of Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth Century



"Illuminating a rich collection of primary texts, Jensen demonstrates that despite exclusion from existing historical accounts, women played a significant role in the advocacy of sex education. This important Progressive Era history details the deliberative context in which debates about sex education occurred and analyzes strategies employed by often-overlooked female advocates."—Susan Zaeske, author of Signatures of Citizenship: Petitioning, Antislavery, and Women's Political Identity

From the Publisher