Consent, mutuality and respect for persons as standards for ethical sex and for sex education

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Consent, mutuality and respect for persons as standards for ethical sex and for sex education

Reiss, Michael J; (2022) Consent, mutuality and respect for persons as standards for ethical sex and for sex education. Journal of Philosophy of Education 10.1111/1467-9752.12680. (In press). Green open access

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Abstract

This article examines Lamb, Gable & de Ruyter's critique of consent as the standard by which one can determine if a sexual encounter is ethical in their ‘Mutuality in sexual relationships: a standard of ethical sex?’. Their examination of this issue is to be welcomed for a number of reasons, including growing criticism of ‘consent’ as the gold standard in medical and social science research ethics. The focus of this article is specifically on school sex education (principally, for 11–16-year-olds). Contrary to Lamb et al., I argue that it is difficult to maintain that ‘The standard of mutuality should be taught in all schools and the government should indeed demand or support this, even with checks to see if children have learned this standard, at least in attitudes about sexual behavior’ for three reasons. First, while there are good arguments in favour of school children being introduced to the ideal of mutuality, it seems too high a bar to require children to ‘have learned’—a phrase that can be taken to mean to ‘have come to accept’ rather than merely to ‘understand’—this; consent is a more appropriate requirement and is itself a sufficiently rich term that it merits analysis by students, aided by their teachers. Second, my judgement as a sex educator is that sex education is more effective when students are given the opportunity to explore what is good and what is right, rather than simply being told. Third, if we have to adopt a single principle, there is much to be said for ‘respect for others’ to trump both ‘consent’ and ‘mutuality’.

Type:	Article
Title:	Consent, mutuality and respect for persons as standards for ethical sex and for sex education
Open access status:	An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI:	10.1111/1467-9752.12680
Publisher version:	https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12680
Language:	English
Additional information:	© 2022 The Authors. Journal of Philosophy of Education published by JohnWiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
Keywords:	consent, mutuality, respect for persons, RSE, sex education, sexual relationships
UCL classification:	UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL
URI:	https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10154900