The Policies and Politics of Sex

This course provides students with an interest in human service practice the opportunity to investigate shifting socio-cultural constructions of sexuality with an emphasis on the contradictions and complexities in the social regulation of sexuality and the contours of state control. Issues relating to human service practice explored in the course include: reproductive rights; law reforms, queer culture and homophobia; local and international control of prostitution; the emergence of sexual rights; pornography and eroticism; sex education and the hidden curriculum; sex and harrassment; sexual violence; safe sex and the HIV/AIDS era; sexuality and ageing; cultural sexualities; the medicalisation of sexuality and the transgendered body.