Question: What Do Sex Educators Do?
Answer:
Sex educator is more of a category than a specific job description. Sex educators engage in different kinds of work with different groups of people at different levels. This is one of the things that make it difficult to get into sex education, knowing what’s possible and where to begin. One answer is that anything is possible, and you should begin with what you like to do and who you want to do it with.
To more clearly understand the job opportunities for sex educators let’s break down what sex educators do by the kinds of settings sex educators work in, the topic areas they cover, who the audiences or clients are for sex educators, and finally the ways sex educators work with different groups and individuals.
What Sex Educators Educate About
In most written theory, and certainly in practice there is a major split in sex education between those who include sexual pleasure in sex education and those who don’t. Most sex education focuses on preventing STDs, unwanted pregnancy, and sexual coercion/sexual assault, and doesn’t talk about sexual pleasure. There is another group of sex educators who believe that sex education shouldn’t just focus on a lack of disease or pregnancy, but on pleasure too, that pleasure is a necessary part of the whole. This makes sense since most definitions of sexual health include sexual pleasure. Here is an incomplete list of some of the things sex educators teach about:- sexual anatomy and response
- reproduction
- safer sex
- sexual communication
- sexual pleasure
- sexual boundaries
- relationships
- sexual activities
- sexual orientation and sexual identity
- sex in the media
- sexual coercion/sexual assault
- sexual expression and exploration
- eroticism
- sexual culture and sexual sub-cultures
- sex and spirituality, sex and religion
- fetishes and “non-normative” sex play
- sex and technology
Where Sex Educators Work and Who They Work For
Because sexuality touches every aspect of our lives, you’ll find sex educators working in almost every system and for a wide range of employers. Here are just some of the people and organizations sex educators work for:- public and community health organizations
- non-profit organizations
- elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities (public and private)
- religious organizations
- private practice
- for profit companies
- themselves
Who Sex Educators Work With
An important element of any education is identifying who your audience is and creating material and an approach that will work for them. Because of this, sex educators usually construct their work around “populations” or groups of people. It doesn’t mean sex educators think that you can generalize about a group of people (although some sex educators fall into this trap). But it means that we look at the systemic ways that certain groups are excluded, and try to correct that by creating educational experiences that include those groups. Here are some of the most common populations that sex educators have identified and work with. Many other groups are missing:- adolescents
- teenagers
- older adults
- parents
- families
- people who have experienced sexual violence
- mental health professionals
- clergy
- people living chronic illness and/or disabilities
- people living in institutionalized settings like nursing homes, prisons
- educators will also work with specific groups identified by ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, sexual identity, gender, religion, and more.
What Sex Educators Do
Education doesn’t just happen in a classroom and sex educators. The best sex educators use all sorts of different tools and techniques to educate, and tailor how they educate to the population and the content they’re trying to convey. Here are some of the ways that sex educators do that:- teaching individuals and groups of people about sexual information
- offering people tools to help them change behavior, beliefs, patterns
- teaching people how to communicate better about sex
- writing policy for public and private organizations about sexual health
- developing curriculum for other people to teach
- developing standards for sex education
