Heard a story on NPR's Morning Edition today about abuse in young adult romantic relationships. I certainly appreciate the sentiments behind the healthy dating programs discussed in the story, but they seem to rest upon flawed, monolithic assumptions about teen desire and sexuality. The report applies this reasoning to the ways that teens interact in dating relationships:
"Teens are being exposed to these things at a very crucial moment in their development, when they are becoming interested in the opposite sex and when they're trying to establish a sexual identity. Up until adolescence, Wolfe (professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Toronto) points out, they've been relating to people of the same sex" (parenthesis added).
I'll definitely agree that socialization is gendered in that it is encouraged that boys play with boys and girls play with girls, but to carry that gender socialization over into questions about romantic relationships and sexual desire reaks of heteronormativity, and I won't agree that that is a good thing. If the folks running these programs assume their students are destined for heterosexual dating relationships, they further marginalize lesbian and gay teens and continue to mask the fact that abuse (emotional, physical, sexual, and otherwise) can and does occur in a variety of intimate relationships. When the goal is to provide students with a toolbox for engaging in complex relationships that may introduce them to the complications of sex, commitment, compromise, and power dynamics, it is unfortunate that these programs neglect a substantial portion of their audiences and, in effect, deny the importance of inclusive health education.
