Pedagogies of Flesh: Sexuality, Race, and Value in the Sex Education of Postcolonial Germany

Abstract

This dissertation is an ethnography of White German sexual pedagogues in Berlin, a city where ideas of open sexuality and progress are coupled together. Although sex education is mandatory in schools in Germany, it is usually taught by invited NGO professionals who are trained in sexual pedagogy, a discipline with its roots in sexology. Basing the necessity of their practice and discipline on scientific claims, these “liberal” and “progressive” sexual pedagogues assume a universal sexuality and a sex education free of values. However, by not engaging with racialized notions of sexual difference and occupying a position of racial blindness, these sexual pedagogues perpetuate discourses of who can be progressive and who is burdened by their cultural background. This was especially apparent when they worked with refugees of color, in whom they aimed to inculcate universalized values in exchange for project funding. By tracing the connections between sexuality, racialization, and commensuration of value from German colonialism onwards, this dissertation argues that Germany’s celebrated comprehensive sex education has racializing effects that benefit, privilege, and reshape Whiteness in the present.