Abstract
Using both autoethnography and in-depth interviews, this thesis explores the experiences and reflections of one all-girls Catholic school’s graduates on their school’s sexual education. Given limited abstinence-only sexual education and surveillant school policies, where do Catholic school students learn about sex and how do they express sexual agency? First, this thesis examines the source of sexual information from the school in the form of the curriculum, the policies, and the general culture. The sexual education curriculum at Saint Margaret’s, a small all-girls Catholic school in Hawaii, was largely based on Pope John Paul II’s interpretation of the Bible in his lecture series, “Human Love in the Divine Plan.” His catechesis was developed into a national morality-based sexual education course, called Theology of the Body for Teens, which includes strict sexual guidelines for Catholic women. Interviews with Saint Margaret’s graduates reveal that the curriculum’s messaging was ineffective; students noted an unequal gender dynamic of power and responsibility riddled with heteronormative and essentialistic assumptions. Secondly, this thesis poses an unconventional framework of sexual education to explore how students come to understand sex past the confines of the classroom in various ways. School policies – including a policy for pregnant students, the uniform, prom regulations, and the administration’s handling of an outwardly gay couple – became crucial aspects of students’ sexual learning. The administration’s use of surveillance paradoxically compelled students to privately consume sexual content, as well as participate in other forms of small-scale rebellion (e.g., embellishing the uniform, reading erotic fiction, engaging in discreet conversations about sex). Agentive actions that neither explicitly reject Catholic doctrine nor wholly accept it make up what I call implicit resistance. Notably, students’ early sexual experiences became an informal part of their sexual learning and thus, a keystone of their self-curated sexual education. The students’ sexual agency, then – be it in conformity to Catholic doctrine, resistance, or something in between – serves a critical role in their understandings of sex. The study ultimately brings to light all-girls Catholic school graduates’ previously hidden experiences in order to push forward understandings of the ways sexual agency and education are understood together.