Differences in American and Chinese’s Sex Education
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Different Rhetoric Uses in American and Chinese’s Sex EducationSex education is a very important yet under-discussed subject. It is important for covering crucial topics relating to human sexuality, such as sexual activity, safe sex, sexual reproduction, birth control, reproductive rights, etc. It is under-discussed because sex is still considered some sort of taboo in many cultures, including China. Traditionally, sex education was considered to be exclusively the responsibility of family and religion, and even then, the conversations tended to be minimal. Before the 1900s, when much of early American society was agrarian, some children had the opportunity to learn about reproduction from watching animals on the farm (Huber & Firmin, 2014). For human behavior, society expects people to remain abstinent until marriage. The years around 1920 – 1960 was the intermediate era in the development of public school sex education in the USA (Huber & Firmin, 2014). Topics such as eugenics, birth control, and social hygiene were starting to gain the attention of the public. Sexually transmitted diseases (STI) spread in the army, especially during World War II, which lead to the first sex education conducted among soldiers (Huber & Firmin, 2014). It was shortly after 1920 that public schools started to teach sexual health-related information in class. By the year of 1927, though few parents were aware of the issue, 45% of schools were offering some kind of sex education (Carter, 2001). Around the 1940s, sexuality-related research was conducted, and sex experts started to merge. The sexual revolution began in the 1960s. While the majority of Americans still valued sex after marriage and loyalty to marriage, a diverse, often young, and vocal minority started to change people's attitudes and behaviors towards sexuality (Huber & Firmin, 2014). Under the influence of the free-love subculture, teen pregnancy rate climbed and resulted in contraceptive methods entering sex education in public schools. The years from 1980 until the present is the era of modern sex education, where social media content gains more and more popularity. Although school sex education is essential, a large part of our sexual knowledge comes from outside schoolings, such as friends, family, and increasingly from media. In a relatively conservative society like China, sex education is poorly done in schools and families. According to a survey done by the Girl Children Protection Foundation in 2017, up to 49.96% of urban children and 55.17% of rural children had not received any sexual assault prevention education, which is a worrying fact. Parents believe children will learn sex knowledge naturally when they grow older, so they seldom talk about this issue or give instructions. Most schools, on the other hand, don’t have any course related to sexual education because these classes are viewed as unnecessary or unimportant compared to core subjects. As a result, current Chinese sexual education is almost blank. With many barriers, the development is slow. By contrast, education is widely supported by the vast majority of people in the United States. In Planned Parenthood’s 2014 poll on sex education, 93 percent of parents supported having sex education taught in middle school, and 96 percent of parents supported having sex education taught in high school (PlannedParenthood, 2019). Meanwhile, as social media has become a well-established communication method, many young people in the US report feeling comfortable accessing sexual health information online (Lim, Vella, Sack-Davis, & Hellard, 2014). Although China has several social media accounts that aim to disseminate sexual knowledge, they must use an implicit way because the Chinese government has imposed various bans on social media. Different attitudes towards sex education lead to a different sex language, and it drives us to investigate how different sex language is in rhetoric. This paper will first go through some rhetorical concepts that will be used in the following section, which is to compare the use of sex language between two sex expert – one Chinese and one American, both are widely respected – in two talks shows. Then, the paper will move on to see sex rhetoric used through social media in America and China, as well as their cultural roots, by analyzing two pop videos. Last, the paper will conclude the roles rhetoric and culture play in sex education. Download 107.02 Kb. Share with your friends:
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