Picturing Sex Education: Notes on the politics of visual stratification

This paper addresses the scarcity of research on depictions and layout in sex education materials. It is argued that pictures and layout can inform an analysis of social stratification based on visual access. This process of social organization is located using four theoretical models. However these models do not lend themselves to a close reading of graphical strategies. To illustrate how pictures operate, three European works are subjected to a comparative semiotic analysis: Zeig Mal! (Germany, 1974), Vies is lekker (Holland, 1979), and Questions children ask and how to answer them (UK, 1997). It is concluded that the works examined inform three pedagogical paradigms of sex education: liberationism, post-structuralism, and stratificationism. These paradigms are discussed in relation to three known paradigms of analysing power (sovereign power, discipline, and control) and a newly discussed paradigm of ultrastructural confinement.