ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the Dutch approach to sexuality education. It investigates understandings of the body in irreligious and religious sexual health programmes implemented by Dutch non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in both the Netherlands and Uganda. Grounded in ethnographic research, the chapter demonstrates that Dutch sexual health approaches convey a disembodied notion of sexuality, privileging the practice of speaking openly about sex. It suggests that the body in Dutch sexuality education is primarily a ‘speaking body’. The chapter argues that this emphasis on speaking about sex renders irrelevant more embodied forms of communication, and also neglects the complicated power relations in which these supposedly open conversations are embedded. The chapter then seeks to understand this privileging of spoken words over materiality in the context of broader secular/protestant modern discourse, arguing that the Dutch approach to sexuality is normative rather than neutral and therefore not necessarily culturally sensitive nor universally applicable.
