Anne Bolin was invited to organize and co-chair a symposium titled "Issues in Teaching Human Sexuality: Sexual Orientations" at the Annual Meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology in Merida, Mexico, from March 24-27.
Bolin presented her own work, “‘Transing’ Gender and Sexual Orientations: Cross-Cultural and Contemporary Identities,” as a feature in the symposium. The abstract for the symposium follows:
“Sexual orientations” is an ubiquitous topic in college-level human sexuality courses. Anthropologists’ coverage of this topic challenges Eurocentric cultural-historical and essentialist perspectives and emphasizes the ways indigenous and post-colonial groups address sexual behaviors among same-sex and other sex partners.
The session explored how we as human sexuality instructors address homophobia, gay rights, stereotypes and the diverse theories of origins and etiologies of sexual orientations through various teaching strategies. We discuss issues around disclosing our sexual orientations, boundaries for personal disclosure in the classroom, and how our specific areas of research regarding this issue can be used as a teaching device.