Sex talk without blushing: enactments of 'Dutchness' in parent guidance courses

The Netherlands is often considered a best practice of progressive sex education. In today’s Dutch "comprehensive approach" to sexual health, parents and parenting play an important role. This paper offers an analysis of ethnographic material and a content analysis of teaching material of the course "Growing up with love", designed to train migrant parents for the sex education of their children.
Very specific constructions of "normal" sex are communicated, negotiated and enacted in these courses: 1) Love and sex are in these practices presented as inseparable 2) children are presented as sexual beings though inactive and 3) heteronormative gay-acceptance is promoted. Many of these representations of the "normal" are presented as typically Dutch and abnormalities are consistently put forward in a culturist logic as decisively "cultural" and thus located with the cultural Other. Furthermore, in the course, talking about sex is presented as "normal" and "Dutch" behaviour, preventing sexual deviance. Not talking about sex, is, by contrast, "abnormal" and considered the cause of sexual deviance. Because the aim of the course is the prevention of sexual deviance, the cultural "other" is invited to participate in particular reflexive and communicative enactments of Dutchness: assignments, debates and discussions about sex. One particular identified cultural "Other" in the practices and course material is "Moroccan". For this panel discussion, this paper will consider the enactment of "Dutchness" vis-a-vis "Moroccanness".