Summary Of Lorena Garcia's Book Respect Yourself, Protect Yourself

In Lorena Garcia’s book Respect yourself, Protect Yourself the situation of school sexual education is brought up with how it’s a bias system that lacks in teaching students proper sexual education. The system as Hochschild puts it “Research on sex education has revealed that sex education policies are informed by national and local struggles over the meaning and consequences of gender, race, class, and sexual categories” (Hochschild, 1994). Hochschild quote is supported throughout this book by the experiences that the young Latina women face during high school sex education. Non-stop examples how the system is flawed with problems of heteronormative, class-based notions of sexuality, and racism. As can be seen in Chapter three of Garcia’s
Further making women see themselves as sexual objects instead of beings. This also gets women stuck between a fine area of desirability for men, the fine line of “emphasized femininity” (Garcia, 2012) that sets a limit on their sexual agency. Women risk being too sexy as Garcia puts it either their not sexy at all or too sexy in which they get ridiculed for. The agency of sexy is also barred by what class the woman is in, lower class consisting of the poor and working class are “assumed to embody an inappropriate femininity” (Garcia,
The sex education system is ruled by a heteronormative ideal that only men and women are accepted in this system. Questions about sexuality like stated are often met with ill replies and ridicule. There is a complete lack of same sex education in this system with little to no reference to same sex and if there is a mention it is often in poor statements. As example when Linda asked about any “books of teenage lesbians” (Garcia, 2012) the teacher yelled out demanding to know who asked the question and how inappropriate it was, even though she wanted to learn about her