One of Freud’s favourite objects was a bronze statuette of Athena

Rethinking Sexology is collaborating with the Sex & History project and museums across the country on a new website which uses objects from the past for discussing gender and sexual diversity today.

Across the UK, collections hold many objects which reveal to us the diversity of ideas about gender and sexuality throughout world history.

From 11,000 year old sculpture to modern day pin badges, the new website showcases just some of this incredible material, together with free lesson ideas for using each object as the basis of LGBT+ focused discussions within Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) as part of Personal, Social, Health and Economic (PSHE) lessons, other school subjects, or out-of-school youth activities.

The Rethinking Sexology team, together with the Sex in Six Objects project, has developed lesson ideas based around an object which the Freud Museum London, a small bronze statue of the Greek goddess Athena which Freud used in psychoanalysis with writer H.D. to explore her gender and sexual identity. This has developed out of a workshop for young people held at the museum in 2016.

The website harnesses the Sex & History methodology which has found that objects from the past have a powerful way of creating distance from contemporary concerns and at the same time providing an important critical perspective on today’s attitudes and assumptions.

The website was developed in
response to the theme ‘Citizenship, PSHE and Law’ for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month 2017, from Schools OUT UK.

Visit the LGBT+ Objects website to access the free resources.

This project is generously funded by Schools OUT UK and Wellcome.