This article deals with sexual orientation in a municipal grade school (grades 5th to 8th) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The reflections about how a school develops this work are investigated from the perspective of the emergence of an image of gender during the making up of an ethnographic study. The fact that a larger number of girls than boys allowed themselves to be interviewed leads one to question who talks about these subjects with the adolescents and how the topic of sexuality is approached, limited and inserted into the school. It can be said that there are two central topics around which sex education classes are organized: pregnancy and STD/AIDS, to which are linked the forms of prevention - the condom and birth control methods. This is followed by a discussion of issues about how the feminine and masculine bodies are viewed, which is in turn related to the historical process of the female body's medicalization. Finally, a few issues about some paradoxes confronted by the adolescents in relation to birth control.
Sexual Orientation; School; Sexuality; Gender; Adolescent