ABSTRACT
In a study of Sex Education in the United Kingdom in the 20th century Hall (2004) portrays the state as failing to provide adequate Sex Education insofar as it has been unable or unwilling to resolve fundamental epistemological questions, such as: Who should be teaching whom about sex? When should they be teaching it? What content should they cover? If Sex Education frames youth-as-future-citizens-in-the-making, what sort of citizens should the state produce? Like Hall, I believe that the state response to this question is incoherent. This is not surprising, as clearly there is no community or professional consensus about the role of the state in Sex Education. This keyword essay considers some historical imaginings of Sex Education. These imaginings are significant because the future of Sex Education depends on the traditions that influence contemporary thought. I then turn to some imaginings of “queer futurity” (Edelman, 2004) and their influence on contemporary conceptualizations of Sex Education.
