ABSTRACT
When I was initially thinking about the paper1 that gave rise to this chapter, I was driven by two things. On the one hand I have a sense that we all – and perhaps young people in particular – are constantly bombarded with images of sexual identity by a range of cultural forms. This bombardment amounts to a provision of sexual education by privatized commercial sources, with sexuality presented in terms of material consumption: ‘Buy this, be sexy.’ On the other hand, I have a sense of missed opportunity. What I mean is that critical, non-commercial voices regarding sexuality seem to me to be offering a decidedly limited alternative. I assert that we need to undertake a rethinking of sexuality and sexual health (of sexual citizenship) that attends to significant existing absences in critical noncommercial writings concerned with sexuality.
