ABSTRACT
Across national and local jurisdictions, sex education is regularly at the center of political controversy. In this chapter, we explore sex education as a sticky subject – a delicate and sensitive topic and one that many other topics seem to “stick” to. We explore the lessons advocates, policy makers, teachers, and students encounter and generate about sex and sexuality and the ways those lessons reflect, repeat, and reinscribe social inequalities, including but not limited to adultism, racism, and sexism. Working with a broad definition of sex education, we also consider how sex education might become an occasion to advance subjectivity, desire, and possibility in the lives of all young people.
