ABSTRACT
This chapter examines some recent debates about the representation of sexuality – particularly representations that are intended to educate or to arouse. Ideas about the role and benefit of sex education are reviewed and the overlap between these issues and the debate about pornography is considered. It is argued that sex education cannot fulfil its social function if sex is imagined as either a purely biological or a purely technical affair. The chapter ends by suggesting that the worldly manipulation of Machiavelli should be combined with the educational journey of the Kama Sutra in order to imagine a sex education that prepares us for the intimate citizenship required in a globalised age (for more on the various debates about sex education, pornography and other forms of sexual representation, see Wolpe 1988; Segal and McIntosh 1992; Preston 1993; Thompson 1994b; Kipnis 1996).
