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This article contributes to the mapping of a ‘new’ ontology of sexuality at school. Drawing on new feminist materialist thinking from Barad (2007), Bennett (2004) and Lenz Taguchi (2013), it analyses photographs from a project on the sexual cultures of schooling in a way that takes ‘things’ or ‘matter’ seriously. Seeking to disrupt the idea that humans represent the only site for, and expression of sexuality, it explores how matter and meaning are co-constitutive in sexuality's becoming at school. Instead of seeing sexuality as discursively constituted through a plethora of schooling processes and practices, another proposition is offered. Sexuality does not pre-exist matter/meaning but comes into being via their relation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until now, the inclusion of a discourse of pleasure in sexuality education has been constituted as a ‘progressive’ and ‘liberatory’ undertaking. This article seeks to scrutinize the political and moral motivations that have underpinned this discourse by tracing the origins of its emergence. It employs a series of anecdotes from the author’s everyday experience, as a launching point for thinking theoretically about how this discourse might be ‘being put to work’ in educational settings. With recourse to the writings of queer theorists, I interrogate the possibilities and limits of a discourse of pleasure in regard to its social justice aims. It is argued that the ‘politically depressed’ picture these anecdotes suggest, is a consequence of a particular conceptual framing of ‘agency’ that implies future-focused and advancing action. The article proposes new ways of thinking about pleasure’s agency, which hold in tension ‘leftist politics’ and queer theoretical understandings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers whether 'straight' identified researchers can produce anti-normative knowledge. This question derives from debates around what (if any) contribution 'straight' researchers can make to queer theory/research. While recognizing that political and ethical decisions are integral to this discussion, I focus on the epistemological implications of straight researchers' participation in queer theory/research. This discussion grapples with a wider issue within identity politics around the participation of researchers who are regarded as representing the 'norm'. I trouble the relationship between identity and knowledge by arguing that sexual identity does not determine the production of anti-normative knowledge. Insights from queer theory are employed to interrogate the power of heteronormativity in generating 'normative' knowledge, and elucidating whether these practices are invested in particular sexual identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been recognized that to be effective, sexuality education must meet the needs and interests of young people (Aggleton and Campbell, 2000). However, this acknowledgement has often manifested in adults ultimately determining what young people's needs and interests are. This article focuses on what senior school students determine as important and relevant programme content from focus group and survey data. Participants' suggestions provide a critique of current sexuality education provision that is clinical, de-eroticized and didactic. Young people's calls for content about emotions in relationships, teenage parenthood, abortion and how to make sexual activity pleasurable offer insights into how they understand themselves as sexual subjects. Student responses position them as having the right to make their own decisions about sexual activity and to access knowledge that will enable their engagement in relationships that are physically and emotionally pleasurable. This positioning sits in conflict with the preferred non-sexual identity young people are offered by the official culture of many schools (Allen, 2007). It is proposed that this tension has implications for how programmes constitute student sexuality and their effectiveness in empowering young people to view their sexuality positively and make positive sexual decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on empirical research with 17-19 year olds, this article explores young people's understandings of themselves as sexual in relation to dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is concerned with providing empirical evidence of resistance in young people's constitution of their sexual subjectivities. The research findings suggest that young people generally draw upon dominant discourses of (hetero)sexuality in their talk about themselves as sexual. However some took up subject positions that involved more resistant conceptions of the sexual self. For some young people this took the form of simultaneously accommodating and resisting subject positions offered by traditional discourses of (hetero)sexuality. It is argued that the potential to take up more resistant subject positions was partly contingent upon young people's location in contexts that offered access to, or opened space for, other ways of constituting themselves as sexual. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]