6: Problems of Sex Education

This chapter takes up Carlson’s The Education of Eros (2012), a book that explores how school-based sex education has long been shaped by fear, politics, and efforts to control adolescent sexuality. Carlson’s framing of “problems”—from teen pregnancy to the AIDS crisis—still echoes today, especially in the ongoing fights over LGBTQ+ inclusion and abstinence-only education. Reflecting on these themes through my own experiences with growing up queer in a rural Southern school, I connect Carlson’s history to the silences, shame, and harm built into the sex education I received. This chapter argues that the stories we tell, or don’t tell, about sexuality in schools have real consequences, and that comprehensive, inclusive sex education is still urgently needed.