The need for inclusive relationships and sex education (RSE) to respond to ‘risky’ youth online practices: groomed with cisheteronormativity

This chapter builds on longstanding calls for reliable, relatable and relevant gender, sex and relationship education against an increasingly uncertain hostile and exclusionary media and political landscape. It challenges re-surfacing moral panics around childhood innocence in need of protection from a predatory dangerous queerness, demonstrating how such efforts to ‘protect’ children not only marginalises LGBTQIA+ youths but also contributes to making such youths vulnerable to actual grooming and sexual exploitation. Drawing on two case studies from a participatory research project in the United Kingdom – a gay male and a trans female youth – it considers how efforts to contain children’s desires are futile, resulting in young people seeking validation wherever they can find it. Critically engaging with questions of online risk, the chapter considers opportunities emerging through risky and exploitative encounters online, enabled by cisheteronormativity limiting age-appropriate opportunities for validation, information and support for safer explorations of bodies, identities and desires.