Making sex, moving difference An ethnography of sexuality and diversity in Dutch schools

The Netherlands is often presented as an exemplary country for its pragmatic dealings with youth sexuality. During ethnographic research in four secondary schools in the Netherlands, with youth aged 14-17, Willemijn Krebbekx followed concerns with sexuality whenever pupils, teachers, or both, invoked them. Her dissertation presents detailed analyses of sexting, sex education, friendship, and diversity. It explores what constitutes youth sexuality in the Netherlands, and how the making of differences among youth is caught up in efforts at achieving it. 
Krebbekx argues that the way concerns around sexuality are dealt with do not just shape the lives of the youth in schools, but also the phenomenon of sexuality itself. Boyfriends, girlfriends, thongs, bras, six-packs, sleepovers, kissing, cheating, showing skin, school hallways, classrooms, mobile phones, pictures, popular understandings of youth, scientific notions of adolescence and sexuality: all are involved in making sex in secondary schools. In the process of making sex, differences among youth are established. These manifestations of diversity and their effects are not uniform and stable: who counts as "the same" or "different" can shift.
Three common refrains about youth and sexuality are articulated: sexuality as a natural attribute of the body; sexuality as a source of problems when silenced; and sexuality as individual identity. Research outcomes and intervention practices in schools, the dissertation shows, contribute to or problematize such refrains. Krebbekx develops an approach to youth sexuality that, rather than proceeding from these refrains or exemplary standards, proposes that researchers make situated interferences in the ongoing process of making sex.