Pleasure’s ascendancy: Against queer youth panic

Normalizing queerness, exceptionalizing sex

A discussion of queer sex scenes, particularly among youth, must first recognize not only the difference between various platforms, but also that there has been, historically, a desexualization of sexual diversity in the US (Beirne, 2006; Maris, 2016; Ng, 2021). As Ng (2023: 11) writes, ‘the gay characters on these broadcast series tended to be desexualized and serve as narrative fodder for the heterosexual characters.’ Precursors to diverse representations of queer youth on streaming services include both paid cable channels, like Showtime and HBO, that can ‘counter the safe and obedient image of major television networks’ (Dhaenens, 2012: 221), along with gay-themed paid networks like Here! (Owens, 2019). Shows like Queer as Folk (2000-5) and The L Word (2004-9) allowed for more explicit queer sexual content and diverse representations given that they were on paid-cable channels (Beirne, 2006; Burnichon, 2018; Manuel, 2009; Peeren, 2006).

Yet such sexualization in the US is limited. Becker’s (2006) classic study of the rise of gay TV not only highlights how gay representation connects to industrial logic, but how gay TV sits against a backdrop of heteronormativity. The NBC show Will & Grace (1998-2006), for instance, ‘works to enforce hegemonic social relations of inequality’ as representative of ‘new homophobia on TV’ given that such representations of sexuality are deemed ‘separate from social constructs of race, sex, and class’ (Mitchell, 2005: 1052). Dhaenens (2012) proffers a theory of queer resistance within gay male domesticity and gay homemaking in shows like Six Feet Under (2001-5) and Brothers & Sisters (2006-11) that see gay characters reconfiguring the confines of the home and domesticity to fit their desires and lifestyles. Shows like Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (2003-7) and Glee frame queer sexuality and gender norms within a heteronormative context (Dhaenens, 2012; Papacharissi and Fernback, 2008; Sarkissian, 2014). Queer representations outside of the US also provide normative and homogenous portrayals of queer characters, limiting the diversity of representation (Heim, 2020; van Wichelen and Dhoest, 2023).

Recognizing such normalization of queer representation, particularly in the US, frames the panic that arises around queer youth sex(uality) and felt by queers and non-queers alike as much more palpable. Cavalcante (2015: 456) notes how ‘the normalization of LGBTQ characters operates within a much wider field of signification and generates a symbolic remainder’ that he calls ‘anxious displacement. Cavalcante (2015: 455) defines this as ‘the overloading of negatively codified social differences and symbolic excess onto figures and relationships that surround LGBT…characters.’ In shows like Modern Family (2009-20) and The New Normal (2012-3), ‘anxious displacement contributes to the legitimization of gay parenting, the subversion of homophobia, and the affirmation of gay masculinity’ (Cavalcante, 2015: 456). Joyrich (2014: 138) also comments on these two shows, noting how they both offer normative representations of queerness, and ‘it’s exactly that supreme—even extreme—normality, that obsession with normalness, that I find intriguing.’ I also find such normality interesting, but I am more interested in the process of becoming ordinary, and how scenes of queer youth sex come to consider the sex queer youth have as ordinary and even mundane. Ordinariness is not the same thing as normative; queerness can be ordinary but still be nonnormative.

Sex scenes in film and television have evolved over the years, both in front of the camera and behind it. The use of intimacy coordinators is now the standard, but there is commensurability between the work of actors (used as a gender neutral term) and sex work, insofar as ‘the line between acting in sex scenes and being a sex worker is more about stigma management and boundary work, with actors avoiding shame and stigma by delineating between simulated sex and real sex, artful storytelling and porn’ (Ward, 2023: 372). The bifurcation between simulated and real also collides with television shows like Girls (2012-7) and Sex Lives of College Girls (2021-present) that intentionally highlight the ordinary, the imperfect, and the ‘real’ through both representations of female bodies and the sex they have (Perkins, 2014). Such attention to realness also emerges in queer cinema and television, such as Mitchell’s 2006 film Shortbus that features explicit scenes of sex meant to simulate ‘real’ queer sex, Davis (2008) illustrating how Warner’s ‘counterpublic’—publics that buck against a hegemonic public space—captures both the messages and scenes explicit in the film. Warner’s counterpublics is also a useful framing for watershed queer shows like Queer as Folk (Fraser, 2006), while the explicit queer sex scenes in the US version likewise attempts to tell a story that does not necessarily sugarcoat queer sex.

Scenes of queer youth sex are thus important because they buttress, for instance, empirical data that details how parents of queer boys are often at a loss for—at times willfully ignorant of—queer sex, giving the impression that it ‘doesn’t exist’ (Flores et al., 2019). Popular culture more generally, especially television shows, can potentially rupture heteronormative expectations and narratives laden in society, and thus prove useful for the classroom as itself a queer pedagogy (Quinlivan, 2012).

As such, queer narratives found in shows like Netflix’s Sex Education, as I explore below, draw much needed attention to the role of queer youth in the production and consumption of sex itself, including porn (Dudek et al., 2022). This, too, contributes to the ascendancy of queer pleasure, as we no longer ought to consider youth in general as a population to protect against sex—they are having it and talking about it regardless—but as active producers and consumers in their own (queer) sex and sexualities. This means, then, taking queer youth pleasure seriously, despite our own potential panic or awkwardness as adults.

Let’s talk about sex

Given that the queer representations on television have become normalized (Joyrich, 2014)—while some have proffered a (hetero)normative representation (Dhaenens, 2012; Sarkissian, 2014)—the growing number of television shows and even films that feature queer youth does, in part, contribute to the making of queer youth sex as mundane. This is again different than claiming that queer youth sex is normative, for despite the growing representation of queer youth sex and presentation of such sex as ordinary, this does not automatically make such sex normative. In an episode of season one of Netflix’s teenage fantasy show Shadow and Bone, Jesper Fahey (Kit Young), the 17-year-old sharpshooter member of the group of thieves known as the Crows, is seen flirting with a stable boy in one scene, making out with him in a second scene, and then collapsing (presumably naked) into a pile of hay with the stable hand in a third scene. The sex that these two have is never remarked upon by others. Jesper’s queer sex is thus as mundane as scenes of heterosexual romance and sex despite being nonnormative, stitched into the episode not as a significant reveal or even plot point, but as a moment of sheer pleasure at an otherwise stressful time (that is, the attempted kidnapping of protagonist Alina Starkov [Jessie Mei Li]). Jesper’s romance and sex with fellow Crow Wylan Hendricks (Jack Wolfe) in season two is treated nonchalantly, discussed casually between the two characters at various moments throughout the show until it culminates in sex and a relationship.

However, if sex among queer youth is becoming unremarkable—or, rather, remarkable for being unremarkable (Joyrich, 2014)—talking about queer sex is still a marked practice that calls attention to itself. There are two potential reasons for this. The first is that talk about sex, especially queer sex, is taboo and awkward, particularly given the panicked world in which we live (e.g., Rubinsky and Hosek, 2020). The second reason is that even if such talk is awkward, it can be necessary and so calling attention to the practice of talking about queer sex attempts to destigmatize not just talking about but having queer sex.

Perhaps the very impetus behind Sex Education is to point to how talk about sex is awkward and to destigmatize sex and sex talk. The show focuses on the sex lives of the students at Moordale Secondary School and the ‘sex clinic’ that Otis (Asa Butterfield), son of sex therapist Jean (Gillian Anderson), and his business partner Maeve (Emma Mackey) run to provide advice to students about sex. In the first episode of the season, we are presented with the awkwardness of sex talk as Adam (Connor Swindells), the headmaster’s son, awkwardly talks to Otis about his inability to achieve an orgasm with his girlfriend. The conversation was pure happenstance, as Otis and Maeve stumble upon Adam and his priapism hiding out in an abandoned bathroom. Adam had previously embarrassed Otis as a ‘sex freak’ given his mother’s profession, itself stigmatized as it hinges on individuals talking about their sex lives and receiving advice and affirmation from the therapist, Jean. By talking to Otis about his sexual dilemma, however, Adam is finally able to achieve an orgasm with his girlfriend. Talking about sex thus becomes the pathway to having more pleasurable sex.

Talk of queer sex is even more awkward and taboo. We again visit one of Adam’s sexual problems in the second episode of season three as he now secretly identifies as bisexual and is dating Otis’ friend Eric (Ncuti Gatwa). Each time Adam and Eric move towards having sex, Adam stops Eric because, as we find out, he wants to bottom. Eric initially assumes that Adam simply does not want to have sex with him because Adam cannot bring himself to tell Eric what he wants. He again has a conversation with Otis, the latter coaching Adam as to how to openly converse with Eric about his sexual desires. Adam eventually visits Eric, sneaking into his bedroom to explain to Eric what he wants. Eric is pleasantly surprised by the revelation as the two have sex and spend the night together. In this scene, queer sex talk is still awkward, but made more bearable and thus a conduit to queer pleasure by not being literally faced with the problem. Adam’s embarrassment at having to verbally convey to Eric his sexual desires initially stands in their way, as both a couple and a couple wanting sex. Yet the multiple conversations Adam has—first with Otis and then with Eric—are the necessary practices to facilitate resolution and pleasure. Even if Adam cannot face Eric in their conversation, an indication that the queer sex talk is still awkward, the talking is the more effective mode of conveying desire.

The awkwardness that Adam feels with regards to queer sex talk also points towards a panic captured by the taboo of queer sex talk. If Sex Education is attempting to legitimize sex and sex talk more broadly, and queer sex (talk) in particular scenes, then it begins with the supposition that sex talk is itself stigmatized, and thus queer sex talk is even more stigmatized as a result. The series makes this point in the first episode with Otis’ ‘sex freak’ status thanks to his mother’s sex therapy practice. Similar to Shadow and Bone, though, the treatment of queer sex in Sex Education creates an equivalency between queer sex and heterosexual sex. Otis can, on multiple occasions, provide advice to queer students regarding their sex problems. While recognizing the awkwardness inherent in sex talk, especially queer sex talk that is indicative of a panic around queer sex, Sex Education works to destigmatize and make mundane queer sex in the present; there is no deferment to later. Adam must talk to Eric now to save the relationship.

As Sex Education demonstrates, despite the awkwardness of sex talk, it can lead to more fulfilling sex and queer pleasure. This is also well-captured in Hulu’s show Love, Victor. Set in the same universe as the 2018 film Love, Simon, the show tells the story of Victor (Michael Cimino), a new student at Creekwood High School, as he navigates coming to terms with his sexuality as gay. At the end of the first season, he romantically pairs up with openly gay student Benji (George Sear), and the two begin the second season in a relationship. The fourth episode of season two entitled ‘The Sex Cabin’ features a nervous Victor wanting to lose his virginity but knowing nothing about gay sex. He tries to contact Simon (from the film) for advice, but Victor is unable to reach him. Simon (Nick Robinson) later explains to Victor that he cannot give Victor advice for sex is a personal matter that can only truly be talked about with one’s partner. The advice only comes after Victor has sex with Benji, the two discussing Victor’s apprehension before Victor initiates the sex.

Both Love, Victor and Sex Education follow a similar blueprint insofar as both Victor and Adam seek advice from a third party—Simon and Otis—only to have both explain that they must have this conversation with their partner. Once they do this, both Victor and Adam can have sex and experience queer pleasure. Queer sex becomes something that must be talked about because it is not the standard form of sex that either one is taught, or one experiences through representational narratives. Queer sex is always marked because it is non-normative. While talk about sex will likely facilitate pleasure in general, talk about queer sex is necessary to destigmatize the sex and to make it a mundane (though pleasurable) part of one’s life. This is a more generative argument, for those being educated about sex are not only the fictional students of Moordale, but the potentially teenage audience as well.

If the panic for queer characters in Sex Education lies in the taboo of queer sex talk, such panic is far more palpable and all-encompassing in Love, Victor. The panic focuses on Victor’s relationship with his family, thus felt by both Victor and his family, which prevents Victor from fully grasping his sexuality in the first season and strains his relationship with Benji in the second season. The panic boils over in season two when at the end of episode seven and start of episode eight, Victor’s mother (Ana Ortiz) walks in on Victor and Benji having sex. We witness not only Victor’s panic in this scene, but his anxious displacement onto his mother. To invoke Cavalcante (2015): his mother panics over her son’s sexuality, embodied in the queer sex she witnesses. In the scene, elongated at the start of episode eight, we see Benji and Victor kissing and removing each other’s clothes before Benji climbs on top of Victor. We catch a glimpse of Victor’s bare legs arched upwards; this coupled with Benji’s rocking motions is meant to imply the two are engaged in anal sex. It is then that Victor’s mother opens Victor’s bedroom door, shocked at the scene before her. The explicitness of the scene, of the sex, matters as it is to compare with Victor’s mother’s subsequent outrage and the panic and queer shame (Munt, 2007) Victor in turn feels. There is no hesitation in what she witnesses given that the scene had already established Victor and Benji’s nakedness and actions. The panic must be as visceral as the pleasure itself to act as a challenge to overcome.

While the end of the season narratively wraps up the panic, pleasure is not seen to overcome Victor’s panic until season three when, after Victor and Benji break up, Victor begins hooking up with Nick (Nico Greetham), a student from another school. This not only mirrors the everydayness of casual sex found in the shows like Skins, Girls, and Sex Education, but indexes the social reality of casual sex among youth in the US (Wade, 2017). If the second season of Love, Victor presented Victor’s sexual hesitancy amidst his panic, the third season sees his panic replaced with pleasure. Hooking up with Nick, something he may have never imagined doing in the previous season, becomes a common practice for Victor. And it is in those acts of hooking up—having experienced pleasure, panic, and now pleasure again—where queer pleasure is destigmatized and made mundane. There is no concern for what Nick and Victor might become, only an emphasis on the queer pleasure they experience in the here and now.

Sexual banality

An even more sensational panic lies at the heart of Netflix’s Young Royals (2021-2024), which tells the story of Swedish prince Wilhelm (Edvin Ryding) as he navigates boarding school and his budding feelings and sexual awakening for fellow student Simon (Omar Rudberg). The panic Wilhelm experiences may be familial, but it is also national for as heir to the throne, Wilhelm must produce offspring for the sake of the monarchy. If both Love, Victor and Sex Education locate the panic in the queer sex (talk), Young Royals locates panic in the implications of Wilhelm’s sexuality. Wilhelm and Simon’s sex is treated as the reward for hurdles they must navigate, pleasure not the opposite of panic but supplanting—if only momentarily—panic. The first time the two have sex in the first season it is treated as the point where Wilhelm fully accepts his feelings for Simon, for even if panic still exists, Wilhelm is not confused as to his feelings. In the second season, the two have sex after they reconcile as a point when Simon is no longer in denial regarding his feelings for Wilhelm, inverting the first season’s reasoning. Pleasure may be momentary, but that is the point: it is a way to supplant panic in the present moment, unconcerned with what comes next.

The queer pleasure of the present threads through this article and a queer theory of/for queer youth. By not calling attention to the non-normativity of Wilhelm and Simon’s sex—only, perhaps, the implications of the sex—Young Royals works to make queer sex unremarkable. The remarkability lies not in the queerness of the sex but in the classified queerness of the romance between a male prince and a male student. In what follows, I explore further the unremarkableness of queer sex and pleasure through the shows Generation (2021) and wtFOCK, demonstrating how making sex even more explicit, downright sensational, both shows legitimize queer pleasure through sexual banality.

The one-season show Generation created by HBO Max features a group of high school students navigating their conservative California community alongside their sexualities, including queer and non-queer relationships and interactions alike. The show fits within a larger repertoire of high school-themed shows with explicit sexual content on HBO Max, including Euphoria (2019- present) and Gossip Girl (2021-3). Yet Generation offers a unique premise as a show about the exploration of sexuality and the pleasures, connections, and disconnections that typically follow. One of the central characters is the openly gay Chester (Justice Smith), who contrasts with the closeted bisexual student Nathan (Uly Schlesinger), a twin who comes from an incredibly conservative household with an overly controlling mother. Throughout the show we watch as Chester and Nathan grow closer, Nathan becoming more comfortable with his bisexuality given the time spent with Chester.

This development matters because Nathan’s demeanor is sufficiently panicked at the start of the show, even when he is having sex. We learn in the first episode that Nathan is hooking up with his twin sister’s boyfriend, Jack (Connor Chavez), as the latter sends Nathan a picture of his penis before Nathan’s sister discovers the picture. Nathan and Jack then meet at a party later in the episode to hook up. The two begin by kissing, Nathan expressing his worry as to what they are doing given that Jack is his sister’s boyfriend: ‘I feel shitty. Do you feel shitty?’ Jack asks Nathan if he wants to, implying Nathan giving Jack a blowjob, at which point Nathan gets on his knees and begins pulling down Jack’s pants. The camera captures the scene behind Jack, including Jack’s butt, as Nathan looks at Jack’s penis and attempts to touch it. Yet as he tries to, Jack orgasms all over Nathan’s face, much to Nathan’s surprise and ending their encounter.

This is not the first time in the episode we witness Nathan covered in semen. The first scene of Nathan’s perspective features him sprawled out on his bed naked, his laptop covering his genitalia as he masturbates. Eventually Nathan finishes, his orgasm ending up on his upper torso and chest, Nathan smiling and reaching for a sock to clean himself. As he is cleaning himself, Nathan tastes his own semen, his face contorting only slightly before the scene cuts to him having cereal in the kitchen. This contrast in visible orgasms and its product (semen) invites multiple interpretations. The first regards whose semen ends up on Nathan, for if it is his own then, as we witness with the smile on Nathan’s face, Nathan is satisfied in his pleasure. Yet if it is Jack’s, Nathan gets upset, rushing out of the room. This could be read as shame and guilt for both hooking up with his sister’s boyfriend—the physical remnant of that is semen in his eye—and for desiring men in general. Another person’s semen on his body, especially his face, makes the encounter tied to his closeted bisexuality. The fact that Jack’s semen ends up on Nathan’s face signifies a greater sexual shame (Munt, 2007), often tied to a form of humiliation. These three emotions—shame, guilt, and humiliation—thus physically instantiate Nathan’s panic.

An interesting pendulum swings between pleasure and panic. On one hand, Nathan’s initial pleasure alone in his bedroom momentarily supplants any panic he may have, which we do not fully understand until we follow Nathan to the party where he hooks up with Jack. We witness glimpses of this panic as Nathan sits in his older sister’s wedding rehearsal, Jack messaging him first a shirtless picture and Nathan admitting he feels bad about the situation. Then Jack sends a picture of his penis, whereby Nathan’s sister sees it and records it to use as blackmail. This contributes further to Nathan’s panic, denying to his twin that he is anything but straight. When we then see Jack and Nathan hook up, pleasure here supplants Nathan’s panic, and despite Nathan’s outwardly spoken feelings of guilt, he continues down the rabbit hole of pleasure. Nathan may be experiencing pleasure, but it is Jack’s pleasure that comes to ultimate fruition, for his orgasm and semen are the true supplantation for Nathan’s panic. Yet Nathan’s panic immediately returns when Jack ejaculates onto Nathan’s face. Pleasure literally collides with Nathan’s panic. The physical manifestation of the pleasure—semen—is thus a necessary tool to challenge Nathan’s panic, accentuating both the panic and pleasure through the explicitness of the scenes.

An equally explicit scene takes place in episode eight of wtFOCK’s third season, a show that focuses on a different high school character each season. Season three features Robbe (Willem Herbots), a student coming to terms with his attraction towards men. He initially panics that he is attracted to art student Sander (Willem De Schryver), for after the two kiss in episode four, Robbe rejects Sander in the following episode, claiming that Sander tricked him into the kiss. Robbe eventually comes to terms with his feelings for Sander and the two reconcile. In episode eight we see Robbe and Sander stay the night at a hotel room, eating food, cuddling and chatting on the bed, and engaging in anal sex in the shower. Viewers know the kind of sex with which the two are engaging given the partial nudity featured in the scene and that Sander stands behind Robbe thrusting at/into the other. This scene is foreshadowed in the previous episode when the two begin to have sex in Robbe’s room, Robbe lying on his back and wrapping his legs around Sander’s torso.

These scenes of queer pleasure supplant multiple moments of panic, from Robbe’s internalized ‘homophobia’—though I hesitate to embrace the term homophobia given that Robbe never comes out as gay or any sexuality in the season (Gitzen, 2022)—to a violent confrontation that Robbe and Sander have with men at a bar, the two boys being assaulted for their public display of affection. Queer pleasure thus contrasts to these two visceral instances of panic. Robbe’s panic is actualized in this moment of violence, but the sex he has with Sander, following this violence, becomes a way to counteract homophobic violence. Queer pleasure is not necessarily an antidote to violence and panic; it is a reorientation of the entire situation: fucking supplants bashing.

Another form of panic emerges following Robbe and Sander’s eighth episode sex scene. While Robbe is trying to sleep, Sander continuously wanders around the room, talking fast and making little sense to Robbe. Sander then leaves the room naked in search of food, awakening Robbe to dress and go after him. A panic-stricken Robbe roams the city in search of Sander, only to find him being loaded into an ambulance and learns that Sander is bipolar and was experiencing a manic episode. While Robbe is initially distant from Sander in the aftermath, he eventually searches for Sander after the latter checks himself out of the psychiatric clinic and disappears. Though Robbe is panicked, he becomes even more so after he receives a message from Sander, Robbe imagining that Sander will attempt to hurt himself. When Robbe eventually finds Sander, Robbe expresses how scared he was.

Sander’s bipolar disorder presents a different sort of panic for Robbe, one not captured by sexual panic but mental health panic. We cannot necessarily compare these different kinds of panic—between homophobia/violence and mental health—both are equally embodied and affective in their representation and resolution. Queer pleasure may not supplant the panic of mental health, though queerness does reorient the moment away from panic and towards a messy, turbulent, but equally meaningful and pleasurable, relationship. Queerness is not meant to sweep this kind of panic away, but to embrace it as it is and as it comes. And while the queer pleasure discussed throughout this article focuses squarely on queer youth sex, a different kind of queer pleasure also emerges in the interaction between Robbe and Sander: the pleasure of the mess, of the trouble.

But when we consider these shows together, we are also presented with a queer pleasure made banal. The sudden transition to Nathan’s masturbation scene may be done to shock the audience, but it is equally done to make mundane queer youth sex. The oral sex that Nathan attempts to perform on Jack may seem sudden, but the quickness to which Nathan gets to his knees again makes this moment banal in its explicitness, especially given that the entire show is about sex and sexuality. The show’s aim, then, is to make mundane all forms of youth sex, including queer sex.

The explicit anal sex scene between Robbe and Sander is also stitched into the hotel scene as an expected moment. The presence of partial nudity, the lack of discussion about sex, again makes their sex an ordinary part of both their relationship and society writ large. Everyone is having sex, so why not queer youth? In both Generation and wtFOCK, what seems explicit and shocking are done so to routinize queer youth sex itself. Like Young Royals and Shadow and Bone, the remarkability of these scenes lies in the unremarkable framing of the sex.

The ascendancy of queer pleasure

What might be the significance of pleasure’s ascendancy for queer youth? Considering that these are scenes of scripted sex, we must recognize the intentionality behind the queer pleasure found in the scenes explored above. These are not scenes of actual queer sex—or even ideal queer sex, as who wishes for their mother to walk in whilst engaged in anal sex? Rather, these are scenes of possibility, not insofar as a deferment of sex, but instead a recognition that queer sex for some youth is ordinary and legitimate, and thus it could be for other queer youth as well.

These scenes of scripted sex can potentially be instructional to teen audiences, not in how to have sex but that sex (talk) is part of daily living. But also, these scenes are aspirational of a present where queer youth consider their pleasures legitimate and ordinary, though not necessarily (hetero)normative. These shows do not ‘obsess’ over normality—or where ‘normality itself becomes a fetish, an excessive fantasy staging rather than a position of narrative coherency or viewer stability’ (Joyrich, 2014: 138)—but rather exist and operate within the messiness of being and doing queer, including the messiness of queer sex. This contributes to the ascendancy of queer pleasure and an insistence that queer sex is a legitimate, albeit messy, form of pleasure for queer youth, and as such, this pleasure is ordinary. But even more fundamental, this ascendancy, one focused on queer youth sex and pleasure, gives credence to the fact that queer youth sex and pleasure are not to be panicked over, even if they are still taboo and nonnormative.

In part, I am making a rather simple argument that representation matters. And it does, certainly, affect how queer youth perceive and understand themselves (e.g., Craig et al., 2015; McInroy and Craig, 2015; Pullen, 2014; Sarkissian, 2014). How are we to expect queer youth to feel comfortable with their sex(uality) if there are no representations of their sex(uality) in popular culture? To thus represent queer sex is to give voice to a population either co-opted by adult voices or essentially voiceless (Talburt, 2004). It is also meant to counteract or complicate the barrage of panic and policies that restrict queer youth and identities mentioned at the start of this piece.

However, the ascendancy of queer pleasure is more than a matter of representation. It is a call to consider queer youth sex(uality) and pleasure within conceptions of (queer) theory. This mirrors Driver’s (2009) insistence to include the youth perspective into critical theory, paralleling also Talburt’s (2004, 2018) ongoing championing of the youth perspective that moves beyond the intelligibility and expectations of adults. However, in focusing on scenes of queer youth sex, I hope to expand the interplay of sex and self/identity to one always already incoherent and ‘ruptured’ (Weiss, 2020). Sex, like the self, is messy and never actually complete. Lingering feelings, fluids, and intensities remain—the sweat on the brow, the racing heart, the flashes of remembrance—and so how can we even consider a moment when we are not ‘undone by each other’ (Butler, 2004: 23)?

I end by advocating for a start, a start to considering the ascendancy of queer pleasure beyond these television shows, beyond even popular culture. How might, for instance, the ascendancy of pleasure manifest (or not) in ethnographic research with queer youth narrating their sexual experiences and histories? But even if we stay within the realm of television, how else might we interpret scripted sex involving queer youth? In other words, what do these sex scenes do, for they must do something? My answer focuses on the ways these scenes illustrate how pleasure supplants panic, both in the scenes and shows and perhaps in society more broadly. And perhaps, by supplanting panic—momentarily so—pleasure may glimpse not only a horizon of queer youth legitimacy and ordinariness, but also the actual ways some queer youth live and experience their sex and sexualities.