Editorial: Let's Talk About Sex in YA

Abstract

By referring to Salt-N-Pepa's iconic pop song in the title of this special issue, we evoke a topic that is both difficult and enticing in texts for young people. Our special section continues some of the many conversations that were started at the Let's Talk About Sex in YA (LTASYA) conference at the University of Cambridge in May 2021. This ongoing conversation is essential because YA literature's engagement with the topic of sexuality and sexual experience corresponds to broader histories of representation in texts for young people, which in turn frame real lives.We began the planning of this conference in 2019. After the arrival of COVID-19, which itself had extreme implications for sex, 1 the world changed, but our desire (so to speak) remained the same: to investigate a dimension of YA literature which is intrinsic to the pedagogical and social dilemmas that structure the field and contribute to the construction and representation of adolescence.YA has always been a ground for ideological struggles and social constructions of what sex 'should look like' for young adults. Emphasis on certain types of representations of sex and sexuality -such as losing your virginity, teen pregnancy, and sexual identity -ensures YA's place as a space of exploration, and for figuring out our relationships to difficult topics; YA can act as a powerful tool in dismantling repressive and contradictory ideologies about youth sexuality. As Lydia Kokkola emphasises in Fictions of Adolescent Carnality, "the ways 1 In the UK, due to the implementation of COVID-19 social-distancing laws, sexual contact between people who didn't share a 'household was briefly made illegal.