Lines of flight in sex education: Adolescents' strategies of resistance to adult stereotypes of teen sexuality

Can school-based sex education (SBSE) that reproduces structural inequalities simultaneously hold possibilities for meaningful and transformative experiences? In this article, we situate students' perspectives on stereotypes encountered in their school-based sexual education classes in the context of Deleuze and Guattari's work. The analysis is based on 63 interviews with high school students at two schools in the same district in the USA, one high-poverty/low-ranked, and the other, low-poverty/high-ranked. Our analysis reveals how adolescents attempt to resist stereotypes in SBSE while simultaneously creating meaning in their encounters. Deleuze and Guattari's concepts lines of flight' and deterritorialization and reterritorialization' allow us to examine resistance in a way Foucault's interpretation of power and discourse does not. We expand on these concepts and how they are significant in explaining adolescents' resistances in our analysis.