Where Sex Positivity Falls Short
Since its debut in 2019, Sex Education, Netflix’s charming and filthy comedy about teenagers at a bucolic British high school, has been a jewel in a very mixed bag of streaming content. I’ve loved and appreciated its sweetness, its sex positivity, and its absurd dramatization of school as a place where everyone is willingly and creatively getting it on, no matter the real-world evidence to the contrary. In the show’s conceit, Otis (played by Asa Butterfield), the awkward, virginal son of a sex therapist (the regal Gillian Anderson), finds self-worth and—in the end—satisfaction by giving sex advice to his cluelessly horny peers, despite having no practical experience of his own to draw on. All sex problems, the show posits, are really just communication problems. Talking openly about things (the shape of vulvas, douching, intergalactic alien erotica) diminishes shame, which means no more dysfunction. Right?
In so many ways, is a fantasy. It’s an oddly nostalgic, , all wooded landscapes and mid-century furniture and regional slang. Of late, though, I’ve started to wonder whether the show’s cheerful raunch is obscuring something crucial. Midway through the recent third season, much better. ,” he whines.) Later, panicked that she might be pregnant, she visits a sexual-health clinic in town, where a nurse gently asks if her boyfriend is pressuring her to have unprotected sex, and how that makes her feel. “Like I can’t enjoy the sex, because I’m just scared of getting pregnant,” she replies. Soon we see Olivia walking out and telling her best friend, who’s waiting for her, that she knows her boyfriend’s a “dickhead” but she still loves him. To me, it felt like an oddly neat and evasive conclusion to a story line that had raised more questions than it answered. The intimation that people frequently cajole other people into doing things that they’re not comfortable with seems to jibe awkwardly with the show’s generally breezy approach to sexuality. Rather than trying to meaningfully define the nebulous edges of consent, changes the subject.
