In “Sex in Public,” Berlant and Warner argue that a key component of heteronormativity is the cultural insistence that sex and intimacy belong solely in the private, domestic sphere. While public institutions mediate sexual behavior in many ways, actual explicit discussions of sexuality are presented as abnormal. With no outlet for healthy discourse, people are made to believe “that they are individually responsible for the rages, instabilities, ambivalences, and failures they experience in their intimate lives, while the fractures of the contemporary United States shame and sabotage them everywhere” (p. 557).
While Berlant and Warner’s argument is still compelling in a contemporary context, a significant amount of media that portrays and discusses a variety of sexual behavior has been released since “Sex in Public” was published in 1998. TV shows like Sex Education (first released in 2019), Sex Lives of College Girls (2021), and Heartbreak High (2022) all take on the task of trying to unpack the sexual lives and practices of teenagers and young adults. Sex Education, in particular, is centered around a high schooler named Otis, whose mother is a sex therapist. Otis starts a business at school where people pay him for sex and relationship advice. Under this premise, the show creates numerous opportunities to discuss a range of sexual “failures.” While many characters express embarrassment or shame around these issues, the general portrayal normalizes varied sexual preferences and difficulties.
Lily’s alien sex fantasy (Sex Education, Season 3 Episode 7)
Aimee tries to figure out what she enjoys sexually (Season 1 Episode 6)
Sex Education offers representation of queer behaviors that viewers might not often see in other media. But perhaps more importantly, Sex Education gives examples of how to discuss sex and desire openly. By representing both the practices and the discourse around those practices, Sex Education can inspire viewers to engage in their own conversations about sex. Sex Education is not perfect by any means (can any representation really be perfect anyway?). Yet, in many ways, it is a kind of queer counterpublic, or perhaps a doorway to a counterpublic, in that it counters “the way a hegemonic public has founded itself by a privatization of sex and the sexualization of private personhood” (p. 559). The more we discuss sex openly and shamelessly, the more opportunities we have to confront the public institutions that govern it while simultaneously preaching privacy. Media like Sex Education is a nudge in the right direction.
2 replies on “Sex Education and The Politics of Talking About Sex”
Sex Education is most definitely a step in the right direction for healthy public discussions about sex and sexuality, especially because of the variety of sexual behaviors covered. In addition, the absence of a moral value being placed on those sexual behaviors does work to combat the heavily policed sex publics available to most people. I think a large part of Berlant and Warner’s argument goes beyond the need for sex publics. Like you mentioned, “preaching privacy” is only part of how sex is policed by public institutions. Another important aspect to sex governance, the idea of “normalcy”, which implies a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ way to participate in sexuality Heterosexuality has positioned itself as the “average”, “the normal”, the “right” way to do sex (Berlant & Warner, “Sex in Public” 557). That’s why the shows you’ve talked about are so stand-out, because most media that discusses sex, sets “normalcy” as the goal for how to affirm sexuality, inadvertently reproducing heterosexual behaviors as the standard for all sexual behaviors.
Not only does Sex Education do some of the work that Berlant and Warner discuss by normalizing discussion about sex and offering examples of sex and sexual relationships with a wide variety of characters in a wide variety of contexts, it also shows important representation of people making different choices with their bodies and health. Similarly to how Berlant and Warner discuss how open displays of the most subversive kinds of sex easier, Sex Education demonstrates how open discussion of sex also makes discussions of bodies easier. Aside from offering a representation of queer behaviors, Sex Education also shows characters making different choices about pregnancy and having discussions about safe sex and how to make sure that sex is both physically and emotionally healthy. Berlant and Warner describe how gay men were largely responsible for inventing new safer sex practices in the wake of the AIDS crisis, explaining that already viewing sex outside of the heteronormative and limited view of sex as equating to penetrative sex made it easier for gay men to conceptualize new, safer sexual practices. In a similar vein, some of what Sex Education does is pair representation of queer sex with representation of conversations about/examples of sexual health and bodies in a way that demonstrates this connection between visible queer sex and an opening up of conversations about health, safety, and bodies.