{"id":314,"date":"2025-05-26T15:46:24","date_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=314"},"modified":"2025-05-26T15:46:24","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T15:46:24","slug":"sex-education-and-the-politics-of-talking-about-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/?p=314","title":{"rendered":"Sex Education and The Politics of Talking About Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In \u201cSex in Public,\u201d 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 \u201cthat 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\u201d (p. 557).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Berlant and Warner\u2019s 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 \u201cSex in Public\u201d 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 \u201cfailures.\u201d While many characters express embarrassment or shame around these issues, the general portrayal normalizes varied sexual preferences and difficulties. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lily’s alien sex fantasy (Sex Education, Season 3 Episode 7)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"sex<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Netflix's<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Aimee tries to figure out what she enjoys sexually (Season 1 Episode 6)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cthe way a hegemonic public has founded itself by a privatization of sex and the sexualization of private personhood\u201d (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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In \u201cSex in Public,\u201d 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=314"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":315,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314\/revisions\/315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rgsinpop.2025.cmoore.sites.carleton.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}