REVIEW: Sex Ed Show vs Porn (part 1)

As promised last night, here is the start of my review of the Channel 4 show "The Sex Education Show vs Pornography", which is linked to the website Sexperience on Channel 4. I'm going to break it down into segments because there's a huge amount that I have to say on this.

(For another review of the show, see The F-Word Blog)

I said last night that I was angry because it isn't about me, and I promised to explain further what I meant by that. There's more than one level of meaning to it, in fact. Obviously, I'm 30 and therefore no longer a teen, so on that level I shouldn't expect it to be about me, but I don't remember my experience of encountering porn to be all that different from what's being talked about here - it just happened a couple of years later in my lifetime than it has for the teens that Anna Richardson interviews on the show. Certainly the sorts of statistics they were throwing around about what ages sexual activity starts at, what percentage have looked for porn, etc all sounded very familiar when compared to the surveys I read about my own generation of teens when I was a teen. And I remember also what we were taught about those statistics, which was that people LIE. Peer pressure makes people want to seem more experienced and knowledgeable than they actually are, so they are not honest even on secret surveys, because they know someone will read it and they don't want to seem stupid. The kids bragging about how often they've done it are usually talking a load of crap to make themselves seem clever.

So I think I can relate my experiences as a teen surrounding porn and sexuality to what's going on in this show. And they don't relate. This show is talking about someone completely unlike me: a teenager who is already sexually active (my first sexual encounter with another human being took place when I was 26!) A teenager whose ideas about anatomy are shaped by porn. A teenager who is comfortable talking about sex with his peers. That may be the majority, but there is nothing at all for those who just aren't as confident as others.

Also, there is this thesis that porn creates negative impressions of oneself against the "ideal". But my experience of porn is that, when I finally encountered "extreme" BDSM porn, I finally managed to see myself in a positive light. The Sexperience website doesn't have any mention of anything to do with BDSM, and once again my sexuality is invisible or disgusting to these people, which is exactly the problem I had with sex when I was growing up.

I want to list in brief here the things about the show that have shocked, disguested or enraged me, and also mention that there is one thing (the central thing, in fact) that is good: that good thing is that tthey are actually providing some good sex ed to the teens.

The first enraging and shocking thing is just how much these teens seem to need it! Both boys and girls seem woefully ignorant of both their own and the opposite sex's anatomy.

I was also shocked and dismayed by the number of girls whom they interviewed who focussed everything about their (sexual) bodies on "it's what boys want, that's why it's important to (shave your pubes/have big breasts/whatever)". If anyone thinks that "girl power" and feminism have succeeded and there's no need for feminism any more - this one thing proves how wrong you are.

Also on the theme of how much feminism has yet to achieve in the area of sexual freedom and autonomy, I noticed that the labia minora were called by the boys interviewed, "flaps". Maybe I am reacting out of turn here, and if women out there wish to correct me, please do, but it struck me as an appallingly disrespectful way of referring to them, and certainly likely to make a girl or woman feel disgusted with her own body.

I am angry about the thesis of the show of porn being necessarily harmful, and of having to "protect" teens from it. I am also angry at the blatant shock tactics and judgemental attitude used to further this thesis.

In short, I am angry at the show's thesis but also (and much more) at the shocking state of sex education in this country, and the magnitude of feminism's failure so far.

On to look at the show itself.

Show 1 addressed teens' views of the female anatomy, and starts with perhaps the most disgusting and rage-inducing comment of the whole series so far:

"We want to replace 'porntastic' images of women with positive versions".

Renegade Evolution represents that "porntastic" image, and you know what? She was born like it. Admittedly, she's had breast implants and all, but as I understand it she was fairly well-endowed beforehand. She works to maintain her body, of course, but it's pretty much natural. She has written angrily (and justifiably) about the way people dismiss her body as "real" (Unfortunately, I can't find quickly the links to those posts; I am sure Ren will be able to fill people in soon). Now the Sex Education Show has by implication labelled her body "negative"!

The show started with breasts, discussing briefly just how sexualised the mainstream media's treatment of breasts is, and observing that the MSM portrayal of breasts was different from the reality of the 5 models who were showing their bodies for the teen audience (1/3 of whom, the captions said, were already sexually active). The captions also revealed that 45% of the girls in the survey were unhappy with their breasts, and 1/5 would consider surgery. I want readers to note that this is MSM images, NOT porn images at work here...

After a lesson on the functions and appearance of breasts outside of the sexualised media representation, the teenagers were asked to pick out from a line-up of 10 bosoms which one they found most attractive. Both the boys' group and the girls' group went for the obviously enhanced breasts - the ones that had implants (there was only one "enhanced" pair in the line-up). And this is another way in which this show completely passed me by as far as my sexuality is concerned: I found a different pair to be far more attractive (the TV camera never gave us a decent view of all the images, I think there were two or three that I would have preferred to the implants).

The boys commented that they had been taught that "no woman's boobs are perfect", which I think is NOT the message I would want them to take away. Surely the point should be to get rid of these ideas of perfection anyway! By which I mean that the idea that there is an objective "perfect bosom" is harmful, and that each woman's breasts should be seen as perfect for her.

Later in the show, they dealt with vaginas and pubic hair. I was again shocked at the ignorance of the teens in the show: not even the girls knew about the clitoris or where it is! I guess it reveals how accustomed I have become to sexual knowledge that I was surprised that none of the teens knew that the clitoris expands during sex, or that it extends much deeper into the body, wrapped around the vagina. All of these things seem like basic points of information, but they're lacking from sex education it seems.

According to the show's survey, 2/3 of girls shave or wax (see the point above about "doing it for the boys"). Conversely, and this probably is related to viewing porn, only one boy in the audience didn't raise his hand when they were asked who preferred shaved or trimmed pubic hair. (My preference is directly related to being a sadist - I like pubes because they're such a good way to torture a woman by tugging on them!)

An0other caption revealed that in the past 5 years there has been a 300% increase in labioplasty surgery appointments (and again, that's where the comment about boys calling labia minora "flaps" comes in).

In Part 2 I will write about the male anatomy parts. Part 3 will probably concern the anti-porn messages being spouted by the presenter, and depending on how I go, maybe address attitudes towards alternative sexuality in the show that were unhelpful. There will also be other subjects raised by later shows in the week, so this is likely to become an epic series.

Rest assured, at the end of it all I will sum up with my own manifesto for how to deal with the issues raised.