The Back to School Special 5/9/25

PART ONE. Programme notes from The Back to School Special 5/9. Reflections on the event, including questionnaire responses, will be discussed in a second part.

Real or not real?

Of course, there is nothing perverted about the concept of sex education. It's a necessary component of growing up and something that evolves with us. Many of us have educated ourselves on subjects like sexual pleasure, how to please our partners, masturbation tips, kink, and for some men, consent (unfortunately still needed in adulthood). When doing research for this evening’s event, I decided to start in the present. What were kids learning about now? More and more access to sexual images doesn’t mean increased awareness of sexual health. What were schools doing about one of the biggest facets of our existence: our sexualities and relationships? Nothing? I’m afraid, as you probably assumed, I was right. And isn’t that perverted?

Shockingly, it was only in 2020, two decades since the last set of guidelines, when sex education became compulsory in UK schools. This means that for hundreds of years sex education was left to parents and guardians, or not at all. The first place we would learn about the most vulnerable features of our bodies has been within the private confines of the family home. When statistically, the majority of children are sexually abused by someone they know, how would we have been able to protect children without sex education in an open, public setting?

I've always been fascinated by the politics of simulated vs not simulated media depicting taboo subject matter since I was drawing my own crude images of ‘sexy’, nude and scantily clad women in Year 6 and selling it to boys for 20p a piece. Or being thrilled by a sex game on the school library computers involving blue computer generated characters (and was the poo in 2 Girls, 1 Cup real? It couldn't have been, could it?). Those drawings, some labelled ‘sexy woman’ filled a plastic bag at the back of my cupboard. One day my parents called me downstairs to the living room. They were sitting on the sofa, the plastic bag and its contents emptied in front of them. As far as I remember, that's the most shame I ever felt in my childhood. And it was just a few (bad) drawings of naked bodies.

When is a child old enough to see a photograph of a human penis or vagina? A large part of UK society would have you believe it’s 18. Currently the sex education books in the children’s section of Waterstones, adjacent to the biology section, contain only illustrations and cartoons of the body, its genitals and even the fertilisation process. Even the anatomy books don’t contain photos of adult human bodies. People with penises can, of course, look at their own, but what do those of us burdened with vaginas do? What on earth is going on down there?

Repressed as we are in the UK, even the illustrations aren’t safe from charges of obscenity. Two years ago I worked as a teaching assistant in a Year 6 class and was present for a sex education lesson. The children watched a dated collection of videos about puberty and sex. One video depicted hand-drawn animated characters with strangely-shaped heads engaging in intercourse (above).

Eventually I found stills from this video in a Daily Mail article discussing the apparent outrage the video had caused when it was first shown in classrooms. Concerned parents and other adults likened the video to a ‘blue movie’, a pornographic film. Yes, they are talking about a hand-drawn animation of borderline aliens. But I suppose this isn’t surprising coming from the same country that created the children’s TV show Sooty and whose producers were worried about the arrival of a ‘female’ hand puppet because she might bring ‘sex’ into the show (below).

As we enter a new era of censorship, with the age verification on internet pornography already being misused, where are we going to get decent sex education if schools won’t provide it? When a little girl or boy sees another person’s genitals for the first time, will it already be too late? I’d go so far as to say that sex education should not only be compulsory in secondary schools, but when we turn 18 too. A large focus would be on consent, of course, but more specifically on different types of sex. The first place we learn about rough sex and BDSM might not be porn anymore (although there’s always ways around restrictions…), it might be when we’ve gone back to our first partner’s house and they’ve got their hands around our neck and we aren’t even sure we like it and we let them tighten their grip anyway.

Maybe I’m lucky, because all I remember from sex education is putting a question in the anonymous box: ‘Is it OK for girls to masturbate?’. And the teacher said to everyone, “Yes, you should masturbate. You need to explore your bodies.” During some pretty dark periods, I’ll never forget that. Knowledge is bliss.

The films:

Growing Up

(excerpts) Martin Cole, 1971, UK, 23m

Sluts & Goddesses Video Workshop

Maria Beatty & Annie Sprinkle, 1992, USA, 52m

The Gay Man’s Guide to Safer Sex

David Lewis, 1992, UK, 49m

A Girl's Guide to 21st Century Sex

(excerpts from episodes 1, 2 & 3) Max Barber & Kelly Diamonds, 2006, UK, 33m

Films shown before the main programme:

Helga Erich F. Bender, 1967, West Germany, 77m

Language of Love Torgny Wickman, 1969, Sweden, 103m

Would You Kiss A Naked Man? Alan Gough, 1974, Canada, 19m

Sara Dale's Sensual Massage: The Stroke of Pleasure David Lewis, 1992, UK, 45m

Part two coming soon...

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