Young people and sexual pleasure in Netflix’s Sex Education

Abstract

ABSTRACT The inclusion of pleasure in school-based sexuality education remains a controversial issue despite a long-standing body of scholarship which argues for its importance. While recent studies reveal sexual pleasure remains missing in school programmes, it appears to be in abundance in the Netflix series Sex Education. This paper examines the series as a potential source of learning about sexual pleasure and the types of messages it offers young people on this topic. It argues that Sex Education’s treatment of sexual pleasure differs from school-based programmes in the way it often disrupts dominant meanings of sex and sexuality. While schools typically take a risk-reduction approach to young people’s sexuality, Sex Education treats sexual pleasure as a legitimate, positive and commonplace pursuit which can be experienced through diverse practices and relationships. Much of what Sex Education is able to achieve in its treatment of sexual pleasure is attributable to the series being outside formal schooling and its deployment of tools associated with the televisual medium. Given the rise of regressive gender and sexual politics globally, programmes like Sex Education offer an increasingly important source of learning and counter narratives to politically conservative understandings of sex and sexuality.