Delfine Dahlia explores why taking our sex and relationship ed from TV may be harmful.

Sex, Lies and Series?

If I ever have kids, I’d rather they learn about sex through porn than commercial (especially American) movies and TV shows. Don’t get me wrong – certain kinds of porn sometimes don’t teach us the best values, but at least porn has evolved to the point where it doesn’t tell us that we should be ashamed of our genitals, that only fit and conventionally ‘good looking’ people can have sex and that people with pussies magically climax when the person with a penis does.

I had this revelation not so long ago, when I became aware of how unrepresentative and basically just inaccurate love, sex and relationships are depicted on the average TV offerings. I also realised that because I watched all these false representations since I was a kid, starting my sexual life had been somehow complicated. 

I was confused. Did I even enjoy it? Why couldn’t I come? I could come so easily by clitoral stimulation, but for some reason I thought that was reserved for masturbation only, and that vaginal orgasm was the way to go as soon as you were fucking someone else. It took me literally years to undo all these false learnings and expectations about sex.

So why the fuck is sex portrayed in such an unrealistic way? We’ve been doing it literally forever, and yet sex is still the last Great Taboo. And with most of the media we consume coming from the puritan US, change is slow. We’re still told, explicitly and implicitly, that you should only have sex when you are ‘in love’, that it should be an activity better kept hidden and secret, that men who want it are ‘studs’ and women who want it are ‘sluts’. With this mentality, sex on TV can then only look prudish, shameful or cheesy. And that’s what we learn!

The same goes for relationships. In most media, they are superficial and lacking in depth. We are told that every woman wants nothing more than a man to treat her like a princess, without critically examining the dynamic and how this ultimately makes her a lesser person. Why do you think so many girls are waiting for ‘Prince Charming’ and end up completely disillusioned? And it goes both ways – guys end up with a profoundly distorted view of women’s needs and their sexuality. Thank you, Disney!

As an end and side note, I am always shocked, saddened and angry when I see that violence, murder, rape and drug abuse frequently find their way onto mainstream TV shows, whereas sex is still only hinted at. The world will be in a much better place when people finally accept the legitimacy and importance of sex in our lives, both in and off screens.