Back To School
A welcome letter for the new year from Adult Sex Ed
Hey horny readers! It’s back to school season. Let’s set some expectations for the year, shall we?
As always, thank you so much for reading the Adult Sex Ed newsletter. If you’re enjoying it, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed.
Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. In case you’re new, I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a comedy writer, film producer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter last year. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Want to know more? Read the whole description on substack here.
Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!
September is and always has been my favorite month. I still consider it to be the start of the new year. I loved getting on the bus carrying new crisp notebooks, feeling the freedom of a fresh start. I always wished my school had uniforms; it was the slutty school girl era of the early 2000s and getting in trouble for rolling up the hem sounded like a dream. Better than getting in trouble for just being myself, am I right?
With Adult Sex Ed, I straddle the line between teacher and student—playing the role of teacher on stage, but often feeling like I’m just taking you along on my journey to educate myself. So, student to student, here’s what you can expect from this year of Adult Sex Ed:
Dear fellow student,
If you’re new here, here’s the Adult Sex Ed backstory. Back in 2018, I was producing movies and writing comedy and I was thinking about aspects of life that I hadn’t quite reconciled. That’s when I started getting obsessed with sex ed.
So why did I focus on sex ed? I grew up in a really open home with very little shame around sex. My mom was even a sex ed teacher for a while, but I went to a public school in a fairly conservative town. In high school, we watched Philadelphia to learn that if you have sex, you will get AIDS and if you get skinny in Hollywood, you will win prizes.
There is a dearth of successful sex education in many parts of the world and that includes America. Not too long ago, educators believed that you could teach kids everything they need to know about sex by watching animals mate. I am here to tell you that Planet Earth won’t prevent teen pregnancies. But I wore an eye patch through my childhood and wearing an eye patch definitely will. Even if you had the best education, we still learn about sex from movies, tv, peers which leaves us with tons of misconceptions. The Adult Sex Ed live show and this newsletter is about asking ourselves a really important question as adults: Why do I think what I think about sex??
You’re in the class of adults that gets to right your wrongs, challenging misconceptions along the way! Listen, I love a deep dive and I’ll continue to deliver those to you weekly. have the perfect blend of ADHD and insomnia and now all of you have to learn about masturbation myths in Ancient Egypt. Not sorry!
This year, we’ll continue to explore the history of sex because there’s so much we can learn about the role of sex in society today based on the events of years past. On the surface, it might not seem like the history of the merkin is important to know about, especially in these trying times. But what if I told you that pube trends can teach us a lot about class systems? The mythical history of chastity belts can teach us a lot about the spread of misinformation. And from the problematic gurus of the 1920s who tried to convince men to implant a second set of stolen balls to be more masculine (really, the press called it "Gland Larceny"), we can learn about the problematic advertising trends of today.
This Fall, we’ll likely cover current events since it’s an election year, but I’ll probably keep reminding you the election of 1800 was the dirtiest of all. I will start releasing more video content, so please follow me on instagram and share those reels! Later this year, I’ll use this platform to tell you about the documentary that I’m directing right now. It’s not about sex ed at all, but it is about important buried history that we urgently need to know about.
Now is the best time to ask adults to challenge their own beliefs. Let's laugh and plug the holes in our education together. Welcome to Adult Sex Ed 2024/2025.
Getting horny now, gotta go.
Dani
PS—HERE’S WHAT YOU CAN DO! Please share Adult Sex Ed with friends and invite them on the journey. Do you have an idea for a topic? Please let me know in the comments below.
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Good read. That eyepatch phase sounds like a whole story arc by itself!
I can empathize. I had a patch for a while then 2 eye surgeries.