Sex ed & the movies
Can a survey help us decide the most important sex scenes?
Hey horny readers! In places where sex ed is banned, media becomes the ultimate educator. Let’s find out the movies that influenced us.
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!
Growing up, I learned a lot about sex from film and TV. I had my sexual awakening when Devon Sawa walked down the stairs in Casper. He makes another appearance on my sexual journey—my friends and I rewound a specific scene in Now and Then to see if he flashed a bit of peen (he likely didn’t). I learned what jizz was when Forrest Gump ruined a bathrobe belonging to Jenny’s roommate. The first sex scene I ever saw in a movie theater was when my friend and I snuck in to see Jerry Maguire. At the beginning of the film, Tom Cruise and Kelly Preston (R.I.P.) have an explosion of Scientology against a bookcase. One of the rare sex scenes to showcase female pleasure, she unabashedly enjoys herself. Cruel Intentions taught me about horny teenagers. Secretary taught me about horny adults.
I remember stumbling upon an entirely strange film called Exit to Eden about detectives uncovering crime on a BDSM island. Directed by Garry Marshall, the film is truly wacky. I was a preteen, watching a late night movie, and getting an education about BDSM. If it was the only education that I ever received, I would be entirely confused.
Even when people have access to comprehensive sex ed, we still learn about sex from film, media (including porn), our families and cultures. Educators know the power of that too—there have been over 100,000 sex ed films produced for use in classrooms. In times when sex ed is banned, people are even more likely to learn from the sources they find at home.
Lats year, I wrote about re-evaluating movie sex scenes, and earlier this year, I wrote about the distinction between what porn is (and isn’t). Looking at the scenes we watched as young people, it’s easy to see that so much of it was problematic. From the foreign exchange student filmed without consent in American Pie to the scenes that we now know that people were coerced into filming.
FINDING OUT THE SEX SCENES THAT SHAPED US
So, what were the scenes that actually shaped us? If you were sending a novice to the movies to learn about sex, where would you send them? Please help me figure this out by filling out the survey linked below. I’ll write all about it over the holidays;)
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