The Sex Education Show

I didn’t get around to watching the first in this new series – Channel 4, 8pm Tuesday – until yesterday when I streamed it from 4OD.

It was only when I googled it to get the website addie to share with you that I realised that it had aroused a great deal of controversy with over 40 complaints about its content as well as its time of broadcast before the watershed.

I have to say it did get a bit near the knuckle in certain parts but I think the whole idea is that it is designed to reach our teenagers as well as their parents. It is a show that is covering everything that a young person needs to know – about their bodies, their development, their sexuality and their attitudes towards all of those things. It also allowed them to understand how much their views are shaped by the information with which they are bombarded, both in the media and on the internet.

The first thing which really made me sit up and listen was the fact that there are three different sizes of condoms. Did you know that? Well I certainly didn’t. The main reason that everyone hates condoms is because of their unreliability and tendency to split or come off. Well, it would appear that this is because in many cases, the man is wearing the wrong prophylactic for his personal endowment. In order to ascertain your size, you have to measure the girth of your penis when it is erect. 12-13cms is considered average and means that a ‘Medium’ condom, the majority of those on sale in stores, will fit you. If your penis is over 13cms then you are a ‘Large‘ and under 12cms a ‘Small’ or ‘Snugfit’. Click on the highlights for a link to some of the different brands suitable for you. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, we’re not talking about length or ability to satisfy in these terms, just making sure that you are wearing a protective sheath that will do its job properly.

There was a section where a trio of 14- and 15-year-old schoolboys were asked about pornography. They all agreed that they looked at stuff on the internet or were sent stuff on their phones. When questioned about the worst thing they had seen, a clip was mentioned (which had been circulated via mobile phone) of two German women ‘pooing and wiping it all over each other and vomiting’. When this information was shared with one boy’s parents, they seemed quite shocked and when the film was shown to a group of parents later, they were all horrified. This segment of the programme came with advice on how to safeguard your child on the internet so that they cannot access adult sites. The problem with this is that the information was received via mobile phone. It seems a little shortsighted to prevent your child from accessing adult content on the web with a blanket ban when they are still vulnerable to receiving it from their mates on their phones. It worries me because it does not foster an open exchange of information between child and parent. It becomes secretive and dirty. Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t find that sort of clip entertaining in any way and I’d really rather my children didn’t have to watch it but I think most of them would make that sort of decision for themselves anyway. Me saying it’s disgusting is far more likely to make it extra interesting to them… The other problem here is that you would need ALL parents and guardians to take similar action and, in my experience, that would never happen. This means that you have some kids with information but not necessarily all the correct facts talking to your children about stuff which they know you do not wish them to look at and so they will not ask you to ensure they are getting the full picture.

What did worry me was the effect of surgically-enhanced pornstars on the teenagers’ perspective of what they should consider normal. Both the boys and a group of girls were shown pictures of flaccid male genitalia of varying sizes and asked to decide which they thought was the most realistic size-wise. They all chose a penis that was 4 or 5 inches long and were shocked to learn that normal was actually the rather wrinkly 3cm example. It was a similar story with pictures of breasts. When shown a couple of normal pairs in 32C and 32F, both genders complained that the boobs looked saggy and had no cleavage. Admittedly they weren’t the most attractive tit shots I’ve ever seen but, when compared to a silicon-bagged beauty of 34D who had beautiful round, symmetrical, tanned globes with a very definite cleavage, naturally they all chose the fake ones as being the most attractive and desirable. It was very interesting to hear one of the boys draw the conclusion that his attitude to physical appearance was being influenced in a bad way by the things he was seeing on the web.

There was another item where a female doctor and a naked man talked about his cock and balls and explained about the body parts and how they should appear but that there was a huge variety of different shapes and sizes down there. It talked about foreskins and non-symmetrical balls. I think it is a clip that I will recommend that my own son watches – not with me of course – because I think he will learn a lot about his body that he might not want to ask his mother.

The item about Anna Richardson trying to put some spice into her own lovelife was very amusing as well as being informative, but probably not really suitable for a programme before the watershed although, again, it comes back to our obsession with making sex secretive and for adults only when clearly our teenagers are doing it anyway and unsafely because they don’t have the correct information.

Channel 4 defended the show, saying it was meant to provoke discussion amongst families and said the scene of nudity had clearly been signposted before the start.

A Channel 4 source added the number of complaints had been relatively small for such a potentially controversial show.

This programme is clearly titled the ‘Sex Education Show’. Parents with children under the age of 14 would be wise to study the Radio Times for clues like that. Parents with children over that age need to ask themselves what their kids might already have a sketchy and incorrect knowledge of and whether exposure to such a programme can give them information that could be very important to them over the coming years.

If you’re somewhere in the middle, you can watch it yourself – as I did – and give them the website so they can peruse some of the more relevant articles for themselves.