Sex Education

[lochmaree]

Didn't see a thread on here already but I thought this final series showed some of the vulnerabilities / criticisms of gender ideology. I dont think it meant to though.

• Cal - I see a vulnerable young woman with mental health problems. also interesting Cal identified as non binary but wanted a double mastectomy. I wonder if others will also see that.

• the college was so trans inclusive etc, but the lift didn't work and some of the less able bodied were disadvantaged. I dont know, I thought this felt quite similar to in real life where there's lots of virtue signalling but for real material accessibility problems, less or nothing is done.

• the trans people seemed to rule the roost a bit, everyone looked up to them, they were the popular ones etc.

I enjoyed it, but it felt very try hard. Interested to know what others thought!

Hating this last series. It’s always felt like a bit of a box ticking exercise but this series is by far the worst.

@RomeoMcFlourish I see what you mean definitely! it does feel like that. it was very cringey.

I haven't been watching it since the social engineering type agenda became apparent. I prefer my entertainment not to be so tedious. Shame because the first couple of series were gold.

I wish you'd put the title in inverted commas or otherwise indicated it's the TV show, OP, as I clicked on it thinking it was about sex education in schools etc.

Never having seen this show (& not starting now from what I've read) I shall quietly remove myself.

I can’t watch the show because I’m sex repulsed, but I heard that they finally added an asexual charecter this season.

How were they portrayed?

it seems to be the way with all Netflix series. Start good, get a strong dose of post modernist bullshit, get preachy, end with a whimper

The first series of Anne with an E was wonderful. The less said about the trite, preachy series 3 the better I think

The Witcher has started to go all 'chosen family, hit you round the head with the message'. Although while Henry Cavill continues to periodically take his top off I expect I'll stick with it

I couldn't make it through the last series of sex education. I really, really don't enjoy being indoctrinated by brightly coloured TV programmes.

It's clearly fiction and not meant to reflect reality, but if it was, it's behind the curve.

IRL, 'wokeness' is no longer an endeavour of the young people moving into the older years of secondary school / entering FE.

The TikToks that are being talked about are those ridiculing the ideology and/or the expectations of TRAs. It is rarely transgender people being mocked but rather the expectation to celebrate or see people as being speshal for being trans, ridiculous claims being made about biology and policies that are completely illogical.

Sadly, this is likely to be experienced or viewed as 'transphobia' by those who are struggling with gender identity issues, as they have been primed to view things this way thanks to Mermaids, Stonewall and that crew.

A section of the media widely reported the announcement they were casting a 'trans couple' a couple of years ago, the show's makers describing them as the school 'power couple' and 'the epitome of couple goals', which is quite something in a show aimed at teenagers trying to navigate their way through some of the most emotionally difficult and confusing years of their lives. The 'epitome of couple goals' for young humans pairing up, according to this global teen show on one of the most popular US-based streaming services, is for you and everyone around you to deny biological reality, pretend you are the opposite sex and chemically and surgically destroy your sexual and reproductive organs.

Here's the casting from Digital Spy that I posted in the other thread: "Sex Education welcome two trans characters in season four, continuing improving LGBTQ+ representation on screen...The show is currently casting the roles of a young trans woman named Abbi and her trans-masculine boyfriend Kent. According to the descriptions given for each role, these two are quite the power couple. Abbi is described as having "a '90s Winona Ryder vibe". The character is "confident and self-assured in her gender identity".
Her bio reads: "Abbi is the leader of her group and the queen bee of her college. She's sunny, magnetic, generous and loyal."....He is "goofy, forgetful, and a great listener" but "not as sure about being one of the popular kids as Abbi....But he knows himself and feels quietly confident about his final year at college," the description also says.
As for their relationship, we know the writers imagine Abbi and Kent as "the epitome of couple goals" and that "everyone loves them".
The casting call is open to those who don't have previous acting experience."

@BernardBlacksMolluscs I think he's replaced from the next season, sadly, so no more Witcher here either 😆

Sex Education... I wanted to like it, but I've found this series quite cringe-y so far. The first couple were brilliant. I've not finished the series, however.

I've been a huge fan of Sex Education since series one (although I nearly didn't get past the first episode of series one... it's quite a full-on opening!).
I've now just finished episode 3 of the current series. No spoilers please for the rest of series 4 but I had to come on here and see if there was a thread about it, because I was so angry at what I had seen in this episode. I'm glad someone has started the thread and I have a little hope, from the opening comment that things may balance out a little better by the end.

Specifically on episode 3:

1. Double mastectomy scars are shown and normalised, as if they are just a part of growing up
2. The topic that is opened up from Cal seeing the scars is that it's so bad that there is such a long waiting list for girls (who identify as non-binary or boys) to get this surgery but thankfully it's getting easier to access this "treatment"

This conversation takes place in a "queer" (their word, not mine) nightclub where Eric's story of feeling joy and freedom at celebrating being gay means the whole thing is force-teamed together under one theme: you are who you are. For Eric, this means that we should be on his side that the church shouldn't stop him from being gay (he meets someone from his church at the club). For Cal and Ronan, this means that we should be on their side that health services should be available more quickly for anyone who wants a double mastectomy. The interweaving of the stories is also symbolised by Eric going out in a skirt that he's given on loan for the night by the trans characters i.e. blending the LGBTQ firmly together as one.

The net effect on any casual viewer, who hasn't been immersed in discussions about the harms being done by "gender affirming care" (i.e. most people who are watching that show) will be to reinforce the notion that the only way to be kind to people who aren't straight/conforming to sex-based expectations is to celebrate the idea that they are who they are. And by extension, that everyone who wants a double mastectomy (or any other "gender affirming care") should have access to do so. No questions asked. The show is pushing a compelled belief in gender identity by building on a very likely assumption that most viewers are supportive of gay people and would generally want all people (including trans people) to live free of hate and judgement.

I feel exactly the same that gay and trans people should live free of hate and judgement. However, I also believe that sex is immutable, that nobody should push a compelled belief in a gendered soul (or similar), that children and young people are part of a medical scandal where this belief is pushed as truth and the answer to puberty distress and that other people's boundaries (women's sports, women's spaces, women's sexual orientation) are being trounced all over.

Imagine going back in time 10 years and telling people that this is what mainstream shows for teenagers would be pushing for them in 2023. They would think society had gone insane, and they'd be right.

Indeed. And then imagine being force-teamed with Mary Whitehouse for calling this out... And then realising that (even if you're an atheist who isn't driven by Christianity and don't see things as "evil") that she may well have actually had a point worth stating about the general direction of travel in TV content. I can't imagine all my views align with hers but I'm certainly not as close-minded as I was on the general point she was making.

One of my favourite shows in the 1990s was The Mary Whitehouse Experience, which pushed the boundaries of "acceptable" in a way that really resonated with me as a teenager. The huge and obvious difference, aside from me now seeing things through a 40+ year old lens, is that boundary pushing back then didn't encourage people to chop off body parts to alleviate the distress of puberty or insist that your own belief allowed you to trample all over those of other people.

Mary Whitehouse, and the cultural image of her, felt like an earlier version of the culture wars binary bunker mentality: she was almost cartoonishly what a fashionable Left-leaning person didn't want to be associated with. Grey areas, a middle ground of discussion and debate, became lost to a sort of, 'uncomfortable with this rape scene, this slasher movie? What are you, a pearl-clutching Mary Whitehouse prude?' And that was handy for those, mostly men, who wanted to push things further.

Yes, very much so with the binary bunker and MW's image.
Today it's more of the same forced teaming with anti-gay, pro-traditional roles and so on.. but maxed up and amplified by social media. Sometimes even anti-abortion gets looped in. Most of the forced-teaming seems to originate in the US, then gets imported unquestioningly to the UK without even the inconvenient truth of the majority of GC (or similar) people being atheist liberals being enough of a flag to derail it.
Then it gets enhanced even further and the grey, pearl-clutching caricature concerned woman is also apparently a fascist Nazi.

and yes @IvyTwines very handy indeed for those who want to push it further.
Another tactic is the caricature of the concerned woman rehash of the "she's hysterical" label from the Bedlam days... now termed "moral panic".

Sorry to resurrect this, slight spoiler ahead if you've not watched or read any articles about the last season. - look away now!

Are there any actual lesbian couples in S4? I loved Ola and Lilly but hear they aren't in this season.

not that I remember. Well technically yes but one was a 'transman'

The British Scandal podcast did a season on Mary Whitehouse and it was a bit of an eye-opener. As in, I doubt I would have liked her much, and there were very few beliefs we held in common - but she did have a couple of points that even the presenters agreed with, and the misogyny she faced was absolutely shockingly awful. It's worth a listen.

Wasn't the other a transwoman?

Oh ya, I see it, transwomen are women

I'm not the greatest podcast fan (I prefer a video if I'm going to sit and concentrate... if I'm doing chores it's music every time) but that does sound really interesting.
Her campaigning began in the 60s, so a different era and different standards. Religion was much more prevalent than it is now in the UK for example - and many of our moral standards come from religion (many of the good ones too.. although obviously each person's definition of that is subjective).

I'm still in the early stages of S4 but yes, the couple I've seen is a transwoman and a transman.

So as far as I can tell, whether people believe in gender identity or that sex is immutable, there would be mutual agreement that this couple is heterosexual.... but equally they could each be pan-sexual (gender identity belief) or bi-sexual (sex immutability belief) outside of this relationship.

Where it would/could get contentious is if they split up (no spoilers please!) and one person pushes their belief on to another party. E.g. the transwoman tells a female lesbian character (who doesn't believe in gender identity) that not accepting the transwoman as a lesbian is transphobic.

the girl who had a hearing impairment was sort of coupling up with Cal who was a transman. I think anyway. and that would be a sex based lesbian couple.

I stopped watching after ' birthing parentz'

Parent

I stopped watching after the hideous infertility storyline. Because in their world a teacher who is strict is a barren bitch who can’t keep a husband.

That show is the most misogynistic thing I have ever seen. All the female characters have been broken down over four seasons to be utterly pathetic. Whoever writes that series hates women.

But that’s okay because hating women is cool
again.