In ‘Sex Education’ season 3, there is earnestness in words
by Paolo Alejandrino
This article contains spoilers.
Sex. A three-letter word that will surely make heads turn, even in this day and age. In fact, the mere mention of this among friends will be in the form of a hush or a whisper while your eyes survey the surroundings for eavesdroppers. Talking about it, even with flowery and absurdly creative ways, such as bald-pate friar for the penis and vajingo for the vagina as an example, would warrant raised eyebrows.
Quite interestingly, there is only one Filipino word for obscenity and rudeness: bastos. Shakira Sison noted this in her foreword for her queer literary smut Don’t Tell Anyone with Ian Rosales Casocot. This duplicity in the use of the word bastos in our language is enough for us to make clear about our perceptions when it comes to matters of sex, as if there is disrespect when we talk about sex outside our bedrooms. It ultimately muddies the line between the implied acts of impropriety. A person is bastos if their skirt goes above the knee or when they expose a shoulder or when they buy condoms and contraceptives at the nearby convenience store.
There is quite a lot of unlearning and relearning to do for us to even acknowledge that for thousands of years, we’ve managed as a society to use our penises and vaginas for other things aside from peeing, birthing, and pooping.
Netflix’s Sex Education, which started in 2019, delves into the world of sex — no, not the kind where there’s an abundance of symbolism and euphemisms to “soften” and sanitize the scenes. As one of my friends described it, “sex kung sex talaga.” I mean, by the show title itself, one would already have a clue as to how bold and upfront it is. It does not sugarcoat nor attempt to glamorize sex. It’s done in a way that is delicately forthright and sincere, fearless to include the dirty, the grubby, and the nasty bits and pieces of it.
Now on its third season, the hit British teen-comedy series continues to make waves from all around the world, earning praises for its soul-stirring, honest depictions of people’s struggles in the love-making department.
Following the success of the first two installments of the show, Sex Education carries on to solidify the relationships of the characters in the series. It sustains its relatability in terms of exploring the different dimensions of sex, of course, coupled with its sonic selection of music and 80s aesthetic.
It starts with another year in Moordale Secondary School, fresh from the summer break after their previous term ended with a school-wide chlamydia outbreak. Otis (Asa Butterfield) is having casual sex with the most popular girl in town Ruby (Mimi Keene); Eric (Ncuti Gatwa) is dating Adam (Connor Swindells); Dr. Jean (Gillian Anderson) is nursing a baby in her belly with Jakob (Mikael Persbrandt). It’s a new chapter for the people in the series. If you’ve been keeping an eye since the first part, you could clearly see the development of the characters, how realistic and logical yet sublimely done they are.
Communication is key
This season centers on one of the most often overlooked aspects of any relationship: communication. We see how this is presented in each of the side stories.
How do you respond to an “I love you” when it was declared without any signs whatsoever? How do you deal with the grief that you struggle to talk about with your partner? What are the things that you like during sex? These are some of the questions that the series attempts to explore and open a discussion about.
There is the tenderness: when Jean and Jakob talked about their differences in parenting, when Ola and Otis are faced with the reality that they’re about to be half-siblings, when Maeve and her mom deal with their family issues.
And I think it is embodied with the poem Adam wrote for Eric, it opens: “A boy I don’t like told me / To write from the heart / I didn’t know what that meant / Because I never knew I had one.” Well, it may not be at par with Borges or Angelou, which were the recommended readings of Rahim to Eric, Adam ultimately captures his attempt to articulate his feelings toward Eric, ending “But I hope we can fix things / And if we can’t / I will always thank you / For showing me I have a heart.”
Sex, relationships, and activism
In this season, we are introduced to the character of Hope (Jemimah Kirke), the new headmistress of Moordale, following the exit of Adam’s father. She declared in one of the episodes that she is a “feminist” too when she confronted students of Moordale to follow her authoritative guidelines in the school.
She made the walls repainted, imposed haircut and uniform rules, and drew a line separating the foot traffic of the people’s right- and left-hand sides. But hey, she says she’s a progressive and many students think she’s cool since she danced when she introduced herself during their first town hall meeting.
“A line is never just a line,” Rahim (Sami Outalbali), the Parisian head-turner transferee from the previous season, said. It was a foreshadowing to her girlboss, white feminist arc. Ultimately, she revamped the school’s Sex and Relationships curriculum, rebranding it Growth and Development, as it separates boys and girls, despite being coed, in suppressing genuine questions of students about their sexuality and relationships.
Indeed, a line is never just a line.
The necessity of destigmatizing sex
It’s really easy to dismiss the show if we base it on our ancient and outdated notions of the bastos. Sure, call it kabastusan all you want. But as long as we reject and outright refuse to reevaluate how we treat and talk about sex, we can’t start to reverse the soaring number of HIV/AIDS cases in our country, the number of teenage pregnancies, among others, which are real-life implications of this stigma.
I am comforted by the fact that shows like these are given the spotlight in mainstream popular culture. More and more young adults are becoming aware of the necessity to talk about sex without having the baggage of fear or judgment.
In our local literature, Lampara Books’ Ako ay May Kiki (I Have a Vagina) by Glenda Oris and Ako ay May Titi (I Have a Penis) by Genaro Gojo Cruz, both children’s short stories, teach little boys and girls the essential value of naming their genitals, something that should not be the cause of embarrassment when talked about in public. Talking about sex and genitals and other normal processes and acts that humans do should be as easy as talking about the back of your hand.
We have so much unlearning and relearning to do — in a society that represses a campus publication for merely changing its profile picture to rainbow-themed, failing to pass protective laws for women’s choice on their bodies, and the lack of sexual health education curriculum.
For Sex Education, this is the true kabastusan. It is kabastusan to deprive people of their right to health, to make women and the LGBTQ+ folks feel unsafe when simply walking down the street, too. It is kabastusan to treat matters of sex as some sort of mortal sin.
Still, there is a lot of unlearning and relearning to do. Sex Education is an apotheosis of a delightful and heartfelt portrayal of characters demonstrated through its writing as it attempts — quite successfully — to amend and turn things around in the world of media. We need more of this mature, raw, and honest series that recognize the beauty and ugliness of being a loving, breathing, and yearning human person. It is, after all, a world we also try to build ourselves.
