Destigmatizing kinks: alien erotica in Netflix’s sex education

ABSTRACT

The Netflix series Sex Education has sparked enthusiasm among critics, audiences, and scholars due to its celebration and visibility of sexual identities in all forms, one of the most exhilarating being the narratory and visual development of the character of Lily which constitutes a focal point of Season 3. Lily’s vibrant interest in writing sexual outer space stories is entangled with her sex life and highlights issues of public shame related to sexual fetishes. Netflix, by means of series such as Sex Education, has become a notable entity in the representation of LGBTQIA+ characters in visual storytelling, as well as the facilitation and sharing of discussions related to non-conventional gender identities and sexual practices within an ever more interconnected media landscape (Zurian, Garcia – Ramos and Rodriguez, 2021). By using as a starting point the fact that claims for visibility, representation and sexual citizenship access do not exist until they are produced through the needs of different identities, this analysis will focus on the premise that the representation of the character’s kinks entails the ability to broaden the understanding of Lily’s sexual identity and contributes to the destigmatization of her sexual practices due to the series popularity and transnational dissemination.

KEYWORDS:

• Netflix’s sex education
• sexuality
• LGBTQIA+
• erotica
• teen fiction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Levin (2023, September 21st). ‘Sex Education: The show that changed sex on TV forever’, BBC.

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20230920-sex-education-the-show-that-changed-sex-on-tv-forever

2. I use kink as a broad umbrella term that encompasses a diverse array of non-typical erotic interests, identities, behaviours, practices, and forms of relationships. It involves the sexualization of intense sensations, such as ‘pain’, the sexualization of power dynamics, a persistent intrigue and sexual excitement related to sensory experiences like particular body parts or non-living objects, known as ‘fetishes’, engaging in erotic role-play or enactment of sexual fantasies (Vivid et al., 2020, p. 75).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Olga Derzioti

Olga Derzioti is a PhD student at the NKUA Communications and Media Department, under the supervision of Professor Liza Tsaliki and her PhD is funded by the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation. She holds an MSc in Gender, Media and Culture from the LSE and her thesis title is “Transnational Queer Cinema: Expanding solidarity across borders – queering the global sexual rights regime”. Her research focuses on the newly emerging queer film production of both diasporic- exilic and non-western filmmakers and its potential to disrupt the unequal cultural flow and enable the formation of supportive queer communities based on the subjects’ shared experiences. Her work explores the cinematic representation of non-western queer subjects and their lived realities, in relation to questions of sexual citizenship and homonationalism. Olga’s research interests include postcolonial feminist studies, transnational feminist epistemologies, sexuality, and queer film studies.