Sexplanations

[transfemandgay]

I've been watching this YouTube channel called "Sexplanations" where a sexologist, Dr. Lindsey Doe, talks about sex and gender and anatomy, etc. Right now she's doing a lot of videos around sexuality and how it's treated in politics and culture.

One of these videos is about her frustration with how YouTube bars her from physically on camera showing anatomy and how to do sex acts because that would be explicit pornagraphy. The second video is about her reading a book from the 70's which explicitely showed nude bodies and sex acts as a teaching guide for children.

Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EMkQ5Yrp8Q
Part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8RQNB8vivQ

In the second video, though, she doesn't show the book at all. When she read it, her attitude toward the book completely changed and she didn't feel comfortable showing it to her general audience, instead linking to her free Patreon which had the unlisted YouTube link.

I watched it all the way through and... I have no idea what to feel other than kind of an uncomfortable feeling, which is weird considering how used and open to these topics I am. I can't articulate how I feel nor how she felt about it, but I still think it's important to discuss.

[Elise]

Trigger warning: this post discusses that the book mentioned above contains photos of children that the children themselves could not have consented to.

Hi transfemangay, YouTube has removed the unlisted video that shows the book (published in the 1970s), however I can glean from the comments that the book contains photo images as opposed to illustrations as part of the "show me" teaching approach, and that these photos not only are of adults, but some are of children (for an explanation of puberty, not sexual acts as I understand). Lots of the comments also seem to raise questions about consent and comfort of the children photographed in the book, which are very pertinent points to raise. Even though these images were intended to be instructional, taking images of children in this way and for this purpose would rightly raise major ethics questions around consent and bodily autonomy if the book was in development today, as children cannot consent to giving away their bodily autonomy and privacy, and so adults violated their rights. Further to that, It also sounds like the children pictured do not look like they were even comfortable with being photographed at the time, which would be quite distressing to see.

As such, for articulating your feelings about the "show me" concept as a whole, maybe it would help to first separate the issue of the treatment of the children pictured in the book as that is quite clear cut as incompatible with our understandings of consent, and then consider the following prompt questions:

• Did you innately feel as uncomfortable about the images of adults as you did of the minors in the images? Or is it hard to separate these feelings?
• Did your feelings perhaps relate to the intimacy/privacy that we socially apply to sex in many context, and perhaps seeing this raised feelings of violating that or being discordant with that?
• Would you feel the same way if the book had realistic illustrations in place of the images? What do you feel might be lost or gained with that swap?
• Did you have any feelings about the positionality and consent of the viewer? Would it be better if the viewer got to see a description of the photo and then decide photo by photo whether they were comfortable with seeing it in that moment? In a book where you don't know 100% what you'll see when you turn the page, or a video showing the same, that control is taken away.

If you feel comfortable sharing any of these thoughts, reflections or other questions, please do, and thank you for raising this conversation about navigating the ethics of presenting sexual content for educational purposes.