The Teens Sex Education

Disillusioned by the limited teaching in schools and the misogyny of porn, a new wave of vloggers are taking matters into their own hands

- Rebecca Newman

Laci Green’s Guide to Orgasm video on YouTube has, to date, 1.5 million views. It’s a rapid-fire, illustrated romp through the female anatomy and the sexual-response cycle, with pauses to suggest what feels good – and bad. Green is close up to the screen, all geek-chic glasses, tumbling auburn hair and naughty twinkle, talking like your best friend, but ending on a serious note: you shouldn’t stress about it or it won’t happen, and ‘sex should not hurt’.

Green, a sex-education blogger, is one of a new wave of young female trailblazers using social media to shake up the way the subject is delivered to an eager audience of women aged between 15 and 30. The 26-year-old sexual rights activist first set up a blog as a teenager, tackling everything from consent and gender identity to achieving satisfying orgasms, because she was incensed by the misogyny in the strict Mormon community in which she lived in Utah. ‘I realised that the only sex education most teenagers were getting was the strict “no sex before marriage” messages delivered by the church, or the misogyny conveyed by porn, neither of which were based on reality,’ she says. Her YouTube channel took off while she was studying law and human sexuality at the University of California Berkeley. Five years on, Green has 1.5 million subscribers.

It’s no surprise that such channels have stepped up to fill the gap online, particularly in America where teachers are encouraged to err on the fear-mongering side when it comes to sex ed – and also exclude any reference to LGBT issues. Green, who is equipped with a bushel of sex-counselling  qualifications, explains the appeal: ‘Now that online video is having a huge boom, girls like me are trying to make real, empowering education a part of that space.’