Netflix Original ‘Sex Education’ Just Failed the Ace/Aro Community in a Huge Way
By Anne Gregg
The final season of a show should tie loose ends together, conclude the themes of the narrative, and give its characters one final, exciting send off. Season 4 of Sex Education did not end with a bang, but rather with a gradual pastel avalanche, crushing most of what made the first three seasons so impactful. The Netflix Original Series, known for its meaningful representations and frank conversations about sex, intimacy, and sexuality ended its run with a season full of tokenized characters and mishandling aro/ace representation.
Sex Education follows Otis and his friends as they navigate love, relationships, and sex. In the first season, Otis begins a secret sex clinic at his school. After their rigid secondary school, Moordale Secondary School, is closed, Otis and some of his friends migrate to Cavendish College, an eclectic school filled with left-leaning students and expensive pastel decor. Cavendish already has a student sex clinic run by O, a charismatic and intelligent student with a sense for business. O is the second asexual character and the first recurring ace character in the series. She is also the only aromantic character ever given story attention in the series. O is not out at the beginning of the season. Unfortunately, her coming out storyline comes off as cheap and performative instead of sincere and impactful.
Sex Education has been known for meaningful representation, and yet on its second attempt representing an asexual character, it completely failed. This failure is not the fault of O’s creator, Yasmin Benoit, who poured her heart and soul into making a character that would be positive and meaningful representation for aro/ace people on screen. Unfortunately O’s character is set up as Otis’s rival. Since Otis is the main character, O has to be the villain. For some reason, the writers can only write storylines in which Otis is a self-centered jerk. Because of this, the writers had to make his rival worse than him. The rivalry starts off petty, but O’s coming out scene cements her as the season’s villain, which is not how coming out scenes should work.
In episode 5, O and Otis have their debate over who should be the sex therapist on campus. O accuses Otis of being like his misogynist father who is a famous writer. Otis retaliates and turns the crowd against O by calling out her pattern of ghosting her dates and leaving them heartbroken. After this is revealed, O comes out to the crowd as aromantic asexual, and uses that as her excuse for refusing to apologize to people she hurt.
My jaw dropped.
I could not believe a show that prides itself on normalizing sexuality would ever think of portraying an aromantic asexual character in this way, because it meshed well with the rest of the season’s progressive messaging. O is redeemed at the end and everyone decides she is a good person. End of show. The show about sex education leaves you with the message that aromantic asexual people are cruel because they do not feel romantic or sexual attraction towards people. If they act out it is because they are sad because no one understands them.
Asexuality is often debated in the LGBTQ+ community. Some people in the community do not believe that asexual and aromantic people exist, while others believe that aromantic and asexual people do not face the same prejudice as other LGBTQ+ people. As a result, asexuals bear the burden of justifying their sexuality to everyone, in and out of the LGBTQ+ community. Asexuals constantly battle stereotypes that something is inherently wrong with them or that they don’t need a special label, they just need to find the right person. The same goes for aromantics. Some may also add insidiously that aromantic people are heartless and cannot feel love or that asexual people are mentally disabled. Aromanticism and asexuality are consistently misunderstood and often treated as a problem.
O’s character could have been a wonderful addition to the cast, especially because she complicates the narrative about sex and romance that the show presents. She is not easily ace, she’s not infantilized, she’s shrewd and witty. I appreciate that Sex Education chose to show a character who could be fascinated by the concept of sex without being interested in it herself. It shows the complexity of asexual identity that is rarely seen on screen. Asexuality is a confusing, isolating path that I have walked down in trying to figure out myself and my relationship with sex. And although I am still figuring myself out, I have found an immense amount of comfort in reading about ace and ace-spec people’s varying relationships with sex. They taught me that the way we experience attraction and desire is not monolithic. Sex Education is all about understanding the nuances of sex and relationships and asexuals can provide some of the most unique and insightful thoughts on sex and relationships. Yet, Sex Education’s final season does not attempt to enlighten the audience’s view of asexuality or aromanticism. If anything, it damages it.
I know good aromantic asexual representation exists but rarely does it get to exist on a scale like Sex Education. And that’s where it needs to be depicted. Asexuality and aromanticism are still often misunderstood. Many people don’t even know what the terms mean.
Sex Education had the chance to normalize asexuality and aromanticism but instead it used it to create a manipulative scheming character to stand as the central villain of their season.
About the Author
Anne Gregg is a poet and writer from Northwest Indiana. She is an English Writing major at DePauw University and is the editor-in-chief of her campus’s literary magazine, A Midwestern Review. She is a Media Fellow at her university and loves dissecting how LGBTQ+ people are portrayed in film and tv.
