Today I managed to get my study plan done!!! Yippee!!
I had my tutorial with Emma and Willem to discuss the study plan, response to my ethics proposal etc.
I'll admit that other than getting Foucault out of the library, I've basically been treating this week as a well-earned breeak having finally successfully removed myself from the ethics proposal hole. So not a lot of actual research has been happening. Tee hee.
That said, I did listen to a fascinating and vaguely relevant podcast episode about "The Welfare Queen", a figure who I saw mentioned in Tricia Rose's essay. Rose mentioned this news story as an example of Black women being portrayed as "hypersexual", irresponsible, etc. The podcast You're Wrong About discusses this news story in more detail, in particular how it was used to paint Black people as taking advantage of the welfare system and eventually to promote restricting access to welfare generally.
While not immediately relevant to my project, I did find this to be useful historical context for discussion of stereotypes of Black people and how they overlap with views of sexuality.
Episode in question here!
So. You may have noticed that I never actually got around to writing up my thoughts on season 4 of Sex Education last unit. I kept meaning to, and then there kept being more important things to do in the lead-up to hand-in, so it's time to do it now!
First things first. This wasn't a very good season of TV. Obviously I hadn't watched most of the previous three seasons so I didn't have all the context but in my defence, this does also seem to be a fairly popular consensus among long-time fans of the show, such as my friend Becca. A lot of the plots felt very bizarre and out of place or didn't get resolved properly. It didn't really feel like a final season, and I suspect it was probably a case where the writers were told last minute. Why was Ncuti Gatwa experiencing visions from god? help me.
So in general it wasn't great, and the asexual stuff specifically also wasn't great. Sex Education season 4 is an interesting case, because they hired asexual activist Yasmin Benoit to help write this storyline, but she's since gone on the record to say she was unhappy with the final product. According to her, a lot of her contributions to the show and important character moments for asexual character O were cut, which she believes made the character come across as a lot less sympathetic and contributed to many fans disliking her. Here's one interview where she discusses it.
If Benoit's account is accurate, it would make a lot of sense to me. I mentioned when I started watching that I kind of liked O, and honestly that still holds up, but she's definitely weirdly written. I think I like the idea of the character more than the actual character, lol. For a show that's so about sexuality, it seems strange that O's experiences struggling and coming to terms with her sexuality are only really mentioned in passing. Instead, her main storyline is this weird story about her and main character Otis' rivalry over becoming their college sex therapist, which is inexplicably a) a position that's open to students and b) an elected position. It also means that she basically acts as the villain/antagonist for most of the season, and we don't get a whole lot of her perspective on things until the end. Anyway, I get what they were going for with her - she feels like an outsider and cuts herself off from other people to dedicate her time to sex therapy, and learns to open herself up to friends - but it feels incomplete.
I do think the fan response to the character is interesting - after I finished the season I watched a few youtube
Anyway transcripts of some key scenes here or whatevar.