Starting with a judgment-free zone her side of the internet
Where can you find sex? Sketchy and creative quips aside, it’s clear that things that reference sex––online, in movies, on television––are a dime a dozen. The answer essentially is: you can find sex everywhere. The same unfortunately cannot be said about sex ed.
Where can a person go for sex education?
For those with coin, there are legitimate, research-based websites like OMGYES (we hear this one’s Emma Watson’s personal fave). This particular platform walks a person through the “science of women’s pleasure” over 50 snackable webisodes…for a one-time payment of 39 dollars. Those who don’t have a more convenient resource apart from the mainstream may have picked up a thing or two from Sex Education, the Netflix series. Others, meanwhile, might have the Mean Girls movie moment with the comically misled Coach Carr top of mind.
RELATED: How Much Do You Really Know About Sex?
In all seriousness, sex education outside a classroom, clinic or subscription-based company is difficult to come by; and a resource that’s accurate, dedicated to the cause and free for public consumption even more so. Then came Laci Green and her delightful, sex-positive and mega-informative YouTube channel Sex+.
Of the topics in the world to be ashamed to bring up in conversation, sex shouldn’t be one of them. This is something Green knew full well and leaned into at the beginning of her career as YouTube’s resident sex educator. Dig up her first sex-related vlog entry back in 2008 and you’ll find a baby-faced Laci Green nonchalantly pulling up a NuvaRing. She then gives her candid, but insightful two cents on the type of birth control and casually ends the review with: “Alright! I'm gonna go to school. I just wanted to get that out there ‘cause I don’t think it’s talked about enough.” This has been at the core of her channel Sex+ ever since.
Her approach to sex education is a sigh of relief and a breath of fresh air: science-based but not stuffy, illuminating but not intimidating, respectful but not rigid.
Green understands the importance of tackling the basics, but moreover sees that in the real world, these basics are layered underneath plenty of easy-to-read-about-hard-to-live-out scenarios. And this is where it gets tricky for people. “How to use condoms” can be listed down and can take a reader from steps one, two, three through four. But what about the conversation that leads up to using said condom? How do you bring up contraception with your partner when you’re both first-timers? What if your partner refuses to use a condom? This is the kind of dialogue Green’s Sex+ leaves room for in the judgment-free zone she so nicely secured for herself on the internet.
Here, seemingly no-brainer topics are touched on again, but with additional useful-in-real-life tidbits a lot of people don’t know about. She also frequently surveys her viewers so she can create sex guides of all kinds that people crave more information about: from anal sex to “happy boobs,” again, safe sex with rubbers and even more “butt stuff.”
It’s the stigma surrounding sex eradicated one YouTube video at a time. “The first thing you need to know about losing your virginity is that you’re not losing anything,” she says in one, for example. “So, when I talk about first-time sex, I prefer to call it your sexual debut.” (You can watch the full video here.)
Sex positive. Unafraid. A space where knowledge is pleasure. If you want more Laci Green on your timeline, subscribe to her YouTube channel Sex+ here.
Art Alexandra Lara
