Netflix's Sex, Love, and Goop sparks a surprisingly intimate conversation

Less so, but not so much so, when that middle-aged woman is Gwyneth Paltrow. And she's surrounded herself with other middle-aged women: somatic sexologists, erotic wholeness coaches, family constellations facilitators, sacred sex and intimacy coaches.

Yes, I can sense you rolling your eyes already. What on earth is a somatic sexologist? Have I been Goop-ified? Turned to the dark side where it's OK to think about putting jade eggs in my vagina, maybe even steaming it, before I've lit my $100 candle that smells like Gywneth's own orgasm (which I can't, because they are sold out worldwide) or indeed forked out $15,000 for a solid-gold vibrator recommended by the Oscar winner herself.

No I haven't. But yes I have, because her new Netflix series Sex, Love and Goop is the show we all need to watch.

Just this week, Katrina Marson, president of the Relationships and Sexuality Education Alliance ACT, a newly formed advocacy for sex education, wrote in The Canberra Times that quality sex education was lacking here in Australia. In 2019 she undertook a Churchill Fellowship to research the implementation of relationships and sexuality education in parts of Europe and North America. She returned with a commitment to provide critical education for young people.

"There was a shared understanding that this education safeguards sexual wellbeing, and is a protective factor against sexual violence and abuse," she wrote.

"It does not corrupt innocence, nor encourage sexual behaviour."

Many people have criticised the Goop series for its subject matter and hands-on (literally) approach. Six couples, young, old, same sex, have come to Goop HQ to talk about sex and work out the issues which are stopping them from having their best sex ever. They're dealing with mismatched desire, lack of modelling, body issues, past trauma. It's an intimate and open discussion in all ways.

If adults are still having trouble communicating aspects of their own sexual lives, what hope do our children have?

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In her opinion piece, Marson referenced the Netflix series Sex Education which is focused on high school students. It has a similar message. We'll all come up against opposition when we try to have open conversations about what's still considered a taboo topic among many conservatives. Perhaps Netflix, with docuseries such as Sex, Explained and Sex: Unzipped, is tapping a market. Hell, even the cringeworthy Sex/Life earlier in the year started conversations that had nothing to do with that shower scene.

But what has the world come to when we're relying on a streaming service for advice? These conversations need to start well before you find yourself in a relationship, even if that relationship is a Tuesday night where you've hit it off with someone you don't plan to ever see again after lunchtime Wednesday. These conversations need to start early, even if the only sexual relationship you're having is with yourself.

In Sex, Love, and Goop so many of the couples didn't even like themselves, or think of themselves as sexual beings. A young lesbian couple, whose problems stemmed from body image issues and sexually repressed religious childhoods, spent a session getting to know their own bodies. Joie and Mike are 62 and 66, they've been together for 12 years. Some days, she'd rather just read a book before going to sleep. At 62, she's still caught up by what her body looks like. I am well over that.

I wondered how all these couples might have been if they'd been receiving quality sex education from a young age. For, at its core, such education is not about sex. It's about relationships, learning to communicate, consent, getting to know ourselves and our partners, about imagination and exploration and a recognition that being physically intimate with someone can be the most wonderful thing, that even something as simple as kissing someone who makes you smile can be the most wonderful thing.

And if it's up to middle-aged women to start these conversations, to be advocates for young people, for our own children even, then count me in Gwyneth. If you've got one of those candles tucked away in your linen cupboard somewhere, let me know.

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