Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You gave me a better sex education than school ever did

Schools are failing their students by not providing them with knowledge of the myriad of sexual encounters that can exist

Prior to watching I May Destroy You, I was unaware of the themes covered in the show but I truly believe after watching the final episodes this week, Michaela Coel has given me a more thorough education on sexual consent and trauma than I’d ever received in school.

I understand that sex education will vary from school to school due to factors such as religious beliefs but I can’t help but think that schools are failing their students by not providing them with knowledge of the myriad of sexual encounters that can exist.

At primary school, my sex education involved watching an animated video, in which we were told that “when a man and a woman love each other, the man inserts his penis into the woman’s vagina”. Then when I attended an all girls’ high school, we were shown how to use a condom. But that was about the extent of it. We were taught that sex is science and logistics, when actually it’s a much more emotional experience.

At the age of 17, my boyfriend at the time raped me. I hadn’t been taught about consent and therefore didn’t have the language to express what had happened until a few years later when I casually mentioned it to a friend and realised how wrong it sounded. I had been taught to believe that when a man and woman love each other, this is what you’re supposed to do, but what I hadn’t understood is that this didn’t mean he was entitled to my body.

In a study conducted by the World Health Organisation on intimate partner violence, they found that out of over 24,000 women from 10 different countries, 6 to 59 per cent reported sexual violence by a partner at some point in their lives. It also concluded that one of the most consistent factors between abusive partners and the victims is a low level of education. This data suggests to me that the sex education being given in schools needs to be re-evaluated to prevent more vulnerable people being exposed to sexual assault.

In episode four of the BBC’s I May Destroy You, Arabella is having consensual sex with Zain when he chooses to remove the condom without her knowledge; the encounter has then evolved into non-consensual sex or, as Arabella refers to it in her speech at a publishing event: “He is a rapist, not rape-adjacent, or a bit rape-y, he’s a rapist.”

Watching this episode was refreshing to me as I had often excused my ex’s abusive behaviour as “not being that bad” because it wasn’t like the strangers that raped women in back alleys that I was so used to seeing on TV.

Kwame’s rape is another example of a sexual partner taking advantage of the original consent and is an unsettling reminder that rape isn’t always a result of a stranger’s random attack. The series divulges into various taboo subjects and Coel is fearless in broaching the complexities behind consent and what rape actually is in comparison to what we are led to believe it to be.

Consent and rape are such paramount elements of sex education and I’m grateful for someone like Michaela Coel to create a show that opens up a broader conversation on sexual assault than I ever had in the classroom.

Hannah MacDonald is an actor and freelance writer from Manchester