Asking your mom about sex can be weird. This Israeli journalist vows to make it anything but for her teenage son. This essay was written and read by Sara Benincasa
JEAN: Adam!
ADAM: Yeah?
JEAN: Do you smoke everyday?
ADAM: Yeah Yeah, most days Mrs., um
JEAN: Oh call me Jean. You know they’ve been doing some interesting studies with cannabis They’re just starting to wake up to its health benefits
ADAM: Yeah?
JEAN: However it has been linked to early onset impotence. I only bring it up because I have a number of clients who were heavy drug users at your age and now they have trouble with sexual performance
ADAM: Sexual performance?
JEAN: They have trouble finishing. Ejaculation Jizz. Spunk. Man milk.
OTIS: MOM JESUS CHRIST
ADAM: Don’t have a problem with that. What makes you think I’ve got a problem with that?
SHIRA: First time he talked to me about sex, about sexuality, when he was 7 or 8...and I didn’t know what to say...I never never never say to him you’re too little to understand. I tried to talk to him in his terms
>>MUSICAL TRANSITION INTO THE INTRO<<
MEREDITH: I’m Meredith Goldstein, advice columnist at The Boston Globe, host of the Love Letters podcast, and lover of television, and this is Because I Watched: A podcast exploring how real people’s stories have been changed, thanks to their favorite Netflix shows and movies.
My regular workday, as an advice columnist, goes something like this: I get up, get a coffee, open my inbox, and read some random person’s confessional letter and then I give them advice. Often I am doing this in my flannel pajamas. It’s a very intimate process.
Because of this – the fact that strangers tell me their life stories and welcome my advice, I sometimes forget that the real world doesn’t work this way. Like, I’ll meet strangers at a party and ask them to tell me about their marriages. Or one time I picked up a guy and wound up asking him all about his ex girlfriend. And I’m pretty sure I convinced him to get back together with her. It was not a successful evening for me. The point is, for me, it’s impulse. I forget that some people’s private lives are private. And this can make things awkward. That’s why I have so much empathy for this next story.
Today we’ll hear from a mother who swore that she’d talk about all the awkward parts of being a human with her son, and a certain show that mirrored her life in an unexpected way.
This story, written and read by Sara Benincasa, is about how the series Sex Education helped one mom discuss sex with her son and how this ultimately helped the two connect.
SARA: It began with a diary.
It was 1992, and Shira was 16 years old, a newly-minted Israeli citizen. She and her parents had emigrated from Soviet Ukraine the previous year. Her parents never spoke to her about dating or love, and when it came to sex, it was as if the concept didn’t even exist. If her parents had their way, Shira would never learn anything about it until she found a nice respectable boy and got married.
But Shira marched to the beat of her own drum. She rejected her parents’ conservative, Old World ways – by nature, she was an opinionated, curious girl. She was creative and outspoken. She loved expressing herself, especially through writing. Like countless girls her age, she fell for a boy from school, and she began writing about him in her diary. She wrote about the romance, the disagreements, the love and the passion , and, yes, the sex. In detail.
One day, she came home from school to find her mother in her bedroom, holding up the diary like a filthy piece of evidence. Shira stared in horror as her mother gripped the blue notebook with disgust - like it was something riddled with poison that must be burned or drowned or shot into the atmosphere, never to be seen again.
Shira’s mother called her a slut.
She yelled, and wept, and forbade Shira from dating or having any more sex before marriage. She called her more names. Shira felt awful – angry and frightened.
But even though her mother had shamed her so viciously, Shira was still the same proud, bold girl. She wished that instead of making her feel guilty, her mother could answer her questions – about the mechanics of sex, or about the emotions that arose, the potential health risks or benefits, or anything. But Shira knew that from now on, the topic was absolutely off limits. There was no chance she was going to stop having sex - and more than ever before, she knew she would have to hide it.
Shira swore off writing in her diary. Even worse, she decided she would never again write anything creative or true or vulnerable, despite her fondness for storytelling and despite her strong suspicion that she might make a good career out of writing. It just seemed too dangerous.
Soon enough, Shira’s mother fell ill. And two years later, she died. Despite their complicated relationship, Shira loved her mother deeply. She mourned the loss. Her grief was compounded by the feeling that this was somehow all her fault. The belief festered in Shira’s wounded heart - like a splinter that wouldn’t come loose.
Like nearly all Israeli teens, she entered the Army after high school. She served two years, and returned to civilian life. Throughout it all, she maintained an on-and-off relationship with that boy from high school, the young love she’d written about in that cursed diary. Then, when she was 26, she missed a dose of her birth control pill, and became pregnant with their son. They married, and called the boy Uri.
Shira adored her son. She promised herself that she would not raise him with shame about sex. She would never make him feel like he had to hide his life from her. She would never call him cruel names for being human, for having wants and needs like anyone else. She was determined to teach him to respect women, and to treat his girlfriends with dignity. She told herself that no topic of conversation would ever be off-limits if Uri wanted her advice, or just to talk through his feelings.
Over time, therapy helped Shira see that her mother’s death was not her fault. She found that as Uri grew, she was able to hold her own love for her mother in her heart, while still choosing over and over again to parent her son in a more modern way. She wasn’t exactly surrounded by other parents who treated their children as equals, and sometimes she felt like she had to invent her own innovative methods - like, for example, telling a child the honest truth instead of making up stories about the stork who brings the baby home to Mommy and Daddy.
But as any parent can tell you, all the high-minded ideals in the world are only truly tested when they’re put into action. Uri was seven the first time he asked Shira a question about sex. She was driving, when her small son piped up, “Mom? What is...sexual arousal?”
Shira was so startled that she slammed on the brakes. After she relaxed, she reminded herself of her resolve to do things differently than her mother. And so, she kept driving, and tentatively and patiently explained the concept to him.
As the years went on and more questions came up, Shira came to believe even more strongly that there was no place for judgmental reactions of any kind. She didn’t like it when she saw other parents laughing at their children’s questions, even silly ones like “Can you make a baby by kissing?” She saw kids get embarrassed and shut down. And she loathed responses like “Oh, you’re too little” or “You just won’t understand until you’re older.”
If questions came up - not just about sex, but about anything at all - she decided it was perfectly fine to tell Uri, “I don’t know, but I am going to find out.” She researched online, talked to friends about their experiences, and found a way to get him the answers he needed.
Eventually, Shira and her husband divorced, but worked out an amicable co-parenting arrangement. He was certainly an accepting, trustworthy parent and a relatively open communicator - perhaps not quite so open as Shira, but that’s admittedly a tall order.) They’d been relatively young when Uri was born, and as her son got older, Shira found herself evolving, too. When her son was around 11, Shira did something rather incredible – she changed her entire career.
For years, Shira worked first as a computer programmer, and then, when she grew tired of working alone, in customer service. But her teenage vision of a writing career kept returning. By now she was a customer service manager - and yet, her old dream wouldn’t leave her alone.
In her mid-thirties, now a single mom, she enrolled in an eight month long creative writing course. Soon, she began pitching stories to magazines. Not only that, Shira kicked off what would become a successful magazine journalism career by tackling a topic that might have horrified her mom: women living without sex. Her editor’s assigned her the piece, and Shira went after the story with fierce determination, knowing that if she did well, more assignments would follow.
Through Facebook, she got in contact with celibate women. She promised to preserve their dignity and, if they wished, their anonymity. Some were celibate by choice for different reasons: lack of sexual desire; dissatisfaction with the dating scene; a history of personal trauma; and other situations. Some just had not been able to find the right sexual partners. Shira was thrilled by the way these strangers opened up to her about such an intimate topic, revealing the private details of their lives to her as readily as they might to a sex therapist. Somehow, they trusted her. And Shira was determined to honor their trust by writing a piece free of shame or blame about anyone’s experience, but would instead simply tell the truth.
So began a new chapter of her life as a writer on sex and relationships. She interviewed men who sought the services of sex workers, and was careful to form her questions so that they wouldn’t feel judgement, scorn, or fear. She interviewed couples who had gone without sex for many years, but remained married. She wrote about women who send nudes to strangers, despite the potential risk to their personal or professional lives. She wrote about families who remain nude in the home, believing it to be a more natural lifestyle.
But while her professional reputation grew, so did her young son. When he was 12, he blocked Shira across social media because he wanted his privacy - and, presumably, to avoid her posts asking if anyone would like to speak to her privately for a story on one sexual topic or another.
Shira believed it was her mission to educate the public about sexuality, and to break down myths and stereotypes through her writing. But how to do so at home with an increasingly mature son who was ever-hungrier for independence? The public school sex education Uri received seemed woefully insufficient to Shira – so mechanical, so devoid of understanding of the nuanced emotional issues surrounding sex - not to mention the exciting and fun aspects.
That’s when both mother and son discovered the Netflix series Sex Education. Uri began watching it first, but when he spoke highly of it to his mother, she decided to watch as well. And it happened just as they were hitting certain roadblocks in how to converse – a series of conflicts mirrored onscreen in the struggle between the two main characters, who love each other and sometimes piss each other off. There’s a scene early in season one in which Dr. Jean Milburn finds her son Otis’s inhaler at home and uses it as an excuse to go to a party he’s at. Of course, she’s really scoping out his friends and the entire scene to make sure he’s safe. Shira never did that, but she identify with Jean’s motives - she struggled with the idea of giving Uri his freedom when she really, really wanted to protect him from harm.
When Shira saw Uri frustrated or stressed about anything, she did her best to wait. Sometimes, when she couldn’t help it, much like Jean, she would come out and ask what was going on. And if she was lucky, he would answer. Or, as Otis often does in the show, Uri would get annoyed. Sometimes very annoyed.
They watched the show separately – probably a good decision, as there are some pretty frank onscreen depictions of sex. But after watching each episode, they’d chat about it – not as if they were analyzing a documentary or discussing a school lesson, but about the stories and the characters who powered those stories. They were both particularly moved and saddened by a scene in which Otis’s best friend, Eric, is assaulted by two homophobes on the way home from seeing a production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. In the show, Eric calls Jean because he knows his best friend’s mother will help him without judgement. Shira does her best to give Uri and his friends their space, but it’s a pretty safe bet they know they could call her if they needed help, too.
Shira felt the show was an entryway to discussions about things like consent, sexual orientation, and contraception - vital conversations that otherwise may have been quite uncomfortable for her son.
For Shira, the show has been a welcome addition to her bold style of parenting . She says Sex Education helped her understand a bit more why it is that sometimes Uri gets embarrassed around her, why he needs his own privacy and space, and why he doesn’t always relish the notion of having a sex and relationships writer for a mother. Shira still occasionally half-jokingly asks him to unblock her on social media, but he always says no. She’s come to realize that no matter how “cool” a parent you may be from the outside, your teen will likely always find you to be a bit awkward or annoying.
Shira thinks more parents should watch Sex Education as she and Uri did – in separate rooms, perhaps at separate times, but with the goal of discussing it in a safe and friendly way. Don’t be uptight. Don’t preach. Don’t be didactic. Don’t speak to your teenagers as if they’re still babies.
And if they’ve made a mistake – had sex without a condom, done something risky that frightens you? She says give them a hug. Then order sushi. Then talk about what happened.
It’s not something her mother would’ve done.
MEREDITH: Thank you for listening to Because I Watched.
If you like what you heard, please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts! It makes it easier for other people to find the show.
Because I Watched is produced by Netflix and Spoke Media. Today’s essay was written by and read by Sara Benincasa. Special thanks to Shira for sharing her story.
This the last episode of the first season of Because I Watched. Before we go, I want to thank not only the people you’ve heard on this show, but also those who helped make it.
Rae Votta is our Executive Producer at Netflix
Alia Tavakolian and Keith Reynolds are Executive Producers at Spoke Media
This show was produced by Juliana Sheldon, Spencer Sommers, Brigham Mosely, Caroline Hamilton, and Carson McCain, with help from Kelly Kolff and Lee George.
This show was mixed by Evan Arnett.
Will Short was our Music Supervisor and Head of Post Production.
I’m Meredith Goldstein. Thank you for listening, and watching.