Warning: Spoilers ahead for Sex Education season 4.

School is officially out – the final ever season of beloved Netflix show Sex Education has dropped. And boy, has the series taught us important lessons, from the reality behind STI hysteria to coming out and living as a trans person and the long-term impact of sexual assault.

Above all, it reminded us all that our sexuality is an individual journey that we should be enjoying and embracing, and this can be encouraged through open and honest conversation. Just like previous seasons, the new series of Sex Education touches on a multitude of sexual identities and experiences, including the complexities of living and identifying as asexual.

Of course, asexuality has already been touched on briefly in the show’s previous series, with a brief plotline depicting theatre-obsessed student Florence confiding in both Otis and his sex therapist mother Jean (Gillian Anderson) about her disinterest in sex. But Sex Education’s final series went deeper on the story of asexuality, joining the ranks of major shows spotlighting a sexual orientation that has often been described as “invisible”.

We meet a range of new characters after the move to a new school named Cavendish College, after Moordale Secondary is closed down at the end of the third season. One of them is O (played by Northern Irish actor Thaddea Graham), who is initially introduced as Otis’ rival as the on-campus sex therapist. But we eventually get to know O a little better, and the complexities of her would-be antagonist character.

She reveals during a public debate with Otis that she identifies as asexual, as well as the various social pressures and problems that come with that. This included feeling increased pressure to fit in and understand her peers’ sexual exploits and interests so that she could “pretend to be like everyone else”.

“Keeping up that facade was really hard and it is exhausting not being able to be yourself,” she tells Otis during a touching, and very telling, confessional scene.

Getting an insight into these difficulties, and having the ace population seeing themselves represented on screen, are two invaluable ways to improve the visibility of the asexual experience.

Asexual activist Yasmin Benoit consulted with Netflix in the writing of O’s character, in the hopes that this representation would “give young people a head start in discovering themselves, and seeing that asexuality can be different for different people”.

“It’s great to have these experiences validated on popular shows instead of just in corners of the internet,” she tells GLAMOUR. “When I was younger, I didn’t see my personality, my ethnicity or anything else about myself reflected in asexual representation, even if it did exist, which made coming out and feeling part of the community a lot harder.”

As the series unfolds, we venture further into the problems and misunderstandings caused by lack of education, communication and acceptance around asexuality when O admits she didn’t feel she had the language to articulate why physical intimacy made her feel uncomfortable, leading her to ghost or avoid people who were interested in her romantically.

It’s great to have these experiences validated on popular shows instead of just in corners of the internet

Yasmin Benoit

O also opens up about wanting to be a student sex therapist so that she could “pretend to be like everyone else” – highlighting the pressures of cis, heteronormative culture on school children still discovering themselves.

This issue was important for Yasmin to highlight, due to the “pressure not to be seen as oblivious or immature when it comes to understanding sexuality”. “It’s often assumed that asexuality is the result of childishness,” she explains.

"That was why it was important to me to create an asexual character who was knowledgable and sex-positive, because that's how I am in my work.”

In the ONS 2021 census, 28,000 people selected their sexual orientation as asexual. Though this might be a relatively small section of the population, that’s still a lot of people who want, and deserve, to be seen – whose lived experiences need to be on our screens.

O’s story on Sex Education is not the only asexuality-oriented one being told on a major Netflix TV show this year. When coming-of-age favourite Heartstopper returned for its second season last month, it brought with it an ace storyline for Tobie Donovan, who plays Isaac in the show. We see Isaac come to grips with being asexual after visiting an art exhibition by an ace artist and navigating his confusing feelings when a boy develops a crush on him that he doesn’t return.

Heartstopper received praise for spotlighting this experience, one that was personal to Alice Oseman – writer and creator of the Heartstopper graphic novels and the show – who identifies as asexual herself.

She spoke to BBC Newsbeat about how long it took her to understand or learn terms such as asexuality and aromanticism. For this reason, she wanted to bring that representation into the mainstream.

“If I’d seen asexual characters when I was a teenager, I would have understood that part of myself so much earlier, and it would have saved me a lot of anguish, pain and confusion.”

Alice’s novel, Loveless, explores the journey of an asexual protagonist exploring her romantic identity within herself. It’s important, Yasmin says, that characters like O and Isaac are written by aromantic and/or asexual people like Alice and herself: “when representation is there, I want it to be authentic”.

One of the most promising things about this kind of representation is its ability to affect change for future generations. If there’s an asexuality storyline on multiple mainstream TV shows, we can hope that it will be more prominent in children’s sex education, where the foundation of our understanding of sexuality begins.

“Asexuality is often left out of sex education in schools,” Yasmin agrees. “People have a hard time seeing it as being part of wider sexuality. I hope these storylines encourage schools to think about integrating asexuality and aromanticism into their curriculum more.”

She adds that by representing the diversity of the ace community, we can ensure that they feel they belong, “normalising them as a natural part of the human experience”.

“We all experience attraction in different ways,” she explains. “It doesn't need to be medicalised, it doesn't need to be stereotyped, it isn't abnormal and it doesn't mean that you can't live a fulfilling, happy life.”

So as we say goodbye to Sex Education, let us hope this won't be the last we see of pioneering moves for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, and their representation on screen.

“There aren't 'two sides' of sexuality, it's all part of the same thing, asexuality is a part of sexuality,” Yasmin says. “Everyone would benefit from knowing more about all of it."

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