I love a good TV sex scene. The Idol had none

In The Idol, where a man’s controlling, abusive and degrading behaviour was described by one character as “kinky-ass shit”, BDSM-styled sexual practices took place in a coercive context and without any discussion of consent. The depiction of this felt like a nefarious, salivating homage to actual misogyny and the subjugation of women. The attempted inversion – if that’s what it was meant to be – in the final episode did not land, nor undo that.

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Because representation of sex in art and pop culture has an educative impact on its audience, this is irresponsible. Giselle Woodley, a sexologist and sex researcher at Edith Cowan University agrees. “There’s often a trickle-down effect when it comes to BDSM, where aspects such as power exchanges, dominant/submissive dynamics and impact play are depicted within both popular culture and mainstream pornography, often without the necessary safety parameters normally upheld by the kink community,” she says.

According to Woodley, it’s the community’s deep respect of boundaries that separates kink from abuse. “Consensual power exchanges and BDSM scenes should be prefaced by open communication and careful negotiations before any sexual activity occurs, including safe words, hard limits (hard boundaries) and soft limits (flexible limitations) as well as frameworks, such as RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink) and the traffic light system.”

Will someone tell that to the steady stream of self-congratulatory straight men with podcasts and social media accounts, who regularly seem to confuse a failure to enquire after a partner’s desires, with being sexually dominant?

Speaking of what women may want, co-creator Tesfaye was reportedly unhappy with the creative direction leaning too much into a “female perspective”. There was a creative overhaul, and now we’re left with this “slice of failed titillation” that has been comprehensively panned.

I’m not saying correlation equals causation, but I can’t help but compare The Idol to other projects with sex scenes that I have found beautiful, sexy, erotic, funny, moving and significant. Des Nudes (‘Naked’), a Brazilian series of vignettes written and directed by women, is a wildly varying and erotic exploration of sexuality and fantasy, solely from “the female perspective”. Good Luck to You Leo Grande, a film directed and directed by women, about an older woman (Emma Thompson) engaging a sex worker (Daryl McCormack), depicts sex that is awkward, hot, moving and preceded by explicit discussions about consent. And Sex Education, Netflix’s series created by a woman, has plenty of sex scenes that are poignant, funny, authentic and, well, educative.

If you want “good” representation of sex on screen – for artistic merit, as well as for lessons about sex and consent – look to these for a better time. It’s not that men can’t write sex – it’s that the same lens we’ve been treated to for so long is finally giving us the ick.

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