At 36 years old, as a gay man, I’ve still never really had a proper sex education. I like to think by now I have a vague idea of what I’m doing but the only ‘ sex education ’ available at all growing up was from Queer as Folk when Stuart famously rimmed 15-year-old Nathan in his penthouse apartment. Not exactly the greatest example of sex to look up to but at least I had that, I suppose.
Before Queer As Folk was released in 1999 there was literally nothing. Still, the LGBTQ+ community is used to teaching itself the ways of the world – be it sex, relationships, coming out to family or learning our own history, we’ve leant on each other for guidance when the education system failed us. Thankfully, LGBTQ+ teenagers today have endless resources for support.
Better than that, so many can safely come out as teenagers and don’t need to secretly scour the internet for life advice – they can just ask for it. And they have Heartstopper , Netflix’s LGBTQ+ young adult series based on the graphic novels by Alice Oseman, which has done more for the community, – young and old – than any series before it. And in just two years since its release.
At this point it’s redundant to reflect on how Heartstopper reminds those of us of a certain age in LGBTQ+ community of things we never had; it’s been said so many times before. When the first season came out in 2021, so many of us wept thinking about how different our lives could have been to see characters like Nick and Ch.