Content Warning: This article contains content relating to sexual violence/sexual assault.
Audrey Kim / Daily Nexus
When I first started watching “Sex Education” last year, I expected it to be a light-hearted show about teenagers dealing with the awkward ups and downs of high school. However, I was instantly pulled in when I saw the show tackling key issues and making every attempt to include a diverse cast of characters. Its second season continued to impress me with its characters’ development and the way it managed to convey messages about serious issues in a unique way. The plotline that stood out the most deals with a character being sexually assaulted and the subsequent trauma she experiences. While “Sex Education” is not the first show to portray sexual assault, it manages to do so in a way that is less about inciting shock in the audience and more about understanding the survivor’s struggle and journey with the experience.
For the majority of the first season, Aimee is portrayed as a bubbly, popular and somewhat naive girl, and this characterization continues into the second season. One day, she excitedly boards a public bus holding a haphazardly made cake for her friend. While holding on to the railing, the bus jostles back and forth, and she accidentally bumps into the man behind her. When she turns around to apologize, she smiles at him before realizing, to her horror, that he is masturbating on her. The upbeat music in the background immediately cuts out as Aimee attempts to back away from the man and loudly exclaims to the other passengers to draw attention to what he is doing.
Aimee expects the sweetness and the happiness she puts into the world to be reciprocated. Instead, her cries are met with the complacency of the passengers, who ignore her and look away. This is one of the most poignant moments in the scene because it is a reality that many women face when they are put in situations like Aimee’s. It’s bad enough that women are forcibly subjected to male perversion simply for being women. It’s only made worse when the witnesses to an incident pretend that nothing is wrong, because this normalizes sexually aggressive behavior and makes women more reluctant to come forward with cases of sexual assault. Their lack of intervention also sends a dangerous message to the aggressor that his behavior is acceptable, thus perpetuating the cycle of toxic masculinity.
The scene is reminiscent of the #MeToo movement, but it’s also just about a group of young girls supporting each other through a tough time and understanding that they are united by their common experiences with sexism.
As Aimee exits the bus in a panic, she notices that her assaulter has left a stain on her favorite pair of jeans — a visual reminder of the horrific incident. At first, she tries to go about her day as if nothing is wrong, but her friend eventually convinces her to report the incident to the police. When she arrives at the police station, she continues to say that it isn’t a big deal, that there was probably just something wrong with the man and that she is truly fine. She seems more concerned with getting the stain out of her jeans, which is a completely normal reaction for a person who has been sexually assaulted. The stain is something that she can control; she believes that removing it will erase the impact of the incident, allowing her to move on.
However, her trauma runs much deeper than the stain, as she finds it difficult to take the bus again. She plays it off to her friends that she just likes walking better, but she continues to see images of the man on the bus haunting her in all parts of her daily life. Her relationship with her boyfriend is also altered as she struggles with being intimate after the incident and is unable to express the reasons behind this change. While it is completely natural for these residual effects to last long after a traumatic incident, Aimee doesn’t understand that. She is shocked and perhaps even ashamed that it’s taking her so much time to recover.
In what is arguably one of the best sequences of scenes in the show, Aimee finally reaches her breaking point and interrupts an argument between two of her friends, crying that she is no longer able to ride the bus. The girls immediately surround her with their support, and each shares their own story about incidents of sexual assault or aggression. Her friends manage to do what the bystanders on the bus failed to do: They validate Aimee’s feelings and make her feel less alone. The scene is reminiscent of the #MeToo movement, but it’s also just about a group of young girls supporting each other through a tough time and understanding that they are united by their common experiences with sexism. The next time Aimee attempts to take the bus, her friends are right there beside her. They help her take an important step toward reclaiming her independence and sense of security that the man on the bus stole from her.
This story arc spoke volumes to me, as I felt it was one of the most accurate portrayals of sexual assault that I have seen on modern TV. Though the incident itself was brief and not particularly graphic, it conveyed the point perhaps more poignantly than if it had been a more visceral scene. Mainly, it struck a chord with me because it’s something that could easily happen to a woman simply for smiling at a man. The other girls coming forward with their own stories also heightened my awareness of the behaviors that can and should be considered sexual harassment and assault.
This decision also highlighted the everyday sexism that women are subjected to simply on the basis of gender. Women are often belittled for being too dramatic when they speak of such incidents. However, they have a right to feel uncomfortable and bring forward their concerns to help women who are going through the same thing and to prevent other women from experiencing similar situations. The show’s decision to depict Aimee’s experience and the experience of the other girls in such a realistic manner is an important step forward in normalizing both the trauma that stems from such experiences as well as the validity of the feelings that come with them.
Surya Swaroop wants other shows and movies to follow the example of “Sex Education.”
