The Independent: The Family Sex Show, an educational theatre production aimed at children, has been axed after the venue said its staff had been subjected to “unprecedented threats and abuse”.
The show, which covers themes such as gender, consent, pleasure, queerness and masturbation, was due to open at Bristol’s Tobacco Factory in May.
4 comments:
Listen, I will never ever condone any kind of threats or abuse of any kind. I think that it is truly terrible that this ever happened to the staff at all. I understand what they were trying to do with this show. I know that they were trying to make sex ed normalized and more accessibly to children but I will say two things that I feel. The first problem I see is just in the title. This is aimed at kids and their parents to come take them and it is just a bad bad title. “The Family Sex Show” sounds like an in universe play about the Lannisters in Game of Thrones. The second problem is the audience portion. I hope to have children one day and I will definitely make sure that they have a comprehensive sex education but I would never want to sit in an audience with my kid while actors are explaining masturbation on a stage. I think this entire situation is extremely upsetting, especially the blowback on the staff.
While I can see where the show was coming for, I found it a little disappointing that it was canceled because the south was subjected to threats and abuse. However I believe that more and more staff are standing up to these kinds of mouth treatments, and this is actually some thing that I did my class on for my production planning assignment were made a mock up class about backstage safety and how to combat against abuse and exploitation basically. And I find it really important that those backstage and those on staff know that they have the power and they have the right to be treated as equally as everyone else including the actors and directors and whoever else might be traditionally seen as higher up in the totem pole, I truly wonder though knowing how hard it is to have a show canceled after all the money has come in after all this chaos has been done after all the investments, what was the degree of these threats and abuse that caused the venue to completely cut ties and lose that money. It’s just something that I find really interesting.
While I can understand people being wary of sexual content aimed towards children, this seems to me like a case of people trying to silence discussion of queerness and sex outside of an abstinence-only viewpoint; it reminds me of the U.S. issue of sex ed in schools. The title of the show catches a person off-guard, but that seems more like a marketing move than an indicator of wrongdoing. The fact that people were so incensed over the production before it even opened is what makes me think this was not simply a case of people wanting to protect children. Unfortunately as important topics like grooming become more widely known, there are people who twist the meaning of these words to suit their goals. Especially considering the show was going to discuss consent and the right to bodily autonomy, it is unfortunate to me that this production had to be canceled out of the fear of violence.
The whole excuse of keeping sexual content away from children that has been thrown around in recent months by parents and so-called "advocates" is - for the most part - completely and utterly fake, and just a convenient way to disguise an intrinsic hatred or dismissal for anything that doesn't align with their beliefs or orientations. Similarly to the censorship of LGTBQ+ and BIPOC books, plays, and other media that is going on around the country, as well as the introduction of public policy like the "Don't Say Gay" bill in Florida, people are simply trying to disguise their reprehensible beliefs under the guise of the much more noble goal of trying to "protect" children. When that doesn't seem to work, the next thing they do is threaten bodily harm, which seems to be what happened here. I don't understand why you would ever feel motivated to threaten somebody like that, just because your opinions differ.
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