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Sex

'The Great British Sex Survey' Should Have Been About More than Men Who Fuck Balloons

Channel 4's new show could have been an illuminating look at how sex lives were changing, but instead it focused mainly on men.

In 1993, three weeks after a tiny political party called UKIP was founded, Eurotrash aired on Channel 4 for the very first time. The show helped teach a generation about the stuff wobbly Belgians and Dutch bus drivers do in their DIY dungeons. Back then it seemed like Europe was a wild land of new sexual frontiers to which us drab morning-breathy Brits could only voyeuristically gaze, with longing and boners.

Over two decades later, Channel 4's The Great British Sex Survey attempts to show that the EU has secured free movement of kink and Britain is now also a land of fetishists. Like a lot of the titillating sex shows that seem to populate Channel 4's late night line-up, The Great British Sex Survey claims to be based on proper research, in this case a large-sample poll that YouGov and Channel 4 commissioned to discover how the nation's sex lives are changing.

In the hands of TV producers, though, this research is diluted. The show counts down our most popular fetishes, running the gamut from cross-dressing to threesomes, to sexy selfies, humiliation and feet. Squished between statistics and descriptions are video pieces of men - and it's almost all men - playing out their fetishes. There's Georgiou, who pays a dominatrix to boss him about and humiliate him for a day; Maurice, who enjoys bulking up then posing in women's lingerie; and Phil, who spent $3,500 on a Live Doll named Trish so he can take her into his local town in Jersey to buy her clothes for their photoshoots. Phil says, "It's no different from a vibrator," as we're shown footage of him down the pub with his mates, flinging his arm around his companion with a perma-parted mouth. The show tries to carry weight thanks to two experts popping in throughout. Belgian sexologist Goedele Liekens extols the joy of watersports, while a couple of pink and blue animated Morph-like figures are overlaid onto a bathtub where they take it in turns to piss on each other. Pychotherapist Philippa Perry, who can see the charm in Rob, a man who has bought an all-in-one latex balloon suit that'd put Daniel Lismore to shame. As he squidges and squeaks across his front lawn like a Deathstar Tellytubby, Philippa eagerly says: "He's discovered what turns him on and he's got the courage to follow that and that's brilliant!" Unlike the show's baking-based near-namesake, nearly all of the show's interviewees were white middle class able-bodied men who seemingly have the time, space and money to enjoy their fetishes. There's no spare bedroom tax on the Red Room containing a drill-powered dildo and a vacuum-sealable latex bed, no question of how Phil finds the money for upkeep on his Live Doll. The show - and perhaps the survey - chose to ignore certain fetishes. Maybe anal sex is too de rigeuer (50% of men and 40% of women aged 25-34 have tried it, according to another study). Nor does the show look at the actual human beings who so frequently become the object of fetishes and fantasies – queer people, BME people, disabled people (407,000 people reported being turned on by amputees, the voiceover told us, before moving on) and the working class (note the rise in chav porn) are frequent items on drop-down menus of our bookmarked porn sites. Instead, the show details seemingly extraneous and rare fetishes like looning, where a man rubs himself on a balloon and speaks about how he likes to leave them in train carriages and comes in his pants when they suddenly pop, or sploshing, where another man sits in a bath, pours oatmeal on himself and speaks of how comforted it makes him feel. The show claims it's going to talk about all British Sex, then whittles it down to just fetishes, and then further reduces it to the pleasures felt by the precise section of society which sees its desires most frequently provided for by the mainstream representation of sex. Perhaps fetish really is the preserve of a specific demographic – if so, that's worth analysis in itself. If not, why didn't we see more diverse groups enjoying these weird kinks? It's easy to say that none of this matters, because this is just another bit of sex stuff from Channel 4. But sex is changing in unusual ways and we need to know about it. A recent survey found four in 10 teenage schoolgirls feel pressured into having sex or into engaging in other sexual activity. The same amount of boys aged 14-17 are regularly watching porn. And like a torn dental dam, sex education is patchy and unfit for purpose. It's not compulsory in faith schools and over 800 Academy Trusts and even in schools where students do get taught, the curriculum only has no mention of sexual consent, the word "internet" and no reference to 'porn'. While we've historically been given such a pittance by official channels, the responsibility for shows like The Great British Sex Survey to pick up the slack rises. For all its salaciousness, it could have usefully filled in some of those gaps. To its credit, it mentioned consent and agreement and mutual attraction and went to great efforts to show that there are myriad ways your average Joe can get turned on and that that's ok. But it spent so much time on a tiny proportion of fetishists who partake in extreme acts that you really would've learned more watching YouTube videos of Eurotrash. More mucky stuff on VICE: Why is the UK so Obsessed with Chav Porn How Sneeze Fetishists Found Acceptance Thanks to the Internet We Asked People About the Times Condoms Have Broken On Them During\ Sex