This YouTube Channel is Teaching Malaysian Millennials About Sex

A young Malay woman examines a flesh-tone dildo before a Malay man jumps into the frame holding another dildo like a gun.

“Ah-ha! What are you doing?” Shayne, the man, asks as she lowers the sex toy off screen. “Where’s your condom? You can get pregnant.”

“What’s a condom?” Herinza, the woman, responds.

In a country as conservative as Malaysia, a Malay-language YouTube channel is breaking boundaries with honest—and informative—videos about sex. Ilmu Seks—or “Sex Knowledge”—touches on the kinds of topics that would make most Malaysians blush. In it channel creator Shayne Wyatt—it’s not his real name—discusses condoms, oral sex, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs), all with an informative and non-judgmental tone.

There’s nothing particularly salacious about Ilmu Seks—despite the repeated appearance of a dildo—but Shayne still doubt’s most of his episodes would make it past Malaysia’s notoriously strict censors.

“I want to create a community where we can talk about stuff that is taboo,” Shayne told VICE. “We should protect each other instead of letting our fear of taboos ruin us.”

Shayne knows first-hand the unintended consequences of Malaysia’s prudishness. In 2015, Shayne tried to get treated for what he suspected was an STI. He was basically bleeding from his anus, and the pain was making it difficult to sit or even sleep.

He was a middle-class, otherwise healthy Malay man. He was a straight-A medical student at one of Malaysia’s most-prestigious universities. He was basically the kind of son most parents dream of—but he was in a difficult spot.

Shayne knew it was bad form to lie to you doctor, but he was unsure how they would react to an open discussion about his sexual history. It’s fear like this that keeps many Malaysians from being up-front with doctors about their own lives—sometimes with dangerous results.

One of Shayne’s friends nearly died of dengue fever because he didn’t know that he was HIV positive. Who would think to check in a country where doctors think it’s OK to shame their patients?

Shayne lied about his sexual history at the first three hospitals he visited. By the fourth, the country’s main HIV treatment center, he decided to open up to the doctor. But once he explained his situation to the doctor, she refused to treat him. The doctor told him to go somewhere else for treatment.

“She even had the audacity to ask about my religion and [then] refused to treat me on the basis that I was a Muslim,” Shayne told VICE.

Welcome to Malaysia, a country where a rape victim was recently told to marry her rapist and a rapper just got arrested for offending Islam over a video where dancers wore dog masks in honor of the Chinese New Year—it’s the year of the dog. It’s a country where, behind the gleaming skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur and other outward symbols of modernism lies an extremely conservative culture hell-bent on policing anything “offensive” out of existence.

It’s a place where Islamist lawmakers petitioned to get the hit song “ Despacito” banned from the airwaves because they figured out it was sexual—after translating the lyrics from Spanish. It’s a country where HIV/AIDS awareness campaigners like Ismail Baba, an executive committee member of the Malaysia AIDS Council, was branded a heretic by religious hardliners.

“Sex is a taboo subject to discuss in Malaysia,” Ismail told VICE.

Ismail, a member of an organization trying to curb HIV infection rates, was once told that he couldn’t even mention condoms during a presentation to a bunch of high school students. This officially-sanctioned prudishness means that sex education is basically non-existent in schools.

Young Malaysians are walking around with little-to-no knowledge of what really happens when someone has sex. A study by the condom-maker Durex in 2016 found that one out of five Malaysians thought that STDs could be transmitted by mosquitoes. One out of 10 women thought douching their vaginas after sex was a way to prevent pregnancy.

The internet alone can’t fill this gap of knowledge, Shayne told VICE. Even someone who was as sexually awake as him struggled to find the right place to be treated for an STI. He eventually found an understanding doctor at his school who fixed him up with some pills and a quick shot. But what if he wasn’t a med student? Where can someone go in Malaysia to find government-subsidized healthcare for issues like an STI?

“Why isn’t this general knowledge?” Shayne said.

There are plenty of sites online offering interested Malaysians the kinds of information they won’t learn in school. But not in the Malay language. And not by a fellow Muslim.

Sure, there’s Popek Popek, but that’s hosted by older, non-Muslim Malays. The only way to reduce the stigma around talking about sex is to create a video series where a young Malay man who looks like them talks about sex in their own language.

“If Malay people, especially those in rural areas, see a Malay face talking about this, I think I can convince them to start a conversation,” Shayne said.

But it’s about more than just speaking Bahasa Melayu. Shayne and his co-founders Reen and Mussy—as well as the channels new trans host Misha—talk about sex in an informal language their peers understand. They don’t use stiff, uptight words for a penis (“zakar”) or vagina (“faraj”), choosing instead to use the words “batang” (for “penis”) and “lubang” (for “vagina”).

Illustrations of sex organs are shown in their entirety. There’s no censoring or sugarcoating what’s going on when two people are have sex. The only thing off-limits is racist or discriminatory language, Shayne told VICE.

This kind of content is what’s needed to teach Malaysian Millennials about sex, explained Noel Solomon Punniah, a program manager at the PT Foundation—the country’s largest sexual health NGO. This information needs to be on social media, engaging, and in Bahasa Melayu.

“You have to give Malaysian youth [enough] credit to process and understand information,” Noel told VICE. “When Ilmus Seks discusses things openly, the younger generation appreciates that they are treated as people who can think for themselves. You can’t take away their independence and right to make their own decisions. You can just give them information to make sure they are able to do so responsibly.”

PT Foundation is now working with Ilmu Seks to create a video encouraging Millennials to visit their local Community Healthcare Clinic (CHCC) and get tested. And Shayne and crew plan to spread out into new ground with videos about sex toys, gender fluidity, and masturbation. They also want to broach social issues like slut shaming and baby dumping in future videos.

By the end of the dildo and condoms video (it’s really about teen pregnancy), viewers learn how to use a condom and which birth control options are most effective. After the hosts explain how a condom works, they show how to put one on.

“Now you’re ready to play,” says Shayne.