Last Saturday, Laura Perrins took to the airwaves to question the British Museum’s step into the world of children’s sex education.
Unwitting parents hoping to give their kids some half term culture risked confronting them with an ‘ancient civilisation sexhibition’ instead. The BM, in its wisdom, is ‘supporting’ schools sex and relationship education with erotic tips from ancient cultures – Greeks to Aztecs – whichever best backs up the on-message, contemporary PHSE themes of:
Pornography and consent (Japan, ancient Egypt and Greece)
Body image (ancient Greece, Rome and Egypt)
LGBT (India, ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome)
Gender and transgender identity (Africa, India and the Aztecs)
This is the programme that BBC Radio 4’s PM chose to interpret as how ‘pots, paintings, and other erotica can help children understand the sex lives of the ancients and better understand themselves’.
Guest Rowan Pelling, former editor of the Erotic Review, enthused about the project. It made sex such a delightful thing and that’s how children should understand it. Fortunately, Laura was there to put her right, in a ‘marvellous, countercultural contribution’.
As one fan wrote: “I can’t remember, in years of listening to the BBC’s output, such a succinct condemnation and exposure of the failure of the post-Christian, sexually amoral society; the threat it poses to the most vulnerable and the sheer misery it causes.”
If you would like to enjoy Laura taking on Rowan Pelling, listen in from 24 minutes into the programme.
