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INTRODUCTION

Hello there dear reader!

Thanks for picking up this book. I’m Hannah Witton and I’m a writer, vlogger and online sex educator. Sex and relationships education is something that I’ve been interested in for a while; some might say I have an unhealthy obsession with it. I argued with my RE teacher at school about it; I studied history at university but still managed to take all the sex modules; I wrote my dissertation on Victorian sex manuals; my whole YouTube channel is about sex and relationships, and I co-created a book club podcast where each month we read and discuss a book about sex. Does that make me obsessed? Maybe.

Let’s start from the beginning. I grew up in a very open household when it came to the sex stuff. So much so that my family developed a bit of a reputation amongst my school friends. When I was about 13 years old, I invited a friend of mine over to my house after school for dinner. Another friend, who had previously had the privilege of dining at the Witton household, forewarned this newcomer, saying, ‘Careful, they like to talk about vaginas and periods at the dinner table!’ So it seems that talking about taboo subjects is something that I was raised by my parents to do.

In school and at home I had a decent sex education. I didn’t think I was dying when I got my period for the first time, I knew how not to get pregnant (and how to get pregnant when the time finally arises – Grandma please stop asking), I knew that gay people were normal, and how to say ‘no’ if I wanted to.

‘Miss? When are you going to teach us about contraception?’ Valid question, I think.

But she said that she couldn’t teach it because it wasn’t in line with the religious teachings of the school. I couldn’t get my head around this. Yes, I knew that some religions had rules against certain things, but I never thought it would make a difference to my education. The argument got a little heated, until I basically yelled, ‘Look Miss, we’re all 16/17, we’re all having sex, so you could at least teach us how to do it safely!’ The answer was still no. (Also, I know that not all 16/17 year olds are having sex, and that’s completely fine, I was just trying to make a dramatic point. ) But that was the first time I realised that something was wrong, and that we, as young people, weren’t getting all the information we needed. And even though it was years later that I started making SRE (sex and relationships education) videos on YouTube, I feel like that experience must have stuck with me.