Film Review: A Sexplanation

 

Remember that embarrassing “sex talk” you had with your parents way back when? Or didn’t have, because they were too embarrassed to initiate it?

Queer Asian American Alex Liu does too, and now he’s directed and co-written “A Sexplanation,” a 120-minute documentary about the universal search for connection, love and acceptance – and why it’s so difficult for Americans to talk about sex. 

Liu notes that his parents raised him to “just say no,” and also that his grandmother got the ”sex talk” on her wedding night.

So he goes to talk to experts in the field – in San Francisco, at the Kinsey Institute in Indiana, Rutgers in New Jersey, several sex therapists and even a priest – in search of answers. What he found is several answers and lots of awkward moments.

Given the current state of American politics, this film didn’t come a minute too soon. Ultra conservative Americans seem to think sex is about reproduction alone. But the researchers Liu spoke to say they are wrong. Sex is about connection first and foremost.

There’s talk about masturbation (the world’s most universal sexual behavior),

orgasm (“like a seizure in the brain”) and sexuality. Even researchers can’t define sexuality, they say. 

And sex isn’t one size fits all. There are 7.8 billion people and just as many kinds of sexuality.

So (say I) pick your poison and enjoy it. Let go of that shame. And watch this amusing, enlightening film, maybe even with your parents.