‘Why porn is a bad educator’
Controversy over a sex toy in her bedside drawer prompts a Real Housewives star to investigate why Kiwis are so prudish. Report by Hannah Martin.
Five perfectly-manicured middle-aged women sit around a glass dining table in a Parnell living room, sipping Champagne and giggling like schoolgirls. In lieu of platters of nibbles and hors d’oeuvres there are delights of a different kind. Dr Seuss-ian sex toys are passed across the table: fuschia pink or pastel purple, pretty and compact, perfect for the cosmopolitan Kiwi woman.
One of these ladies is former Real
Housewives of Auckland star Julia Sloane. This is her party. But this gathering gives new meaning to ‘‘reality show’’. The cameras are rolling for a feature-length documentary Sloane is releasing in May, Let’s Talk About Sex.
Directed by award-winning filmmaker and former field producer for
RHOAKL, Lisa Burd, the show investigates how New Zealanders’ reluctance to discuss sex, in schools or with our children and friends, is damaging our ability to be intimate; how prudishness is creating barriers to accepting different gender identities and sexualities.
Speaking from an airy Mt Eden loft, Sloane says she knows some may wonder why she is involved in this.
Sloane was responsible for RHOAKL’s most controversial moment when she called English-Jamaican co-star Michelle Blanchard a ‘‘boat n .... ’’ while on a luxury yacht.
‘‘That is something in the past. I made a mistake, and apologised and that was accepted,’’ she tells the
Sunday Star-Times. ‘‘That shouldn’t define my life, I’m much more than that.’’
Indeed. Raw footage from the upcoming documentary shows Sloane being caned by a dominatrix in a dungeon, serpentining and shimmying around a pole, meeting a gigolo, a tantric sex therapist and a trans woman, going behind the scenes at a sex shop, and talking with strangers on the street about their own relationships.
Sceptics might say this is shameless titillation. Sloane would say that attitude is precisely where New Zealand has been going wrong for many years.
The discussions are at times confronting – and that’s why she did it.
‘‘People are so quick to judge, and a lot of that judgement comes from a lack of education and understanding.’’
Sloane is back home in Wellington’s Titahi Bay for her parents’ 50th wedding anniversary.
The morning after the party, Sloane and her parents, Peter and Lynn McGregor, gather around the dining room table to discuss their own relationships, raising children and their traditional views.
Her parents joked Sloane would not see her 50th anniversary, because unlike them, she was not married by 18.
They recalled the shockwaves that went through their sleepy Porirua community when the woman next door ran off with another woman.
Sloane, who describes her upbringing as sheltered, listens as her father says he’s not sympathetic toward homosexuals and would be dead against children ‘‘getting into it’’. Her mother doesn’t agree with homosexuality being ‘‘flaunted’’ at parades.
Sloane says she knew her parents were conservative, due in large part to their religious upbringings, but says it was surprising to see that ‘‘in some places, things do stand still’’.
In an early episode of RHOAKL, Sloane’s fellow cast members found a sex toy in her bedside drawer. Sloane was unashamed, but the discovery caused a stir, provoking questions about whether her sex life with husband investment banker Michael Lorimer was ‘‘boring’’.
Sloane was ‘‘astounded’’ by the cast’s reactions. ‘‘It surprised me that people feel so uncomfortable talking about sex, and anything sexual.’’
From there Sloane, a former model, athlete and bonds broker, set out to learn what New Zealanders think about sex and whether ‘‘people really are that prudish, or if they are just ignorant’’.
New Zealand leads the world in terms of social reform in the decriminalisation of prostitution and in legalising gay marriage, but there are still ‘‘huge stigmas’’ about simply talking about sex and sexual diversity, she says.
Mary Brennan, aka Mistress Mariah, has been a madam for 22 years, a dominatrix for 12, and owner of the Funhouse dungeon and escort agency for about as long.
With tight brown curls and rectangular thin black glasses, Mistress Mariah isn’t how you’d picture a dominatrix.
But it’s ‘‘her calling’’: one that lets her open people’s minds about sex, intimacy, touch and closeness. For her, sex work is about human rights.
Many clients have told her the most honest relationship you can have in life is with your madam; even then, many fight shame and fear before being able
to openly talk about about their desires.
Our reluctance to talk about sex is an age-old thing, she tells the Sunday StarTimes.
Open-minded people won’t explore because so many people have closed minds.
Brennan says she often deals with people who have never visited an escort service or dominatrix before – ‘‘clients who say, ‘you’re going to think I’m really strange’.’’
‘‘They’re terrified they’re the only person in the world who wants what they want, and terrified people will judge them.’’
Stigmas around sex and sexuality, particularly about the sex industry, are only just starting to break down, says Brennan, who says that if her appearance on screen helps even just a couple of people, that’s a win.
Amother of two teenagers, Dunbar and Ella, Sloane is mindful of the role sex education plays in shaping our knowledge and tolerance of sexual diversity.
The sex-ed she received as a young person was not memorable – ‘‘I was given a book with cartoon sperm running across the page’’ – an experience shared by many others, who say the teaching focused on biology, reproduction, contraception and disease. There was no emphasis on consent, emotions or pleasure.
Associate professor Dr Katie Fitzpatrick, at Auckland University Faculty of Education, is currently researching health and sexual education in New Zealand schools.
‘‘New Zealand is interesting in that we have progressive policies – same-sex marriage, our abortion laws (relative to other places), access to contraception – and our sexuality education policy is really progressive, but in our social attitudes there is a reluctance to talk about sexuality and sex.’’
It is compulsory for New Zealand schools to teach sex-ed until the end of Year 10, but parents have the right to withdraw their child from classes.
A 2013 health select committee report found sexuality education programmes in New Zealand were fragmented and uneven, and recommended a new, consistent and evidence-based programme.
In 2016 (in response to alarm at the so-called Roastbusters boys bragging of having sex with drunk and comatose girls) schools were advised to address issues of consent and coercion in their sexuality lessons – the first time the guide had been revised since 2002.
Fitzpatrick says New Zealand has one of the more progressive sexuality education programmes in the world, in terms of what teachers are allowed to teach, but that ‘‘hasn’t translated’’. Some schools have ‘‘great’’ programmes, others have nothing at all. A perceived fear of a backlash in the community can also hinder what a teacher or school is willing to cover, Fitzpatrick says.
‘‘Sex is still connected for many people with shame, secrecy, privacy and risk – it’s too scary and exposing for some people.’’
Where do ‘‘curious’’ young minds turn? Porn. Website Pornhub was visited 28.5 billion times in 2017, and New Zealand ranks fifth in the world for visits per capita.
Porn is a bad educator, Sloane says – though she questions whether porn is the cause of the problem, or the response. Whether it is simply that young people have nowhere else to turn.
She doesn’t profess to be an expert on sex and sexuality, and she’s not gasping for airtime. ‘‘I’m not a journalist, I’m not an investigative reporter … but I’m nosy and inquisitive and I can talk about sex.’’
She hopes viewers will come away feeling empowered, more tolerant, understanding and accepting.
More than anything, Sloane hopes the documentary will get people talking. About sex.
❚ Let’s Talk About Sex premieres at the Doc Edge Film Festival at the Roxy Cinema in Wellington on May 16.