4 Sexual Healing Series to Stream

Heads up: This post mentions sexual assault.

1. Unorthodox
Unorthodox is a miniseries about a 19-year-old woman named Esty who leaves her ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York and moves to Berlin.

Flashbacks show how Esty has experienced sexual trauma, and how her religious community perpetuated this trauma and neglected her suffering. The way this series portrays the link between religious beliefs/practices and sexism/sexual oppression hits home for me because of my own experiences with religion and sexuality. 

Where to watch: Netflix

2. My Unorthodox Life
Not to be confused with Unorthodox, My Unorthodox Life is an American reality show about a family that has left their ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York. While it does have some of the trashiness you might expect from reality TV, it also shows (what I see as) a genuine process of reclaiming sexuality after many years of oppression.

Julia, who was the first of her family to leave her religious community (most of her children have since followed), is very open about her journey of reclaiming her sexuality and rejecting the culture of enforced modesty. Over the course of the show, her adult children each find their own paths of sexual exploration and empowerment. One is queer, one is single for the first time after ending a hetero marriage she was in since she was a teenager, and one is newly stepping away from a vow of abstinence and navigating a lack of sexual experience. I find that I relate to each of them at different times. It is refreshing to see so many different approaches to sexual empowerment represented!

Where to watch: Netflix

3. Feel Good
Feel Good is both funny and poignant. The show centers on a queer couple—a comedian and a school teacher. It follows* the highs and lows of their relationship, including struggles with coming out of the closet, as well as some very fun and playful sex. The series gets heavier as past trauma begins to surface. One of my favorite things about this show is its portrayal of how confusing it can be to try to make sense of past trauma, and how it can be hard to figure out when and how trauma is affecting you.

Where to watch: Netflix

*Not to be confused with It Follows, the terrifying (and heteronormative) 2014 horror movie that still haunts me, which is also available on Netflix.

4. I May Destroy You
This one is intense, but it’s also my favorite. It starts with the aftermath of the main character being raped by a stranger, following her attempts at making sense of what happened and healing from the trauma of it. Later on, the show explores some lesser talked about (but in reality, probably more common than stranger rape) consent issues, like sexual coercion, queer sexual assault, and stealthing (which is when someone has sex without a condom, when their partner has only consented to sex with a condom).

One thing I love about this show is that it explores some unhealthy ways of trying to reclaim power after sexual assault. This is a more nuanced view than I usually see in the media and I really appreciate that.

Also, I found the end of the show very powerful. I highly recommend it!

Where to watch: HBO Max