Into my fifth hour today watching I May Destroy You and WOW Michaela Coel is a clever writer

I've still got a couple of episodes to go, so I might be proved wrong, but the show seems quite (how to put it?) crypto-anti-sex-positive. The commentary I've seen has mostly been on how Coel is so candid about trauma, and the plot is so focused on consent, which is all true.

But it's also true that, far from representing hook up culture as fun and liberating, the characters are in fact consistently punished for having casual sex or choosing risky partners (e.g. the drug dealer boyfriend Biagio). Arabella and Kwame in particular.

But also (*spoilers*) Kat, who tries to initiate a threesome with her husband as a way of exploring her bisexuality, and the result is that she 1) get's no threesome, and 2) her husband's infidelity is revealed.

The show has inevitably been compared to Fleabag in all sorts of ways, and quite fairly. This is another way in which the two shows are similar: Fleabag is absolutely not a sex positive show, despite initial appearances. It shows Fleabag using casual sex as a form of self harm.

And the big reveal in season one is that her toxic relationship with sex actually contributed to her best friend's suicide. And then in season two she literally FINDS CATHOLICISM. Where is the sex positivity???

I think a lot of people have interpreted both of these shows as sex positive because they show cool, funny, young women (and men) having lots of graphic sex. But the deeper messages in both are cautionary.

Which shouldn't come as a surprise, given Coel's religious background (explored brilliantly in Chewing Gum).

Also one of the very clever features of the show is that it is clearly feminist in that it is focused so compassionately on sexual trauma, but Coel makes some very stinging criticisms of feminism, and identity politics generally.