Learning about love and sex is a lifelong adventure.
You’re never truly done.
And who would want to be?
Sex School began as a sex-worker and educator-led platform to make sexuality education accessible, inclusive, and shame-free. Today, it has evolved into a Creative Hub, a global community where filmmakers, intimacy coordinators, educators, and artists collaborate to create films, tutorials, and workshops that speak to real sexual experiences.
The XO Creators Hub is at the heart of this evolution. Each month, audiences get access to new work from diverse creators, from embodied practices and kink education to holistic sexuality and feminist porn storytelling. These aren’t abstract lessons; they’re lived perspectives that expand how we understand sex, gender, and pleasure.
With a focus on representation, justice, and emotional safety, the Hub centers voices often excluded from mainstream narratives: queer, trans, neurodivergent, body-diverse, and BIPOC creators. The goal is to make sexuality education not only informative but also cultural, artistic, and deeply human.
Sex School Founder, CEO & producer Anarella Martínez-Madrid believes in the importance of creating resources that are accurate, trustworthy, and shame-free.
We sat down with Anarella and talked about sex education for adults, mainstream porn, and fatal puritanical beliefs.
How did Sex School come about? Tell us a little bit about the creation of the platform.
We started Sex School because we noticed a lack of another kind of sex education for adults.
Sex Ed should never end.
Your questions about sex & sexuality progress and mature just like you do.
Consequently, learning about sex is a lifelong journey that never comes to an end.
Sex School was created to guide you through cultivating your sexuality as an adult.
Most adults today have received very basic or no sex ed at all in schools.
If we were taught about sex, it was basically just about not contracting STIs and how not to get pregnant.
Our sex education was neither focused on values like desires and pleasure nor about developing a healthy understanding of sex.
While growing into adults we face different situations where we don’t really know what we are doing in terms of needs and boundaries.
We often just follow what society tells us to do, not knowing if it brings us personal, sexual, and romantic fulfillment.
After my personal experience of organizing a Sex Festival in my hometown in Spain, I got the opportunity to meet many porn performers and sex educators that fascinated me.
At the same time, I felt very connected to them and even more free to talk about topics around sex and sexuality.
After the festival, I really wanted to create a platform where sex workers, porn performers, and sex educators come together to talk about sex from a realistic point of view.
Because who knows more about sex than the professionals in the field.
Sex workers and porn performers are completely stigmatized by society.
With Sex School, we want to give them a voice and the value they deserve.
We’re called BERLINABLE because we love the sex-positive vibe of our city and we want to share it with the rest of the world. Why did you choose Berlin as your and Sex School’s home base?
Moving to Berlin has helped me to be true to myself and my sexual desires and practices.
It made me realize how badly my previous sexual education was lacking.
So, I regained many important opportunities joining sex-positive communities and being surrounded by people with the same ethics and values that we’re teaching.
I missed having communities like this to help me grow in a safe space.
I thought, if I miss those things, many other people probably do as well.
That is why I agree that Berlin is the right place for a sex-positive company!
Besides, there are many directors, sex workers, and performers living here.
Sex School offers explicit sex education for adults. What does comprehensive sex ed for adults look like?
Sex School is seeking to help you grow your sexuality with the help of explicit content and lifestyle education.
Sexually explicit content is part of what we offer, but we are expanding the parameters of SEX to include our idea of PLEASURE BEYOND ORGASM.
This idea encapsulates multiple lifestyle components that can be seen in our sex lives.
We navigate sexual space by creating: “how-to” content that combines reality and pleasure through:
– Consent
– Identity
– Communication
– Sexual Health
Sex School’s content breaks down the falsehoods, misconceptions, and most importantly, inaccuracies as a result of mainstream ideas from our environments.
Our content targets an audience seeking to invest in themselves.
For us, what separates Sex School from other sex-positive platforms is, that all your team members are professional sex workers. Do you think sex workers are the better educators?
Absolutely, yes 🙂
What are the positive effects explicit sex education can have on viewers? Are there any negative ones?
The positive effect is that you can see directly what happens in real life.
You can see how it happens.
You get an insight into the various and unique emotions that can be involved in different sexual situations.
It gives you a better picture of what a special act can look like.
Certainly, it can make you less nervous or scared about it when you decide to try it yourself.
Who is your main audience? Who attends the Sex School?
Our main audience is people from 18 until 45, although we encourage everyone to check our films.
We also encourage parents to sign up to Sex School, if they don’t know how to open the conversation around sex with their kids.
It is proven that destigmatizing sexual content helps to increase self-comfort, body positivity, and sexual self-confidence.
What is your explanation why, instead of embracing this positive change, censorship of sexual imagery is on the rise globally?
In my opinion, religion and puritanical beliefs play a big role here!
Most of the censorship exposed to us comes from big cooperations that hold very old-school beliefs about sex and sexuality.
Sex is still seen as a sin, as something shameful.
Here in Berlin in our circles, we are still fighting and trying to understand gender and sexuality as something non-binary.
Now imagine how other people see sex if all they ever heard about it was that it is only for procreation and can only happen within a Christian, monogamous relationship or marriage.
If dating has taught me anything, it’s that when it comes to sexual pleasure and safety, there are huge gaps in knowledge from one person to the next.
Why do you think that is?
This can also be traced back to lacking and varying sex ed.
There is no common plan for sex ed in schools.
Somebody who went to school in Berlin has probably received different sex ed than someone who went to school in Madrid.
Consequently, there is no real, universal conversation about sex, often even in an open-minded group of friends or peers.
Therefore, people search for information online and they find a lot of inaccurate information or think that porn from free tube sides is where they should learn about sex.
We need to be loud and proud and normalise the conversation about sex.
Is it proven, that people who have received adequate sex education are more likely to enjoy the sex they’re having?
I am sure yes.
If you have received proper sex ed, certainly, you will be more confident about what you are doing and the risks you are taking.
You will also be more likely to have the tools you need to communicate your desires and wishes and to understand that your pleasure matters just as much as your safety does.
You can find a lot of questionable sex-related material on the internet.
Do you have any advice on how people can tell the difference between good and bad resources for sexual education?
In terms of visiting porn sites, I always ask people to PAY FOR YOUR PORN!
Also, ask yourselves: What am I watching?
Who made this?
For what purpose was this made for?
Is there diversity in the content I watch?
Are there different gender roles, bodies, races there?
Is any particular group being fetishized?
In terms of Sex Ed, I use Instagram a lot.
In short, I find sex educators, porn performers, sex therapists.
Then I follow them and I question myself if I like their content or not.
