Zoella and the exam board masturbation row

Just what is the right age to start talking about masturbation?

It very much depends who you ask and this week, it's caused something of a row - involving the hugely popular YouTuber Zoella.

An exam board decided to stop linking to her content for a GCSE media studies course - citing "a whole range of adult-focused content" published on her website.

Some of that content includes a list of the year's best sex toys.

AQA says conversation about this on social media has led to "misunderstandings" about the context of its decision, made about the younger end of GCSE media studies students, to remove "sexual content aimed at adults".

Zoella, whose real name is Zoe Sugg, says her site is aimed at people over 25 - but is worried the AQA thinks 16-year-olds aren't exploring their own bodies.

The exam board says: "Effective Relationships and Sex Education in schools is vitally important and we completely support it.

"All we're saying is that we don't think studying adult-focused lifestyle websites in GCSE Media Studies is the best way to do it."

It's still got a lot of people talking about when is the right time to talk honestly about sex.

Emily Clarkson wants to start a conversation about sex education

"I left school knowing men needed to wear condoms and got erections. I knew absolutely nothing about myself."

You've probably heard of Emily Clarkson's TV presenter dad Jeremy. She has 141K Instagram followers herself - and normally uses her platform to talk about stuff like body positivity.

But this weekend she says she had "a really honest conversation" with her followers about masturbation.

"I just thought back to my own sex education. It never included female pleasure in the narrative at all. Not in biology, not in sex ed, never," she tells Newsbeat.

"I knew I'd have a period and one day, I'd maybe have a baby, that's it."

• I'm the friend who recommends sex toys

Emily says she remembers seeing porn aged 12. "All parents know that boys watch porn, and everyone rolls their eyes and sticks their fingers in their ears."

The problem, she says, is if "girls aren't being taught that they're going to like sex - then what sort of sex are they consenting to as teenagers? Because they're not going in there expecting to enjoy it and I think that's quite distressing."

In an Instagram post, Zoella says female pleasure is nothing to be ashamed about.

"None of this is a judgement on Zoe Sugg, her work, or the suitability of her material for her target audience. As she's pointed out herself, she wasn't aware that children were studying her work for our course and we've never had any kind of relationship with her," the AQA statement says.

"The decision was due to the whole range of adult-focused content that the website has started publishing since we added it for in-depth study in 2017".

The statement continues that "it isn't appropriate for us to ask children as young as 14 to study a website that includes sexual content aimed at adults", and that this view "is shared by teachers and parents".

20-year-old Grace says she grew up watching Zoella and has recently started watching her videos again.

"I thinks it's great she's using her platform to discuss taboo subjects," she says "but it's also difficult because she's grown up with her audience."

"I'm glad she's normalising this, but I'm also like go back and show me your lush collection."

Aged 14, Grace says she "knew more than what my parents thought I knew" but at school sex education was "very basic".

She says the boys and girls were split up for sex ed - with the boys "taught about masturbation and the girls left to talk about periods".

"I think that set the tone for males being socially acceptable to do that kind of stuff. That's where the problem stems from."

Grace also worries about the effect this has had on people her age.

"It leads people to go online to places like Pornhub. This generation is being raised thinking sex should be this rough, nasty thing and it's not."

Amelia Jenkinson teaches 14 year old pupils about consent and masturbation

Amelia Jenkinson runs the School of Sexuality Education - and has recently finished teaching a group of 14 to 18-year-olds about sending unwanted sexual images.

"From year seven, we might get questions from students like, 'What's a vibrator, what's a dildo?'"

It's these questions that pupils "really want answered" and Amelia says "it's important we don't shut that down and create a sense of shame".

Before the most recent lockdown, Amelia's lessons involved pupils making penises and vaginas out of modelling clay.

"When it comes to women and girls it's still seen as shameful and taboo" when in fact, she says, it's "something very natural".

"We often share with young people that lots of animals masturbate. Camels masturbate into the sand -it's nothing to be ashamed of."

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