Tech / Technology

‘How to Have Sex’ review: A brutally honest film about early sexual experiences

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Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut examines consent and sexual pressure, following three teens on an end-of-exams trip. Review.
A teen girl looks deeply serious at a party.

Content warning: This review discusses sexual assault.

Despite its searchable title, How to Have Sex is by no means a tutorial.

It’s more of an intentionally vague concept that pervades Molly Manning Walker’s directorial debut, indicative of a more sinister knowledge gap affecting young people today when it comes to sexual experiences — thanks, inadequate sex education and rampant online misinformation!

One of the most important films of the year, How to Have Sex examines British youth culture, consent, and sexual pressure through three teens on their end-of-exams trip to Crete, Greece. Tacky pool parties, a bucketload of crappy booze, and formative experiences await, some thrilling, some deeply traumatic. With powerful performances from a talented, emotionally generous young cast, superb cinematography from Manning Walker, and a script that actually sounds like teen conversation, How to Have Sex is a triumph of honest storytelling.

It’s by no means an easy watch, nor should it be. But it’s reality.

What is How to Have Sex about?

When you’re finished exams at the end of high school and you’re faced with impending results, the possibilities of the future, and the newfound independence that comes with graduation, what do you do? You grab your two best friends and head to Greece, geared up for a week of too many shots, too many spews, too many trays of cheesy chips, and doing it all again night after night. You’re set to make hilarious, gorgeous memories with your mates, and meet some new faces. And it’s going to be the “best holiday ever”.

Until it’s not.

This is the set-up for Manning Walker’s film, which sees 16-year-old Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce), Em (Enva Lewis), and Skye (Lara Peake) heading to a week of partying in the coastal town of Malia for the British equivalent of America’s Spring Break or Australia’s Schoolies. The horizon is clear: drinking, dancing, and sex. For Tara, she’s yet to have her first sexual experience and she’s feeling under pressure to “catch up” with her friends. When Tara meets the neighbours, their week of partying intensifies and the pressure rises. However, for Tara, her first sexual experiences aren’t respectful, wanted, or consensual, and the film follows her during the week processing what’s happened as the party rages on.

How to Have Sex navigates consent and assault with respect and honesty

How to Have Sex isn’t the first teen film to examine these experiences of sexual assault and consent by any means, but Manning Walker brings a brutal honesty and frankness that sets the film apart. Through superb scripting and performances, the film acknowledges how male violence is normalised or brushed aside, how that “nightmare of a guy” in a social circle known for misconduct is simply allowed to carry on because “I’ve known him since we were little.” And in particular, the film puts emphasis on peer pressure to say nothing — and how blatantly society puts this responsibility on survivors.


You should have said something. These conversations aren’t plucked from obscurity, I’ve heard them myself. You might have heard them.

“You should have said something,” Tara is told. You should have said something. These conversations aren’t plucked from obscurity, I’ve heard them myself. You might have heard them. Manning Walker told the BFI that the idea for the film itself came from a similar trip in her own adolescence, but particularly from speaking to a group of friends years later about their collective experiences, and recognising yeah, that wasn’t OK. The film shows how casually teens can feel pressured into unwanted sexual experiences, even celebrated for doing so. And it’s this level of authenticity in the script that imbues How to Have Sex with uncomfortable accuracy, reminding us that not every teen sexual experience is as wacky as other films and TV shows present them.

Not everyone will feel this way. When I saw the film at the BFI, I was shocked to sit behind two people on the bus who loudly debated the incredulity of Tara’s circumstances, that her friends would never act as they do, that this kind of assault would never happen, and that Tara’s eventual courage to speak up about her experience felt removed from reality. I cannot disagree with these opinions more (and I tried my best to not scream these in public, I’ll tell you what). Toxic friendships that hasten sexual experiences and leave people in vulnerable scenarios exist. Everyday social circumstances that enable predatory behaviour exist.

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Survivors of sexual assault do not always have the words to describe what has happened, nor should others blame them for processing it at their own pace. It’s a shocking reality that many who experience sexual assault may not feel able to label it as such, and misguided perceptions of rape keep this confusion in a deeply dangerous ‘grey area’. 

“The way our culture talks about and defines rape can have significant impact on a person’s ability to recognise when it has happened to them,” Mashable’s Rachel Thompson writes in her book Rough. “The stigma attached to rape and cultural ideas about the consequences of accusing someone of sexual violence also present obstacles in acknowledging the reality of a violation.” 


Toxic friendships that hasten sexual experiences and leave people in vulnerable scenarios exist. Everyday social circumstances that enable predatory behaviour exist.

Thompson points to shocking figures from the End Violence Against Women coalition, writing: “33 percent of people in Britain think it isn’t rape if a woman is pressure into having sex but there’s no physical violence. And one in ten people are ‘unsure or think it’s usually not rape to have sex with a woman who is asleep or too drunk to consent.'” 

It’s this data and this reality that trickles into casual conversations and sexual experiences in How to Have Sex, how the characters talk about and pursue sex without speaking to consent or feelings of pressure in vulnerable circumstances.

How to Have Sex features an impeccable young cast

As the film’s protagonist, McKenna-Bruce takes Tara through a deeply compelling and devastating arc, beginning as a joyful, hilarious girl, the absolute life of the party, and finding herself crushed by her experiences of alienation, peer pressure, and ultimately, surviving assault. Through lengthy close ups that muddle the surrounding sounds, Manning Walker allows McKenna Bruce to move Tara through a mix of emotion — shock, shame, anger, disappointment, fear, suppressed vulnerability — as the party rages on around her. As much as she tries to plunge herself into every dance floor and pool party, Tara appears disconnected from everything: her social group, the ludicrous sexual stunts that define the Malia parties, and especially her own body.

Meanwhile, Tara’s two best friends prove polar opposites, with Peake perfecting peer pressure queen Skye and Lewis bringing sweet, hilarious nuance to Em, who actually recognises something is wrong with her friend. Both Skye and Em fail to adequately handle Tara’s experience, both painfully championing her in their own way instead of checking in properly with her. But what Manning Walker does with the core three is distill an absolute lack of knowledge each of them has about sex, consent, and pressure. They literally do not have the language to talk about their experiences beyond verbal high-fives, and because of this, Tara’s pain goes unacknowledged by her friends until the very last moments. 

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The film proves the best part of any party is before it’s started

If there’s a dominant truth in How to Have Sex it’s that the best part of the party is in the promise of it all. When Tara, Skye, and Em arrive in Malia, they’re giggling, bickering, screaming, and splashing about in the freezing ocean, on top of the world. They’re enamoured with their tiny hotel room, praising “the best view I’ve ever seen in my life”.

Though Manning Walker knows how to shoot the hell out of a party scene, it’s these early moments that I clung to for the rest of the film, the trio embracing their independence with hands in the air, deep-and-meaningfuls in the street while stuffing their faces with chips, and stocking up on supplies in the supermarket with their hard-saved cash. It’s pure, adolescent bliss, on the cusp of adulthood, and it’s truly fun to watch the chemistry of the core cast, imbuing Tara, Em, and Skye with sheer resilience, taking another shot right after a cheeky spew. They’re ridiculous, silly, and hilarious, and completely avoiding thinking about the future. 

It’s this joy and silliness they deserve, but the formative experiences ahead of them will determine the rest of their lives. When the credits rolled of How to Have Sex in my screening, the cinema filled with the enormous, emotive sounds of “Strong” by Fred again… and Romy. I couldn’t move. It was perfect. “You don’t have to be so strong,” Romy sings. And she’s right. But we are. 

If you have experienced sexual abuse, call the free, confidential National Sexual Assault hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or access the 24-7 help online by visiting online.rainn.org.

Tech / Technology

What is No Nut November? Why abstaining from masturbation isn’t healthy.

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What is ‘No Nut November’? The practice of abstaining from masturbating for one month is harmful and the online community surrounding it spread misinformation about sex, and posts that are racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic.
Illustration of two men holding hands and tensing muscles and sweating profusely.

“I got a massive W [win] recently because I managed to refuse sex during a wet dream,” 26-year-old Aaron tells Mashable. “So I’m the No Nut November king, heavy are the balls that wear the crown.” 

Akin to monthly events centred on health-based challenges like Sober October or Movember, No Nut November is where people resist partnered sex and masturbation, with the aim of not ejaculating for 30 days. The challenge has developed into something of an online community, with hundreds of Discord servers and online forums acting as digital pseudo support groups for those taking part, and the No Nut November Reddit community totalling 137,000 members, called “nut comrades.”

While some are there to share memes and have a laugh, others are there to take the challenge very seriously, believing it will better them in some way. And some members have darker intentions. 

Aaron, who works in digital advertising, says he partakes in No Nut November annually, and has done since 2017. He’s an avid Reddit user, which is where he came across the movement, and was led to believe it would come with an array of health benefits. “Better mental health,” “improved will power,” and “being better in bed” are just a few reasons he cites for signing up to the challenge. 


“Frequent ejaculation is good for prostate health and masturbation is a healthy behaviour.”

The No Nut November community centres ideas like these. It has even been suggested by people in support of the challenge that abstinence can increase testosterone. But experts and actual research have presented data that suggests the complete opposite of this. 

Sexologist and author of Sexology: The Basics Silva Neves tells Mashable that there are “literally no benefits to giving up masturbation for a month, or even a week. None. Frequent ejaculation is good for prostate health and masturbation is a healthy behaviour.”

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In fact, masturbation is often used by many for stress relief and tension, and for better sleep. Neves explains stopping masturbation can increase people’s stress and people can have less good quality sleep, which can impact on their work, their relationships, and their overall well-being.

Sex educator and author of All the F*cking Mistakes Gigi Engle adds that giving up masturbation will also likely make you sexually frustrated. “It will make you more irritable if you’re not getting that release. If you stop masturbating, it can also make you more anxious. You don’t need to masturbate for a month if you don’t want to, but there’s no real pros to giving it up,” she explains. 

Want more sex and dating stories in your inbox? Sign up for Mashable’s new weekly After Dark newsletter.

“Turning down sex and giving up wanking is a big thing for a man,” Aaron adds. “There’s just something about resisting it for an entire month and having your boys big you up that feels like a good accomplishment. I need to know I’m able to do it, so I know I’m not addicted.”

There’s an ongoing narrative in the No Nut November movement that these side effects of a lack of masturbation are a “symptom” that men are “hooked” on sexual pleasure. This feeds into the myth of sex addiction, which is not actually recognised by science.


“It does not make you a failure to masturbate. The idea that it does comes from purity culture where masturbation is considered about as ‘dirty’ and ‘sinful.'”

Neves adds that many members of the community will use this misconception as a reason why men should try harder to stop. “But those symptoms are an indication that they become dysregulated because they have lost one central and healthy and harmless way to manage their stress.”

The movement is also underpinned by ideas of “winning” and “losing”. A quick scroll through the No Nut Subreddit reveals disturbing posts of misogyny and intense, public group shaming towards those who share their “failures”. One Reddit user shared that he got an erection over Amy Schumer which received thousands of downvotes (the dislikes of Reddit) and shame-fuelled comments like “man down” and sexist replies like “come on, if you’re going to break NNN, do it for someone hotter than that.”

Engle explains that this language focused on showing your power and “winning” is rooted in misogynistic purity culture. “It does not make you a failure to masturbate. The idea that it does comes from purity culture where masturbation is considered about as ‘dirty’ and ‘sinful’ and that taking part in it makes you weak or perverted. None of this has any scientific basis or evidence.”

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Neves says that associating masturbation with failure can have a severe impact on the person’s mental health. “It can be detrimental to people’s psychological well-being,” he explains. “Having the goal of restraining masturbation for one month as a ‘win’ can increase shame, stress, anxiety, a sense of failure, impacting on self-esteem and they often feel ‘not man enough’ or even ‘broken’ if they don’t succeed. Those who do succeed put themselves on a pedestal looking down on those who don’t.”

Basically, the whole movement is pretty shame-drenched, and at times, just plain cruel. A better challenge, Neves suggests, would be trying not to judge other people’s sex lives for one month.

Unfortunately, sexual health misinformation and toxic masculinity displays are not the only problems with the movement. What began as an online challenge for a bit of fun or an opportunity to shitpost online at best, has been co-opted by the far-right. Racism, misogyny and anti-semitism runs rife on the No Nut November subreddit and other #NNN discussions on social media platforms like Twitter. 

A deeper message propelling No Nut November is an anti-porn and anti-sex worker agenda. Most [cisgender] men use visual aids for sexual stimulation. So, for many, abstaining from masturbation means refraining from pornography use. And rather than take this into their own hands, many in the community have harassed sex workers online, projecting blame. 

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 “Some of those No Nut November forums have been found to be misogynistic, homophobic and antisemitic,” Neves adds. “They incite violence towards pornographers and women who are sexual. There is a nasty underbelly to these movements.”

Back in 2018, for example, porn company xHamster tweeted against No Nut November, albeit playfully, implying that the movement shared misinformation and that porn wasn’t the bad guy. The fallout from this pretty innocent tweet, were violent anti-sex worker replies like “capital punishment for pornographers now” and anti-semitic images suggesting that Jewish people control pornography. Similar messages of sexism and anti semitism remain four years later, both on the #NoNutNovember hashtag on twitter, and in Reddit spaces. 

29-year-old copywriter Sanjai tells Mashable he took part in No Nut November four years ago after hearing some of his favourite podcasts talk about how freeing it was for them. “They talked about it like it was a fitness challenge which is something I’ve always loved doing and liked the feeling of accomplishing. I didn’t really wank that much anyway, not compared to my mates anyway, so I thought ‘why not?'”

Sanjai did come across anonymous forums for the challenge like the Subreddit along with a couple of Ddiscord servers. “I wasn’t there long. It was fucking disturbing to be honest. These men are really weird,” he shares. 

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“[I saw] sexism, racism, conspiracies. You name it. I just wanted to see how long I could go without wanking, man,” he laughs. 

Aaron says he’s aware of this part of the No Nut November community, but doesn’t get involved. “I don’t know anyone personally, that’s part of all of that stuff. It’s nothing to do with abstinence anyway so I don’t know why it’s there but I guess racists will use whatever [they can].”

Neves says a lot of people have received misinformation about masturbation, often accompanied by misinformation about watching porn, and they feel shame about their masturbation behaviours. This is likely what initially attracts so many men to take part in the movement, along with the element of community and support that’s visible from the outside. But when they get there, they’re introduced to alt-right propaganda, misinformation, and violence instead. 

Being exposed to shameful language around sex is also no small enemy. Engle points out that engaging in sex negativity can make people feel like they can’t talk about sex (which creates problems around consent and managing sexual boundaries), make them avoidant in sexual exchanges because they’re worried about their performance (a common cause of erectile dysfunction) and encourage misogynistic ideas. 

If you’ve participated in No Nut November this month or you’ve caught wind of it and were thinking about it for next year, consider that you’re likely to interact with intense shame, sex negativity, discriminatory behaviour and inaccurate sexual health information. You certainly won’t learn anything about who you are as a man, person, or lover of any kind. Close your Reddit tab and have a wank instead.

This story was first published in 2022 and republished in 2023.

Tech / Technology

The best part of ‘Foe’ is how the world is ending

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Garth Davis’ dystopian sci-fi thriller “Foe” shows the end of the world happening slowly but surely, thanks to climate change.
A man rests his head on a woman's shoulder. Both look forlorn.

Garth Davis’ dystopian sci-fi, Foe, has been getting some lukewarm reviews. But there’s one surefire element of the film, based on Iain Reid’s 2018 novel, that actually deserves its moment in the burning, burning sun — and it’s not necessarily the beautiful people feeling all the feelings within it. 

It’s the way the world as we’ve known it is actually ending, often incrementally but surely. And you’d better believe it’s all thanks to climate change.

How is the world ending in Foe?

Set in the year 2065, Foe is a work of speculative fiction that presents an Earth that has become almost but not entirely inhospitable, when fresh water and inhabitable land are scarce. They’re not human rights but instead the most important capital a human being can own. It’s Mad Max without the steampunk or gang violence.

Reid’s novel keeps specifics of the apocalypse off the page, but the film, which Reid and Davis co-wrote, gives details at the top. In this version of America, the government’s Federal Climate Alert System has become useless. Human displacement sits at the centre of the global climate crisis, with nations uprooted by extreme weather events. Air quality has declined and respiratory conditions have risen. People are encouraged to stay indoors to avoid the extreme heat. Folks live off-grid if they can, using solar panels and reusing their waste water, but it’s all a little too late. At the core of the narrative, humanoid AI robot substitutes have replaced human labour in many industries.

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Quietly surviving on a barren, isolated Midwest property is married couple Hen and Junior, played by Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. In this future, inhabitable land is mainly owned by companies or governments and used for farming; as for the rest, inheritance rules, as Junior’s property is fifth generation-owned. Above the dusty, cracked earth of the property, extreme weather events from intense dust storms to extreme heat are an everyday occurrence. Only one tree survives on the land, kept alive by the couple’s waste water. In fact, water is such a precious commodity that we regularly see Junior and Hen drinking cans of beer instead of water first thing in the morning — perhaps beyond mild hydration, beer doesn’t hurt for dealing with the end of the world, either. Though for someone trying to conserve water, Hen sure has some lengthy shower cries.

A woman lies in bed ignoring a man kissing her shoulder.


Credit: Amazon Studios

Foe shows the end of the world in an isolated, domestic silence for two people, but it’s also not quite ended. At every turn, it seems people are still working hard to keep surviving the harsh conditions. However, Junior and Hen’s quiet, rural life changes with the arrival of a man called Terrance (Aaron Pierre), who works for a government-backed company called OuterMore, wielding a plan to evacuate the planet — but notably slowly.

Plans to move people off-planet to a colossal space station near Earth are well underway, moving away from a “climate migration strategy” to simply getting the hell out of here. Terrance mentions that the moon, Mars, and other planets were possibilities built for the “first wave of temporary settlement”, but due to their distance from Earth and the time it will take to go back and forth to build a new colony there, OuterMore has instead built an enormous planet of its own near Earth and readies humans for permanent relocation to space through years of training.

A man wearing a white shirt stands looking pensive in a low-lit room.


Credit: Amazon Studios

People are chosen randomly through a lottery to participate in the first phase of the space program, known as The Installation, a two-year placement on the station to test its readiness for a whole planet to live on — but Terrance notes Junior’s physical strength as a positive attribute for it. Notably, the program isn’t optional for those chosen, instead functioning as a form of “fortunate conscription”. Through discussions of this station around Junior and Hen’s dining room table, Foe lightly takes aim at the billionaire space race and billion-dollar plans to terraform other planets like Mars. “Why should you be spending money up there when you should be fixing things down here?” Hen asks.

Hollywood disaster films love to cut to the chase.

By no means is Foe the only film to predict the end of the world through climate change and eventual human relocation to space — even in recent years, we’ve seen the likes of 2016 sci-fi Passengers sharing similar scenarios. But it’s something films have only started to really hammer home within the last few decades, with a notable rise in the 2000s. Though scientists had been warning of the coming threat for frustrating decades, and weather disaster films had long rampaged through cinemas, filmmakers finally seemed to harness these legitimate fears in the 2000s and 2010s, punishing earthlings’ blatant disregard for the planet with brutal, extreme weather-driven consequences in films like The Day After Tomorrow, Geostorm, 2012, and the Keanu Reeves remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. 

Not simply allowing viruses and sentient machines to destroy the world as we know it, rising sea levels caused by a warming planet finally got their moment in the 2000s, notably with Steven Spielberg’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence — also aligned with Foe in terms of AI human replacements and self-aware robots in the coming apocalypse. In the film, set in the 22nd century, melting Arctic ice causes catastrophic flooding in coastal cities, meaning widespread human displacement, starvation, and death. New York is underwater. The global population plummets and humanoid robots step in for both human labour and companionship because they’re “never hungry and … did not consume resources beyond those of their first manufacture.” 

In the book Hollywood Wants to Kill You, Rick Edwards and Dr. Michael Brooks write of Hollywood’s tendency to speed things up when it comes to planetary death by climate change, to get to the dramatically perilous stuff overnight instead of showing how it happens and how we could have stopped it gradually. The authors particularly skewer the films Geostorm and The Day After Tomorrow, which predict an overnight climate overhaul, a catastrophic tipping point that sees the planet plunged into every kind of extreme weather Hollywood can conjure at once.

“It turns out that governments, both Hollywood-imagined and real-life, aren’t really interested in long-term gains that involve short-term pain,” Edwards and Brooks write. The film 2012 also does this, cutting straight to the chase, but at least the movie consistently reiterates that scientists and world leaders have known what’s coming for years.

But one of the most realistic parts of the potential end of the world in Foe is not that we’ll all inevitably shack up with a smokin’ partner with an endless supply of PBRs. It’s that some things will happen slowly, the decline of the planet’s habitable spaces slowly increasing as CO2 levels skyrocket, climate science misinformation continues, and government inaction prevails. (Some impacts, like amplified Western U.S. wildfires and increased flooding, are happening rapidly.)

Foe isn’t a perfect representation of a future Earth, notably being the experience of two sad yet socioeconomically advantaged white people, citizens who by no means are on the frontline of the climate crisis. And notably, climate doomism itself gets us nowhere — we’re not completely up the bone dry creek yet. Despite how things appear, we haven’t passed a point of no return, and earthlings still have the power to either exacerbate the planet’s problems or seal them in stone.

Instead, Foe is a cautionary tale, a hypothetical endgame. One that’s slow but sure, and without action on climate change, could very well be what the end of the Earth looks like.

How to watch: Foe is now in theaters and will be streaming on Prime Video at a later date.

Tech / Technology

Twitter / X posts with misinformation are no longer eligible for ad revenue sharing

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Twitter / X owner Elon Musk has announced it is disabling ad revenue sharing on posts which are corrected by Community Notes fact checks.
Elon Musk's account on Twitter / X is displayed on a smartphone.

Twitter / X owner and executioner Elon Musk has announced that the platform is disabling ad revenue sharing on posts which are corrected by Community Notes fact checks. The aim is to make sharing incendiary false information on Twitter / X less obviously and immediately profitable.

“Any posts that are corrected by @CommunityNotes become ineligible for revenue share,” Musk wrote on his official account on Sunday. “The idea is to maximize the incentive for accuracy over sensationalism.”

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Implemented earlier this year, Twitter / X’s ad revenue sharing program gives users a cut of the income from ads shown in the replies to their posts. The program is only available to users with a paid X Premium or Verified Organization account, and they must also have at least 500 followers as well as a minimum of 5 million organic impressions in total across all their posts within the last three months.

Unfortunately, it’s widely believed that social media posts are more likely to go viral if they are divisive, polarising, negative, or include misinformation. So if you were aiming to maximise your potential Twitter / X ad revenue earnings prior to today, you were essentially incentivised to make posts which included such content.

Having specific posts ineligible for ad revenue still won’t stop verified accounts from continuing to peddle misinformation, but at least they’ll have one less reason to do so.

Musk also attempted to address the possibility of people abusing Twitter / X’s new policy by using Community Notes’ crowd-sourced content moderation with the intent to restrict an account’s potential ad revenue.

“Worth ‘noting’ that any attempts to weaponize @CommunityNotes to demonetize people will be immediately obvious, because all code and data is open source,” Musk claimed.

It’s unclear exactly whether such data transparency will actually prevent people from applying Community Notes to strategically demonetise accounts, or whether it will simply be apparent when they do.

Interestingly, Musk did not mention any intention to disable ads on posts that have been corrected by Community Notes, making this new policy seem like a win-win for Twitter / X. While the company will no longer explicitly reward users who spread mis- or disinformation, it will presumably still reap the ad revenue rewards of such posts for itself.