Trekant
When some American friends visited me last year, their first questions were about all that European sexual openness everyone talks about. Where’s the nearest nude beach? Can you just have sex in parks? Why don’t they show actual porn on television? I had to explain that you could zip through the German TV schedule for days and barely see a full frontal anything, and they almost booked a flight home.
I probably should have sent them to Norway instead. Turns out the Norwegians haven’t gotten soft about the naked human body. Or maybe they never were. They’re fine with blood and violence in constant loops on their screens, but actual sexuality doesn’t have to hide the same way it does in Germany. There’s a show called Trekant on Norwegian public television. It’s about fucking. And it’s rated 15+.
The show’s been running a couple of seasons now on NRK3. Three hosts—Johanna, Benjamin, Even—go looking for sexual adventures. They talk to experts about orgasms, vibrators, fetishes. They’ll strap into leather and try stuff that isn’t missionary under the lights of a living room. It sounds kind of boring when I describe it like that, like Bravo magazine for seventh graders.
But here’s the thing. While German media regulators are absolutely obsessed with protecting teenagers from the sight of a naked body—exactly when they’d probably benefit most from learning actual facts instead of getting it all from hardcore pornography—the people behind Trekant have zero hang-ups. They just show you how to do it.
In one episode, Johanna learns how to masturbate under the guidance of a professional. The camera doesn’t cut away. Five minutes of gel and vibrator, totally unflinching. Even drives out to a friend’s house for a casual dick parade. Benjamin, who’s gay, puts on a cop hat half-naked and just riffs while the TV crew laughs. It’s all so fucking normal.
That’s what kills me about it. This casual access to actual sexual information—the kind everyone should probably learn about as a kid, without all the euphemisms and censorship fucking it up. Because yes, German TV is happy to run mediocre crime dramas where murder and rape and drug dealing are just background noise. But show a breast or a penis and the whole country has a breakdown. I thought I could brag to my American friends that Germany was different, that we’d figured something out. I was wrong.