It's a rainy Wednesday evening in Melbourne and 10 young women and one man are packed into a trendy little gallery space, all of them staring up at the massive diagram of a clitoris being projected onto the wall.
The group has assembled for an adult sex education class called 'Pleasure 101', run by Vanessa Muradian, a charismatic sexologist and yoga teacher who refers to women's genitals using the Sanskrit word "yoni".
"1998," she says with a grin. "1998. Is it any wonder older women say they're having the best sex of their lives?"
Shrieks of laughter fill the room before Ms Muradian continues on her hour-long "introduction" to women's pleasure, which she says is designed to "empower people to feel their best".
There's a lot to get through, so Ms Muradian bounces quickly between topics: basic anatomy, dropping the notion of "goal-oriented" sex, the importance of mutual respect, communicating with confidence, sex as part of "wellness" and other thorny issues like labiaplasty, pornography and gender inequality.
"It's about educating people on what their bodies are capable of, and them understanding that they're worthy enough to receive pleasure," she says.
But Ms Muradian isn't the only one offering sex ed classes for adults. In the past few years a growing number of initiatives in Australia and overseas have sprung up to counter the ongoing impact of the lack of comprehensive sex education being delivered in schools, with many focusing on demystifying women's sexual pleasure.
Such programs are popping up online, too. Last July the University of Oregon Health Centre launched SexPositive, a comprehensive sex ed app that provides "judgement-free" advice on sexual health, consent and sexuality, while a new website called OMGYes aims to collapse the taboo of discussing women's sexual pleasure by tutoring paying customers in research-based techniques and insights.
"There's definitely a big push and it's been very paramount in the last five years," says Cyndi Darnell, a Melbourne-based sex and relationships therapist and sex educator.
"Sex education classes for adults have been around in Australia for some time ... but what's different now is that it's out in the open, it's not hidden in some kind of backwater or glossed over as something that it's not.
"Slowly, the taboos around sex are starting to break down."
Ms Darnell, who provides consultations, workshops and online tutorials, says her clients and class participants often tell her how horrified they are that they never received the kind of information she shares when they were in high school.
"Why is this information is actively withheld from us?" Ms Darnell demands.
"There's absolutely no reason for it apart from morality and shame, and that needs to stop."
Sex ed: Anatomy and abstinence with a bonus side of shame
Of course, for many Australians, the term 'sex education' triggers flashbacks to high school classrooms filled with blushing, squirming teenagers, maybe even a giraffe in a dark van.
Certainly, this writer's sex education consisted mostly of anatomy and abstinence, with a bonus side of shame.
We might have been experts at fitting bananas with condoms, and we definitely had the lingo down pat - you never know when you'll need to wheel out the name of an exotic-sounding body part such as the elusive 'vas deferens', after all.
But there was no discussion of the positive reasons people have sex and very little about respectful relationships and the importance of consent - forget matters like sexuality and gender.
It was Coach Carr, from the film Mean Girls, to a T: "Don't have sex, because you will get pregnant, and die."
Even today, many young Australians feel they are receiving inadequate sex education.
While some participants in the fifth National Survey of Secondary Students and Sexual Health spoke positively about the quality of their sex education, several complained their lessons excluded conversations about consent, pleasure and sexuality.
"It was all about biology and contraception. Nothing about sex for pleasure or LGBT+," reported one student.
A 2015 survey of more than 1,000 Australian young women by the Equality Rights Alliance's Young Women's Advisory Group identified similar concerns.
Almost two thirds of respondents said they were not taught about consent in their sex education at school, while only 37 per cent agreed sex education had made them feel confident in their understanding of relationships. Meanwhile, a staggering 90 per cent reported not being taught about LGBTIQ+ relationships and homophobia.
"I found that sex education covered mainly periods and pregnancy and discussed very little about the actual act of sex and what consent is and the fact it should be pleasurable for girls as well," said one respondent.
Reported another: "I would very much like it if there was a more open discussion surrounding the positives of sex and the emotions around it."
A 'sex positive' approach
It's the positive aspects of sex and sexuality that Louise Bourchier, a New Zealand-based sex educator and sexual health lecturer, aims to highlight in her adult sex ed classes.
While her workshops on pleasure physiology and the female orgasm tend to be the most popular among all genders, Ms Bourchier - who teaches in Australia, New Zealand and the USA - also runs classes in sexual health, safe sex, and communication around sex, and tailors her content to suit her audience's age and level of experience, as well as the kind of sex education they received at school.
"When you tell them something like, 'This is what the clitoris looks like and how it behaves', they go, 'Wow, light bulb moment, this is really helpful information'," she says.
Ms Bouchier often finds that once the initial nerves wear off, participants feel more comfortable exploring and talking about their sexuality, and take this confidence home with them.
"We kind of give permission for people to be curious and to learn their own answers, and to legitimise valuing sexual pleasure and positive relationships," she says.
"Often you see people quite relaxed when they leave. They laugh, 'Oh, I thought it was such a big deal, but actually, it's not.'
"I guess that's the taboo we've erected around anything to do with sex and sexuality," she adds. "We don't talk about it, particularly women's pleasure."
Dr Debbie Ollis, senior lecturer in education at Deakin University, agrees school-based sexuality education (often for good reason) tends to prioritise the "mechanics" of sex and "harm minimisation" over more "sensitive" issues like pleasure, consent and intimacy in relationships.
"Most people have been brought up to think of sex as something [that exists] behind closed doors, and is shrouded in shame, particularly for women," Dr Ollis says.
"Girls and women are still considered sluts if they actively pursue their own sexual pleasure."
But the benefits of including conversations about pleasure in sex ed in school extend beyond helping reverse the sense of shame many people grow up feeling around sex and sexuality. Importantly, it fits into a broader, nationwide discussion about violence against women.
"What I say to my students ... is that you've got to ... look at these issues through a gendered lens so that you can explore them," Dr Ollis says.
"On the one hand, if kids are going to understand pleasure and consent, then they also have to understand violence and abuse and the nuances within that."
Introducing... Respectful Relationships classes
For this reason, Dr Ollis is confident the introduction in 2016 of 'respectful relationships' classes in all Victorian Government schools will have a significant impact on how young people approach relationships - with themselves and others.
"I think that there's really positive change occurring ... All schools have to implement the Stepping Out Against Gender-Based Violence [unit] which is basically a sexuality curriculum. So that's going to provide some time to do some of this work," she says.
"Obviously it's not going to cover all of it, but we are going to see issues around consent, issues around gender construction, issues around starting and ending relationships, what you want in relationships, how you feel about yourself - that sort of work is going to be done, and that is a start."
Building on this momentum, the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University has also just released a new sex ed teaching resource to help secondary students navigate gender issues, relationships, consent and sexual desire.
The government-funded resource contains a collection of guided classroom discussions, quizzes and animated videos that model how sex and intimate relationships can be a source of pleasure for young men and women. "What took them so long?" asked Guardian columnist Van Badham.
Still, a number of structural speed bumps continue to hold kids - and society - back.
Although the new Australian curriculum has been revised to include a more "sex positive" approach to sexuality education, Dr Ollis says it can be difficult to implement because many teachers have not been trained in its delivery and it is not given sufficient time in the curriculum.
"One period a week, once in year eight, is not going to be enough," she says.
The benefits of beginning sex education early
Amelia, one of the women who attended Ms Muradian's workshop in Melbourne, says the sex education she received at her Lutheran school was not as inclusive as she'd have liked. Now, at 26, she's beginning to explore her sexuality more.
"All of a sudden, you get to a certain age and you're like, 'oh my god, I wasted all that time', because you're not taught or because you don't feel safe enough to talk about it," she says.
"[So much of that time] could have been spent feeling happy with yourself and your sexuality or happy with your sexual experiences."
Amelia doesn't blame the schools - "sometimes they're bound by the curriculum" - but feels strongly that teaching topics like pleasure, consent and sexuality would have positive impacts on young people's wellbeing.
"It probably feels very scary and confronting ... but it would be really great to see someone lead that territory," she says.
"It would give people confidence in themselves to go out and achieve things that they want to. If you're not feeling confident in yourself - and that can come from body confidence or sexual confidence or any of those things ... you are less likely to succeed in a range of areas."
Dr Ollis agrees wholeheartedly.
"[Beginning sexuality education earlier] has enormous benefits," she says.
"To begin with, it normalises it ... sexuality is part of who you are, it's normal. It's part of our identity, so if we start that early ... then a lot of the discomfort [with sex] disappears.
"The other benefit is that it helps kids to feel good about themselves, and that's what we need."