Earlier this week, one of my friends expressed an idea that I think accurately depicts what most of us are taught by our parents concerning sex: You really shouldn’t have sex with anyone that you don’t love.
I struggle a lot with that idea. Mainly, I think, because I’m a woman, and I’m told that the amount of sex I do or don’t have determines my worth in society. On one hand, of course I believe that sex should be something special that I share with someone I truly care about. But on the other hand, it infuriates me that I’m caught up in this double standard that tells me if I abstain I’m a prude, and if I engage I’m a slut. But if I have a penis no one could care any less because guys will be guys and it’s just a natural urge and they’re just following their instincts, ya know?
What upsets me the most about this active demonization of sex that our society engages in is that it leads to a complete lack of conversation. Well, I should clarify—it leads to a complete lack of informative, fact-based, well-rounded conversation. As children, most of us simply aren’t taught how to have safe sex. Instead, we’re taught that the only effective form of birth control is abstinence, and if we use any other alternative, we’ll probably end up either pregnant or dead. You decide which is worse. We’re taught that sex is dirty. It’s something to be ashamed of. It’s something we should shy away from at all costs.
This narrative robs our generation, and the generations following us, of the opportunity to have all of the information necessary to make well-informed decisions about our sexuality. With 40 percent of women saying they weren’t taught alternatives to abstinence in sex ed and a quarter of teens saying they’ve never even discussed sex with their parents (you know, the ones that made them), millennials are tragically uninformed, and as college students, that practically sets us up for failure.
When my mother and I had “the talk,” her narrative sounded a little bit different. She began by giving me something of an "amended" promise ring. She wasn’t asking me to pledge to save myself for marriage. Instead, she asked me to promise that I would never make the choice about whether or not to have sex based on what someone else wanted instead of what I wanted for myself. She asked me to always be safe. Finally, she asked me to always feel comfortable coming to her with any questions. While I certainly didn’t realize it at the time, the way she handled that incredibly delicate idea in my life allowed me the sense of security to shape my own understanding of my sexuality.
Lack of information coupled with corrupt societal standards makes sex in college pretty freaking hard. Not in the sense that it’s hard to get your hands on (because that’s certainly not the case), but in that it’s hard to navigate all of the implications that come along with that seemingly simple act. We are women living in a society that robs us of our freedom to engage or abstain from whatever acts we please. We are expected to be madly in love with every man we sleep with, and every act that takes place outside of those parameters is downright filthy. Our society tells us that our worth fluctuates dramatically every single time we make the choice to say yes or no to sex, and that’s just not right.
Personally, I believe that my sexuality is something important that shouldn’t just be tossed around aimlessly. I do think that the intimacy two people experience in that moment is a discovery that should begin far before you take your clothes off. But for the sake of my peers, and my future daughters, and the countless women across the world who aren’t as lucky as I am and who aren’t given the opportunity to make such choices so freely, I have to believe that my worth neither increases nor diminishes based on the amount of sex I do (or do not) have.
