Okay, let’s be real, sex is everywhere, and I think it would be completely impossible to not it let cross your mind—certainly in the society we live in. Sex is portrayed in a thousand different ways, but what do we really know about it?

We start learning about our sexuality at a very young age, and we are taught to suppress it. “Don’t touch yourself there, it's dirty!” Sound familiar? Well, that’s actually very common, parents don’t want their kids touching themselves. We have as a society have normalized this idea that we shouldn’t experiment with our sexuality or even so innocently touch ourselves until we are ‘ready’. But the question is how do we decide we are ‘ready’?

Well, the public school system tells us, of course!

Ah yes, this is where the horrors of Sex-Ed come into play. I’m sure we all remember sitting in the classroom at age 14 having what was most likely a gym teacher yelling the word “Abstinence” at us, maybe even dropping an “AIDS” in there somewhere. That’s about all you get for Sex-Ed in the public school system, which leaves most kids even more confused than when they entered the class. This is just another reminder to us that sex is dirty, and is off limits, but that’s not going to stop a group of hormonal teenagers from experimenting. And guess what? it shouldn’t.

Sex is great, and most everyone enjoys it in some way or another. It comes in so many different forms, but the most widely recognized by the media, of course, is the heterosexual relationship. Now let’s talk about that for a minute, just for a refresher, a heterosexual relationship involves both a male and female. So don’t you think both members of this relationship should be able to enjoy sex? In a perfect world, yes, but that’s unfortunately not the case in our culture. Girls are taught that they really should not have a lot of sex and it certainly shouldn’t be with multiple partners. Women to this day are still told they should save themselves for someone special, and to not “sleep around” or they will get a bad reputation. Great, so we as women should all stop having casual sex to protect our perfect “virginal” image, right? Yeah, no. Without the ability to have multiple sex partners, its hard to understand what you enjoy, but multiple sex partners entails 'slut' in our society. Ever hear the saying “Who’s gonna buy the cow if they get the milk for free?" That mentality is something that’s drilled into women’s heads, every. single. day. Well it’s about time we take control of our sexuality, and girls, we are allowed to enjoy sex and we are allowed to enjoy it casually with multiple partners.

Sex is confusing, especially with so many mixed signals from the society we live it. “Own your sexuality!” “Don’t slut shame!” is great, but is often overshadowed with “you slept with how many guys/girls?” “you lost your virginity at what age?” “EW, you’re into that? Gross!”. It’s a never ending cycle. We are taught from day one to not have sex, to not touch ourselves not to experiment, but then we get told to “embrace our sexuality” Makes sense, I know.

It comes down to just do what feels right for you, whether that’s saving yourself for marriage, or hooking up with a random in the bathroom of a bar. And experiment! You don’t know what you like till you try it. Just be safe, because if there’s anything at all you took from Sex-Ed hopefully it was that herpes is real.