One of the main topics of conversation on college campus’ is sex. Obviously, college is known as a time to explore who you are, and a lot of that means sexual exploration. Somewhere along the path from middle school to college, sex transforms from a topic where you whisper the word between fits of giggles to something that you brush off as a part of life and honestly not that interesting. For some people, it’s the news of the week, who is sexually active with who is exciting and important, but for people like me, I don’t really care.
Now I don’t want you to think I am completely neutral towards the subject because that would be a lie. I am in a group chat where sometimes without context I’ll get a text like “help you know that guy I said I wasn’t gonna talk to anymore? We quite literally got to third base” and the conversation would spiral off to a corner of the sexual universe that very few would consider going. That is thrilling. However, for the purpose of this article, I am going to talk about average hook ups and such.
When I first got to school I befriended a girl and through her, I met my first group of college friends, we would hang out in one of the suite dorms while the rest of the freshman class huddled around the bobcat getting wasted as per tradition. As the weeks progressed I started realizing how sex-obsessed people were becoming. Whenever I would break away for a moment to hang solo with a male friend, people would assume we were ‘doing the dirty.’ Eventually, it was this mindset that led me to break off from this group. One night when I not in the best state of mind and clearly not interested they took it upon themselves to be my unwanted wingmen. This included encouraging men and shooting me a text, saying how I was the bad guy holding off.
When one of the girls made her sexual debut it made headlines in the friend group. It was an exciting time for her and she was very enthusiastic to share. I, however, did not hear the news from her, I heard it from another person who was happy to spill all the intimate details as well as their critiques. There is something so offputting talking about someone else's sex life while they are unaware of it, it’s like someone showing NSFW pictures of someone's body without the person in the photos consent. It just feels dirty, and not the fun kind.
Sexual conversations are important, though. Making sex a less taboo subject is the best way I’ve found to get people less awkward around it. I’m reminded of a CollegeHumor video about Marijuana. In the video, they say legalize Marijuana so that people can stop talking about it. Sexual education should normalize sex (I can’t believe that it doesn’t. When I was in seventh grade our entirety of sex ed was how to tell if our drink was roofied and getting told to not have sex until we’re 30. I wish I was joking). So people don’t act like it’s the second coming of Jesus every time they get laid.
I don’t really care what happened in the backseat of a frat boy's 2006 Honda Civic, and I don’t really appreciate getting texted ‘just do it' every time I talk to a boy.
