I've had a diary languishing in my drafts for a few months now on female sexuality, but the topic is so vast and varied that I feel out of my depth each time I try to approach it. I am by no means an expert on the topic, and I'm not the greatest writer of matter-of-fact posts. Most of what I write is based on observation and a lot of emotion. If you prefer facts or figures, I'm not your gal. I just write, I don't investigate.
So approaching this topic is quite difficult for me because while I usually write from personal experience, I'm not completely willing to indulge in that here, on this site.
That being said, this is an important topic and my ass is stuck on the couch today anyway. I've got nothing but time on this Sunday morning. Might as well give it a go.
My thoughts on this could fill a book, and indeed, many books have been written about it. This morning I elaborated more than I ever have before, I think, in this comment. And while I don't want to make this a call-out diary, or further shame someone who has already expressed remorse, I can't help but be deeply troubled by the attitude I was fighting against.
In general, sex is a normal, fun, and healthy form of recreation. Tastes, preferences, and drives vary wildly, but not in the way many believe. We still have the age-old double standard of slut versus stud. Women who want and have a lot of sex are sluts, insatiable naughty girls that must have been abused, there's no other reason to defile themselves so much. Men who don't crave a lot of sex are emasculated, abnormal, broken. Women who don't want a lot of sex are considered the norm; after all, it's just another chore. Alternately, men who want a lot of sex are studs, men will be men, they have two heads and only think with that one.
I'm certainly not the first person to point this out or the first woman to be frustrated by it. But it still stuns me that in this day and age it needs to be reiterated. Even more frustrating to me as someone who has fallen on multiple levels of sexuality throughout my somewhat young life so far. I suppose that I was lucky to have had parents who were very obviously attracted to each other. Every Saturday morning they'd lock their bedroom door and tell us to go watch cartoons for an hour or so and to not disturb them unless someone was hurt. Yes, we thought they were napping, but realized what was going on later in life. There wasn't any shame in sex that I recall. Sure, mom told us when we were younger that it should be with someone you love.
But I was tomboy (shocking, I know) who was completely disinterested in the topic. (I was also somewhat of a late bloomer, being the last of my friends to lose my virginity. The experience was decent but mostly unremarkable. My lover was gentle but enthusiastic, considerate but desperately excited. We fell asleep in each others arms, and I awoke the next morning feeling kind of disappointed. It didn't hurt as much as people told me it would, and it felt better that I'd been taught to expect, but it wasn't something that I'd ever remember had it not been my first time. I had been sort of trained to expect a painful night, bloody sheets, and regret. None of that happened.)
Besides my own coming out, I have never been uncomfortable or conflicted about sex. I said in an earlier comment today that when I meet or read people who are so conflicted and troubled about sexuality, it's like a flashing neon light that screams "disturbed individual" to me.
Maybe that's not fair, but neither is projecting ones own hangups onto others or holding others accountable to their own prudish standards.
Women take a lot of flak for relatively minor things, most of which conflict with each other. Don't wear "revealing" clothes or dress in an otherwise "seductive" manner lest you want to be raped. But don't wear too many clothes because it shows you're an insecure prude.
It's really fucking hot if you make out with a chick at the bar, but if it's not for a man's benefit, don't do it. And if you do do it, you're a slut who will make out with chicks for attention. If you do like it, you really just haven't met the right man yet, and if that's not the case quit flaunting that shit.
We at once accept that female sexuality is more fluid while damning that fluidity, which in turn hold men to an even more rigid sexuality. A woman making out with another woman is just partying and having fun. A man who does the same is gay. No ifs, ands, or buts.
We all know that our attitudes towards female sexuality are archaic and wrong and disrespectful to women. We're far less aware that it holds men to a standard that is also damaging. If a woman is asking to be raped by her choice of clothing, then it follows that men are savage beasts that are unable to control their most primitive urges.
I do not accept that. I've known and loved many men; I have no fear of being alone with them, of getting drunk with them. Given a choice between drinks with another woman or drinks with a man, I'll choose the man. Talk football, sex, politics, religion, relationships, whatever. And I'm not an unattractive woman by any means. In fact, I know my male friends think I'm hot because they tell me so. I get a lot of "If you were straight...." But I'm not afraid to be alone with them as popular culture tells me I should be. Even if I was drunk.
I don't accept the myth of men as monsters. When we perpetuate stereotypes about women, we perpetuate stereotypes about men, and in turn, we perpetuate rape culture. Because men do this and women do that, so it's bound to happen.
Now, I know I'm not saying anything that most of you don't already know. So why does any of this matter?
Because I think it goes to the core of our humanity. Sexual liberation is a powerful thing. Not just for kids who struggle with being gay, or men and women who equate sex with guilt and shame. Sex is a perfectly healthy thing to want and to have. It is also perfectly healthy to be uninterested in it (in general) if you simply have no desire. Some people just aren't all that sexual, and that's okay, too.
When we try to turn sex into something that it's not, we damage ourselves quite deeply and some of those wounds can be very hard to heal. Let's be honest with each other: love is not a requirement. I've had bad sex with someone that I love and mind-blowing sex with someone I've just met. Should I be ashamed of one or both of these things? I don't believe so. Sex is simple but strange. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
I worry about the people who live in a culture that teaches them that everything they love is wrong. Wanting something is wrong. Craving something is wrong. Being curious is wrong. These are our very bodies driving us to feel a certain way, so we train children that their very bodies are wrong. Masturbation is wrong. Sex outside of marriage is wrong. Sex that can't produce a baby is wrong. Every time you orgasm is wrong, wrong, wrong, but we'll never quit orgasming because it feels so fucking good.
I don't think that should lead to shame. No one should be ashamed of having a functioning body. Sex is part of that. We are driven for and by it. There is nothing wrong with that, and we need to stop pretending that there is.
By doing so, we are only harming each other with a bunch of lies that none of us believe anyway.