Due to moral and possibly religious reasons, I want to wait 'til I am married before I have sex. But as a woman, I am worried that many men will not wait for this length of time and also will not be virgins by the point of marriage.
I've been dating my boyfriend for 6 months now. He is my first long-term boyfriend and I really do love him. He is 3 years older than me and has had a 3 year relationship with another girl before me. After 3 months we decided to have sex. I was a virgin and this was a really big deal to me but he was not a virgin and had been with 2 girls before me. I don't regret being with him, I knew I was ready. But I get really upset about him not losing his virginity to me. Is it normal to be so upset about his past and past relationships? I have tried to just forget it all but I almost feel cheated. I gave my virginity to him and I didn't get anything in return. I felt like it wasn't as special to him as it was to me. How can I get over this?
In my experience it feels like there are two crowds, those who are 'cool' and have frequent sexual activity, hookups etc both in and out of relationships (or at least portray themselves as doing so) and those who are 'pure' who have decided at this point to abstain from sex until marriage, who are frequently Christian or otherwise religious. I think there's pressure to fit into one of those groups, either to go out and have lots of sex or to not have sex at all. There is stigma from both sides to each other, the cool group think the pure group are 'frigid' and boring, the pure group think the cool group are disrespecting themselves and God or something along those lines. If you're not willing to put yourself in either box then you can cop it from both sides. And if you are out LGBTQ then chances of fitting in either group are slim to none. I'm not sure if this is how it is for other people but that's how it feels to me in the last few years.
That's from Caitlin, a member of our community at the message boards who's in high school in Melbourne. This came up in a conversation the other day, and I was really struck by it, how well she put it into words, and by how many young people I've heard express similar things. But there's something else that struck me about it, which I m usually struck by when I hear those kinds of sentiments.
In a word, that whole paragraph could have come out of my mother's mouth, who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s. I mean, to the letter, this dynamic is not one I grew up with myself in the 1970s and 1980s, but which my parents certainly did. If I called my mother up right now and asked her to describe the sexual dynamics and politics she experienced while in high school, what she would say -- and has when we've talked about this -- would be almost exactly what Caitlin, in high school now, said.
We are simultaneously bombarded with two conflicting messages: one from our parents, chruches and schools -- that sex is dirty and therefore we must keep ourselves clean for the love of our lives; and the other from Playboy, Newsweek, etc., almost all women's magazines, and especially television commercials -- the we should be free, groovy chicks.
That's from Our Bodies, Ourselves, by the Boston Women's Health Collective, in the 1971/1973 edition, penned by women in their twenties at the time.
But now and then aren't the only times this has come up, either. We've had waves of these kinds of push-me, pull-mes several times in the west over the last 100 years and more, with relatively few cultural breaks in between, particularly cultural breaks which were very widespread, rather than very local or quickly fleeting.
Public discourse absorbed both currents, the condemnatory and the celebratory, and new sexual conventions grew in tension between the old (Victorian) and the new, between the sexual proscriptions of authorities who sought to control sexual expression, and the sexual prescriptions of youth, who places sexuality at the center of youth culture.
That's from From Front Porch to Back Seat, p. 78, by Beth L. Bailey, who is describing changes in sexual mores in the 1920s in that paragraph.
The increased visibility of sexuality in the public sphere disturbed middle-class Americans, especially middle-class women, who had been entrusted with the guardianship of the nation's morals. In response to the movement of sexuality outside the family, these women sought to retain their authority over sexuality by organizing moral reform and social purity crusades... Other sexual reformers responded as well. Doctors and vice crusaders such as Anthony Comstock opposed abortion, contraception and the public expression of sexuality by demanding greater state intervention in the regulation of morality. In contrast, sexual radicals of the anarchist free-love movement rejected any state involvement in personal matters. By the end of the century, diverse reformers -- women, doctors, vice crusaders, free lovers -- engaged in heated debate over who should regulate sex: the individual, the family, or the state.
That's from Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, by John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, p. 140. That passage might sound familiar, like some things we see and hear now and have over the past ten years or so.
But the authors aren't talking about the last century in that paragraph. They're talking about the one before that, describing American sexual politics not in the late 1900s, but in the late 1800s.
I'm someone, due to my age and where and how I came of age, who doesn't feel like she experienced these kinds of dynamics in my teens and twenties. They were there, for sure, but it felt fairly easy to opt out of and avoid, and it seemed, to me, a very quiet periphery, even perhaps something just kind of dangling out the window of the past as it was driving away, not an ever-present din from my peers, parents or the media. It seemed like it was the property of my parent's generation and those before them, not to my own, particularly in the punk/new wave, queer and neo-hippie subcultures I spent my teens and twenties in. I certainly never would have imagined that those politics they lived through were not static -- that there were also periods where things weren't so like that -- but also that they were so very far reaching, and that this pendulum had been swinging back and forth in the west for such a long time. And would swing back to these kinds of sexual politics yet again.
I certainly recognize it as something many young people grapple with now, as it's voiced often, and is often a part of some of the sexual choices a person is trying to make. It comes up all the time around whether a sexual choice is a right one or a wrong one, especially according to others, more than oneself. It comes up around the expectations of partners, or worries about a partner's judgment about a sexual history, or a lack of one. It comes up as a barrier in communication about sex and sexuality between young people and parents. It comes up around access to STI testing and contraception and worries about privacy with either or both of those things. It comes up a lot when people express feeling like their sexual choices are also major identity choices: they they don't just dictate if they do or don't have any kind of sex, how or with whom, but who they are as people, and who others will see and treat them as as people.
I'd love to hear some of our readers weigh in on this; talk together about if you have experienced or do now experience this kind of dynamic, and if you do, how you deal with it and how you feel it impacts you and others. If none of this sounds familiar to you, and you feel like the dynamics where you are and have been have been wildly different, I'd love to hear from you, too. So often folks hear and read older people talking about all of this about young people. Far more rarely are people able to read (or take the time to read) young people talking about it themselves. As always, we're much more interested in how you feel things like this impact you than we are in someone else's third-party interpretation of your experiences and feelings.
If you're really up for a challenge, I'd love to hear about what you think could potentially break this pattern that just seems to keep coming back again and again and again.
What do you think could get people and culture to a place where no sexuality or sex life is a right one, a wrong one, or not recognized as any kind of sexuality or sexual life at all; a place where there's much, much more room for everyone, and much more respect for everyone's diverse selves and thus, diverse choices?
After all, the times there have been cultural shifts around these kinds of dynamics, the people who tended to conceptualize and drive those changes or different views weren't usually older people. They were most typically young people. So, just like there's a historical precedent for these kinds of dynamics, there's also a historical precedent for young people being the ones who envision and start to enact a different picture.
Depending on your view, the answer to that question might seem really obvious or very tricky and hazy.
This is a subject that's talked about all the time, however, when it is, there's often little to no clear definition about what healthy sexual development is. Many easy assumptions get made, and ideas about what's healthy for all people are often based in or around personal agendas, ideas and personal experiences of sexuality, rather than being based in broader viewpoints, truly informed and comprehensive ideas about all that human sexuality and development involves and real awareness of possible personal or cultural bias.
We think this question is very, very tricky and that the answers aren't at all obvious or easy: sexuality is incredibly complex, especially given its incredible diversity, not just among a global population, but even within any one person's lifetime. Our cultures also are often sexually unhealthy in many ways, and so ideas about healthy sexual development, deeply influenced by culture, are often flawed, incomplete or limited, and can sometimes present things as healthy which truly are not, but are so pervasive or so much a part of cultural frameworks that people assume they are or must be. So, what healthy sexual development is is hardly a simple question, nor a question we can answer casually or without a whole lot of deep thought and consideration, both ideally coming from multiple perspectives and kinds of expertise.
At a recent conference I was part of in London, Alan McKee presented a talk which included a piece published in the International Journal of Sexual Health (2010, 22(1), Healthy sexual development: a multidisciplinary framework for research, Alan McKee, Kath Albury, Michael Dunne, Sue Grieshaber, John Hartley, Catharine Lumby and Ben Mathews). As someone who's worked for many years in sexuality and sex education, and who worked in early child development for several years before that, I've heard "healthy sexual development" tossed around a lot, but have often felt dissatisfied with the way it was undefined or some of the things it has implied when people have used it. Often, critical pieces seem to be missing, personal agendas seem to be central and unrecognized, or the way it's defined hasn't been broadly inclusive, holistic or thoughtful.
What McKee and his colleagues determined to be the core parts of healthy sexual development had me jumping up and down in my seat with joy (literally: I may have disturbed my fellow attendees with my bouncing). It summed up the things we try to support, encourage and inform our users with and keep core at Scarleteen so well, and so much of what I think -- after many years of thinking hard about and working with these issues, and being fully and broadly immersed in them with a very diverse population -- truly is central to healthy sexual development.
Their work also makes it wonderfully clear that sex education and supporting healthy sexual development isn't just something that can or does happen in what we call sex education, but can -- and should! -- be present in and come from many different kinds of education, information and support. Not only do I think this list includes the key issues for the development of healthy sexuality for individuals, I think it's also an excellent framework for working towards cultures which are sexually healthier than most are and have been.
I'm delighted to have permission to excerpt and reprint this framework here. I believe the domains listed are benchmarks everyone can use whether we're providing sex education, parenting or mentoring, evaluating the health of our sexual interactions or relationships with others, or working on our own personal growth and well-being when it comes to our sexuality. I've included alternate ways of understanding the key points and also some links to get started with on our site in exploring ways of supporting these aspects of healthy sexuality at the end.
From the paper: "A consultative group was gathered consisting of seven Australian experts across a number of disciplines relating to children, development and sexuality. The group included a psychologist specialising in preventing child sexual abuse; an early childhood expert; a legal expert in children’s rights; a specialist in sexuality education; experts on sexual socialisation; and on the media’s impact on children’s development. The group commissioned literature reviews of the research on children’s sexuality across their disciplines; and worked together to develop a consensual definition of healthy sexual development that drew on the insights of their various disciplines."
"One key point emerged early in the discussions: this would be a holistic approach to healthy sexual development. In much of the literature in this area the sole concern is the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of child sexual abuse (see for example Haugaard & Emery, 1989; Lamb & Coakley, 1993; Ryan, 2000). The group agreed that preventing unwanted sexual encounters is a key element of healthy sexual element – but it is far from being sufficient for an understanding of the important elements in that development. There is more to healthy sexual development than simply preventing abuse. Important positive skills and understandings must be developed. We identified fifteen key domains which provide a multidisciplinary framework for understanding healthy sexual development:
Healthy sexual development takes place in a context in which children are protected from unwanted sexual activity (Haugaard & Emery, 1989; Sanderson, 2004). This is a fundamental point. Its complexity must also be acknowledged. Hence the second point is:
Healthy sexuality is not coercive (Wardle, 1998; Ryan, 2000; Chrisman & Couchenour, 2002; FPQ, 2006). And so children need to understand the nature and complexity of consent – not just their own, but also other people’s – in sexuality. They need to learn about the ethics of human relationships, and how to treat other people ethically.
In other words: Healthy sexual activity is only activity that is truly wanted by anyone and everyone directly involved in it. Consenting and acquiring consent, and the freedom to withhold or withdraw consent, always; knowing what consent really means and involves for everyone are key to healthy sexual development and to a healthy sexuality and sex life.
In healthy sexual development, children are provided with accurate information about how their bodies work. Research has shown that ‘[i]n the absence of adequate and systematic sex education, children invent their own explanations for biological and sexual processes often in the form of mythologies’ (Goldman & Goldman, 1982, p. 392).
In other words: This means things like accurate words for body parts, science and fact-based explanations of how bodies can or do function not just around sexual reproduction, but also around sex itself and the debunking of mythologies about bodies, sexuality and reproduction.
In healthy sexual development, children learn what is safe sexual practice. This is meant in the widest possible sense, including physical safety, safety from sexually transmitted diseases (Allen, 2005, p. 2), and safety to experiment.
In other words: It's vital to know about safer sex, preventing or reducing the risk of injury, illness and other harm, and how to explore sex and sexuality in ways which are known and shown as most likely to be physically and emotionally safe.
In healthy sexual development, children learn relationship skills more generally. This includes, but is not limited to, communication and assertiveness skills. Children learn to ask for what they want assertively in relationships generally. At an appropriate point this also includes sexual relationships (Impett et al, 2006).
In other words: Part of everyone's sexuality involves interpersonal relationships, whether that's about sexual relationships expressly, or any relationship in which someone's sexuality may be addressed. Learning what is and is not healthy in all relationships -- including family relationships, friendships, interactions with healthcare providers or people outside those spheres -- is a big part of learning what is healthy in sexual relationships.
Emerging from the previous point, in healthy sexual development children learn that they are in control of their own sexuality, and in control of who can take sexual pleasure from their bodies. They are confident in resisting peer pressure. They understand their rights. They learn to take responsibility for making their own decisions (SIECUS, 1995).
In other words: Sexual agency is about having and being afforded ownership of one's body and sexuality, not being externally controlled by others. This includes freedom from unwanted sexual activity and sexual coercion. Agency also means that we're the owners of our own actions and choices. With real agency, we are both held accountable and responsible for them and are allowed the liberty of having ownership for the choices we make.
Every researcher who has studied the healthy sexual development of children insists that children are naturally ‘curious’ about their bodies and about sex (Sanderson, 2004: 62). Studies over many decades have shown that they explore their bodies – including touching and sometimes masturbating their genitals – from birth (Levy, 1928; Ryan, 2000; Larsson & Svedin, 2002b); they ask questions about sex at the same time as they begin to ask questions about other aspects of society (Hattendorf, 1932; Larsson & Svedin, 2002); and they play ‘sex games’ like doctors and nurses with other children from an early age (Isaacs, 1933; Lamb & Coakley, 1993; Chrisman & Couchenour, 2002; Larsson & Svedin, 2002b; Sandnabba et al, 2003). Research has shown that this behaviour is not only normal, it is healthy and has no harmful effect on later sexual development (Kilpatrick, 1992; Greenwald & Leitenberg, 1989; Leitenberg et al, 1989; Okami et al, 1998; Larsson & Svedin, 2002b). Similarly, learning about sexuality does not stop at the point where (or if) sexual intercourse begins. Adults continue to learn about their sexuality throughout their lives, improving their knowledge of and attitudes towards their sex lives.
In other words: Being curious about sexuality and wanting to explore it needs to be understood and presented as healthy and acceptable. Exploring sexuality in healthy ways is also learning about sexuality, and that learning, and feeling open to always learn more, is part of our sexual well-being throughout all of life.
There is a necessary element of risk in all learning. This is also true of sexual learning (Chrisman & Couchenour, 2002, p. 3). In healthy development, children develop agency in order to facilitate resilience, so that bad sexual experiences are opportunities for learning rather than being destructive.
In other words: Sometimes sex can suck, doesn't meet our expectations or things happen to us or by us sexually which are painful or traumatic. In order to be as healthy as we can, we need resilience so that we can deal with and/or heal from disappointment, embarrassment, harm or trauma, rather than being unable to recover or move forward in our lives and sexualities.
Healthy sexual development requires open communication between adults and children, in both directions. As noted above, this means that children are provided with age-appropriate information about sex (SIECUS, 1995), and particularly that they are given honest answers to any questions they may ask (Chrisman & Couchenor, 2002). There is absolute agreement in the literature that this is important for preventing sexual abuse (Krafchick & Biringen, 2002, p. 59; Sanderson, 2004, p. 55), development of a healthy attitude towards their own bodies and sexuality (Chrisman & Couchenour, 2002, p. 14; Impett et al, 2005), and preventing unwanted pregnancies and STDs when they do become sexually active (Lindberg et al, 2008). On the other hand, in healthy situations, children feel comfortable in coming to adults with problems, concerns or issues they may have about their bodies or what is happening to them.
In other words: Healthy sexuality doesn't and can't often happen in a culture or environment of silence. Talking about sex and sexuality openly and honestly is part of developing healthy sexuality and healthy sexual development, both with peers and and with parents, guardians and other adults, and also part of reducing the risk of sexual harms or negative outcomes.
This is a key distinction between healthy and unhealthy sexual development. Healthy sexual development is ‘fun’, playful and lighthearted (Okami et al, 1998, p. 364). Unhealthy sexual development is aggressive, coercive or joyless (Sanderson, 2004: 79).
In other words: It's not healthy for anyone to be pushed into or away from sexual development: both should happen at a pace that's right for each individual. As well, ideally sexual development is something that others support as being okay, something people experiencing it can feel relaxed about and even have fun with and enjoy.
In healthy sexual development children are supported in developing a positive attitude towards their own sexual identity (Impett et al, 2006); and a ‘positive body self concept’ (Okami et al, 1998, p. 363).
In other words: Part of sexual well-being is accepting who we are, uniquely, and feeling accepted in who we are, even if and when our sexuality, sexual identity, embodiment or the ways we are sexual does not conform to someone else's ideas of what our sexualities should be or what our bodies should feel, look or function like.
Children learn to understand that it is acceptable for sexuality to be pleasurable in healthy development (SIECUS, 1995; WHO, 2002, p. 5). It is not shameful to enjoy it. It is a desirable outcome that when they become adults they will have to option of enjoying satisfying and high quality sexual relationships should they choose to do so (Okami et al, 1998, pp. 361, 365).
In other words: Sex isn't just about making babies, something people only do because someone else wants or expects them to or something to exchange in order to get something else. It's also about pleasure. In fact, when sex (of any kind, including masturbation) is truly wanted and consensual and when it occurs in healthy social contexts where everyone involved has agency, it's most often mostly about pleasure. Seeking or experiencing sexual pleasure isn't something to be ashamed of or embarrassed about: it can be a healthy, happy part of life.
In healthy development, children learn social and parental values around sexuality to enable them to make informed decisions about their own sexuality in relation to them. These vary greatly (WHO, 2006: 6). Research shows that parental values around sexuality range from extremely conservative to extremely liberal (Okami et al, 1998), and that judgments about what is appropriate sexual behaviour in children differ dramatically in different societies (Aries, 1962; Higonnet, 1998; Jenkins, 1998).
In other words: Whether we wind up agreeing with them or not, it's important we understand the values and ethics of our world and our closest communities, including those within our families. When we are aware of and understand those well, we can inform our choices with them and also work out what our own values are, whether they're the same or different from the values of our parents or our culture.
xiv. Awareness of public/private boundaries.
As a particular subset of values, children learn how the public/private distinction works in their culture as part of healthy sexual development. This allows them to manage their own privacy, understand public behaviour, and how to negotiate the boundaries between the two (Larsson & Svedin, 2002; Sanderson, 2004, p. 60).
In other words: A healthy sexuality involves boundaries, including boundaries between public and private expressions of sexuality, even though all people don't have the same boundaries. As well, how we present our sexuality and put it into action often is different when it's public and when it's private, both in our individual experiences and when it comes to how we are treated by others. To make sound choices about sexual behavior and expression, choices which include keeping ourselves and others safe, we need to be aware of the differences between what's public and what's private.
xv. Competence in mediated sexuality.
In healthy sexual development, children will develop skills in accessing, understanding, critiquing and creating mediated representations of sexuality in verbal, visual and performance media (Higonnet, 1998; Hartley & Lumby 2003; Buckingham & Bragg, 2004; Ward et al, 2006; Mazzarella & Pecora, 2007; Lafo, 2008).
In other words: Everyone knows that there is (as there always has been) sex and sexuality in all kinds of media. The media is a big presence in our world, especially over the last couple decades, so it's important that we learn how to make sense of and ask questions about what we see, hear or read in it so that we can have a sense of its impact on us and others and know the difference between what the media shows us and how it presents it and how different sexuality can be and often is in real life.
Want to find out about some of those key domains right here at Scarleteen? The following articles are some good places to get started:
When it comes to sex and sexuality, I was a very, very, very late bloomer.
Raised in a Pentecostal Christian home where sex and sexuality were rarely discussed beyond, "No sex until you are married," as a teen I assumed I would not have sex until my early- to mid-twenties, after I had finished undergrad.
I assumed any boys/men I met would share my religious beliefs about sex. I assumed my values would never change. And I assumed my husband and I would know how to sexually please one another, in spite of having no sexual experience before our wedding night (which, of course, would be a night of unbridled passion and ecstasy).
Sacrificing a little sexual pleasure in my teens and early twenties would be a small price to pay to have a church-sanctioned outlet for my sex drive before I was past 25, 30 at the latest. Besides, I had heard so many stories about the pain and bleeding of first intercourse, and the mere thought of being an unwed mother (does anyone even use that term anymore?) filled me with so much shame that I was afraid to have sex. (Because, you know, good girls don’t need contraceptives; getting contraceptives was planning to sin, after all. But that’s a commentary for another essay.)
I was in no way prepared for reality: unhappily single in my mid-thirties, haunted by memories of mild sexual activity (mutual masturbation shrouded in guilt and shame) with my two or three past boyfriends, and agnostic. To add insult to injury, at that time in my life I didn't have any viable possibilities for sexual partners anywhere on my radar, unless I was willing to have one-night stands or be some married man's "other woman." (I wasn't willing.)
But I still had a sex drive, and I was thoroughly tired of being ashamed of it, trying to ignore it, or being in agony over it.
Now that I was free of the stigma against sex and sexuality that had been indoctrinated in me from my religious past, I was determined to learn about, accept, and take good care of my sexuality.
I made up my mind that if I ever had another committed relationship, I would not hold my sexuality hostage to a wedding ring (which, to be frank, would make me more likely to rush into an incompatible union, because I would have been blinded by the thought of all of the sex I could FINALLY have). I would have sex for love, marriage or no marriage. But before that could happen, I had to be comfortable with vaginal entry. Previous exploration with my fingers had proven uncomfortable, to say the least. I thought perhaps surgical intervention would be necessary and mustered up the courage to mention the possibility of a hymenectomy to an OB/GYN I went to for the first time after relocating to NYC. He waved off my concerns and swiftly opened me wide with a speculum to prove a hymenectomy would not be necessary.
Ouch, and no. I never went back to his office.
It became clear to me it was time to consult a REAL expert on sex and sexuality, if I was going to get anywhere. On the recommendation of some friends, I gathered up my courage and visited Babeland in SoHo, where I sought out a friendly, female staff member. I explained my hymen was intact, I wanted to get comfortable with entry, I hadn't had any pleasure out of inserting my fingers, and I worried using a dildo was out of the question.
To my relief, she listened without laughing and then asked me a very simple question, "What kind of lube are you using?"
"Lube?" I said, giving her a blank stare of utter incomprehension.
She took my arm and gently steered me to the lube display, where she explained the difference between such products as Astroglide and Sylk, and how they would provide a cleaner, more pleasurable experience than something like K-Y. I had heard of lube, but had never thought about using it, because my body naturally provided enough lubrication, right? Well, not necessarily, and even if my body did, what would be the harm in using the slickness of lube to add to the pleasurable sensations?
She opened a whole new world to me with that conversation.
I had a favorite line, in high school, when debating people on the subject of abortion. It was "Hey, that thing in your stomach's not gonna come out a toaster, right? It's a baby!"
Oh, I thought I was really, super clever with that one. Because I loved talking about the babies. I talked about the babies at the high school Young Republicans Club--not only was I the president, but also the founder. I talked about the babies at Club 412, the evangelical punk teen hang-out in Fort Worth I frequented with my friends. I talked about the babies in class. I cried about the babies while I strummed my guitar. I wrote songs about the babies, imagining myself as a broken, murderous whore who regretted her abortions.
I didn't have an opinion one way or the other on abortion until I started hanging out with right-wing punk rock kids in high school. Then, somebody -- probably one of the older teenage punk rock boys I would later fend off in the back of a car or behind the chapel at church camp -- handed me a pamphlet with an aborted fetus on the front. The pamphlet told me abortion causes breast cancer and how women who abort can never be redeemed in the eyes of God and will live with heartache and depression for the rest of their lives, a shell of the beautiful thing they could have been if they'd only carried to term. I was outraged. I couldn't believe women were killing members of my own generation -- my sisters and brothers! -- just because they couldn't keep their legs together.
Because while I said it was about the babies, it wasn't. It was about slut-shaming.
I absolutely loved slut-shaming. Because I was saving myself for marriage -- well, oral sex doesn't really count anyway, does it? -- I knew that I would always be right and virtuous and I would never be a murderer like those sluts. The issue couldn't possibly be up for real debate, to my mind: either you were a baby-killer slut, or you behaved like a proper Christian woman and only let him get to third base. Babies were simultaneously women's punishment for having premarital sex and beautiful gifts from Jesus Himself. That didn't seem like a contradiction in my mind. It was just another one of God's perfect mysteries.
After all, I was 16, 17, 18. I knew everything. And what I knew more than anything else was that anyone who got herself into the position of having an unwanted pregnancy was filthy in body and soul. And again, since I would absolutely never have premarital sex, I would absolutely never make the decision to murder my child. Because I was pure, and so were babies, and together, me and the babies and my perfect hymen, we were all going to be fine if we could just fight the ignorant sluts. So that's what I did. I talked and argued and cajoled and pontificated. I ministered to the heathen nerdgirl sluts in Telnet chats and online bulletin boards. I stood up for what I believed in, which was: If you do not believe like me, you deserve whatever brand of God's wrath comes your way.
But, you know, to hear me talk, it was all about the babies. The innocent children. The mass genocide! Perpetuated, of course, by millions of American women who I imagined happily scooping out their wombs with ladles before heading back out for another gang-bang. In private, my anti-choice friends and I would laugh and laugh (or, in some cases, LOL and LOL, if we were chatting online) about how stupid women were for having premarital sex. How evil they were for not being able to control themselves. How great I was for not having sex with my boyfriend. How loved and special I was in the eyes of God because I didn't let my boyfriend, you know, do it with me.
If I'd thought about it any, I might have realized that it takes two to create an unwanted pregnancy. But the conversation was never, ever about men or their behavior. It was only about women.
So, what happened? How did I come to be editing a lefty, pinko-assed feminist blog?
Well, I got off my religious high horse and on to a sex life I enjoyed and found fulfilling.
At college, I met a wonderful, sweet Jewish boy who fell in love with me and who I fell in love with right back. And he didn't have any hang-ups about sex, though he was also a virgin. And we did all of the things except for The Big Sex, and the more I grew to love him, the more I thought back on those people I knew back home who told me sex was awful and would break me. How could sex with this guy, this absolute sweetheart, break me? And so we had The Big Sex. And it was great and fun and loving, and we kept having all of The Big Sex, for about three weeks, until I realized it was about time for my period.
Suddenly: I was the dirty, filthy slut. I was the horny bitch. I was the callous murderer-in-training. What, did I think my womb was going to grow a toaster if we had a condom mishap?
Of course not. I didn't think babies were toasters and I didn't believe I was going to birth a toaster if I got pregnant, so how had I managed to belittle women for years with this condescending, patronizing line about a small kitchen appliance? I was frozen in a kind of moral limbo: I couldn't believe I found myself simultaneously relieved that I could access an abortion if I wanted to, and saddened and stressed out by the possibility of having to make that decision.
So I went right the heck out and got myself some hormonal birth control, is what I did.
I marched into my college women's health center -- oh, thank God they had one -- and I got my first pap smear and the Ortho-Evra patch and talked to the nurses about STD's and pregnancy and how to take care of my body. I had never had any of those conversations with my family or church or friends or teachers back home in Texas. I learned more in a two-hour visit to that college women's health center than I had in the 19 years leading up to it. And yet as a passionate anti-choicer, I had considered myself an expert on sex and reproductive health -- my own and everyone else's -- because of a few pamphlets and preachers.
Today, I see that nothing about my religious anti-choice views did anything to prevent abortion. They did a lot to shame myself and my friends, but nothing to prevent abortion. Today, I hear anti-choicers talk about the babies and the unborn and the American genocide, but what I really hear beneath all that is slut-shaming and fear of female sexuality. I hear that language clearly because I spoke it once, myself. It is a familiar language to me.
And I even have a little bemused sympathy for old men who try to pass anti-choice legislation. Because they really will not ever have to worry about abortion. And once, I thought I wouldn't, either. So I see where they're coming from. I see how blind to the experiences of others they are. Privilege does that to people. If they weren't so damned full of themselves, and so damned politically powerful, I might even find them funny.
What saddens me more than anything else are women who want to make abortion either so inaccessible as to render it impracticable, or who want to outlaw it altogether. Because I truly believe that most women, anti-choice or otherwise, who've experienced even a flicker of uncertainty about a pregnancy in this country since 1973 have been glad, in their hearts, to have a choice. I believe wanting to take that choice away from others is deeply about shame and punishment and judgment, and not about righteousness and love. I believe that because I rarely see those who want to outlaw abortion doing anything to combat its cause: unintended pregnancy, and I see them doing a lot to punish and shame women.
There is nothing "pro-life" about sonogram bills and denying Medicaid funding to (some!) rape victims or allowing doctors to opt out of giving pregnant women life-saving abortions. I know that what has kept me from having to make a decision about an unintended pregnancy is not the prospect of hearing a fetal heartbeat or having to go through a 24-hour wait period, but safe, easy and affordable access to contraception and good, honest medical information disseminated by doctors and medical professionals without religious agendas.
I was a girl growing up in Texas who was failed by abstinence-only education and soured by extreme religious dogma.
I don't want other girls to go through that, too. And so if you've gotten through this whole essay, consider donating to Planned Parenthood. Get on a NARAL mailing list. Fight HR3. Stand up against empty religious and political pandering and stand up for real solutions like affordable health care, comprehensive sex education and contraceptive access.
Originally published at Hay Ladies.
I'm a Christian, and I have decided to save myself till marriage. I'm perfectly fine with that. My boyfriend is fine with that too (we've been together a month), and respects my decision. However, like any celibate person would admit, sometimes I get these truly surreal urges for sex: I catch myself thinking that maybe even a little bit of touching while kissing would be fine, or I just think about what it would be like if we ever got married and ended up sleeping together. I have said nothing to my boyfriend, in case he misconstrues it as an invitation, but it has recently been very, very difficult to resist, especially with all these hormones making me want sex. I want to stay true to my decision to stay premaritally celibate, and I will pride myself on not being tempted, however my urges make the battle all the harder sometimes. Any suggestions?
Okay, well here is the thing: I'm a girl and I'm so afraid to be in a relationship for too long, because I think that I'm going to have to have sex. I know that my boyfriend right now wants it, but I really don't. He says he'll wait for me, but I'm still scared. I don't think that I will ever be ready to do it, and so I'm worried. What if I am NEVER ready?!
I have a question...so I was reading some of the questions that you answered and I noticed a strange feeling. The more I read of your site the more I am repelled by the idea of sex. I find that I start to lose trust in the people around me and question the things that they might do. I wonder just how normal they are, or if they are freaks who do sexual things with anyone or if they are gay or have some hidden agenda. The more I read about fourteen and fifteen year old girls having sex or doing sexual things the more I want to leave my house and hike out to the wilderness to live among the trees and rocks who live beyond the debilitation of civilization. I feel so alone, like I am the only one left who cares and that I am being pulled down with the rest of the world. Am I weird? Is there something unnatural or wrong with me for hating this all so much? Am I a bad person? Please be honest, I really want to know.
I have a problem, and I'm ready to crack with the stress of it. I've been on birth control (Yaz) for a year, to help with my acne, though I don't always take it at the same time every day. Sometimes I've missed pills or taken them over 12 hours late. That shouldn't really matter, though, because I'm not sexually active. My boyfriend and I have decided to wait until we get married to have sex. We only ever make out. Still, I find myself worrying about pregnancy risks even though there are no apparent ways to get pregnant from what we do. Some small part of my mind will whisper things like, "What if he has pre-ejaculate that seeps through his clothes onto you? What if he had a nocturnal emission that night he stayed over?" Nobody else I know seems to have this constant paranoia. I don't understand why I spend half my time worrying about a pregnancy that most people understand is impossible. I'm not sure what I'm asking here, other than, have you ever seen this before - a girl terrified of something happening when it isn't even likely? Is there any way I can help myself and get peace of mind? Thanks.
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