My sophomore year of college,
I had to take this class called Honors Human Sexuality.
Which was a strange kind of class to wander into
because you had a dozen kids: nerdy enough to be
top of their class, getting scholarships just for
doing their homework, but
also
who were willing to have completely honest,
frank discussions about sex.
(What I’m saying is, it was awesome.)So our first day, the professor went through this list
of intimate acts, and wanted to know what we believed
qualified as sex.
She said kissing, we said no.
She said oral, there was some controversy.
She said anal.
And one–
one singular girl, in the corner of the room,
said no.And god, with that one word, I could tell you
her whole life’s story:
I could tell you about the Bible Belt, Southern Baptist home,
the “your virginity is a gift you give your husband.”
I could tell you about the pushy high school boyfriend, the
First True Love and how he said things like
“blue balls is a medical condition” and
“no, this is totally six inches” and
“baby, baby, anal doesn’t count as REAL sex.”The tragedy here
is not her ignorance, or her warped perception
of human sexuality. The real tragedy
is the education system that failed her–
the way female sex drive is treated like a myth
or a side-effect of heterosexual marriage, the way
the clitorus is left un-labeled in high school text books
or how I learned the word vulva on the internet.
It’s the society whose obsession with sex
can only be rivaled by it’s shame of it.
How there is no right way to have a body:
virginity treated as prudishness,
promiscuity treated as lack of moral compass.
In a world where boys talk about
losing respect for the women they sleep with
and yet never lose respect for themselves,
it is not her fault
that she didn’t understand what she was getting into.When she stumbled over her explanation
that she thought anal counted as sex in gay couples,
just not heterosexual ones,
it made my chest ache.
She was putting up parameters, working in clauses
all so that what she’d done
wouldn’t fall under the terrifying title of
Real Sex.
Because growing up under the
Lone Star State of Abstinence Only
turns the freedom of choice into a heavy burden
where we are taught how to say no
but not how to say yes–
where women are valued by the state of their bodies.Did you know you can’t even pop a hymen?
That it’s a muscle and it stretches and
if you bleed the first time,
you’re not supposed to?
That stained sheets are not a rite of passage
or a sign of purity.
To every teenaged boy who’s ever bragged
about how tight she was,
here’s the part where I tell you that when she is aroused
everything lubricates and loosens,
she was only that “tight” because you
have no idea how to turn her on.
(Which is not something to brag about.)It is unacceptable that someone
could make it to college—two decades of their life–
without getting the bare bones basics of sexuality.
And no, fear tactics and wait-until-marriage don’t count
as an education. We can’t be so caught up
in shaming sexuality that we neglect to teach
how to express it safely.
Because if Abstinence Only really works?
Then I guess anal isn’t sex.
It’s just cardio.
HONORS HUMAN SEXUALITY by Ashe Vernon (via latenightcornerstore)
