A Blog About Sex

A few housekeeping things: yes, I skipped another week. Soz. I started a post, realised it was boring, deleted the whole thing, had a bit of a sulk and then avoided thinking about it for a week.

On the plus side, Hum Drum Plum recently surpassed 40,000 views, which is NUTS. Even if we accept that a bunch of those are spam views, which we must, I’m pretty chuffed.

Also important, this week I visited the doctor who was my anaesthetist for the procedure I talked about in this post, and he claimed that I was actually talking about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, not Pixar, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story, I always say.

With that out of the way it’s time to get into this week’s blog post, which is about sex.

Woah, look out. Didn’t see that coming did you?

Without going into any detail at all because this is the whole problem I have a lot of difficulty with talking about sex.

To be clear, it’s not sex that’s the issue; it’s my own experiences I can’t discuss. I am super sex-positive. I am quite happy to talk about sex theoretically, quite happy to be accepting of other people’s sex lives, to not squirm or giggle or judge. But ask me about my own and I’ll probably die of shame. There’s nothing shameful about it, and I’m not actually ashamed, but still, I couldn’t just say, “oh this is a thing I like” or “this is how often I do that thing”. Even in a perfectly respectful and open context.

Here is the only detail I can bring myself to share in this oh-so-public forum:

When I was a teenager, I thought that sex was for boys. This was ok with me, the whole thing seemed a bit icky actually, and so I was quite ok with the idea of being the means to an end for another person. This, it seemed to me, was the logical role of a girl in a boy-girl sexy times scenario. This is obviously a totally fucked up thing to think, and I definitely realised this was not the case pretty early on, but I know that subconsciously, this attitude has been pretty deeply ingrained in me since then.

I also bought into the idea that all dudes want sex all the time. Every adult ever told me to be wary of boys, that they only had “one thing on their mind” at all times and that I couldn’t trust their seemingly innocent motives. This led me to believe for many years that any time someone didn’t want to have sex with me, I was a failure. Coupled with the belief that I was a sex object, not a sexual person, I began to relate ‘rejection’ to my self-worth. If these sex-mad boys didn’t want to have sex with me, didn’t this mean I was an ugly, unsexy, failure of a woman?

Without going into any more detail than this because I might die in a second, this has caused some issues in my life. But in the last few years I’ve been really working on it… sort of like a pet personality project. I’ve been trying to be braver, trying to think more positively about myself and my body, and trying to communicate better.

One of the things that has changed my life is Sexplanations, the sex-ed channel on youtube. If you’ve not watched any of these videos, can I just highly recommend that you do? Even if you you’re super educated on this stuff? Not only have I learnt some things, I’ve also learnt that other people don’t know stuff, that other people have questions, and that lots of things are normal.

But I’m also pissed off that I’m nearly 26 years old, and it’s taken me this long to feel ok with any of this stuff.

It’s very clear to me from my own experiences and from reading about others, that good sex education is completely lacking from most people’s lives. Kids should be taught that consent means hearing a definite yes, not just assuming a yes exists based on the lack of a no. They need to learn how contraception works, and to what extent. They need to be taught that virginity is a meaningless social construct, and that there’s no such thing as a slut. They need to have open and safe forums in which to ask their questions. And they need to not just be shown a whole bunch of photos of chlamydia in the hopes they’ll all abstain in fear.

Photo not relevant. Unless you want to consider the fog a metaphor for confusion and the trees a metaphor for grumpiness.