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