Sex: Proceed With Caution

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about sex. I think modern women have been fed such a bum line about sex. We grow up watching shows and movies where women and men play each other like violins, listen to music by pop stars who strut around like strumpets, live in a world surrounded by advertisements filled with painted half-naked supermodels hanging open like barn doors.

Naturally, most of us grew up believing that we would not wait until marriage to have sex. We were all – I know I was – probably “sex-positive,” meaning that we thought that sex was a good thing... unlike our ancestors, who believed it was a sin. Being sex-positive, at least for me, meant viewing sex as a toy, one of my most cherished ones. It was a tool, a plaything, something for me to exercise at will, to use at my discretion.

There was only one problem with this. Sex is not a toy. It is not a tool. It is a powerful, mercurial force. Sex is not a toy that we control, or a tool that we manipulate. It comes into our lives on its terms, and leaves its presence as it pleases. I grew up believing that my sexuality would be at my beck and call, that I would engage man after man, flirting with some, establishing relationships with others, wielding my sexuality like a bludgeon. I believed that I had the power to exercise my sexuality at will.

This was unrealistic. I was a woman, a mortal human being. I didn’t have the power to “exercise my sexuality.” As I entered adolescence and then matured, it became patently obvious to me, to my dismay, that my “sexuality” was not following the master plan. Sex was not a toy. I was getting hurt. And so were my girlfriends. In my case, the men simply weren’t coming. My sexuality was there, and I was ready for love, but I just couldn’t find the right guy, and the guys who were coming were there for the wrong reasons. It hurt. I thought I could control who came into my life and when, but I didn't have any power over when or where I would find love, or what type of love it would be.

My girlfriends were faring a bit better, but not much. There were boyfriends who were distant, boyfriends who were indifferent, boyfriends who were downright abusive. Boyfriends who cheated, mooched or stole money, forgot anniversaries and birthdays, ditched date night for Monday Night Football with the boys. Those of us who experimented with one-night-stands discovered that, contrary to Erica Jong’s concept of the liberating “zipless fuck,” promiscuous sex was often an empty and unsatisfying mélange of foreign bodies melding together, hands groping erotic zones clumsily, a perfunctory caricature of foreplay, and a sweaty body thrusting between the thighs, indifferent to our rhythms, pushing robotically until climax.

Some of you have undoubtedly had much better luck than my friends and I have. And yet I think I speak for most of us when I say that many of us have discovered that sex is not a toy. And we can’t control it. We can’t control who comes into our lives, and when. We can’t control what happens when they get here. And throwing sex wantonly into the mix is like mud-wrestling with a barracuda. Reading this has probably made some of you think about the experiences you’ve had. If I would be allowed to offer you any advice at all, it would be to RESPECT SEX. Respect sexuality. Respect romance. Don’t be wanton. Or you’ll get hurt. Like all my friends and I did, and almost all of the women I know.