We have all been there, sitting in the couch, watching a movie with our parents in the late hours of a quiet Saturday afternoon. And then a sex scene comes on, and everyone sits there quietly, begging the lord or the universe or whoever's listening to please just make it stop. Fortunately what seemed like endless torture didn't last very long: in only two minutes both actors were naked, done, and seemingly incredibly satisfied.
Later on that day, I walked by a huge billboard announcing the premiere of Fifty Shades Freed, that happened to be right across the street from a lingerie store. I stood there looking at these two amenities, that most likely would’ve gone unnoticed, had it been any other day. I laughed.
We live in a hyper-sexualized world where everyone is scared to talk about sex.
By the time kids get introduced to sexual education in school, most of them (if not all of them) have watched extremely violent, unrealistic, completely male-focused and careless of consent pornography online. Take that and add in the still widely shared conception that sex is something sacred and reproduction-oriented, and where does that leave us? More precisely, where does that leave young girls, who have only ever heard of how important it is to wait for the right person, and were never informed about masturbation, nor their own pleasure, nor their own choice?
Female bodies have gotten men all confused since the beginning of time. Going back to mid-16th century, a time of scientific and humanistic progress, anatomists believed the clitoris was some sort of abnormal growth. Men (because let’s face it, no chance you’ll find the name of a woman amid 16th century anatomists) didn’t know what to make of the clitoris at the time. Five centuries later, it would appear most of them still don’t. We’re still wondering about female orgasms as we wonder about aliens and life outside of earth: are they out there?
The gap between how much we represent sex in society and what we actually allow ourselves to talk about is huge and becoming more and more visible. But God forbid we tell our children that sex should be as enjoyable for her as it is for him. Or that we tell girls that they shouldn’t feel guilty for enjoying sex. Or that we tell them that she has a right to be curious and experiment at her own pace. We keep on romanticizing and idealizing first times, leaving out the fact that one should only do what one is comfortable doing.
So indeed, sex is a most private and personal subject. What one does is one’s business. But sexual education is a public social matter, since it only reflects how careless we are of women, and how much they are still perceived as an object more so than a subject, an actor. She is entitled to her own pleasure and her own choices, at work as much as at home.
It is time young people are taught to fully consider their partners when engaging in any sexual activity. It is time we start telling children that it is not okay to kiss Snow White when she has been poisoned and is unconscious. If we weren’t busy staying “pure” and “decent”, maybe fewer drunk girls would be taken advantage of. If we took the time to educate young teenagers, maybe sex would be more consensual more often. Maybe, just maybe, sex would be healthier, more fun, more fulfilling.
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