I wish people were more open about sex and sexuality. I met a boy at a UU youth religious conference who believed in not closeting sexuality and it was amazing to talk to him. There was no shame in whatever he said, we talked unabashedly about sex, our sexuality, genitalia, all the things I’ve never had anyone to ask about males and sex compared to females. And it wasn’t awkward or uncomfortable after a while, and so by simply talking about sex, it became something understandable and natural, not disgusting or inappropriate or secret. For a few hours I didn’t need shame or to blush or stumble for acceptable words, and I learned a lot and it was very freeing. Our words had the power we gave them, and so they didn’t have power over us. I miss that, I wish I’d tried harder to keep that level of comfort talking about the human body.
Mark came over last night and we fooled around a bit for the first time, and I had such a hard time talking to my sister about it, even though we are close and I wasn’t afraid of telling her, just of using the words. I had to beat around the bush so much, it took at least an hour and a half to finally get comfortable enough to talk. What if something had actually been wrong, what if I had had something important to say? There is so much shame placed on human sexuality, no wonder rape goes unreported so often. No wonder STD’s and teen pregnancy are so prevalent, when I can’t barely even tell the person I’m closest too about being kissed. We can’t prevent anything we can’t educate about, and we can’t educate when we can’t talk.