by Anna Fry 

 

There are several very loud voices that seem to overpower the cultural dialogue surrounding women’s sexuality. The first is the message many of us grew up with, which says that you should remain a virgin until you’re married, that sex is a moral issue and that if your own actions aren’t aligned with those values then you, young lady, are officially a big S-L-U-T.  Even if we don’t have this spelled out for us by our parents, it definitely manifests itself at school and in our social lives.

How many guys you knew were shunned or treated as though they had a bad reputation in middle and high school for their (alleged) sexual behavior? And how about girls?

Yeah, exactly.

Anyone who has ever been called a slut or a whore or has felt otherwise punished for something that should have been a private and personal choice knows how much that double standard hurts.

The second voice that seems to be shouting with a great deal of force is that of our popular culture, which asks that we be thin, tan, busty, sexy and horny at all times. Music videos, certain late-night infomercials featuring young, inebriated women flashing the camera, at least half of the advertisements marketing anything towards the 18-to-30-year-old-set: they are all saturated with sexual imagery that can border on the pornographic. And speaking of pornographic, the Internet has made porn more readily available than ever and the mass consumption it has generated is shaping our perceptions of sex in some questionable ways. It’s no wonder we feel extremely pressured to be sexed up and ready to go at all times…even though we know we “shouldn’t”. Because then, you know, you’d be a slut. You can see where this is going.

So here’s the thing about this whole mess: they aren’t going to shut up. People are going to keep on trying to force feed us all of this crap that tells us that we, in all of our gorgeous, organic realness, are somehow flawed and wrong. I just don’t buy it, not for one second. When living on someone else’s terms doesn’t work for me, I like to make my own. Now, obviously the ways you feel about your body, your sex drive and the values surrounding those things isn’t going to look exactly like mine, but this might give you a starting place.

1.    My body belongs to me.

2.    I choose to love myself, to feed myself, to care for myself and to feel sexy at the size and weight I am right this second, and not at the size of my skinny jeans.
3.    MY MORAL COMPASS IS NOT LOCATED BETWEEN MY LEGS.
4.    I am only okay with sexual activities that occur between consenting adults.
5.    When I decide to have sex, I first think about the physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual reality (read: consequences) of my choice.
6.    I always use protection. Every. Single. Time.
7.    I masturbate as much as I want (for me, this is every day, sometimes more than once.  I think I’m addicted) and I consider orgasms to be a love letter to myself.
8.    The roadmap of my desires is created by paying attention to who and what I love and by what feels pleasurable to me, not by any outside standard of what’s “normal”.

9.    I love having sex! A lot! All the time! It is one of my favorite things in the whole wide world.

 

When I first started piecing together these terms, I literally wrote them out as a contract with myself. And very shortly thereafter, something cool began to happen: for the first time, the loudest voice I heard was mine. Those other things yelling from all sides began to have a lot less impact, and I was able to see them for what they were. I am still learning to do this, but as I get older, I’m finding it easier to realize when some outside force is trying to use a bullshit message as a way to control or influence my feelings about sex and about myself. And you know what? It’s getting better all the time.