Can’t we all just get an orgasm?

Why are we so afraid of female sexuality?

It seems every few years someone writes a book exposing the (supposed) dark side of women’s decent into sexual gratification. First of all let’s tackle some stereotypes. I’ll just throw some of the more egregious ones out there for you. Women should be virgins when they get married. A woman who has had multiple partners is a whore. Men don’t marry women that have slept around. Etc., etc. etc.

Barf.

Let’s take a trip in Meme’s sweet little pocket rocket shaped time machine.

Our first stop: 1919, Frederick Killian created a condom that didn’t age as fast as previous kinds by hand-dipping them from natural rubber latex. These new type of condoms enjoyed a great expansion of sales. By the mid-1930s, the fifteen largest makers in the U.S. were producing 1.5 million condoms a day.

Hop back in, here we go: 1963, 2.3 million American women are using the Pill.

Now let’s get back to present time. There are a plethora of birth control choices.

Bear with me, I’m getting to my point.

In 1919, when the first reliable condoms were mass produced they were immediately popular. Why is that? Because now women could have sex for the pleasure of it, no longer burdened by the fear that they may get pregnant. Epiphany!

By the time the Pill was introduced in the ’60s it extended an extra freedom to women. They no longer had to rely on the man to wear the condom and could decide their own reproductive fate. Once again women could now have sex for the pure pleasure of it.

So, the other day I was reading a review for a book called ‘Unhooked’ by Laura Sessions Stepp, subtitled, ‘How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both’. In describing how she came to venture into the topic of young women and sex she recalls a story,

“In the spring of 1998, the principal of a suburban Washington, D.C., middle school called about twenty-five parents to a special night meeting. There, over the annoying hum of the fluorescent bulbs found in eighth-grade classrooms around the country, she announced that as many as a dozen girls had been performing oral sex on two or three boys for most of the school year. The thirteen- and fourteen-year-old students were getting it on at parties, in parks and even in a couple of neighborhood parking lots.“

I’m sure I’m treading on thin ice when I say that I do NOT find this the least bit upsetting. My sexual growth and development, from masturbation to heavy petting to girl-on-girl, have played a large part in my adult sexual health. I am able to enjoy myself, feel comfortable with my body, and give pleasure all in equal measure.

What struck me about this topic is two-fold. First, these girls are experimenting sexually with alternatives to vaginal penetration. These are some smart cookies, much like their fore-mothers, they are taking control of their own sexual economics. (If you haven’t figured it out by now, non-vaginal sex=no pregnancy). And the fact that the onus is entirely on the girl, as usual, just makes the argument moot. Consensual sex people!

Let’s stop this swarm of fear based propaganda being heaped on women’s bodies and bring pleasure back into the bedroom.

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