Sexuality Happens

I support comprehensive sex education. 100%. 150% even. I’m not a fan of abstinence based/abstinence plus sex education and I am VERY anti abstinence only sex education.

However, I feel that sometimes with all this sex positive, comprehensive sex ed, yay sex stuff, we become anti abstinence.

That is unfair to many people. Abstinence is a completely valid choice. In the same way that we don’t like the abstinence only people making us feel like sluts for wanting to have sex when not married, we shouldn’t make people feel like prudes for making the choice to wait until marriage to have sex. Or for making the choice to wait until ______…whenever that means the right person, the 2 year mark, the magical dinner date when they “just know” or whatever it is.

It’s ok to wait.

In the same way that sometimes I feel that feminism makes it a not ok choice to be a house wise, this sex-positive view point makes it not ok to be abstinent. I have a friend whose goal in life is to be a house wise. She comes from a family of powerful women…she’s even in graduate school getting her Master’s. She wants nothing more then to get married, have babies, and spending her days matching paint colors, balancing school schedules and girl scouts with karate, and having a child on each hip. She gets SO much flack on this for being a feminist who wants to do this.

My friends who choose to be abstinent are the same way. It’s like we think that by having them make this choice, we’ll be loosing ground. They tell someone that they’ve chosen to be abstinent, and they get a lecture on the health benefits of sex, or they get looked at quite strangely, glared at in fact. Or they get the “oh, haven’t found anyone you like, eh?” When they reply “oh no, my partner and I have been together ____ months/years,” they get more looks, or often the “what religion are you?” question. Many people are abstinent not because of their religion, but just because they choose to be.

Just because people are so excited to talk about sex and to be sex-positive (and I know I’m one of them), it doesn’t mean that we can forget that being sex-positive about abstinence as a choice too is important. As sex educators, and even sex bloggers, we can’t leave out an entire community solely for a choice that they have made, just like as feminists, we cannot alienate a population for a career path choice on which they have decide. Sex-positive means embracing a variety of options, not just picking and choosing the ones that work for us.