I am genuinely surprised (this post contains talk about sex)…
…by how many people on tumblr post nudity and/or sexually explicit images/text/whatever to their pages.
Like, it doesn’t bother me, and I don’t feel as if the moral fabric of civilization is fraying or whatever, but it’s interesting to see sexually explicit imagery move so far into the mainstream that people are willing to use it in public discussions of their sexual lives and proclivities. (i.e., when I was in college, one would talk abstractly about being gay or straight or bi or whatever, and one might even talk abstractly about what one was ‘into,’ but it’s hard to imagine any of my college friends posting a gif that would end up on my dash showcasing what they were into, let alone posting revealing and/or nude photographs of themselves, all of which seems to be de rigeur on tumblr.)
In general, by the way, I guess this is good news. People feel a lot of shame about sex, and they shouldn’t, although of course it is important to remember that images posted to the Internet are permanent, and may be seen by your children and their children etc., in addition to your employer and whomever else. (I realize that on some level that’s equivalent to saying to someone 30 years ago, “Don’t come out of the closet because you might lose your job,” but being gay is not quite the same thing as choosing to post naked pictures of yourself.)
I’m also of the unfashionable opinion that people shouldn’t start sexualizing themselves or the world around them until/unless they want to, but I think normalizing sex instead of treating it as This Terrible Secret Dirty Thing ends up making for healthier relationships between people and their bodies.
I feel awkward even saying this, but presumably anyone reading this is aware the traditional barrier between Porn and Not Porn is breaking down.
(It belatedly occurs to me that if you swap every mention of sex or sexuality in this post with the words “Doctor Who,” it is still mostly accurate. Like, I am genuinely surprised by how much Doctor Who content is posted to tumblr, and I do think it’s wonderful that the people who post such content feel no shame or embarrassment about it, but of course they should be mindful that future employers may discover they have a Known Whovian on the payroll.)
Anonymous asked: do you believe in saving sex for marriage?
I can’t answer that question unless I answer the question of what constitutes marriage. And none of the definitions I have for marriage really hold up to scrutiny:
1. A marriage is a legal contract. But for the vast majority of human history, marriages were not legal contracts, so are we to say that all those people—from the Prophet Muhammad to Mary and Joseph—weren’t really married?
2. A marriage is a life-long monogamous romantic relationship. Well, this is patently untrue. 40% of marriages end in divorce; is it immoral for those people to have had sex during their marriages simply because their marriages later ended? If I’m single, meet a girl in Las Vegas, marry her, have sex with her, and divorce her the next day—is that somehow less ethically problematic than two unmarried people in a committed relationship having sex?
The question is further complicated by the fact that many people in the United States are legally prohibited from ever marrying. So if you argue that one must always wait for marriage, you end up arguing that gay people in New York can have sex after they get married, but that gay people in Alabama will never be able to have sex, at least until and unless gay marriage becomes legal in Alabama.
Which brings me to the biggest issue of all: To answer your question, I must not only define marriage (which turns out to be really hard to define); I must also define sex. What is sex? Is it actions that can result in procreation? Is it any kind of sexual intimacy? If so, is kissing sex? Is hugging sex if it happens to result in arousal?
We’ve created this aura around virginity as if one’s virginity is a real and tangible thing—but of course it isn’t. Sex and virginity are socially constructed concepts. Are you a virgin if you engage in oral sex? Are you a virgin if you’ve kissed a girl? Are you a virgin if it was just the tip? Are you a virgin if your hymen breaks from tampon-insertion?
In my opinion, our obsessive focus on virginity and sexual purity doesn’t serve anyone. Losing one’s virginity is not an event; it’s a process. Similarly, weddings are events, and signing your marriage license is an event, but marriages are not events. They are processes.
So no, I don’t think it’s inherently wrong to have sex before marriage, because I don’t know what sex means, and I don’t know what marriage means. I think people should feel empowered to make their own decisions about their own bodies in thoughtful and open conversations with their romantic partners.
And use condoms. The End.
