Something I really love about sex is the way it makes me feel alive and at home in my body…. It’s kind of amazing to realize how much pleasure I can experience in this body.
Sexuality is a state of being, a way of experiencing and giving pleasure to ourselves and others. It has the potential to be a powerful and positive force, deepening our most intimate connections; it also can be a source of great pain. Not everyone has, or wants, sexual feelings. This, too, is part of the range of experiences.
This chapter looks at how sexuality develops through individual desire as well as social and cultural influences. It includes the voices of many women who have shared their diverse experiences around sex and sexuality.
What influences sexuality? Nearly everything. Child-rearing practices, government policies, religion, media images, pharmaceutical companies, drug advertisements, violence, and sexual abuse—all these affect how we experience sexuality. Stereotypes based on race, class, gender and gender identity, age, relationship status, disability, and sexual orientation also play a role. Understanding the social and personal influences on our sexuality can help us claim our right to pleasure.
Our sexual desires may reflect social influences and contradictions. For example, a particular sexual act may feel affirming in one situation but degrading in another. You might think someone whistling at you on the street is crude but also enjoy the attention. Or you might fantasize about sexual acts you’ve been told, or believe, are taboo. It’s not uncommon to feel conflicted about what you want sexually. Sometimes it takes time and experience to know what we want and how and when to set boundaries.
In an ideal world, we would all grow up with adults who talk comfortably and openly about sex and respect our boundaries. If we learn to think of sex as bad and shameful, or if we experience childhood sexual abuse or violence, it may take years of positive experiences later on to heal the relationship with our bodies and sex.
Most of us who experience or are assigned a female gender learn at a young age that we are supposed to make ourselves beautiful and sexy in order to become objects of (boys’) desire—but not to enjoy our bodies, not to have desires ourselves. We may come to fear that having desires will automatically lead us into risky sexual behaviors that will, in turn, lead to unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, or sexual assault.
© Maaike Bernstrom
These fears are instilled in us by a culture that sees female sexuality as dangerous and dirty. When we become aware of our desires, we are in a better position to choose whether and how to act on them, and to protect ourselves from risks.
The term “virginity” doesn’t mean anything, really, but people still use the word like we all know what it means.
Cultural notions of virginity have long shaped sexual attitudes and practices for young women on the verge of exploring sex. A virgin is most commonly considered someone who hasn’t had sex—heterosexual intercourse, specifically.
Young women in particular are burdened with conflicting pressures about virginity. On the one hand, popular culture promotes an everyone’s-doing-it attitude that can make young women feel something’s wrong with them if they’re not ready to have sex. On the other, morality messages shame young women into “saving themselves” for marriage.
Jessica Valenti, author of The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, writes about the troubling dynamics of federally funded purity balls (father/daughter dances where girls pledge their virginity to their dads, who promise to protect it until a suitable husband comes along) and abstinence-only programs that compare girls’ bodies to wrapped lollipops that become unwanted when used. “While young women are subject to overt sexual messages every day,” notes Valenti, “they’re simultaneously being taught—by the people who are supposed to care for their personal and moral development, no less—that their only real worth is their virginity and ability to remain ‘pure.’”
Also troubling is the messaging about who can attain such purity. The girls most often presented by the abstinence-only movement as examples to idolize are white, are straight, and fit a narrow beauty ideal. “Women of color, low-income women, immigrant women—these are the women who are not seen as worthy of being placed on a pedestal,” adds Valenti.
Complicating attitudes further is the pressure to make “the first time” meaningful in every way. A young college student says:
Particularly for girls, there is pressure coming from two opposite ends: the pressure to “lose it” and the pressure to lose it “in the right way.” I don’t think guys feel that “right way” bit as much.
You may choose to abstain from intercourse and/or other sexual activities for any number of reasons, including just not being ready. You have the right to say no to someone who is pushing you to have sex, and the right to say yes to sex that is pleasurable and responsible:
It’s not that I am waiting for marriage, or even for the “right” guy to come along. It isn’t that I don’t like to look sexy and that I don’t enjoy flirting or being sexual. It’s just that I haven’t had sex. I haven’t been in the position with a person where I am comfortable and feel safe. For some reason being a virgin in high school is relatively normal, but being a virgin in college seems to have as much of a stigma as being a “slut” does.
© Amanda Harrington/Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin
If sex were not such a taboo subject, comprehensive sexuality education would not only cover birth control and sexually transmitted infections, but also make room for discussions about pleasure and enthusiastic consent (topics that are covered in depth in the next chapter). When women are shamed into always saying no, and men are pressured to always say yes, we all miss out on experiencing our full sexual selves.
There is no reliable way for anyone to tell by looking at a woman’s genitals whether she has been sexually active. The hymen, more recently referred to as the vaginal corona, a tiny bit of mucous membrane at the opening of the vagina left over from the vagina’s development, is often considered an indicator of virginity, but its presence doesn’t have any real significance. And not everyone has one.
“Some girls are born without a hymen,” says Carol Roye, a nursing professor at Hunter College and a nurse-practitioner, while “others have only a scanty fringe of tissue. Moreover, for all its fabled mystery, the hymen is just a body part.”3 For more information, see “Vaginal Corona,”
While the hymen can be torn during sex or other physical activity, it doesn’t “break.” Torn areas can bleed, but it doesn’t always happen.
It is also impossible to tell if someone has had sex by how her body looks, how she walks or sits, or by any other means.
Media images and messages often reinforce stereotypes about sexuality. For example, Latina characters on TV shows and in films are often dressed in tight, revealing clothes, while Muslim women are covered head to toe and depicted as repressed. African-American women are often cast as hypersexual when young and asexual when they’re older. And media portrayals of African-American men and women in loving relationships are almost entirely absent from popular culture:
What are the young ladies thinking and feeling when the only women who resemble them are shaking their ass in front of the camera for LiL Wayne and Drake? What are the media telling us about African-American women? That we are only good to be video vixens and single.
Racism, which often limits representations of color, exacerbates such stereotypes.
Other stereotypes arise from sexism and general fear of difference. Lesbians are often portrayed as aggressive man-haters; bisexuals as promiscuous, because they refuse to be boxed into an either-or definition of sexual attraction; and trans people as confused, hypersexual, or deceitful. Those of us who express sexuality and sexual desire openly may find ourselves called sluts. Slut shaming is frequently used against young women who are believed to have had sex (even in monogamous relationships) and women who have (or have had) more than one partner. It may also be used as a slur for other reasons:
Those girls, I learned, were nearly every girl—not only the ones who showed interest in sex or had sex …but the ones who wore skimpy clothing, read fashion magazines, drank, dated, flirted, or had any investment in finding a partner.
These and other destructive stereotypes influence the ways we do (or don’t) assert our desires and the ways we judge ourselves and other women. They affect how others treat us and, when we internalize them and believe them, how we treat ourselves.
In reality, there are enormous differences in sexual experiences and attitudes among women within any racial, cultural, gender, or sexual identity. We can begin to free up the range of sexual values and expression available to all of us by approaching one another ready to listen and learn.
We often see ourselves through the eyes of others. Influenced by popular images, we may lose respect for our uniqueness and end up judging ourselves harshly. This can have a negative effect on the ways we express ourselves and the risks we take:
For years I wouldn’t make love in a position that exposed my backside to scrutiny, for I had been told it was “too jiggly.” Needless to say, this prevented me from being sexually assertive and creative and limited my responses. We have a good sex life with lots of variety, fantasies, games. The fact that my disability prevents me from bending my leg limits us in some positions, but we just try different ones. Yet …I am still struggling with my body. When I am unclothed, I still feel like parts of me are really ugly. I think that when I can finish mourning and cry out my anguish over the disability, then sex will get better for me.
Courtesy of YWCHAC
Members of the Young Women of Color HIV/AIDS Coalition at the 2010 Teen Health & Wellness Film Festival in New York City. Learn more at statusispower.com.
Sometimes we find ourselves in the difficult position of trying to help our partners overcome their own negative feelings:
While I love my girlfriend’s body without reservation, and think she looks damn sexy in most clothes (not to mention achingly beautiful naked), I know—in part because I’ve felt that way myself—that when you’re feeling lumpish and fat no amount of affirmation from a partner or other friend/family member is going to help drown out those voices in your head. In part this is because we’re relentlessly told by media and medical “experts” that not conforming to our culture’s physical standards of beauty isn’t just unfortunate—it’s somehow immoral. I don’t have a lot of authority, as just one person (who’s blinded by love to boot), to counteract those omnipresent voices of cultural authority that say, “You’re bad, you’re wrong, you’re not beautiful, you’re unworthy.”
Acceptance that comes from within can be the most satisfying. Getting to where we can block out the damaging messages frees us to love ourselves and our partners more fully:
One of the difficult things about being large is that more often than not other people are the problem, not me. Many times I have felt that people I know wonder at my friendship with my lover. They wonder how a thin person can make love to a large one. The idea, I suppose, is that large women aren’t attractive. Nonsense, of course. I enjoy my body immensely when I make love, either to myself or my boyfriend. I never think about my largeness. I simply am it and positively luxuriate in it.
As a woman, and particularly as a trans woman, I sometimes find it difficult to forget all the messages from society and the media about what I’m “supposed to” look like. The possibility that my body can give me pleasure—regardless of whether or not I think I’m thin enough or my breasts are big enough or I’m too tall—is really wonderful.
For further discussion, see Chapter 3, “Body Image”; and “What Is It Like to Be in a Relationship When You Don’t Like Some or All of Your Own Body?”
Power differences often play out in sex. Even if you feel equal to a male partner, the culture we live in generally values men more. A female sexual partner may also have more power or status than you because of earning power, level of education, class, race, or other factors. If you are transgender, non-trans lovers may have more respect in society because they operate within the context of a widely accepted gender identity. Though a partner may not acknowledge or even feel that there’s a power differential, such privileges can surface in sex, resulting in the following responses:
• You feel you should have sex when your partner wants to, whether you’re in the mood or not.
• You feel you should have orgasms to validate your partner.
• You feel you shouldn’t ask for what you want, especially if it’s different from what your partner is doing.
• You feel you shouldn’t use protection if it interferes with your partner’s pleasure, even if this leaves you unprotected against sexually transmitted infections.
• If you have a male partner and are sexual without having intercourse, you feel you should help him have an orgasm to relieve his sexual tensions.
• If you have a male partner and have intercourse, you feel you should take care of birth control, or you shouldn’t use birth control at all if your partner doesn’t want you to.
Becoming aware of how externally created dynamics may play out is an important step toward developing respectful and mutually satisfying sexual relationships where consent matters:
[I don’t want] a partner who doesn’t know that because he’s male, his partners don’t always tell him when he does things sexually that they’d rather not participate in. After one disastrous relationship with a fellow who was a jerk and didn’t have any idea about privilege, I wrote, “Isn’t a patriarchal fuckhead” on my list of qualities I desired in future partners.
It is a cruel fact that many women experience or witness abuse—most often from men, but also from women. Childhood sexual abuse, rape, sexual harassment, homophobic or transphobic attacks, battering in our homes—any of these can affect our sexual lives. Even if we don’t experience violence directly, the fear of being assaulted, or disturbing news stories or media images, can prevent us from feeling comfortable with sexual partners:
I always feel like I have to hide part of myself in my relationships, and as a result it makes it really hard for me to be fully invested on an emotional level because I am constantly performing. And it makes me question how much I can expect a partner to give when I cannot and will not give all of myself. The actions of rapists do not stop with the rape. They reverberate and echo and continue—what these people did to me is with me for life.
If you have been abused, a sudden touch or gesture from a partner—even one who would never dream of causing harm—can trigger what some call the “sexual alarm system”6 and cause you to tense up. You may have to show a partner how to disarm the system—for example, by warming up with gentle touching or intimate conversation. It’s essential that you go at your own pace and find friends or other supportive people who can help you through this.
More women speak about how they have coped with violence or an abusive relationship, and its effect on later relationships, and in Chapter 24, “Violence Against Women.”
Many religions have teachings that seek to prohibit certain sexual thoughts and behaviors, especially outside monogamous heterosexual marriage. These attitudes can leave us with negative feelings about our bodies and sexuality. Growing up in a religion in which spiritual goodness is associated with celibacy or the denial of sexual feelings can lead to the idea that sexuality and spirituality are completely split:
All through my teen years, [my] church leaders stressed sexual purity. While I was busy staying sexually pure and modest, I learned absolutely nothing about my body or how I felt sexually. The guilt and shame stopped me in my tracks, and this did not go away when I married. [Recently] I spent a lot of time on a female-oriented sexuality website. After immersing myself in all this female-friendly sexual literature, I finally got in touch with my sexuality and started enjoying sex.
I was raised in a strict Southern Baptist environment in a small town in southern Arkansas. I knew I was a lesbian at around nine or ten years old. Having repressed my sexuality until I was twenty-eight was very hard. I had no role models to look to, growing up. In my mind, church and being a lesbian just did not go together. Now I know that sex can be a very spiritual, uplifting experience. I wish I experienced it more.
At the same time, some of us have found positive messages about sexuality within organized religion. A woman who attended Roman Catholic schools says:
I was taught that the body was the “temple of the Holy Spirit,” and I thought then, as I think now, that having the spirit of God, however we each define God, dwelling within us is …beautiful.
Asra Nomani, a journalist who writes frequently about religion and gender issues, has created an Islamic Bill of Rights for Women in the Bedroom that address key issues for women in many religions. It reads in part:
• Women have an Islamic right to respectful and pleasurable sexual experience.
• Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about their bodies, including the right to refuse sexual advances.
• Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about their choice of a partner.
• Women have an Islamic right to make independent decisions about contraception and reproduction.
• Women have an Islamic right to protection from physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.7
Some of us leave our religions of origin because of the sexual prohibitions. We may choose not to affiliate with a religion at all, or seek out liberal congregations within our own denominations or other denominations that are more sex-affirming.
Reconstructionist and Reform Jewish congregations, Unitarian Universalism, the United Church of Christ, Metropolitan Community Churches, Wicca, and liberal Quakerism (Society of Friends) have a wider acceptance of women’s roles and sexuality and may include female clergy and leaders, recognition of same-sex relationships, and comprehensive sex education.
Drawing upon ancient cultures in which women’s bodies, sexuality, and fertility were honored as an integral part of nature and life, many women have found wisdom and strength in connecting sexually with a partner and a sense of divine feminine energy. Others have turned to tantra, an Eastern spiritual philosophy, to explore sexual practices that focus on the interconnectedness of life. By investigating sensations of touch and breathing, creating rituals, and paying attention to subtle energies, some women create a sacred connection with partner(s) and higher power(s).
Traditionally, celibacy has meant choosing not to marry. Today, many people use it to mean not having sex with a partner, and sometimes not even masturbating, for a certain period of time. Some people choose celibacy in response to our culture’s overemphasis on sex, as a break from feeling the pressure to relate to others sexually all the time.
One woman who grew tired of always having to say yes or no describes her experience with celibacy:
I’m exploring myself as a sexual person, but in a different way. My sensitivity to my body is heightened. I am more aware of what arouses my sensual interests. I am free to be myself. I have more energy for work and friends. My spirituality feels more intense and clear.
In partnered relationships, we may choose celibacy when we want some distance or solitude, or when we just don’t want to have sex for a while. This can require careful communication:
I say to my lover, “I don’t feel like making love this month, and I may not next month.” Now, who does that? Is it okay? Am I allowed? The last thing we were ever taught was that it was okay to try what we want.
Some couples choose celibacy together. It can help couples break out of old sexual patterns, expand sensual/sexual focus beyond genital sex, and make us feel more self-sufficient and independent—all of which can strengthen a relationship.
Asexuality, a lack of interest in sex, is a natural human variation thought to be experienced by about 1 percent of people.8 It is not the same as a sudden decline in sexual interest or attraction, which may be linked to side effects of certain medications or illness. (For more on variations of desire and the effects of hormones and medications.)
Reporting on her groundbreaking 2008 study based on interviews with 102 asexuals, Susan Scherrer quotes one woman who doesn’t feel sexual attraction: “I love the human form and can regard individuals as works of art and find people aesthetically pleasing, but I don’t ever want to come into sexual contact with even the most beautiful of people.”
Another woman feels sexual attraction but not the inclination to act on it: “I am sexually attracted to men but have no desire or need to engage in sexual or even non-sexual activity (cuddling, hand-holding, etc.).”
One woman describes her ideal relationship as “the same as a ‘normal’ relationship, without the sex. We would be best friends, companions, biggest fans of each other, partners in financial, work, and social areas of our lives. I am very physical. I would like to be able to tackle my lover (as in “I love him” not as in “person I am currently having sex with”) to the ground, roll around until I pin him, then plant a kiss on his nose, snuggle into the crook of his arm, and talk about some random topic …without him getting an erection or entertaining hopes that this will lead to the removal of clothing or a march to the bedroom.”9
The Asexual Visibility and Education Network, known as AVEN (asexuality.org), offers asexual people a place to connect and learn. The website identifies several aspects of asexuality:
• Unlike celibacy, which is a choice, asexuality is a sexual orientation.
• Asexuality is not a dysfunction, and there is no need to find a “cause” or a “cure.”
• Asexual people have the same emotional needs as everybody else and are just as capable of forming intimate relationships.
• Asexuals are generally very different from one another: some experience romantic attraction, some don’t. Some experience arousal, some don’t.
• Many asexuals talk about having a “romance drive.” They need to be intimate with another special person; it’s just that the intimacy they desire isn’t sexual.
• It may be more difficult to find someone who is willing to enter into a conventional relationship with the knowledge that sex will not be involved, but remember, there are other people with low or no sex drive out there and many people who care more about love and companionship than they do about sex.