I have noticed over the years that when it comes to sex there are many definitions as to what counts, and these definitions vary by generation and predicament from what I can tell. I shall expound, and the not-so-innocent shall remain nameless.
I’ve had friends that engaged in anal sex in order to preserve their virginity. Personally, I don’t understand this thinking at all. I also had friends that took a somewhat different approach and engaged only in oral sex as a way of preserving their virginity. It seems that as long as it wasn’t vaginal it wasn’t sex. Are they suggesting that their cheap form of birth control maintains virginity? If it is not obvious, all of these people are heterosexuals. My homosexual friends found these definitions of sex offense. I don’t think I need to explain why. I wondered with the logic employed here if that meant one can remain a virgin with any form of birth control? Does one only lose virginity after giving birth? Are these the lessons these same people would teach their children? I think not.
I became quite intrigued by these methods of madness that American girls and women went through to protect the fragile existence of their reputations. Trying to understand, I started taking a poll. And oddly, nearly every American girl I asked confided in me that she had a number, a secret number. This number was her personal limit of how many men she felt it acceptable to sleep with before she married. Stranger still nearly everyone said that number was 5. And only those who had exceeded 5 stated 10. Apparently we were working in increments. But where did these numbers come from and why did they weigh so heavily on our minds? It was an insane preoccupation for women in their teens and twenties, and it was why they began the artful parsing of the definition of sex, by which Bill Clinton would be proud.
These crazy definitions and secret numbers were leading to neurotic behavior. One friend was in a panic to get married as she hit her number 10. I myself swore off sex after ending an engagement with my fiancĂ©. What if I don’t marry for another 10 years? I’d hate to think how many men one could sleep with in 10 years. Fortunately for me, not all of my friends were Midwestern American girls. Sara, from Belgium, thought my declamation ludicrous. You wouldn’t buy a car without a test drive. You should not get married without one either. She was married, she never had a secret number, and she was right.
Now, quickly reaching my mid-thirties and divorced, I don’t give a crap what secret numbers or definitions our sexually repressed and yet exploitive society holds. It’s not the number. It’s not the act. It’s the quality that counts. Great sex and a great love are the things I’m counting on finding these days.
1 comment:
the what-constitutes-sex conversation is one i've had many times. . . it seems to me that a lot of it stems from the narrow confines within which parents discuss sex with their children. they talk about sex only in terms of vaginal sex and only in terms of avoiding pregnancy. oral and anal sex is simply not discussed; std's are not discussed. i think many girls enter their teenage years truly believing their virginity is defined by absence of vaginal sex; that they can claim to be virgins even if they engage in anal or oral; that they can explore their sexuality through anal and oral while knowing they won't disappoint their parents (or themselves) with a teenage pregnancy.
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