Sex through the Lens of Art: An Interview with Artist Zoe Charlton
Subservience. Sexualization. Strength.
In this episode, Laura Stepp speaks with artist Zoe Charlton about gender, sexuality, race, and history. [11 min 41 sec]
Originally published on SexReally.com on December 6, 2010.
I Can’t Get Pregnant - Oh Wait, I Can!
Think because you smoke weed, had an abortion, or haven’t gotten pregnant or gotten someone pregnant yet, you’re infertile? Think again…
Laura Sessions Stepp talks to students at Montgomery College in Maryland—and to a professor at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta—about common fertility myths and misconceptions. [11 min 09 sec]
Originally published on SexReally.com on July 26, 2010.
STD Investigators: Solving Mysteries, Saving Lives
Many young people, like older adults, are scared to get tested for STDs…so they don’t.
Melissa Wong and Teri Lopez, STI investigators in California, explain how they track down former partners of people who’ve tested positive for a sexually transmitted infection—and make sure they get tested. [9 min 45 sec]
Originally published on SexReally.com on June 28, 2010.
Standing Up to Idiots: Responses and Reflections
Originally published on May 15, 2010 on SexReally.com.
Ever since I came out with my story about Mr. Idiot thinking he had the right to take off his condom and pull out my NuvaRing without consulting me, I have received numerous responses, all expressing varying degrees of disgust and disbelief that this kind of stuff does actually happen. The most interesting thing, however, is who I have been receiving responses from. A number of men have written me apologizing for their gender, asking me if I’m okay, and if there is anything they can do for me.
A few examples of responses I have gotten from men:
Good for you for writing about it and sharing it. A lot of women will learn something about those idiots out there and maybe find a way to protect themselves from it. Yes, I know the law doesn’t make this a crime, but in my mind you are right to see this as a form of assault. —John
OMFG! I cannot believe this happened to you (or to anybody)! As a male, this is embarrassing and disgusting. I know I can’t apologize for my gender and/or stop my fellow men from doing terrible things, but, wow. What an outrage. In my book, this is absolutely a form of rape. I’m so sorry this happened to you, Anya. I absolutely support you and commend you speaking out about it. —-Paul
Unacceptable behavior. In my mind, removing protection without consent is a horrible invasion of privacy, as bad as rape. There need to be laws to protect both men and women who are taken advantage of like this. — Drew
These impassioned responses from men lead me to believe that men can help make a change concerning this issue. If men continue to stand up against such repulsive behavior and vocalize their opinions on birth control sabotage, awareness of this issue will increase significantly. After all, this issue doesn’t just affect women, it affects men as well. Men need to hold themselves and other men accountable for their actions towards women. One of the best ways we can ensure a decrease in sexual assault is to make it known within male culture that a majority of men do not condone or accept it.
Of course men can also be victims of birth control sabotage. Women have been known to lie about birth control in order to get pregnant without their partner’s consent. And what about gay men whose partners slip off the condom, increasing the chances of passing a sexually transmitted infection (STI)?
But where do we go from here? What steps do we take to ensure that we’re all protected from Idiots such as this one?
First, we need to understand and truly believe that birth control sabotage is a form of assault.
Second, in order for change to happen, there needs to be a united front. While the response from women to my facebook post has been minimal, I truly believe that women would support a law that would protect them from this sort of abuse if given the choice. I also believe women would not be afraid to vocalize their opinions if they knew a majority of men do not condone this type of repulsive behavior.
I had someone write to me and ask why it is that strong, independent women allow men to continuously abuse them. He was referring to a friend of his whose ex-boyfriend always slipped off his condom during sex without asking. She, a local community leader, a business owner, and an educated woman, never said anything to get him to stop. I believe that while women are strong and independent in many ways, we are still taught to be feeble and are often reminded to act “like a lady.” The message constantly espoused is for women to keep silent and women are shamed into believing that the reason why they are getting abused is because they made bad choices and didn’t have more discernment when it came to men. They shouldn’t have slept with that guy or they should have seen the signs. But how often do we find that people are not what they seemed after we get to know them? Isn’t it a bit ridiculous to assume that a woman will know immediately if a guy is a jerk?
On a related note, I also believe many women don’t have high enough standards for themselves. We’ve made behavior acceptable in our minds because we are afraid to expect something more from someone, afraid to ask too much. So we keep finding ourselves in abusive relationships.
I encourage women (and men) who have similar occurrences—whether it was a hole poked in the condom or removed without you knowing, or sabotage of another birth control method—to speak up and tell your story. You have a right to your body and when someone takes it in their own hands to endanger your sexual health, you have the right to be protected by law. The more we make it known that we expect to have complete control over our sexual health, the less likely it is that others will try to tamper with it.
If we decide to become sexually active we must clearly communicate our needs when it comes to contraception use, what we expect from our partners, and how we want to be treated in any type of sexual relationship. It’s our responsibility to take a proactive role in our own well-being.
To personalize this story more and to help you understand why I feel so strongly about this issue, when I was 16 I was raped. I never pressed charges because I was afraid of what my rapist might do to my family and to me. To this day I regret not taking action and wonder whether he has done this to other women or if he will. I made a promise to myself never again to sit back and allow someone to get away with putting my sexual health in danger. That is why I feel passionately about this and I hope people will support me and other women and men who have experienced birth control sabotage.
Spread the word. Ask your friends to join the facebook group “Standing Up to Idiots” or on Twitter, @AgainstIdiots. And please check out Know More, Say More to learn more about this issue.
*****
Anya Alvarez, from Gallup, NM, is studying political science and history at the University of Washington. She plays on the university’s golf team and hopes to one day (soon!) combine her interests in public policy and writing.
The Rich History of Rubbers
Few inventions have been the subject of so much derision, praise and laughter as the condom.
SexReally took a field trip to the Museum of Sex in New York City to visit an exhibit there called: “Rubbers: The Life, History and Struggle of the Condom” and talk to curator Sarah Forbes. [9 min 27 sec]
Originally published on SexReally.com on May 10, 2010.
Slut: The Worst 4-Letter Word?
Dating back at least as far as the 15th Century, the word “slut” has been hurled at women through the ages. But today, in the age of sexting and random hook ups, when porn stars have their own prime time reality shows, what does the word even mean? Laura Stepp talks to Leora Tanenbaum, author of Slut! Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation and various twenty-somethings about this short word with a long history and what it means to them. [11 min 33 sec]
Originally published on January 25, 2010 on SexReally.com.
Words to Scrap: Chastity
Originally published on SexReally.com on November 23, 2009.
I’m about to toss another word into my trash bin. It can rest nicely there alongside “wedlock” (marriage is not necessarily a prison); “lost my virginity,” (have you found it yet?) and “practicing abstinence” (let me know when you’ve got it down).
The word this time is “chaste,” defined by Webster’s New World Dictionary as “not indulging in unlawful sexual activity.”
I’m okay with chaste’s first cousin, “abstinent.” Being abstinent implies something you choose to do or not do. You decide whether or not to abstain from smoking, drinking, or sex.
The word chaste, however, describes your moral character. As Webster’s says, it implies “moral excellence manifested by forbearance from acts or thoughts that do not accord with virginity or strict marital fidelity.”
In other words, it is a label applied by others, a reputation to uphold in certain circles lest you fall from grace and become a slut (while we’re at it, let’s toss that word also).
This week’s episode of the Fox comedy “Glee” illustrated beautifully the dark side of the words “chaste” and its more common sister, “chastity”. The parents of Quinn, the pretty, blonde president of the Chastity Club at McKinley High School, learned that their daughter was pregnant - and threw her out of their house.
The alleged father of her baby (although, as viewers know, he’s not the real dad) suffered no such abuse from his mom who, in saintly fashion, took Quinn in. No surprise there. Celibacy – the guy version of chastity – is rarely expected of any man unless he wears a cassock and collar.
The word chaste means pure, the word chastity, purity. Does that make women who have sex outside marriage impure? According to model/makeup artist Jessica Hoffman (and others), it does.
Midweek.com, a news website based in Honolulu, ran a profile this week of Hoffman, 28. Hoffman recently started Pure Beauty Ministries, a business that advises 14- to 34-year-olds on fashion and abstinence. What really got to a friend who read the article, then alerted me to it, was the way Hoffman not-too-subtly described sex outside of marriage.
“The word purity means not to be contaminated with anything,” she told the reporter (my italics).
So all sex other than married sex is dirty? What would the 80% to 90% of unmarried 20-somethings who have had sex say to that? Would it change their behavior, make them feel bad, or just annoy them?
The words chaste and chastity bring to mind a several-hundred-year-old chastity belt I saw displayed in the museum of the Doge’s Palace in Venice. Academics now debate whether such belts, forged from metal and equipped with teeth and keys, were actually used during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
But as I stood in the palace staring at this contraption I shuddered to think that someone – assuredly a man –even had the idea to clamp a large, spike-laden piece of metal around a woman’s private parts and lock away her “goods” from use by anyone but himself.
And I continue to be puzzled that couples today can and do buy similar devices of torture for sex play. A woman wrote the Ottawa Sun recently, worried about her married sister. She said her sister allowed said husband to lock her up in a chastity belt 24 hours a day. When he wanted to have sex with her, he would unlock it.
“She has no access to the keys, except when he is away,” this woman wrote. “Then he leaves a spare key in a sealed container so that he knows she tampered with it.” Read: her sexuality belongs to him, not her.
So it was as well in the Netherlands during the Renaissance. Hans Memling, an artist of that time, painted an allegory of chastity depicting an ivory-skinned, fully-clothed maiden perched on the top of a mountain, surrounded by a moat and protected by two lions. Her eyes are cast down demurely, her hands crossed in front of her strategic place.
More than 500 years later, women have made their way down that mountain to lie in bed alongside men and enjoy the same sexual freedom that men enjoy. Like men, they sometimes use that freedom wisely, at other times foolishly.
To categorize them - or their male counterparts - as pure or impure teaches them nothing about how to handle the moral complexities they will face in their lives, including their sexual lives.
*****
Laura Sessions Stepp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, formerly with The Washington Post, who specializes in the coverage of young people. She has written two books: “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both,” and “Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children through Early Adolescence.” She is a consultant to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Addicted to Love: An Interview with Helen Fisher
Social anthropologist Helen Fisher discusses evidence she has found that the powerful feelings associated with romantic love are chemical and come from the same part of your brain as addictions. [13 min 31 sec]
Originally published on October 5, 2009 on SexReally.com.
The Female Condom: Could It Be For You?
It all started with a cigar box… The female condom is safe, spontaneous, and more affordable than ever—so why isn’t it more popular? Mary Ann Leeper, the woman behind the method, tells us how the female condom came to be, why it’s important, and where it’s headed. [9 min, 43 sec]
Originally published on SexReally.com on September 8, 2009.
The Importance of “Virginity”
Originally published on SexReally.com on August 3, 2009.
Let’s get rid of the phrase, “Losing your virginity.”
It places too much attention on one event (the “first time”) and one form of sex (intercourse). It makes sex seem like something bad for the (female) loser and good for the (male) winner.
And talking about it takes the place of more important conversations such as how to listen to, and protect, yourself and your partner.
Why not say something like, “Having sex for the first time?”
The markers leading from childhood to adulthood are numerous for women – learning to ride a bike, starting school, having your first period, shaving your legs, getting your driver’s license, earning your first paycheck. Certainly having intercourse is on that list.
But to place it at the top puts too much pressure on young women to do it “right,” whatever that means and at the “right time,” whenever that is. (I’m sticking to women in this post. A post on men and virginity may appear later).
One young woman I work with offered two other reasons why the phrase is unsatisfactory:
“There is a full range of activities outside of intercourse that adult couples find satisfying. I have friends who would not describe themselves as virgins but don’t have intercourse with their partners.
“Since the term implies penetration, it mostly ignores the dynamics and experiences of lesbian relationships.”
Other young women are equally candid about society’s obsessions with virginity.
One recalled that “as a teenage girl, I expected my first time to be flowers and candles and passion and whatever. As an adult woman, I look back on that expectation, roll my eyes and wish I could hug that girl and tell her, ‘Yeah, not so much.’”
Another woman said she and her boyfriend, both college sophomores and virgins, decided to have sex for the first time on a certain night. Early on the agreed-upon evening, after having supper with her family, she got up from her chair and walked around the dinner table, kissing Dad, Mom and her sisters goodbye.
“It was eerie, like I was about to die or something,” she recalled. Years after the event, she remembers the dining room scene far more vividly than what happened in the bedroom. That is telling.
A New Yorker in her 20s told me last week that she first had sex as a high school junior on a college tour. Wanting to be the first in her crowd to do this “special” thing, she went to a party on the strange campus, “got wasted and I’m pretty positive drugged, and woke up in a college senior’s apartment.” From then on, “I went crazy. I had sex with whomever whenever, because that first time wasn’t ‘special’ or even really wanted, it was just one more thing, on par with kissing.”
“At first, I thought it would be cool to lose my virginity, to be the first. But after, I thought ‘Crap, it’s not as cool as I thought.‘” Only now, she said, is she learning the pleasure of sex with a man she has gotten to know and trust - several years after her “loss.”
In her book The Purity Myth, Jessica Valenti, executive editor of the blog “Feministing,” argues that virginity, like abortion restrictions, is a construct of a patriarchal society designed to control women’s sexual and reproductive behavior.
Saving yourself for marriage, she says, is “a lie told to women” that is part of a “well-funded backlash that is rolling back [their] rights.”
Although a narrow view of the history of human sexuality, what she says has some merit.
Here’s where I take issue: In her reaction to conservatives’ take on virginity, she proposes that we separate discussions about sex from discussions about values such as honesty and kindness. She argues for “a new way to think about young women as moral actors, one that doesn’t include their bodies.”
That’s impossible. Sex does present us with certain moral choices. Otherwise, we might as well be rutting around like goats. Are we honest, as well as flirtatious, with our partners? Are we kind, as well as seductive? Questions for the first time, the next time, and the next…
*****
P.S. Here’s another phrase to erase from the lexicon: “sexual debut.” Makes me think of some poor couple in formal attire on stage, taking a bow before taking to bed.
Laura Sessions Stepp is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, formerly with The Washington Post, who specializes in the coverage of young people. She has written two books: “Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both,” and “Our Last Best Shot: Guiding Our Children through Early Adolescence.” She is a consultant to The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
