Why You Should Embrace Your Sexuality

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I spent the majority of my adolescence in Hagerman, Idaho, a small religious community of less than a thousand people who seemed locked in the year of 1950. The high school there followed the formulaic recipe of the American Dream: if you were wealthy, blonde, and engaged in extracurricular activities, you would rise to the ranks of success. It was a quiet, relatively uninteresting town so with only 400 students in the entire system, gossip traveled like wildfire, catching from person to person until the whole school was ablaze with judgment.

In small towns, where crime is low and nothing of great interest happens; everything that does happen is of great interest. As a consequence of the biggest scandals we bore witness to, was the “deflowering” of a young woman. When the girls in my school “lost their v-card” it became headlining news to the point where even the teachers and principal were (inappropriately) squawking about it. Needless to say, it wasn’t a healthy environment for a sexually blossoming woman.

Having lost my mother at a young age, and not wanting my peers to know about the sexual thoughts I was having I didn’t have anyone to turn to with my questions.If I were to ask my father his face would flush beet red and he would offer the same helpful advice most fathers give to their daughters: “Just don’t do it.” At the same time, my older brother was probably receiving the advice that EVERY adolescent should receive; “Use a condom, make sure she consents, get to know her, make sure you are ready.” As a result, I was one of the few who made it through high school with my “precious” virginity intact. It wasn’t that there weren’t opportunities to lose it, or that I didn’t want to, it was a fear of what would become of me if I did.

Once I transitioned from the Twilight Zone into reality, I became aware of the countless parallels between man and woman. The thing I noticed most about this supposedly romantic transition from girlhood to womanhood, was the dehumanization of my colleagues. I became a silent observer, familiarizing myself with the things men said about sexual women that I blush to recount on paper. The more a woman embraced her sexuality, the farther she became from a woman; she became something lesser – a slut. By expressing her sexuality in the same way her male peers did, she would no longer be a human, but instead a label. A whore, a slut, a cum factory. Despite whatever noble causes she devoted her life to, her sexuality would create an identity for her. Men would exercise power by devaluing her achievements with clichés about hotdogs and hallways. They would make Freudian assessments of her psyche, attributing the cause of her acts to deep-rooted insecurity or worse making claims to molestation.

When I was younger, I was more willing to accept the stigmata on sexuality. I embraced it, even though I didn’t understand it. Now, however, I am still dealing with the residual effects of a culture that isn’t willing to accept not only female sexuality but sexuality in general. By denying ourselves and closing off that outlet we are removing an element of what makes us human.

There is so much propaganda that enforces the ideas held by my upbringing, and while we now recognize the problems with such beliefs, we are doing very little to act against it. So here are five compelling reasons why you should throw convention to the window and usher in an era of sexual and spiritual freedom.

It’s NOT “bad”

One of the biggest reasons people are afraid to embrace their sexuality is because of the prevailing misconception that extramarital sex is morally incorrect. That “sex is bad.” Sex can neither be good nor bad. Nonconsensual sex is bad. Sex with children due to repressed conscious thinking is bad. “Slut shaming” is bad. Making people feel tainted, dirty, and guilty for something that is natural and present in all facets of the reproductive world – that’s bad. People not being educated because they fear asking questions about their “dirty” thoughts is bad. Telling young women that they lose something that makes them special when having sex the first time is bad. Sex is sometimes the physical manifestation of love. Sex is sometimes a way to release pent up energy in a nondestructive and even healing way. Sex is sex. Brainwash is bad.

It’s natural and healthy

If you’ve experienced the rush of endorphins when you reach climax, you are assuredly aware of the instant benefits it has on your health. The biological purpose of the pleasure both parties feel when they orgasm is to make human want to reproduce. We get hungry, we get thirsty, we get horny. It’s just another physical response that lets us know that there is a need that is asking to be satisfied. By censoring out the carnal thoughts that float through the mind of every healthy creature, you are not only denying your primordial instinct, but you are also denying yourself of the increased circulation and mood enhancing hormones among some of countless health improvements.

It’s too expensive

We are well aware of the double standard present in our culture. Men are applauded for promiscuous behavior, while women are degraded and condemned for it. As a result of this degradation, sex has become too “expensive.” What I mean by this is women feel they have to set a price for sex which is paid by a set amount of time spent together or a number of dates. As long as women are made to feel they have lost something (a chunk of dignity for increasing their “number”) they are going to expect something in return. Sex should not be a cycle of courtship and degradation. It should be a mutually giving experience in which nothing is lost on either side – only gained.

When everyone’s a “whore” no one will be

There is a huge problem in the way that women use sexuality against one another. When we can not find anything to attack, we attack a person’s sexual preferences to illuminate a less “promiscuous” background with sanctimonious light. There is no reason a person should be proud of withholding sex for the sake of withholding sex, in the same way, there should be no shame in expressing our sexual urges for the sake of expressing our sexual urges. And the more people begin to embrace the lifestyle, the less powerful that ammunition will be. Rather than working to enforce the idea that women should be chaste and subordinate, women should be encouraging one another in the pursuit of sexual equality. When we accept that other people have reasons and a right to express their sexual energy in ways that we may not necessarily agree with, we are broadening our understanding and strengthening the cohesion between humankind.

It feels good

And the most compelling reason why you should have more sex: it feels phenomenal. There is enough pain and suffering in the world, why should we enhance it by denying ourselves one of the intrinsic outlets of pleasure? Because at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about: doing what feels right for YOU; doing what makes you happy – not what society tells you will make you happy. It’s about seizing your sexuality back from the hands of the public because it’s no one’s business what choices you make with your body except your own.