What You Really Really Want (10 page)

Even if you do find yourself wanting something you think would hurt yourself or someone else, I should stress here that there are no wrong
desires,
only some wrong
actions.
It's very
common to fantasize about things you would never actually do in real life, and there's nothing bad about that. We'll talk more about that kind of desire in chapter 8.

Sensing a theme here? The Terrible Trio can be powerful and insidious, but you don't have to let them rule you. And your best defense against them is information: separating fact from fiction, yes, but also separating the things you've been taught to believe about sex from what actually makes sense to you when you really think about it. Ever heard the phrase “sunlight is the best disinfectant”? It applies here, and what it means is this: If you're infected with the Terrible Trio, the best way to get rid of them is to shine the light of fact and thought on them.

CHAPTER 3

S
O, NOW THAT YOU'VE FINISHED CHAPTERS 1 AND 2, YOU'VE sorted out your own beliefs from the forces that have influenced you and rejected the Terrible Trio. You're all set, right?

Just kidding. Of course you're not! This is a long journey, and you're off to a good start. But a word of patience: Change doesn't happen overnight, and it doesn't happen all in a neat little line, either. You may have epiphanies along the way that make you feel clearer than you've ever been, and then the next day something can happen—someone says something to you, you see something on TV, maybe it's something in this book—that throws you for a loop, and you feel more confused than ever. That's normal. You're in the process of reevaluating a pretty deeply rooted part of your identity. It's going to be a bumpy ride for at least part of it. So, if you're feeling great right now and can't wait to dive in further, that's awesome. And if you're feeling overwhelmed or confused, that's okay, too. It just means you're on the journey, and that's what counts. Just keep
doing your daily writing and your weekly body love, and keep coming back to these exercises. We'll get there together.

In this chapter, we're going to go a little deeper into some of the forces that may have shaped the way you think about your own sexuality, and others' as well. Specifically, we're going to explore group identities and the sexual assumptions that are attached to them. And then we're going to see if we might want to detach 'em a little.

It's useful, too, to think about these issues not just in terms of how they affect you, but also in terms of how they might affect a current or future sexual partner. Not just because it will make you a better lover and friend, but because it's sometimes easier to start by empathizing with a loved one, and then extend that same kind of empathy to ourselves. But before we do this, a reminder: There's no way to ever be fully free of the lessons we've learned at a deep level about sex, and that holds for the messages that come with your identities, too. You may embrace or even embody some of the stereotypes that are unfairly applied to you, and that's fine. Even if you act the exact opposite of how you're expected to, you're still behaving in some ways in response to how you've been taught to act. And the social forces that keep these stereotypes in place are strong—as much as we wish it could be, it's not possible to just erase them. The goal here isn't to wipe your slate clean, it's to take a look at the ingredients that have brought you to where you are with your sexuality today and adjust the seasonings until you think you're delicious.

Age is unlike most other group identities in that it's always fundamentally changing for everyone. And yet your age can have a lot to do with how you feel about your sexuality, how other people view your sexuality, and how you view others' sexuality.

Let's take the most obvious example: Most young women are expected to be innocent virgins. That's not redundant, because just being a virgin isn't enough to live up to social expectations. To avoid judgment, young women shouldn't even be curious about or desirous of sex. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the ongoing debate about whether or not insurance companies should cover a vaccine for HPV (human papillomavirus), an STD that sometimes causes cervical cancer. The vaccine is quite effective when given to girls before they become sexually active, and that's just what gets some folks upset: They fear that even talking about STD prevention in the process of giving a girl a shot will turn her into a sex-crazed maniac. They'd prefer that girls grow up with a greater risk of dying from cervical cancer than to suggest in any way that it might be okay for girls to have a thought related to sex.
¹

The folks who push the message that girls shouldn't be thinking about sex say it's about teaching girls to value themselves, but if they'd rather girls die of cancer than be sexual, that doesn't really value girls much, does it? What it really teaches is that the most important part of a girl's character is what she does or doesn't want to do with her body—not how good a friend she is, how hard she works in school, how honest she is, or anything else.

What does this mean for you? Well, for one thing, if you're a young woman, it means extra pressure to not even
think
about being sexual. It means that if you do think about or act on your sexuality in any way, you may feel afraid to talk with anyone about it, which is isolating and can be dangerous.

In fact, the pressure on younger women to be “good” (that is, not sexual) can be so great that it isolates us not only from older adults, but also from other young women. Eugenia, seventeen, had promised to tell her best friend when she had sex with her boyfriend for the first time. “But then, when it happened, I didn't think I wanted to,” she told Deborah Tolman, “and it wasn't like I myself felt bad about it, but I just didn't want to,'cause I felt good about it, and I didn't want anyone else passing judgment on me, that's what it was.”
²

On the flip side of that coin, young women are also treated as the most desirable sex objects there are and are pressured to act as sexy as possible—wear sexy Halloween costumes, work out to stripper-pole aerobics, and wear panties that say WHO NEEDS CREDIT CARDS . . .
³
These sexual expressions aren't about the girls engaging in them, they're about fulfilling the fantasies of heterosexual men. So, to review what's expected of you if you're a young woman in our culture: Be drop-dead sexy, but don't think about sex ever. Good luck with that.

And, because women get shamed coming and going, older women face certain assumptions and stigmas as well. Past a certain, nebulous (though still fairly young) age, women are considered prudish or frigid if they're not sexually desirous and experienced. And that kind of pressure can be just as isolating if it doesn't match up with how you actually feel.

Or, if older women are sexually desirous and experienced and happen to have a partner who's younger than they are, they're called “cougars” or “pumas” or some other predatory-cat name, and become the butt of jokes.

Or, if older women start looking like, well, older women—as they naturally will—we suddenly assume that they've lost any sexual drive they may have once had, or, worse, any sexual desirability. Furthermore, younger women sometimes assume that their foremothers are easily scandalized by the sexual antics of young women. This is too bad for many reasons, not the least of which is that some older women have been through a lot of what young women are just starting to experience and can share their wisdom about how to navigate the tricky waters of sexuality, if only young women would ask.

Are you noticing what I am? There's basically no right age to be in this paradigm. You'll always be accused of being too young or too old to behave or think or feel a certain way. And whatever age you are, there are only wrong ways to be sexual. Know what that means? The whole paradigm is a trap.

As with all things racial, the intersection of race and sexuality is complicated. It's complicated by the ways race and economic class intersect, by the history of slavery in the United States and around the world, by the fact that race is both an utterly bogus way to look at people and simultaneously very real. And yet while it's definitely not simple, it sure is important to think about.