What a Girl Wants

I'm going to ascend the soap box yet again and rant about a topic that may be uncomfortable for some: Female sexuality. Girls within the conservative Christian community are not educated about their own sexuality nearly as much as they are educated about men.

Note that I said sexuality. If we are blessed with a painfully explicit sex-ed class in middle school we are perfectly aware of how our own plumbing works (though this does not prevent some of the ridiculous notions about tampons and virginity that crop up in seventh grade). But our sexuality is left shrouded in mystery. I wonder if I'm giving my teachers too much credit? After all, we learned all about the physical changes a guy's body goes through when he's turned on, but to my knowledge, didn't address how women react to arousal at all.

This omission seems to point back to some archaic, dark-age mentality that holds women as somehow less sexual than men, a myth that is as destructive to women as individuals as it is harmful to society. How? When girls do not taught to understand their own sexuality in healthy ways, they are forced to find out experimentally. Let's be honest, even where there are good role models, teenagers can be quite deficient at gleaning useful knowledge from other people's mistakes. Add raging hormones to the mix and a pop-culture that practically condones making sexual blunders ("Let's experiment, it's human nature!"), and you have a lethal situation.

It starts around age eight. This is around the time that parents start teaching their kids the nuts and bolts about "where babies come from." Somewhere along the line the school (in my case, a private school) picks up the ball and carries it for a few grades, assailing poor, confused pre-teens with horrific pictures, lists of STDs, downhill charts of how interdigitation leads to intercourse, and ominous cassette tape testimonies from teenage girls about the horrible sex they had at thirteen and how it ruined their reputation/life.

As a teenage girl I remember the most prominent messages about sex revolved around the following three ideas:

1. Sex belongs in a marriage--An idea I still hold dear.
2. Men are highly sexual creatures who will loose it if you wear a crop top, falling on the ground in sexual frenzy and foaming at the mouth--slight exaggeration, but that's what if felt like they were telling us.
3. Good Christian girls set intricate boundaries to make sure they aren't sexually overrun by the men in their lives--again--a slight exaggeration--probably accentuated by the sourceless "girl doctrine" that sexual experiences (be they innocent or sordid) are doled out in ascending order, slowly over the course of a dating relationship until unnamed boy can be suckered into marriage. Budget well and you'll land yourself a husband!--I've had quite the trial weeding this surprisingly en-grained idea from my relational theory.

Not nearly enough time either at school or at home (sorry Mommy and Daddy) was spent talking about my own sexuality. What does it mean to be sexy? What does it mean to be a woman? What do sexual encounters mean to a girl? In what ways is she potentially stronger or more vulnerable than a guy (beyond physical strength, and depending on your source, general self-control)? What drives a girl sexually? Physical desire? Emotional desire? A combination of the two? How can she best take the reigns of her own sexuality so that her relationships are responsible and healthy?

Until recently (historically speaking), there was a cultural assumption that women were somehow less sexual than men. While our desires and motives may differ, one can be sure that our drive is very real, as are our weaknesses. It is in our weakness and misunderstanding of ourselves that we tend to make mistakes and either become doormats or stumbling blocks to male society, so that relationships in our community become even more convoluted and depraved than before (if you get the sense I don't have much respect for most teen relationships, you'd be right. I'm not a hypocrite, I'm a realist.).

And while Sex in the City has done its part to blow the chaste, asexual model to pieces, the teaching generation has yet to catch up with the emerging truths. Hopefully those of us dating now can vow to do better with our own kids.