Imagine this - politicians sitting around, talking about sex just the way that you do with your friends over dinner and drinks: openly, honestly and realistically in their consideration of sex in our society.
But the only time we ever hear about sex from our country's leaders is when they screw up and put their agendas at risk. When public figures like John Edwards admit to having affairs, there is little denying that sexuality in the public sphere is shameful and verboten. The world would be a better place if we opened up the floodgates for discussion and requested that those in power brought sexuality into a different light.
Mum's also the word when it comes to talking about adolescents and sex in our society. Each year, 750,000 girls between the ages of 15-19 become pregnant in the United States. Granted, this is a significant decrease from 10 years ago, but abstinence-only education can only take us so far. Pretending that pre-pubescent schoolchildren won't engage in sex play is naive and irresponsible. Unbiased education will forever be an important part in the sexual development of America's children, and shrouding the subject in shame is crazy. Shame makes people cut off communication and results in dangerous practices because no one's suggesting otherwise.
So, let's talk about sex. Sex is the most basic, natural human act, but we treat it like the black sheep in a family of pressing social issues. If politicians took teen pregnancy, the rate of teen abortions and sexually transmitted infections as seriously as they did their own campaigns, things would be a lot different. But they continue to ignorantly assume that a mixture of faith and fear will keep babies from having babies.
Not only should we work to lessen the negative physical repercussions of sex, we should also change the way that sexual politics play out in the public eye. Sexual politics play a major hand in how gender functions in society. The Madonna-whore dichotomy completely eclipses positive images of women in the media. From simply watching a few minutes of television, one can see how women are still marginalized by the media. Women are not portrayed as sexual beings who can act on their own whims. For instance, in food commercials, women lovingly prepare chicken for their husbands as if that's the thing they like doing most in the world. In commercials for birth control, women gab, drink fruity cocktails and complain about their periods.
Sure, these women might have sex, but only after they've cleaned the chicken dishes or taken control of their monthly cycles. Women should be portrayed in a celebratory sexual light that says, "Yeah, women are sexual. They aren't necessarily swinging from a pole or playing secretary with the married boss, but they do enjoy femininity and sex in the same way that men enjoy sexuality."
Sexual politics, just like government politics, can be crooked and hush-hush. But when what goes on behind closed doors can be talked about as casually as our country's leaders' discrepancies, we can get serious about sex education and eradicate the dangerous myths that lead to unsafe practices. We need to challenge ourselves to think about sexuality in public like we do in the bedroom (or, let's face it - during class, walking down the street or picking up take-out). It's human nature to think about sex a lot, but no one's getting hot and heavy looking at sex through the lens of abstinence-only education. We need to channel our desires into frank discussion about safe practices.
Limited communication about sex acts will not keep us safe and satisfied. It only leads to a newly defined sexually transmitted infection - the John Edwards syndrome. Symptoms include lying, guilt, shame and pain.
Staggs is an English and UTeach senior.
Be the first to comment on this article!