I’m back to talk more about sex, baby. Let’s talk about you and me. Let’s talk about all the good things and the bad things that may be. Is that the lyrics? It’s close enough. I don’t feel like Googling it. I like the song, though, and I may include it as the video below. I loved that Salt-N-Pepa were so frank and open about sex in 1991. And from a female point of view in rap. I have to give them props for being pioneers, and I’m so happy that they made the Hall of Fame.
You know what? They have a song I like even better than Let’s Talk About Sex. It’s not Shoop, though that’s a great song, too. Nor Whatta Man ft. En Vogue (also a terrific song). It’s None of Your Business, and I found a video of them doing it live on the Jon Stewart (!) show. I love that they’re telling off everyone who scolds women (and, yes, specifically women) for having casual sex and those who are harsh on sex workers.
I love that they are sex-positive and very unapologetic about it (at least in their music). There were very few female rappers and DJs at that time (and still, sadly). Their songs are catchy, and their hit with En Vogue is truly something special. I loved seeing that many badass (and hot) women strutting their stuff.
Here is my post from yesterday in which I wandered all over the place talking about whatever came to mind as it pertained to sex or technology.
Here is something about sex that I don’t get–why I’m supposed to feel guilty about enjoying it. I grew up in a very restrictive, shaming, fundamental Evangelical household that made it seem like having sex outside marriage was a Mortal Sin tthat would cast my soul into Hell for all eternity. Especially for women. That’s a very important part of the shaming process. Making sure the woman feels like she’s total trash if she has sex.
Only before marriage, mind. Once he puts a ring on it, then the heavens part, angels come down to sing Hallelujah, and then you get immediately pregnant. That’s the only reason to have sex in the eyes of the devout.
I was fed that bullshit all my childhood. When I was dating in my late teens/early twenties, I had what I bagan to call everything-but–meaning anything that fell technically short of actual penis in vagina. This was a known thing In fact, I didn’t do this, but it became a well-known Christian thing for girls to have anal sex as a way to avoid giving up their vaginal virginity. Which, I mean….
Side note: virginity is not a real thing, anyway. It’s just a thin piece of skin that not every AFAB person even has, and there are so many ways for it to break. In addition, it’s such an antiquated way of looking at sex–and so sexist. So many young women thinking they were ruined or broken just because that little piece of skin was no longer there.
In addition, no one cared about when men first had sex. No, there was no physical way to tell, but no one ever asked or inquired about a man’s virgin status. Maybe in church the boys were also shamed for having sex, but I knew that if it happened at all, it was much less than the shaming that young girls received.
I grew up being taught that a girl had to rebuff a boy, but it was also her fault if the boy wanted sex. So much focus on sex for people supposedly against it. My youth pastor was a white dude who had been wild in his youth. Like so many of his ilk, that meant he went regressive as an adult. He said that you should not even hold hands before marriage because it would lead to sex. This was when I was sixteen or seventeen, before I started dating. Wait. Then I had to be fourteen or fifteen.
Even then, I knew he was full of shit. There were so many steps between kissing and sex, and it wasn’t as if you couldn’t stop at any point. I understood much later the spirit of what he was saying (you could get swept away), but it was so silly as a warning. Much like, “This is your brain on drugs”, it doesn’t really work as a deterrent.
When I first had sex, I was twenty. It was an amazing and incredible experience, and I was furious. Not at the sex, but at the fact that I had waited so long to have it. Once I realized that the church had lied so massively about sex–I mean, this? Something that felt so good and hurt nobody was going to cast my soul into fire and brimstone for all eternity? I had a very dim view on a religion who believed that.
Side note: It’s fascinating how people chose what they believed in when it came to religion. You could believe that god was a loving and supportive being who only wanted the best for you. Or, as so many people chose, you could believe that god was a vengeful, hateful, foreboding being who would smite you the second you put a toe over the line. My mother’s church was of the second camp, and it left me with lasting scars.
The first time I had sex was when I lost any vestige of religious belief I ever had. Well, that would be none, but it really made me bitter about organized religion. It was like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz. Once I realized how badly the church had lied to me about sex, I could not believe a single thing they said to me.
Sex was great! Sex made me happy. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was one of the best things I’d ever done up to that point in my life. Why the hell would it be so frowned upon? That’s when I realized it was a way for the men to control the women in church, and, yes, that’s as deeply sexist as it sounds.
This is why you don’t lie to people. Once the lie is exposed, nothing else you say will be believed. Sex before marriage will send me to hell? Liar.
That was a span of time that I realized i was bi, that I was Asian, and that I was a woman. I had so much shit to deal with, and finding out that sex was amazing was the cherry (heh) on top of the cake. It really was the origin story of how I started questioning society, and I haven’t stopped yet.
More tomorrow.