Perhaps you think that as a non practising Christian, I have something against god. Perhaps you think that I believe that people should throw caution to the wind and the rest of you be dammed. Actually I don’t. But I will tell you this: I am irritated beyond belief by the ways in which religion controls women.
Whoever invented the contraceptive pill was a genius. Could he, (for in a lovely twist of irony it was a he) ever have dreamt what a tidal wave of change would wash over a world that kept women chained to the cooker/home/bed simply because they couldn’t control their own fertility? I am oversimplifying the facts but this is what it boils down to. Women used to need men and now they don’t. Except for the things that really count in life: love, companionship, warmth and protection. All the things that men need too.
We are all singing from the same song sheet, so why the fuss? Why do people persist in telling other people what to do and dress it up as something else? Its 2008 and women (and men for that matter), must be able to make basic choices for themselves without the burden of guilt.
Here is a consummate lesson in ‘owning your own sexuality’. No muss, no fuss, this is the story of a girl who asked the question, ‘who makes the decisions around here’?
Me, god, or the judgement of everyone else?
I think you know the answer.
Lynette, Southern California, USA (Born 1985)
I was the ‘everything-but-sex’ girl for a good six years of my sexual maturity. My first kiss came from a boy who pushed me up against a wall and stuck his tongue down my throat.....not all it was hyped up to be. He'd come over while my mom was at work and we'd make-out for hours. I'd let him put his hand up my shirt but that was the extent of it, after all, Jesus was watching.
One day he thought himself clever and slipped Mr. Happy over to the side of his shorts and I very accidentally came into contact with the most disgusting, wrinkly appendage I'd every felt. I was pretty much over it right then and there.
Boyfriend # 2. I'm sixteen now and everything-but-sex now includes my hands and his hands and a crazy, messy blur of clothes and mouths and ‘everything-but’. I asked if he was ready. I was scolded for even bringing it up and we continued on as if nothing had happened. I got to hold on to my v-card and assume the Christian mould and he got to continue being a weenie.
For years I pulled out the 'waiting till marriage' speech every time someone asked, when secretly, it was merely by chance that I hadn't blown it at sixteen. It became this crazy, inner struggle between what the church had told me was right and what I really felt. This continued until I was twenty. Enter Mike. Four years older than me and very much not a virgin. Beautiful piece of man. Incredible, charming and seductive. I knew he was a bad idea the second I laid eyes on him.
I let him take me to dinner. After a month of make-out sessions with me saying ‘no, no’ and him saying ‘I won't, just let me *stay* here’, I finally gave it. I'd like to believe I ‘gave in’, but truly he had one foot in the door already.
It was amazing. I went home that night and stared at myself in the mirror for an hour. I felt like something in me had shifted and like it should have shown on the outside...it didn't. But I had been changed; I had taken charge of something that for so long had been controlled by something other than myself. And it brought me closer to the thing I had feared for so long, that maybe God's not so concerned with whether or not I'm wed before I'm bedded. Maybe it's about being aware of myself and things that I'll stand for. My happiness, my confidence, my self-respect came from being that much closer to understanding the inner workings of myself.
God still loves me, and now so do I. And seriously, everything-but? It all came down to owning my own sexuality and allowing it to grow within me without being told how to do it.
I am a 25, male.
In my opinion sex is great but loosing your virginity before reaching the age of 16 as is happening in so many places now a days is really sad. I know some girls that have lost it when they were 13 and say there is nothing wrong with that. Imagine your daughter/son at the age of 13 they are still a babies. So how can you say there is nothing wrong with loosing your virginity that young. I think that is just the week ones that cant hold on to their virginity for longer.
P.S this is not posted against the article above i just had to get it of my chest.
Posted by: Mr. A | May 15, 2008 at 03:39 PM
Thank you Mr A, I appreciate your input!
I feel I must re-iterate, as per my May 3rd post, that encouraging a 13 year old person to lose their virginity is not something I would do. A 13 year old, as you rightly point out, is a child.
Having said that, neither would I judge someone for their personal choices.
Posted by: Kate Monro | May 17, 2008 at 01:42 PM
I believe the quicker you lose your virginity the better it is. I'd rather die than be a 40-year-old virgin.
Posted by: Satanist Boy | July 14, 2010 at 06:42 PM
where is God in all of this? really?! God has a plan from beginning to end and it is GOD, as a fatherly figure in my oppinion, trying to save young girls of thier innocence. He wants girls to stay pure until marriage for a reason! To make sure they (including their partner)are ready to raise a child. Also, to make sure they are with who he made specially for them....duh. ;)WWJD.
Posted by: WWJD | November 09, 2010 at 12:41 AM