This story speaks for itself. Its owner wrote me last summer to tell me about her search for love and companionship, a search that her family thought she shouldn’t make due to her sexuality. Luckily, Sadie* is a pioneer. I don’t suppose there are too many daughters of Christian Evangelist preachers who are prepared to go against the grain and stake the claim over the life they instinctively feel they should have.
Which brings me to my next point. Lately this blog seems to have morphed into a one-woman mission to insist on the most basic of human rights. I can’t help it. Instinct should triumph over dogma. Marriage or not, gay or not, whatever or not, we cannot deny ourselves the most basic of needs. A sex life has to begin somewhere and that usually begins with the loss of virginity. Read on…
Sadie. Born 1973. Lost virginity aged 35.
‘Hi Kate
I'm back again....finally with the rest of the story.
First of all a poem was what started some of this for me. It was the thought: ‘If I died today, what would I have most regretted I didn't do?’ And for me it started with kissing. I didn't want to die having never kissed someone. And then it progressed to ‘I don’t want to die having never been loved physically like that’.
As you know from my earlier story, I had no interest in sex with men because I'm gay. For years I wasn't able to seek out relationships with women because of my religious beliefs and because I kept trying to heal myself i.e. not like girls.
About two years ago I asked my counselor if he thought I was healthy in general and he said ‘yes’. I had been in counseling for years and I suddenly decided I was wasting my life trying to fix something that wasn't fixable. I finally started to accept myself and my love of women as something that just was.
The result of this is that I started dating for the first time in my life. I went out on dates or ‘friendship outings’ as I like to call them because a lot of these were just ‘get to know you’ events. I got to know myself a bit as well. I developed more confidence that someone would actually want to date me.
To skip ahead, a couple of months ago I met someone who I wanted much more than just a friendship date with. I was looking for someone who had a lot of the same religious things in common as me. We are both Christians, I can go to church and hold her hand, God and gratefulness is important to us both. Both of us would only like to be intimate in a committed relationship so soon we were dating.
I am still stunned that I lost my virginity. You asked ‘how does a lesbian lose her virginity?’ I think it's the first time you are fully naked and physical with someone. I asked my girlfriend and she said it's both oral sex and any type of penetration.
My strongest thoughts afterwards were: The church/Christians have totally lied to me. The church has made sex sound like crack. Something so powerful that you will be addicted. Something that is evil and then magically becomes good the moment a priest says something over you like ‘your married’. That is all a lie and I think it does a disservice to tell people or even hint at these things.
Sex and intimacy was sweet and playful. It was lovely. We were gentle and fun with each other. We talked a ton about it before. We talked about the areas of our bodies we felt insecure about. We talked about what we wanted and hoped for. What we had heard. And then we also talked during and after just checking in on how emotions and all were doing. It was really helpful and healing for me to talk like this. And she was so sweet. We are well matched sexually because we both have similar wants.
People told me I'd be scared, I wasn't. People told me they shook. I didn't. I had thought through this decision so much that I think when the time came I was just fully ready. I learned that I am an Aries lover. This is something I totally didn't know about myself until this. I thought all that stuff was junk. She said she was surprised I was a virgin because I didn't act like it. But I think the reason why is found in a poem by E.E. Cummings that says ‘the body has an intelligence of it's own.’ I did not need to train it. It knew what to do.
Our relationship is still going great. I do not feel any different. I do not feel guilt. I do get in some way why it was a great thing for me to have sex in a committed relationship. I think when I was younger I would have had some self-judgment due to the religious voices I'd heard through growing up. But here's the thing. Those same religious voices won't let me get married because I'm gay. So the best I can do right now in seeking to live the life I want is by keeping sex in a committed monogamous relationship.
I know I'm a rare breed. I was a virgin until just before my thirty-fifth birthday in order to figure this out. The decision to have a more spacious and wholistic understanding of sex than the church’s literal and confining view took me a long time.
The church has made being anti-sex it's own God. The church, especially the evangelical church in America judges the body as evil. It may not say this outright but it does come through. I think I've heard more about the evils of sexual temptation than any other topic. But in the end, sex for me was nothing to do with temptation. It was a choice to live instead of kill everything in me that was embodied.
Besides this, I have told three very open and accepting friends and it will stop there. But in needing to tell someone about all my years of working towards this and all the crap I had to figure out for myself, I wanted to tell my story somewhere. If I ever told my story in a Christian community I would be soundly renounced. I get that. But you know that just keeps the fear and lies about sex in play.
One more thought. I am so glad I didn't force myself to date, marry and have sex with a man. I know another girl who did that. She has to drink alcohol to have sex with her husband. She stayed a virgin until she was married. And now she is basically stuck. I definitely am glad I didn't do the same as her just to ‘look good’ for the church.
*Name changed to protect identity. Part one of ‘Sadie’s’ story was published on September 10 last year.
What a wonderful tale, full of hope, strength and self worth. Thank you for sharing this.
Posted by: DJ Kirkby | May 26, 2008 at 07:23 PM