Here in Texas, we have spent quite a bit of legislative energy deciding exactly what schools may and may not say about sexuality. And before anyone starts yelling at me, I am not arguing that every conversation belongs in every classroom. Age matters. Parents matter. Context matters.
What fascinates me is what happens next. We spend childhood treating sex as something that requires warnings, permissions, carefully controlled vocabulary, and sometimes complete avoidance. Then at some point we hand people the keys to adulthood and apparently expect everyone to become excellent communicators about it. Good luck out there.
We are grown adults. We pay mortgages, schedule colonoscopies, discuss cholesterol, divorce, taxes, aging parents, retirement accounts, and whether our knees are going to cooperate when we stand up. But mention sex and suddenly everyone is twelve.
It is especially interesting because pretending teenagers do not need information has never actually prevented teenagers from becoming curious about sex. Research has found that teenagers who receive comprehensive sex education are less likely to experience teen pregnancy than those who receive no formal sex education. Teaching young people about contraception also does not appear to make them more likely to have sex.
There is even a public high school in Massachusetts that began making condoms available to students. In the three years afterward, rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia among teenage boys in that community dropped dramatically, while they increased among boys the same age in a nearby comparison city.
Apparently information does not cause sex. Sometimes it just causes better decisions. Which seems almost embarrassingly obvious when you say it out loud.
And yet somehow the awkwardness follows us right into adulthood. I do not even mean discussing graphic details. I just mean talking about sex like adults. The fact that we like it. The fact that we have preferences. The fact that sometimes people want more of it, less of it, different kinds of it, or simply want to tell another person what they enjoy without everyone acting like the building is on fire.
Sex is one of the most ordinary human experiences there is. People date partly because of attraction. People marry partly because of attraction. Songs are written about it. Movies revolve around it. Advertising has been using it to sell everything from perfume to hamburgers for decades. But ask someone what they actually enjoy and suddenly we are all deeply interested in the weather.
Maybe part of the problem is that a lot of us were taught how to avoid sex long before anyone taught us how to talk about it. Don’t do this. Don’t say that. Don’t get pregnant. Don’t get a disease. Don’t let anyone think you are that kind of person.
Some of that information is obviously important. But somewhere along the way, plenty of people reached adulthood without ever becoming comfortable saying, “I like this,” “I don’t like that,” “I’m curious about this,” or even, “Can we talk about it?”
Which is odd because communication makes almost everything better. Relationships, friendships, work, sex. Pretty much anything involving another human being. And yet sex is often the one place where people expect everyone to somehow know what to do without actually discussing it.
We do not expect someone to know how we take our coffee without telling them. We do not expect them to know what temperature we like the house. We certainly do not expect them to know how to load the dishwasher correctly without extensive instruction. But somehow, when it comes to sex, people are supposed to become mind readers.
Maybe the embarrassing part is not talking about sex. Maybe the embarrassing part is how long we have all pretended we should not have to. There is nothing particularly shocking about adults wanting pleasure, affection, intimacy, or connection. Those are pretty ordinary human things. And maybe talking about them should be ordinary too.
After all, if we are old enough to understand our insurance deductible, I think we can probably handle the word sex.
🌭Charlotte