Last week was Sexual Health Week. You may have gotten the email (which was not, just so everyone is perfectly clear, soliciting anyone for sex or trying to sell anyone ""pornagraphy""). Thursday was Sexual Health Fest on Library Mall, and while we were setting up the tables, I looked at my Sex Out Loud coworkers, smiled a huge smile, and exclaimed (at typical Erica volume), ""I LOVE MY JOB!""
My job is to help ""promote healthy sexuality through sex-positive education and activism."" I know this material so well I could recite it in my sleep. But sometimes, even though I am steeped in sex and sexuality and sexual health all the time, I forget exactly what ""healthy sexuality"" really is, and why I love this work so much.
So for my final column of the year (don't worry, I'll be back), I'll pause to reflect on what Sex Out Loud's mission means to me: What is ""healthy sexuality,"" and why is it important? Some of you may cry, ""Basic!"" But the thing is, it's not. Healthy sexuality is a lifelong process which requires work, and not a single one of us has got it down pat.
Healthy sexuality is informed. Few things we do are as powerful as fucking. As our keynote speaker Tristan Taormino explained last Friday, sex allows us to learn, teach, give, receive, fulfill, laugh, cry, open, close, love, lust, demonstrate, subvert, choose, connect, lie, share, explore, create, stop. People really argue all that stuff is ""not that important""? We're supposed to ""just know"" how to do all of it, or we're supposed to learn all that from movies and high school health class?
I'll tell you one thing, I agree with the people who deem it outrageous that student seg fee dollars fund Sex Out Loud; we should not have to pay for this info. This information should be given to us freely, openly, readily and frequently. My high school taught me geometry in an effort to prepare me for ""the real world."" It didn't teach me a thing about masturbation. I can count on one hand the number of times I've used geometry since high school—as for masturbation, I'd definitely need two hands.
Healthy sexuality is consensual. ""Choice"" has already come up a number of times in this column, and sexual activity should always be a choice. Consent in the traditional sense—a freely-given ""yes""—is of course a necessary component of healthy sexuality, but we must also give others the freedom to consent in their sexual choices. Recognizing our different preferences and choices sounds so easy; ""I'm a tolerant person!"" we say. But I don't like this idea of tolerance, ""to endure, put up with, sustain.""
Tolerance can be a beautiful thing, but with it is the inherent implication that what we tolerate is somehow negative or undesirable. Different bodies, different choices, different boundaries, different likes, different sexualities are not something to be tolerated—they are something to be celebrated.
Healthy sexuality is safe. We can practice safer sex, with barrier methods, STI testing and/or contraception. When we have sex, we deserve to feel safe in our surroundings and with our partners. We deserve a space in which we can express our authentic needs and desires to our partners without fear. We must respect the boundaries of others (consent), but we must also feel safe and able to enforce our own. We deserve to express our identities and our choices without castigation. If we do not have these things, we deserve access to resources that can help us obtain them.
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, healthy sexuality is a process. This means not taking what I have to say at face value. It means taking what I have to say and ripping it apart, keeping the bits you like and casting away the ones you don't. It means reading more Tristan Taormino, Carol Queen, Pat Califia, Violet Blue, Susie Bright, Betty Dodson, Dan Savage, Joani Blank, Leslie Feinberg and the thousand authors and thinkers whose names I haven't listed. It means jacking off a lot. It means exploring. It means waiting. It means choosing. It means respecting. It means using our information to build our own definitions of what healthy sexuality looks like, and using that definition as a foundation on which to base, seek and validate our own sexual experiences. In other words, it means whatever you want it to mean.
Go forth and redefine.
