Adolescent Sexuality by Dr. Karen Rayne

Ah, good ole Texas. Always a great place for scandals like this one. So here’s what happened: A senior named Marche Taylor wore a really skimpy dress and was denied entrance to her prom based on it. And yes, it is really, really skimpy. So I get where the prom sponsor was coming from when she told Marche that her dress was too skimpy. But Marche offered to wind her train up and around her torso - and that really should have made it okay. Instead, “voices were raised” and the cops were called and escorted this loud, scantily clad girl off the Sugarland Marriott premises. Honestly, I don’t see what the big freaking deal is.

So here’s where the conversation about this one random girl near Houston, the stinky armpit of Texas, turns into a conversation about the state of our country’s obsession with adolescent bodies and adolescent sexuality. In fact, I wonder if this is even news worthy just because of the recent Miley Cyrus fiasco? Or maybe it’s because silly things like this suddenly go viral on the Internet and out of nowhere everyone knows who Marche Taylor is and that her prom sponsor accused her of not wearing underwear to her prom (Marche says she was).

But really, I think people pay attention to things like this because they get to look at a teenage girl’s body. We are, as a culture, both obsessed and repelled by teenage girls ‘bodies. We want them to be shown off and considered sexy in the right ways (like your standard prom dress or a bikini on the beach) but not in the wrong ways (like Marche or Miley). But teenage girls are never really given a good, solid list of guidelines and what’s appropriate can change far too quickly for the average teenage girl to be expected to keep up.

Let’s get back to that liking to look at teenage girls’ bodies. When we see a news show, or read a blog post (unless it’s this one), or read a newspaper article about a scantily clad 17 year old, the man - the publisher - knows that eyeballs will be had in great droves because people like to look at 17 year old’s bodies. And I’m fed up with it.

As a society, we honor and love youth - particularly the fabulous body part of youth.

But then at the same time we slam (a) a teenager’s too-sexy choice in photo arrangements or (b) a teenager’s too-sexy choice in prom dress.

We can’t do both, folks. It just screws with girl’s minds and makes them obsess at a highly unhealthy level about their body - because they’ll either be considered stodgy and not sexy enough or too slutty and too sexy. The middle ground is a very, very narrow tightrope. So let’s all just breathe. And stop it with the obsession about teenager’s bodies.

Rachel Brignoni set out to write a book to help pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers think through what they want in life and then go out and get it. And she stayed true to that goal throughout this little blue-covered book.

I really like Brignoni’s premise, her goal. Pregnant and parening teenagers need all the help they can get in finding their own footing in this very anti-pregnant-and-parenting-teens society of ours. I was a young mother, although not a teenage mother, and felt some of the public disapproval and negativity that actual teenage mothers feel at very high levels. I feel for these young women, and I am absolutely compelled to cheer on anyone who works to help them gain self-confidence and self-efficacy in their parenting abilities. And so, in that vein, I am absolutely delighted by Brignoni’s book. She’s done a great job of encouraging young women to trust themselves to be good parents and to go out and create a good life for themselves and their children.

Nevertheless (and you just had to know that was coming, didn’t you?), I am concerned the book won’t speak to many teenagers who actually get knocked up and decide to keep the baby. It’s a good book - it really is - but it doesn’t speak a language that most pregnant teenagers have ever heard before. So I worry that there aren’t many pregnant teenagers who will spend enough of their very limited time to get past Brignoni’s language in order to internalize her message.

For example, Brignoni includes a CD with the book that has a very heartfelt, very sweet, soft rock tribute to teenage mothers. And, of course, teenagers’ music taste varies widely, so it would be hard to find one song to reach them all. But these songs sound more like a generic Celine Dion than anything currently popular (like Lil Wayne, for example).

This is the problem throughout Brignoni’s book. While she is always looking to engage teenage mothers in deep conversation that will allow them to see themselves and their goals more clearly, she does so with a marked inability to reach out to teenagers where many of them are.

So for a teenager who can relate to the language found in adult self-help books, I recommend Brignoni’s Hope…Joy (and a Few Little Thoughts) for Pregnant Teens. And indeed, this may be the best option out there right now to help and support a pregnant teenager in getting a grip on her life and moving forward in a positive way. I just wish I had another option to suggest that spoke a bit more directly and productively to today’s pregnant teens.

The Dinah Project recently had a post about how to carry a condom, and ended the post with a good argument for why girls should carry their own condoms. It’s a good post. Straightforward, interesting, and educational. You should forward it on to the teenagers you know, so they’ll be one step closer to using condoms correctly.

Here’s a few excerpts from the post:

To this day, carrying condoms in wallets and back pockets are common choices for men. It needs to be said that fantasies aside, your luck with shine through so much better when your contraceptive is intact. There is something to be said for not having to fumble around for a condom when the time comes, but pulling out a shabby, old prophylactic isn’t going to impress a soul.

…

Besides all this logic and practicality, sharing the condom load between the sexes inspires other creative benefits. For example, it can be the ultimately cool way to overcome the awkwardness of covering the bill in these times when having him pay up just doesn’t always feel right. Dinner is on him, condoms are on you. Well, sort of.

So go read the whole post! You might learn something, and you can pass that knowledge on to so many people in so many places!

As long as we’re talking about the line between appropriate and inappropriate adolescent sexuality, I thought I would bring up Jock Sturges. There is much controversy about Jock Sturges‘ photography. Mr. Sturges primarily takes pictures of nude adolescent girls on nude beaches.

The contention is whether or not Mr. Sturges’ pictures are nude art or under age pornography.

The answer, of course, may lie in whether you’re French or American - that is, what kind of cultural and sexual understanding you have of the human body. This is really so similar to how people understand the FLDS debacle - so much is based on how you see girls between the ages of 12 and 16. (And yes, it is absolutely a tragedy and a debacle, regardless of which “side” you’re on.)

Me? I think that girls between the ages of 12 and 16 should be free to find their own sexuality - but should not be the objects of adults’ sexual desires. Basically, I think the FLDS folks shouldn’t allow their daughters to marry under age 18, and I don’t think it’s appropriate for Jock Sturges to publish images of girls under 18 naked.

Mr. Sturges talks at length about the quality of his relationship with the girls he photographs and their parents. And I commend him for that - or, rather, I don’t condemn him as I would if he didn’t make it crystal clear that he has a great relationship with them. Nevertheless, it’s hard enough for young teenage girls to make sense of their developing sexuality without their naked images being published online and in books.

Give teenage girls time and space to develop sexually and romantically. There is plenty of time - plenty! - for them to get married and pump out babies if that’s what they want or to pose naked for photographers if that’s what they want. I just don’t think that a 13 year old is ready enough to make those decisions - and I certainly don’t think her parents should be making them for her.

And to stave off the comments I already see in the rear view mirror: No, I’m not sure an 18 year old or even a 24 year old is always fully ready to make those decisions either. But I am absolutely confident that a post-adolescent woman of 18 is more capable of making decisions than a pre-adolescent girl of 13.

I am not including any of Mr. Sturges’ pictures in this blog post on purpose, but you can find plenty here and in the links above.

I have been thinking, reading, and speaking with more people about the heartrendingly painful events taking place here in Texas. 416 children from a Fundamentalist Church of Later Day Saints (FLDS) ranch were taken into state custody just over two weeks ago. This point everyone agrees on. Almost everything else, it seems, have people disagreeing.

There are some groups, including the ACLU, who see this as a civil rights issue - the freedom (or state imposed lack-thereof) to practice religion.

There are other groups who couch the issue purely in terms of sexual abuse against teenage girls.

There are more and less sensationalistic reports about various aspects of the events.

So after reading what I could, and talking those who know how child abuse cases in Texas go, and thinking about the myriad issues, here is how I see the facts of things:

There are essentially three positions here: the state, the parents, and the children.

The state lawyers are alleging that FLDS pre-teen and teenage girls are put into arranged spiritual marriages with much older men when they are younger than is legally allowed by the state (16 years old here in Texas). There may be girls as young as 8 or 9 who are married, although the state suggests that most of the marriages happen between 12 and 14. These young girls are told that their greatest gift is to produce as many children as possible for their husbands.  The lawyers for the state say that girls this young having sex with adult men, regardless of their marital status, is statutory rape and sexual abuse.

The parents (mostly the mothers) and their lawyers state that the FLDS group is a tightly knit, loving community of families and that there is no abuse of any kind happening on their ranch.  From what I have been able to gather, they have said as little as possible about what ages they allow their daughters to marry and have children.

The children want to go home.

Today I will continue to process these thoughts, read the thoughts of others, and talk with people I think will have additional insights.  I’ll gather my thoughts and reactions and opinions for tomorrow.

In the meantime, what do you think about the FLDS events here in Texas?

Okay, I am diverging from this week’s regularly scheduled blog posts again. I’ll have to return to them next week.

Last night rumors swirled around a community of adults about one young woman’s theoretical, or rumored, sexual activities.

It’s unclear how the rumors got started, or whether there is any truth to them. No one knows if any of this young woman’s peers have any knowledge of the rumor. No one wants to continue to spread the rumor by asking any of her peers. No one wants to make things worse by asking the young woman herself.

The only thing that is really crystal clear to me right now is that there is one rather freaked out mom who is now mentally going over every conversation and nuance from the past three months.

I am so disappointed by all of this. All of the people who I have talked with are basically good people. They certainly don’t want to be spreading rumors, they want to be stopping rumors. But there is good reason to believe that by trying to stop the rumor, it is being spread.

Rumors about sexuality can have serious, long-term repercussions for preteen and teenage girls. Leora Tanenbaum’s book Slut! Growing up female with a bad reputation catalogues this experience thoroughly.

Almost everyone knew a “slut” in middle school or high school. Some of you may have been labeled that yourself. Others may have been saddled with other sexual labels that held little truth to them (dyke, fag, etc.). But the point that really stuck with me in Tanenbaum’s book was that many, many young women who are labeled a “slut” have had very little sexual experience - often less than their peers.

I tell other adults that young women labeled a slut often are not, and they rarely believe me. They say, “Well, that might be true for some girls, but the slut in my high school…well…you wouldn’t believe what she did!” Often these adults, long out of high school, suddenly catch themselves at this point. They wonder aloud if that girl actually did have sex with the entire football team in one night. They realize that, in fact, she probably didn’t, because anyone having sex with that many people in one night by choice is highly unlikely. They suddenly wonder about their own unintentional part in continuing false and painful rumors about an unaware and awkward teenager.

Now I wonder about the adults who are talking about the young woman I mentioned earlier. I wonder if they have examined their unintentional part in extending this rumor. There is a salaciousness in talking about adolescent sexuality, both as an adolescent and as a parent, but for different reasons. I like this young woman. She’s strong, she’s interesting, and she’s fun to be around. I hope the rumor ends without her peers hearing about it. I hope that this young woman is blessed by passing into young adulthood with no other sexual rumors marring her experience.

But if I am being honest, I have very little faith that she will be so blessed. Very few women are.

Yesterday I posted the first half of my interview with Sarah Dopp about her gender and sexual identity. We spoke about how she defines herself and how that has developed through her life and within her social networks. Today we talk about family.

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KR: Have you talked with your parents about your gender and sexual identity?

SD: Unfortunately, my dad died from a terminal illness before I was ready to talk to him about this stuff. I still wonder how those conversations would have gone. But my mom is incredible. We’ve talked so much about gender and sexuality, and every time we listen to each other, we both grow. She loves me deeply and she’s made a lot of space for me to be myself.

KR: How have those conversations gone?

SD: Now? They’re wonderful. But I’ll be honest — it’s taken a lot of work to get here. When I was fifteen and I had my first girlfriend, my mother asked me if I was a lesbian. I told her I thought I was bisexual, and she responded, “Bisexuality is bullshit.” That comment hurt me so much deeper than she intended it to. I became convinced that she’d never understand me, and I closed off the conversation for seven years after that. Later, she approached me about it again and started asking questions with openness and acceptance. Our conversations became messy and difficult, but they were always full of love, and we talked ourselves into a more healthy relationship. Her insistence on loving me exactly as I am has made it possible for me to feel comfortable in my skin today. I don’t know where I’d be without her.

KR: What about your extended family? Coming out to parents is often stressful to teenagers and young adults, but coming out to siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, etc can be much harder or much easier depending on the circumstances. How have those conversations gone for you?

SD: Yeah, that’s a hard one. My extended family is big and scattered. Half of them are liberal and half of them are conservative. But they all love me. Most of them have accepted that I’m ambiguously different and generally prefer not to talk about it. I’ve come out to almost all of them in one way or another — usually in the least confrontational way possible — and I’m giving them space to make sense of it. What matters most to them is who I’m going to bring home for Christmas. If I start seeing a man, then they’ll think of me as straight. If I take a female partner, then they’ll think of me as a lesbian. They just want to be happy, and in their eyes, happiness is a healthy marriage. I might never get married, but I’m not asking them to accept that right now. I’m just grateful to have a family that loves me, and I try not to mess with their heads too much. (It helps that I live on the other side of the country.)

KR: What is the best possible reaction a parent could have when their teenager or young adult child comes out as gay or bisexual? Why?

SD: Trust them to know themselves better than you can know them, and accept whatever they tell you as their truth. Even if it changes, it’s still their truth. Try to think of gender and sexuality as fluid things — they can change and evolve and that’s okay. Try not to get attached to labels. Check in with yourself, and ask yourself honestly if you love and accept your child exactly as they are. If you do, then communicate that to them every time you interact with them, and tell them it’s important to you that they love themselves. But if something about your child’s identity feels wrong or unfortunate or misguided to you, consider the possibility that you’re hearing from some of your own baggage, and that you don’t need to pass that onto your child. Find an LGBT-friendly cognitive-behavioral therapist for yourself (before you find one for your kid), and work through the parts of your reactions that feel blocked. And spend some time getting educated. Read books on the subject, or find someone who specializes in educating parents about adolescent sexuality. I happen to know a great one in Austin.

KR: What is the worst possible reaction a parent could have when their teenager or young adult child comes out as gay or bisexual? Why?

SD: LGBT youth have a frighteningly high suicide rate, so I have a very firm belief on this one: If you withhold love, acceptance, or privileges from your child in ANY WAY as a result of their gender or sexuality, you are putting their life at risk. You DO NOT have the power to change them, but you do have the power to influence their desire to live. It’s a hard and real truth. Take this responsibility very seriously.

KR: Thank you so much, Sarah! I think your insights have much to add to the conversation and to support parents of current questioning teenagers and young adults. Any last words you want to leave us with?

SD: Wow, I ended up going down some pretty serious paths there, didn’t I? That feels strange because my life is usually pretty joyful these days. I think it’s important to remember that there are as many different genders and sexualities as there are people in the world. The labels we use are just a short-hand for describing patterns, and sometimes they don’t cover everything. I believe in the inherent worth of all individuals, and I believe there’s no such thing as “too much love.” And also… when we learn to relax our grip on the categories, I’ve found that life becomes a whole lot more fun.

I recently met the delightful 24-year-old Sarah Dopp. Sarah’s understanding of gender and sexuality has developed over the years into a delicate balancing act between male and female, gay and straight. Sarah generously agreed to an interview to provide some insight into the path of defining sexuality when the standard road maps don’t make sense.

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KR: Sarah, can you introduce yourself a little? What would you say in an internet dating ad?

SD: [chuckles] The title of my most recent dating ad was “Androgynous Queer Girl seeks Androgynous Queer Boy.” Inside, it said, “I’m looking for someone to go on adventures with. Someone who knows how to laugh at the line-painters and make forts out of the boxes with sticks and sheets.” I guess you could say I’m playful.

I’m 5′10″ and I have a shaved head. I’m built like a man from the knees down and the shoulder blades up, but the middle of my body is made up of a woman’s curves. If I’m dressing down, my clothes are gender-neutral. If I’m dressing up, I mix and match feminine and masculine clothes and accessories until I feel like I’ve struck a perfect balance. I happen to be single right now, and my dates cover the spectrum of gender pretty thoroughly — from manly men to feminine women to transgendered people and androgynous folk. There are so many flavors of beauty in the world.

KR: How do you define your gender and your sexuality? Can you explain how that plays out in “real life” terms?

SD: I identify as queer. The word resonates with me and seems to describe both my gender and my sexuality, which are two separate things. I understand that a lot of people are still uncomfortable with that word, though, so I try to be flexible. You can call me bisexual or androgynous, and I’ll believe you understand who I am. If you live in a world where there are only two categories for gender or sexuality, you can put me in whichever one feels most comfortable to you. I usually won’t argue.

How does this play out in real life? It’s interesting. I get called “sir” a lot in public, but everyone who knows me understands that I’m female. Most people assume I’m a lesbian except for the men I date, and they’re often convinced that I’m straight. I’ve learned to stop taking it all personally and to go just go with the flow.

KR: So you’re single now, but have been in relationships with both men and women. Tell me a little bit about how your relationships have gone. Would you say that once you’re in a relationship that it follows a relatively standard path - something that would be familiar to most people?

SD: I’ve had several long-term relationships that were standard enough to make everyone in my family breathe a sigh of relief. There’s a sense that I’ll become more “normal” — or at least fit categories better — if I’m in a stable relationship, because it’s easier for people to understand. But I’ve also been in relationships where we both intentionally agreed to be non-monogamous or nontraditional in some way, and where that turned out to be a healthy arrangement for both of us. Those relationships are much harder to explain to the outside world.

KR: When did you first start feeling different from the standard girl?

SD: My mother has told me she suspected I was gay from the time I was six, but I don’t think I felt different until middle school, when all of a sudden “being pretty” mattered to everyone I knew. That’s when I noticed I was awkward. Really really awkward. That’s all I could understand at the time.

KR: How do feel your teen years were affected by your orientation? Did you acknowledge your difference or not?

SD: My orientation confused the heck out of me. I had crushes on boys, so that meant I wasn’t a lesbian. But sometimes I had crushes on girls, too, and I sort of looked like a lesbian, so that must have meant I wasn’t straight. I wasn’t taught that there were more than two categories for these things, and I really thought I was doomed to feel “invalid” for my entire life. To top it all off, the first boy I had a crush on turned out to be gay, and my first girlfriend later transitioned to male. The most I could really do was acknowledge that I was “weird” and embrace that.

KR: Do you think your peers were aware of the difference? If so, how did they react?

SD: Yep. They knew me as the “weird” kid, too. In middle school, I was the butt of way too many jokes, and I’m still surprised sometimes that I made it out alive. I became so severely depressed that I actually attempted suicide my first year of high school. After that, my life shifted, though. My weirdness morphed into some strange kind of social charisma, and people started to tell me that they envied me. I was different, I knew it, and I embraced it. Turns out, that’s what everyone else in high school wants to do, too.

KR: And what about your peers, friends, coworkers, and acquaintances these days? How do they generally react upon meeting you, and as they get to know you and your gender and sexual identity more intimately?

SD: Well, the whole “shaved head” thing seems to put my queerness out on the table before we have a chance to discuss it. People either make assumptions about me (which are sometimes wrong) or they start asking questions right away. I’m a friendly person who genuinely likes people, so I think people feel at ease around me even if they’ve never talked to a queer person before. When they begin to learn more about me, I find that they can either accept my “middle grounds” or they can’t. If they can’t, it’s because of their belief system, and that has nothing to do with me. They’re usually still polite about it.

KR: Is there anything more you’d like to say about how you define yourself in these terms or how that has impacted your peer or romantic relationships?

SD: In some ways, my queerness makes my world very big — I can shift my appearance to meet people’s expectations, and nearly every friend has the potential to make me fall in love with them. But in other ways, my world is very small. I know there are other people out there like me, and too many of them are hiding in shame.

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Tomorrow Sarah and I continue our interview, with Sarah speaking more directly to her family.

 (Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.)

I said I would write about substance abuse and adolescent sexuality, but I am amending that. I think there are plenty of people who use alcohol and drugs without abusing them (experimentation lies in this realm), but I think my opinions still stand.

Instances of rape (including date rape) are much, much higher if the girl/woman has had anything to drink, or any kind of recreational drug. And I think this isn’t talked about enough (although I know Dr. Rayne has referred to this correlation in the past). When you’ve had even one drink, your inhibitions lower and your natural caution goes by the wayside.

Please, consider, on a first date or any situation where you are around people you don’t know well, don’t trust well, please just don’t drink or drug! Its a good enough reason not to. The benefits of the recreation just don’t measure up to the serious safety issues.

I remember when I was young, my junior high actually showed “Reefer Madness” as an anti-drug message in our 7th grade science class. It was hilarious! And one of the things that’s important to include when talking to young people about the dangers of drugs and alcohol is that it feels good! That’s why people do it, and that’s why people can get addicted. Same thing with sex. When adults want to create “danger” messages, if they don’t include the fact that it all feels good, if they are only trying to scare youngsters into abstaining, kids can feel lied to. The message rings false. I don’t want to do that.

When experimenting as a child, teen, and/or young adult, just keep these safety factors in mind, and see if you can make the decision to only drink and/or drug if you are in very safe surroundings with very safe people. If you are ever having blackouts (periods of time when you are drinking where you can’t remember what you were doing), then realize that is a prime indicator of potential alcoholism. If you have blackouts, its really best that you not drink at all.

I don’t want to come across as a prohibitionist. Although I don’t drink at all any more, and I don’t take recreational drugs anymore, I have come to realize that some people can do these things in moderation. Even some binge drinking doesn’t mean certain alcoholism. (I’m in somewhat of a minority in the AA crowd these days.)

But I also know the pain of rape, and the pain of guilt. I absolutely don’t mean to blame a victim if she was impaired by alcohol, and was then raped. The rape doesn’t come as a result of the alcohol; the blame belongs with the rapist. But, especially in cases of date rape, the lines get so fuzzy and prosecution is practically impossible. I really want women to take care of themselves, and avoid sexual assault, and refraining from the use of drugs and alcohol is a very good preventative measure.

What do you think?

(Written by guest blogger Wendy Harlowe.) 

Dr. Rayne has kindly let me weigh in as a guest blogger for the few days while she is at the SXSW Interactive conference; she knows one of my favorite topics in life is sex! I think this blog is playing a crucial role in the needed discussion of adolescent sexuality in the repressive context of our “abstinence-only” government propoganda. I’ll be posting today, Monday and Tuesday. Today, I’ll let you know a little bit about me and my perspective on sexuality in general. Monday I’ll write a bit about human sexuality from a biological evolutionary perspective, not something I’ve seen much about. Tuesday, I’ll write about substance abuse as relates to sexuality. Of course, I’d love to hear from you, and look forward to this continuing conversation. You may e-mail me privately at WendyHarlowe@gmail.com, or of course, simply comment here on the blog.

So, first off, Wendy Harlowe is a pseudonym. I can be much freer in discussing sexuality this way. I’m an “outlier” in this arena. You know what an outlier is? Statistically speaking, its someone outside the norm, someone on the charts far outside where most people fall. My history and experience are unusual, and my perspective is unusual in many ways. Does one follow the other? Perhaps, but not necessarily.

As regards adolescent sexuality, I had a lot of sex while an adolescent. I’ve had a lot of sex and sexual experiences as an adult as well. Briefly, here is some of what I’ve experienced: snatched by a pedophile at 9 yrs of age; burst out into sex, drugs and rock’n'roll at age 13; was gang raped by the bikers I was hanging around with at age 17; had lots of sex with lots of people in my teens, 20s and 30s, started slowing down in my 40s; worked in the sex trade in my teens — strip joints, porn theaters, prostitution; lived as a lesbian for about 7 years, late teens and early 20s; really enjoyed a lot of computer sex in my 30s; am now happily married (third time’s the charm for me); am bisexual, but fairly invisible in that regard since I now live a middle class married life with children; contracted gonorrhea as a teenager (with the diagnoses of infertility as a result — although after 22 years of using no birth control, I did become pregnant at the age of 38!); contracted herpes in my early 20s, still live with it; sobered up as a member of AA when I was 21 yrs old, so I only hit the alcohol and drugs heavily for 8 years.

This I believe regards sexuality: that so much of what is taken for truth isn’t; that monogamy and marriage originated as tools to promote patriarchy — to ensure that men know their progeny, can “own” and control their families; that there exists an unfair double standard that heaps blame and shame and negative social repercussions upon girls and women who are free with their sexuality; that religion and religious beliefs far too often reinforce the institutions of marriage and monogamy; that it is entirely OKAY to tryst with another person simply for the pleasure of the shared sexuality; that sex can be enjoyed in its fullness without expectations, without promises, without a future between the consenting participants; that honesty is the way to go; that there is an exquisite balance between selfishness and giving to the other in sexual encounters, and that this balance cannot be achieved at all times; that girls and women too often forgo their own sexual pleasure out of fear and timidity and the unexamined belief that they need to be nice; that sex isn’t talked about near enough; that one can deeply love more than one person at a time; that if one is in a long-term committed relationship, “extracurricular sexual activity” is not necessarily a betrayal of one’s partner; that the sexual drive is primal and exquisite and should be explored and enjoyed, not repressed and denied.; that our ideas about sexual morality are intertwined with our dysfunctional social strictures; that if we lived in a more child-friendly world, one wouldn’t necessarily need the monogamous/marriage institution in order to see our children raised well.

One of my favorite quotes: “… have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” — Ranier Maria Rilke

A question for you: what do you think about having multiple sexual partners? If we could get rid of the romantic notions that saturate our culture, that yearning for “the one” … the one who will make our life complete … could we enjoy our sexuality outside of a “long-term committed relationship”?