When Will We Teach Our Daughters To Be Sexual Equals? -- Pt.1 Love Before Sex?

 Before one dismisses this series of essays as being a "man-bashing" essay, without reading it, I think shifting the way we teach girls about sex will improve relationships for both men and women.

And, before one says -- "But, but, there are sexual predators out there!"  I am WELL aware that there are sexual predators.  Unfortunately, there will always be a contingent of the population that are sexual predators.  I do not advocate for one second that a girl or woman let her guard down or ignore her intuition or take her safety lightly.

And, before you argue with me about what your religion or church says about women and sex, please know that I am NOT religious and am not about to take up a religion.  One of the big reasons I am not religious is the way women are regarded in religions.

I was going to do a long essay encompassing all of my thoughts on this; but, feel this would be better done in several parts sticking to one idea at a time.

About a year ago, I watched an episode of Blue Bloods (it may well have been a repeat).  In the episode, Erin Reagan, (divorcee and successful prosecutor for the city of New York), has a small "sex-talk" with her daughter.  And, as seen in many a TV show and movie, Erin tells her daughter, "I would hope that the first time you have sex, that you are in love."

While this is a vast improvement over, "Save yourself for marriage" and "Why should he buy the cow when he can get the milk for free," I found myself getting very angry at this.  Telling a girl that the first time she has sex, that she should be in love, is terrible advice.  This sets her up for a series of disappointments.  You can pretty well bet that in most cases of first time sex, the boy in NOT in love.  He may eventually fall in love; but, he most likely is not in love at the time that he has sex.

Pair that with the way we teach girls about boys and sex. (Especially in light of a rapper's confession that he takes his daughter to the OB/Gyn to make sure her virginity is in tact.)  Why are we still putting a girl's virginity on a pedestal?  That is just disgusting!

Here is the reality of first time sex:

• Boys are not taught that their virginity is valuable.
• The boy will most likely not be in love.
• Boys are not taught to be in love the first time they have sex.
• The first boy a girl has sex will almost never be the person she marries.
• Even if, by chance, they do get married, there is a more than 50% chance that they will not stay married.  

So, why do we continue to continue to give girls the cruel advice of telling them that the first time they have sex should be when they give their heart to someone;and, that their virginity is something that they should prize?  Breakups can be humiliating enough, especially in a social situation where everyone knows who is going out with whom, without a girl feeling like she gave her heart and virginity to someone who didn't feel the same about her.  This paradigm eventually leads to the girl feeling duped and ashamed --  "I wasted my virginity on him." 

What we should be teaching girls is much more complicated than, "You should be in love the first time":

• We should teach girls to have great self-esteem.  
• We should teach girls how powerful they can be both as a person and sexually.
• We should teach girls that their self-worth, throughout their life, has to be about more than sex and attractiveness.
• We should teach girls to know what appropriate boundaries are.
• We should teach girls about the hymen and that breaking it does not make her "less than" or "unpure"; and, that sexual purity is a sexist, outdated notion.
• We should teach girls that if any boy/(or man as she get older) needs a woman to be "pure" -- it is a bad reflection on him, not her.
• We should teach girls that they are worth just as much as a boy in a relationship.
• We should teach a girl that if she has consentual sex with a boy (or man as she gets older), and he refuses to go out with her again because he feels she had "sex too soon" with him, to remind him that he also participated in having sex, so he can take his sexist double-standard crap and shove it, because he just let her know that he is NOT her type.
• We should teach girls that sex should be a wonderful experience, not a shameful one.
• We should teach girls (and boys) about safe sex and about birth control.
• We should teach girls that sex and love are not synonymous; and, that she doesn't have to be in love in order to have sex for the first time.
• We should teach girls that the first time she has sex, it should be something she really wants to do and not something she feels she has to do.
• We should teach girls that the first person she falls in love with, will most likely not be the person she marries.
• We should teach girls that they have just as much right to play the field as boys do; and, to never let anyone call her a slut or a similar name for doing so.
• We should teach girls to ignore the sexist advice that is spewed by the media.
• Before they get into a relationship, we should teach girls that the amygdala and prefrontal cortex of their brain will be responsible for them feeling like they can't live without the person they broke up with.  Click here to read more about it.

Ta-Ta-For-Now!

Coco looking particularly cute!