Why I've Remained Silent About My Sexuality — Until Now
There are very real consequences our society imposes on people who deviate from the norm.
Vladimir Gjorgiev / Shutterstock This is a topic that weighs heavily on me and isn't easy to write about.
I'm massively in favor of providing shame-free sex education, of over-sharing as a political act, and of creating sex-positive learning environments.
Yet, I feel unable to talk about my own sexuality publicly.
In a way, this betrays my multifaceted privileged status: I'm a female-bodied person married to a man, so very few people question whether I'm straight.
I'm white and middle class, so it doesn't seem to occur to people to wonder if I'm a sex worker. I'm cisgender so people don't attack or misgender me.
The fact that I even have the option of choosing not to discuss my sexuality publicly means I'm already benefiting from an intersectional system that oppresses some and lifts up others.
With that acknowledged, my reasons for not discussing my sexuality publicly are many.
1. I teach at the college level.
American culture is so intent on shielding children from any contact with sex that it's usually considered inappropriate for teachers of any level to reveal anything about their sex lives (despite the fact that my students are all over 18, and despite the fact that teachers with children of their own are admitting to having had sex at least once).
2. I don't want my own sexual experiences to distract from anything I'm teaching.
Especially in the sex education classroom where I want to model appropriate boundaries.
3. Our culture is so sex-negative that there's someone who will judge you for just about any sex act out there.
Certainly, some sex acts should be harshly condemned (those involving non-consent, for example), but consensual sex acts between adults?
Those aren't deserving of shame, intolerance, or really much discussion from anyone who isn't directly involved/impacted.
In regard to that last point, I feel that women are judged especially brutally for their sexual experiences.
Getting a lot of action? You'll be called a slut or whore.
And if you try to set boundaries or say no, you might be in danger of verbal or physical harassment. Not saying yes to a lot of sex? Then you're a prude or a tease, and also in danger of verbal or physical harassment.
Yes, I think that hegemonic constructions of male sexuality are also very damaging and limiting for men, but at least they have the option of being sexually active without being condemned quite so hatefully.
I really want to change the world and improve everyone's perception of sex, in part so that everyone can be more liberated, and in part so I can feel freer to be myself in public discourse. I know that one of the ways to make that happen is by being more open and by showing that it's OK to be who you are even in the face of misogyny and sex-negativity.
But honestly, I'm afraid to.
I'm terrified that people can take any facet of my sexual experience — the age when I became sexually active, the kinds of people I do or don't have sex with, and so on — and use it against me.
I'm fearful of the particularly vengeful glee you see in sexphobic rhetoric, when dragging someone's sexual identity or experiences through the coals.
I worry that my academic colleagues will stop respecting me and that the general public will think I'm weird.
I make ethical choices about my sex life; thus, my sex-positive peers and friends will still have my back, so that's something.
But I worry that being too open will rob me of the legitimacy I can claim by occupying a detached academic vantage point where we all pretend to be more objective than is actually possible by suppressing our sexuality and hiding it behind closed doors.
As I've written about mind-body dualism in the past, it can be incredibly damaging to pretend to be all mind, no body.
And it's disingenuous, too, which always bugs me. And because sexual norms are socially constructed, damn near any kind of sex that someone's having or not having is probably demonized by someone out there.
In our sexphobic culture, it's especially likely that anything outside heterosexual monogamous vanilla sex within marriage purely for procreative purposes will be stigmatized.
And not just that the sex itself will be stigmatized, but also the person/people having it.
In a rare candid moment, I'll admit that many of my sexual experiences don't fall into that narrow category of acceptable sex described above.
But really, whose do?
Narrowly defining "normal" sex isn't only an inaccurate way to model the world (because there's such a variety of sex practices and identities out there), but it also places rigid limits on what's a dazzling diverse facet of human experience. Again, so long as consent is mutual, I don't really think there's a wrong way to have sex.
Writing all this out, I can see how it's melodramatic and a tad ridiculous to be this worried about being judged for my sexuality. But I worry about it nonetheless.
And I'm sharing this brain-vomit post to illustrate that these kinds of fears of sexual judgment exist, even among folks like myself who are trying to end slut-shaming and stigma and sex-negativity, and all that horrible stuff that makes people afraid to explore their sexuality in whatever way is healthy for them and helps them grow in their lives.
I hope someday I'll refer back to this post and be able to say I've outgrown this fear, that the people in my life whose opinions really matter have demonstrated repeatedly that what happens in my sex life doesn't impact their view of me as an intellectual person, a scholar, a teacher, an artist, an ethical human being.
Since I try to surround myself with awesome, open-minded, compassionate people, the limiting factor is more likely to be my own anxiety combined with the very real consequences that our society imposes on people who deviate from the norm.
Again, this is a wonderful motivation to be an activist for sex positivity, so we can change arbitrary norms and demonstrate that there are many ways to be sexually active as a human, whether that means abstinence or being an ethical slut.
Time to see if I'm alone in having these kinds of fears.
Jeana Jorgensen is a sex educator, scholar, and writer with a passion for relationship communication, narrative models of gender and sexuality, and alternative sexuality communities like non-monogamy and kink/BDSM.