Let's talk about sex, babies

Author: Vera Butcher

There's been a lot of sex talk on campus. The "I Heart Female Orgasm" lecture was well attended by both sexes, Robert Jensen came to campus for a male-only discussion on pornography, and a film in which he's featured, "The Price of Pleasure" - a documentary on the effects of pornography - will be screened in Axinn 229 tonight at 7 p.m. We're lucky to have access to these resources, and it's wonderful we're opening up to each other through using them. But I still feel that at Midd, we're talking about sex more openly than we're actually doing it.

You know that small tinge of shame the morning after a blurred night. Okay, if you're lucky, you don't. But picture it: you get on your weekend dancing shoes, pregame with your friends, then head over to a see-and-be-seen party where you bustle through the half-chitchatting, half-dancing crowd to the bar, pour yourself a drink and proceed to check everyone out. You may be picky or you may have no scruples at all, but within the first five minutes you know exactly who you would sleep with. If you're single and ready to mingle, you go for it.

There are a few faults with this strategy, and not just because drunken sex can be awful. You deny yourself the joy of getting to know someone you sleep with in a meaningful way. Getting comfortable with someone. Being able to freak freely. It's also hard to feel the butterflies if you haven't courted someone. No matter how hot or cool a person is, interacting on a late-night level will be exponentially less sexy than, say, a daytime rendezvous. My best sexual relationships have always been with people I got to know.

Okay, now it sounds like I'm espousing monogamy, but I'm not. I think having random sex can be empowering too. Sometimes it feels good to have no strings attached. But what about sleeping with one of your friends, someone you know and trust? Having an F-Buddy always sounded fun to me. Sex can be great outside of exclusive relationships. But why not have a steady partner, or even partners, to practice with?

Relationships like these are less common, I think, because sleeping around is conceived as dirty. Terms like "slut" and "player" oversimplify the entire collaboration. The only people who are truly dirty are those who resist using protection and continue to be promiscuous. Just because we're living in a bubble does not mean we're not susceptible to disease. Women our age are more prone to HPV than ever, and although men cannot be tested for it, they do spread it.

Trust is so essential in having a healthy sex life. If we continue to be horny scenesters, we deprive ourselves of great sex (great sex = sex + orgasm, orgasm = pure glee, you see where I'm going with this) and we may even be putting ourselves at risk. Talking about sex is not enough. Rationalizing too much can even get in the way of doing the do. We know the ins and outs. Now lets explore how to use what we know (and always, what our partners teach us) to achieve optimal results.

Questions? Remarks? E-mail vbutcher@middlebury.edu.