The L-Word

It’s not easy being green.

If I have learned anything about living a sustainable lifestyle (and I have learned a lot while at Middlebury), it’s that going truly green requires a significant level of self-awareness and effort. Making small changes is a great idea, and the more of us who make those changes, the bigger the impact they will have. But as I have become increasingly aware over the last four years, what really needs to happen is a paradigm shift, a change in our fundamental values and habits as a society. I won’t comment on the nature of that change because the Opinions section is already full of people better qualified than I am to do so, and besides, this is a sex column, and you came here to read about sex. So how do we apply environmental sustainability to our sex lives?

In last year’s green issue, I told you about proper condom disposal (please don’t flush them!), petroleum-free lubes and choosing the most environmentally friendly sex toys. This year, I want to look at sex through the lens of sustainability and move past the small changes toward some personal paradigm shifts. But the shifts I want to talk about don’t really have anything to do with the environment — short of refusing to have sex in anything except an adobe yurt that you built yourself, or at the very least practicing good birth control to keep our population from skyrocketing further, I’m not so sure there are sex-specific values to be altered, at least not when trying to be eco-friendly. I think the process of seeking big changes for the better, though they might not be easy, is still useful even if it’s not saving the environment, however. So let’s talk about positive climate change in the climate of the climax — change in the environment of sex, as opposed to change in sex for the environment.

You have read through all of my contrived setting up of this grand extended metaphor, and really all I want to tell you is to talk. Talk about sex. Talk during sex. Talk after sex. Get naked and then get vocal. My biggest bad habit in the bedroom — bad in that it wasn’t serving me, my partners or the friends who then had to deal with my anxiety — was not communicating well regarding sex for the first, oh, two years of having an active sex life. That’s a long time not to voice what you want, how you want it, if you want it. Just like the first step to saving the planet is starting an open dialogue on what needs to be saved in the first place, the first step to saving yourself from silent suffering and bad to mediocre sex is to say something.

The most important thing to speak up about is obviously whether or not you want to have sex. Developing self-awareness is just as important in protecting yourself as it is in reducing your carbon footprint. If you don’t feel good about getting down, DON’T DO IT. If we can learn to call out people for driving to the gym when they could walk, we can learn to call out others for pressuring us into sex when we don’t want it. It is our responsibility to take care of the environment, and I think it is equally our responsibility to take care of each other, to be gentle with each other in such a vulnerable state as practicing procreation.

If you get it out there that you do want to get sexual, and so does your partner, don’t clam up now! Your bodies shouldn’t be the only things speaking to each other in the dark of your dorm room. Making the first peep can be a challenge — it can feel less nerve-wracking to let your partner gnaw your nipples off than to risk turning him or her off by speaking up (unless biting is your thing). But isn’t it so validating to know you’re giving your partner what he or she wants (and not giving what he or she doesn’t want)? You can both have the kind of sex you enjoy the most. I really think the biggest problem facing Middlebury’s sexual environment today is the lack of communication — if we don’t change, neither will the climate.