Sexual Education Of Young Girls: The Pleasure Principle

Whether parents want to acknowledge it or not, the world has started teaching their children about sex long before that first sex ed assembly or the dreaded birds and bees discussion. The issue is that little boys and little girls are getting two completely different sides of the coin and this miscommunication can lead to a lot of issues with intimacy and relationships later in life. Most sexual conversations between children and adults focus mainly upon the mechanics and biology of the act. While it is fantastic to know what a fallopian tube is and to understand why our bodies go rogue on us once a month and turn our lady parts into a literal horror show, this and other parts of our internal anatomy will not be big players in our sexual coming of age. I don't know about anyone else, but my uterus did not cross my mind once in my first sexual experience. It didn't cross my mind much after it either, until there was a person growing in there. In fact the internal workings of our productive system is not even remotely sexy or relevant until we plan to start reproducing, the key word being plan which I feel is an entirely different conversation.

There is another part to the conversation that is simply not happening as frequently and I feel that it is a major cause for the discrepancies in the sexual experiences of men and women. It is the why question. There are three reasons people have intercourse; reproduction, love, and pleasure. Reproduction is the reason most birds and bees convos focus on, and depending on whether you are male or female your peers and environment will focus on one other reason. I'm sure you can guess which reason gets overlooked when it comes to young women. While young men are thumbing through the pages of contraband pornography and learning how to effectively conceal the not so occassional traitorous stiffy, young ladies are being spoon fed the promise of everlasting love by way of magic fairy dust, candlelight and Dirty Dancing. Adolescent girls much unlike adolescent boys, rarely even have arousal explained to them. Instead, women are taught to wait for that just right moment, with that just right man, who has that just right feeling for her. In an effort to keep us disease free and our wombs empty, our environment attempts to turn us into Goldilocks. It's all very nice in a storybook but unfortunately real life can rarely accommodate this mentality.

Essentially from the gate women are taught to view sex as an emotional act while men are taught to view it as a physical one. I feel that the effect this infallibly unrealistic expectation has on women as they mature can be emotionally damaging for numerous reasons. While I fully acknowledge the emotional connection that can be found in intimate relationships, I don't believe this kind of emotional maturity is likely in adolescence when most initial sexual interactions occur. We are expecting grown up emotional intelligence in adolescent relationships. It is a set up for failure and I feel that it can also impede a woman's ability to have a healthy sex life as an adult.

Sex is not a dirty word, it is a fact of life. We should empower young girls to understand and embrace their sexuality instead of turning sex into a biology lesson or a John Hughes movie. In any case the truth remains, as parents we decide who our children's teachers are and if it isn't us it will be someone else.