When I was a child, my parents (especially my mom) talked about how sex was a marital obligation, but how if you had a really strong marriage you didn't need sex. My mom had made my dad remain abstinent for 2 years (early in their relationship) to "help make their marriage be about something more than base desires." She said that the mouth was a clean place not meant for the penis, and forget about anal sex. Here favorite comment regarding the anus and vagina is "why would God put a garbage dump right next to an amusement park?" The first time I ever saw my parents kiss with a little tongue action I was a teenager. My dad had been given a Kama Sutra style book and tried out one of the kisses with my mom to which my mom jumped back and said something about it not being appropriate.
Luckly, while my mom presented me with this bizarre and anti-sexuality view of the world we lived in a commune like setting. I was able to see that while my parents had some strange beliefs they certainly were not the views of all my friends' parents. Many of the adults I grew up around were on the other extreme of sexuality. They were free love hippies. They practiced Tantric Sex/Yoga, talked freely about sexuality, walked around naked and had noisy sex at night.
I remember one of my friend's mom and step-dad teaching her weekly lessons about tantric sex (they were both tantra instructors) when she was around 8. Not in perverted way (not with any demonstration) but in a really liberal here is some information you should know to help make your sexual experiences better when you are older way. I did sit in on a couple of those lessons which were informative.
Also, I had another friend whose mom talked about her sex life frequently. It was through her explicit depictions of what made for a good sexual partner and a good sexual experience that I had some idea of what to look for and try when I got older. I was very curious since this stuff wasn't talked about at home, and I asked my friend's mom questions like "how do you give a good blowjob?" to which I got a detailed reply involving saliva, positions of hands, use of tongue and humming. This grossed out my friend as we were both around 12 but seemed entirely necessary to me.
The path that I have taken regarding sexuality is very different from that of my mom. I'm open, eager and embracing of sexual energy in myself and others. So why is my mom the way she is? It certainly wasn't her mom's doing. My grandma was fond of dirty jokes and freely answered my sex related questions (and though she also believed sex was for marriage, she had engaged in premarital sex).
The conclusion I have come to is that my mom does not get pleasure out of sex (she has said so herself) and she was messed up from her first marriage where her husband had taken on another wife (I don't know how it, as she says, "just happened"). In her mind the new wife forced her out of the marriage. The other woman had a daughter and my mom has always claimed that she left because she couldn't be part of messing up the child. I think she expressed her negative attitude in order to scare us into not having premarital sex so that we wouldn't get pregnant or acquire STDs.
I don't think of my more sexually open lifestyle is a form of rebellion. I think that it's just part of me being authentic to my own desires and belief in feminism. I hope to raise my daughters to not be ashamed of masturbating or secretive about their sexuality. I want them to know about their bodies (perhaps not as explicitly as the parents of my friends in the commune) but they will certainly own a copy of Our Bodies, Ourselves as teenagers and can feel free to ask me any questions. They will also most certainly grow up with parents who show public displays of their affection with each other.
No comments:
Post a Comment