HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018461.jpg

I'm so grateful for my relatively liberal, relatively sex-positive upbringing. I think it did
me a world of good. But here are my five biggest problems with the way I learned
about sexuality:

1. I wish that I hadn't gotten this message: "Sex is easy, light-hearted -- and if it's not,
you're doing it wrong."

Do I believe sex can be easy? Sure. Do I think it can be light-hearted? Absolutely! But do
I think it's always those things? No, and I don't think it "ought to" be.

I think we need to teach that sex can be incredibly difficult. It can be hard to
communicate with your partner. It can be hard to learn and come to terms with your own
sexual desires. It can be hard to understand or accept all your partner's sexual desires.
And just because it's hard, doesn't mean that you're with the wrong partner -- or that
you're missing some vital piece of information that everyone else has -- or that you're
doing it wrong.

And as for light-hearted, well -- sure, sex can be "happy rainbows joy joy!", but it can
also be serious... or dark. And there's nothing wrong with that!

I recently talked to a friend, who also identifies as a BDSMer, about our stories of
coming into BDSM. Both of us had sadomasochistic fantasies from a very early age
(mine, for instance, started in grade school -- seriously, I actually did tie up my Barbie
dolls). I told my friend about how I'd always had these intense, dark, violent feelings --
but when I made it to middle school, I remember a change. I had a series of vivid BDSM-
ish dreams, and I freaked out. I closed it all away, I stopped thinking about it, I repressed
it all as savagely as I could.

Before that, I had also started thinking about sex. I imagined sex at great length; I read
about sex. I had long since filched my parents' copy of The Joy of Sex and examined it,
cover to cover -- not to mention many other fine sexuality works, like Nancy Friday's
compilation of female sexual fantasies My Secret Garden. I was totally fascinated by sex.
I talked about it so much that one of my friends specifically searched out a vibrator as a
birthday present for me. I actually pressured my first major boyfriend into some sexual
acts before he was ready, which I suppose is an interesting reversal of stereotype (but to
be clear, it's not okay that I did that). As I started having sex, I found that I liked it okay,
but knew a lot was missing -- and couldn't figure out what.

It took me years and years to connect sex to BDSM -- to figure out that the biggest thing I
was missing was BDSM. Why? Because BDSM was horrible and wrong, and I'd shut it
away; BDSM (I thought) couldn't possibly have anything to do with the bright, shiny,
happy horizon of sex! Coming into BDSM was a crisis for me partly because -- although
I knew other people practiced it, and had never thought much about that -- my own need
for those dark feelings totally shocked me. This wasn't me. This wasn't healthy sex. Sex
was light-hearted, happy rainbows joy joy!... wasn't it?

In contrast, my friend -- who had an extremely sexually repressed upbringing -- never
had any trouble integrating BDSM into his sex life. Sex, for him, was already wrong and
bad... so as he got in touch with his sexuality and began having sex, BDSM was involved
from the start. After all, there was no reason for it not to be.

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018461