To quickly provide an overview of this series, this first post will address the need to for disclosure between partners and, hopefully, the fear that prevents us from doing so. As this series progresses, I’ll cover other topics in disclosure such as coming out to a partner, specific issues trans people must deal with if we are sexually active and how to talk about what one wants from sex.
Does the term “safer sex” drum up visions of the discovery, passion and complexity of human sexuality for you? It certainly doesn’t for me. Perhaps I’m influenced by a stereotype that casts safer sex educators with traits in opposition to the traits I expect people involved in actively sexual communities to have, while realizing both these images are biases that aren’t really flattering to either group.
I am aware I still have my own issues on being sexually active and I deeply hope I do not indict writers and distributors of safer sex resources. They work hard, they’re open-minded and God knows it’s an awkward subject they’re dealing with. Well, sex is awkward. And it’s embarrassing and it’s challenging. There’s a load of tension in sex already without having to keep our heads cool about safety. Is this why it’s hard to get excited about safer sex?
But when I started to think about the essence of safer sex, I realized that it has in common with good sex that which makes sex good: communication. I hope I didn’t lose any readers with that. Yeah, that word is everywhere these days. The admonition to communicate is certainly wearing thin with me and I really don’t think I’m the only one rolling my eyes when it comes up. Why do we hear it so much, especially in regard to sex and relationships?
Because sex IS communication. And it benefits from mutual understanding. Sex discloses at least as much or more about us than any other single action we can do. And there is more fear involved in sex than in any other social behavior.
The purpose of safer sex education is to overcome those fears. Hard facts cut through confusion and create focus. And yes, this blog’s safer sex series is going to address the clinical points as well.
But first, I’m going to approach the softer, subjective aspects of sex. And I’ll start with, yep, disclosure and what prevents us from being willing to disclose what we should.
To shamelessly borrow from a favorite source, Dan Savage often says that disclosure should be approached as though you’re offering a gift, not cancer. That statement is as clear as it can be. So let me muddle the waters a bit in the name of perspective. Shame has a place in sex but not in disclosure. Don’t confuse shame for wrongdoing. How can you distinguish unnecessary shame from shame about doing real harm? That’s where we get into the murky questions. It’s highly subjective. A person might consider masturbation real harm if they were taught sufficiently to fear it. On the other hand, in a BDSM scene, the degree to which those involved do “harm” depends on what they consider to be truly harmful and on what level they’ve agreed is acceptable with each other. Outsiders don’t necessarily have the same tolerance and might declare anything done in the scene to be real harm.
So, again, how do you clarify that which is and is not acceptable? For some things, you don’t need experience with to know that they’re not acceptable, period. But short of subverting someone’s will without allowing them the right to stop you, pretty much everything’s on the menu these days. Even if you’re shy, if you’re racked with nervousness and fear of rejection, disclose in order to discover that everyone’s weird about sex.
Impossible, you say? If everyone’s weird, then no one is. I guarantee, everyone’s weird about sex. Everyone has a perspective on so-called “social norms” about sex and none of them are the same. Everyone has a body that’s different from anyone else’s. When you treat all this weirdness as just another fascinating wrinkle in the wide, wide world of sexual possibilities, you get the opportunity to see sex and sexuality for what it is: a force of tremendous influence and power and a downright dirty, strange, confusing and wonderful thing.
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