Talk (sex) therapy
I keep linking to Amber Rhea of Being Amber Rhea because she keeps saying things more succinctly than I can. For instance here she knocks off the whole reason why talking non-hyperbolically and/or non-hypocritically about sex is important in a social sense.
I don't understand the mentality that talking about sex and sexuality will make people want to go out and fuck. That makes no sense. Talking about bungee-jumping doesn't make me want to bungee jump - and if I had already wanted to bungee jump anyway, talking about it probably wouldn't make a difference.
The reason it's important to talk about sex is the same reason it's important to talk about (for example) mental illness, and a host of other "stigmatized" things in our society... to get it out there and remove the taboo, get over all the hush-hush weirdness that makes people feel isolated and alone, and realize that we all deal with these issues, so why not talk about them and begin to learn from our shared experiences, our similarities, and our differences!
Ain't that great? A) Talking about it isn't going to make anyone do anything they wouldn't have been up for anyway, and B) if we don't talk about it, and hear others talk about it, every one of us thinks we're the only round peg in a sea of square pegs... and go to often extraordinary lengths to comform to a set of standards that don't work for any of us.
Even better, part A dismisses the strawman argument that if we talk about it then before you know it everyone will be having Santorum-style man-or-woman-on-dog sex while part B dismisses the idea that if we just don't talk about it maybe our urges will revert to "normal."
I think you should sort your blog roll by subject, too often I don't find the kind of discussion you are speaking of now. I find what I found this morning (more ads)when I was going thru the "S's."Quite often I will read those blogs linked in the comments.
[If you're replying to the blog-patrol post this is perfect feedback, Five. You may be able to set your browser to block unwanted pop-up ads, but not everyone can. Next time I review the section I'll watch to see what pops up, and unless there's a compelling reason not to I'll remove offending links. Thank you so much. --fl]
Gee, no kidding, Amber and Fig! I remember the sex talk with my mother when I was in my early teens - all it made me want to do was go "no freaking WAY am I doing that!" Of course, later on, I did "do that" and a lot of it, or I wouldn't have children, haha. Fortunately, my daughter seems to have had the same reaction I did, at least so far. We had the sex talk, and she calls it "doing the thing", and shudders every time she hears the word "sex". She thinks kissing her boyfriend on the cheek is nice, liplock is gross, and handholding or cuddling is the bomb. Might just be I'm managing to raise a kid who's not only knowledgeable about sex and her body, but one who will know when she grows up what she likes and wants and won't be afraid to talk about it. She is comfortable with her body, and it's entirely natural functions - she's hit menarche recently and wasn't freaked by it, her best friend had no idea what was going on and came to ME thinking she was going to bleed to death because her parents had told her NOTHING about what was happening to her body, poor kid.
[Yup, I'm gearing up to have the same talks with my children. (I've been softening them up a bit, asking if they want to know where babies come from and saying I'll tell them. My oldest, the 10-year-old bookworm, says he knows all about it because he read a four-page entry in an encyclopedia. :-) Good to know, eh? :-) I told him there might be some details that might need filling in. Thanks, Cameo. --fl]