Sex is Not a Commodity I “Sell” to Men in Exchange for Worth

I was taught that men took something when we had sex but I’ve resisted

It should be no surprise that sex confused me growing up. Ever since I realized I would someday have it (around puberty), I was bombarded with contradicting messages. On one hand, I was told women wanted sex very much. I was shown this through imagery almost everywhere I looked. Red lips, big breasts, shiny hair, fluttering eyelashes. Female sexuality was used to sell almost everything, and even as an adolescent I understood this. I was taught that the female desires and is desired. I read article after article in my teen magazines about females and their sexual wants and urges. Women were pleasure-seeking creatures. This — if I could believe what I saw in fashion magazines.

My day-to-day reality was very different. You would think I’d grown up in a different country — a different planet. My mother expressed embarrassment when even talking about sex. In high school we were lectured in sex-ed classes: “Wait till you’re ready.” “If he really likes you he’ll wait.” At least the girls got this lecture back in the eighties. And this wasn’t even Catholic school! But why were we lectured this? Would sex hurt me when I finally had it? What would I lose if I had it and wasn’t ready? Ready for what?

“People will think badly of you.”

Okay. But what about all the women in the magazines, on TV, in the movies, and so many advertisements? Those women seemed to be having an okay time with sex. They seemed to be having a pretty good time with it, actually.

Ironically my mother was the exact person who bought me those magazines, who went to see those movies with me, and who purchased the revealing clothing that trends dictated were fashionable. All this happened while I was instructed that men would begin to want things from me and that I should deny them those things. Why? “Because people will think badly of you.” I’d get a reputation. I was even told: “Once you start having sex you’ll have it with every guy.”

No one ever discussed that I might want to have sex simply because it felt good. No wonder I was confused. Friends who had grown up in similar families with similar mothers, reading similar magazines, watching similar movies, finding themselves similarly persuaded by similar ad campaigns only helped to drive home this point. I should want to have sex, but only with someone who respected me. But I should still show off my body, advertise my sexual availability. I just shouldn’t be too available. Being too available was bad. Gossip about “too available” girls was rampant in my high school. Those girls were sluts. Calling a girl a slut was the easiest way to disparage her.

I finally had sex for the first time, just shy of my sixteenth birthday. While wearing revealing clothing purchased by my mother, I attracted a boy. We kissed and he felt my body and I felt his, but we still waited the right amount of time to have sex — two months in our case. We had the correct kind of sex because he loved me, he respected me.

When I broke up with him a year and a half later, I enjoyed attracting new boys. While wearing more revealing clothing purchased by my mother I met more boys, whom I fooled around with, both of us feeling each other’s bodies. This time I didn’t wait until the boys and I were “going together” to have sex with them. Now the problems began. Because there was no commitment, these boys didn’t “respect“ me. But I enjoyed the sex and didn’t care if they called me again. Still, my girlfriends told me I was developing the dreaded reputation I’d been warned of. One boy who wanted to date me even decided not to because I was “too easy.”

Of course, no one asked me if I was interested in him. I wasn’t. Still, my girlfriends insisted I was letting myself be used. “He thinks you’re the type of girl who lets boys use you.” But I’d enjoyed letting those boys touch me and I’d enjoyed touching them too. I’d enjoyed having sex with them. What had I given them too freely? What had they taken?

For this to be true, I would have to have gone to bed with them for the sole purpose of getting them to like me. I didn’t have sex with them for that reason. I’d been drunk and turned-on so I went home with a few guys. I had fun. I enjoyed the sex. So how had they used me?

College was more of the same. “Oh, my God, you let him use you,” my friends were known to say. This, if you had a friends-with-benefits arrangement. Huh? Why? How?

It hurt me when my friends said this, so I began to believe it. My mind rebelled against my body. My body wanted sex but now I had to divine the exact moment when it was okay to have it. After weeks of waiting — weeks of heavy petting and no, don’t touch me there, only there — I would give in to a guy and have sex. Still, he would ultimately drop me. You’ve been used! My body tightened. I couldn’t relax around a guy until I’d discerned without a doubt he wanted me as his girlfriend. I started dating lower hanging fruit. In other words, guys who were obsessed with me.

“I don’t know why you’re dating him.” This from my friends. He’s not using me but he’s still not good enough? Shame ruled me. Bewilderment clouded my brain. I felt confused about an expectation that I show off my body while having to deny my body to men who only wanted to “use” me. I was to put my body on display for everyone to look at but never to enjoy myself. Or if I did enjoy it, this was to only happen sometimes, only with a man who loved me, who respected me. The supposition was that men controlled whether I was worthy of respect. No one ever asked if I still respected a man after we had sex. No one ever asked if I still respected myself.

It’s taken me years to root this B.S. from my mind. I have no control over how other people react to me. I can only control what I think of myself. I certainly have no control over whether a man “respects” me after we’ve gone to bed together.

I refuse to play this game, so I’ve de-complicated sex. Since I left my husband, if I have sex with a man it’s for one reason alone: to achieve pleasure in the moment.

I refuse to go home with a guy and say you can touch this but not that because if you touch that I’m a slut but if you touch that other thing I’m okay. Why should one part of my naked body be fine to touch and another part not? If I don’t like a guy enough to enjoy my entire body with him, then I’m not going back to his place. This is not a critique of consent. I think a woman (or any human for that matter) has the right to stop sex at any time if they’re not comfortable with what’s happening. It’s just I’m not up for playing games with men anymore. I refuse to give men all the power. I refuse to think a sexual experience has been “successful” only if a man calls me again.

If I have sex with a man it’s for one reason alone: to achieve pleasure in the moment.

How a man reacts in the minutes, hours, or days after our sexual experience has nothing to do with me. This isn’t to say that I don’t treat men kindly, that I don’t go out of my way to be respectful, to be charming. But I simply cannot take responsibility for things that I cannot control. If a man decides he doesn’t like my smell or the taste of my vagina or the sound of my voice or the look on my face when I come, that’s on him. Maybe he decides I’m boring, or too talkative or not talkative enough or I have kids or it’s icky that I still spend so much time with my ex. Whatever. That’s on him. It says nothing about my actual worth or what’s left of me after he takes this mysterious thing I supposedly give up to him through sex.

I won’t play that game of sex as currency. I play the game of enjoying myself for the sake of now. I refuse to believe that I have to earn my self-respect from a man. I respect myself, and that’s enough.