Sex.
Probably one of the most thought about and talked about subjects in high school. You’d think that everyone who has some form of understanding about what it is would be chill about it, but sadly this isn’t true.
Sex in high school seems to be the biggest platform for shame, blame and judgement. Wellington High school is seen as a progressive school in the Wellington community. We do sound pretty relaxed and accepting. But I don’t think we’ve reached a point of complete shutdown of negative, social behaviours just yet.
Recently I heard about a sort of pattern in sexual interactions at the soirees he’d happened to attend. A friend told me, “One will ask another to go off with them and they’ll say no, but then the requesting party will literally beg and beg all night long until they, unwillingly, say yes. And then the next day I’ll hear the coerced person blaming themselves for the situation because they were dancing near them or they were talking to them or they should have been more assertive. And then I’ll also overhear the manipulative party talking about how the person they got with did end up sorta saying yes so it’s fine,” he told me.
Hearing these things didn’t exactly shock me. I remember a time when my brain had turned to scrumpy and as I wandered off with some cute looking guy I heard my friend yelling out my name. I still regret not turning around and going back to her. The next day I blamed myself for going off with some random, when really the spotlight should have been on him for he had had only one bottle of bear and I was a wasted year 11. Luckily I had to run to the bathroom before anything really serious took place. Praise my food empty and liquid filled stomach.
The really scary part of these stories is that these aren’t just random, gross behaviours. This is a culture that’s been passed down generation to generation. We’ve been taught to act like this. Women being the door that opens to blame and men being the hands that force the door open. Now I’m not saying that all men are manipulative rapists or that all women are self blaming victims. What I’m trying to do is highlight these things that always go on but that we don’t seem to notice or care about. Having this conversation didn’t just prompt me to think about the blurred lines of consent, it also made me wonder how people actually view and think about sex at school. I went out and spoke with a number of gals and guys about this. Asking questions such as “is having sex something you look forward to or just a thing to get over and done with?” Only one female I spoke to out of eight sexualy active women said their first time was enjoyable and of the women who hadn’t had sex yet (six to be exact) all felt like it was something they needed to get over and done with rather than something they were looking forward to doing.
Not so shockingly all sexually active males I spoke to had had a pleasant first time. Yay. But one thing that both groups of people could agree on was that whether your personal sexual experiences are good or bad there are definitely pressures put on teens to have sex.
What are these pressures? Peers? Society? Media? I say all of the above, bitches. Although not obvious, pressures to have/or to not have sex in friend groups is 100% real. Little comments between mates like “oh lol I forgot you hadn’t done it yet,” *awkward face* can have a hugely negative effect on people’s sexuality. If all of someone’s friends are having sex and they’re not, it’s not surprising that they’d just do it, because then they’d fit in.
Society and the media go hand in hand. Every day we’re blasted with over sexualised messages, expectations based on our gender and people telling us how we’re supposed to live our lives. I don’t think there’s been a day in my life where I haven’t seen the woman’s body or a man’s “masculinity” used as a marketing tool. The perfect woman is promiscuous but prudish, sexy but conservative, smart but not bossy.The perfect man is assertive and strong, emotionless and confident, the kinda guy who takes what he wants.
The world isn’t black and white. Consent isn’t just a yes or a no. We need to have a better understanding about everything in between those two little words. I also hope you know that sex does not define you. Whether you have or haven’t had sex should play no part in how you treat or are treated by your friends.
In conclusion, fuck society and have great, consensual sex.
By Grace Stone
Images attached to this article
