Eighth Post

This past week we talked about sexual relations and intercourse. It's always interesting to have these kind of discussions in a Mormon setting. There seems to be three distinct types of students; the ones who already know this material, the ones who are extremely sheltered and are learning this stuff for the first time, and then the ones who are rather self-righteous and embarrassed to be listening to this lesson. While I do fall into the first group of students, it was interesting to hear about how important sex is in a relationship and the stipulations that arise from it.

One of the most interesting things that I read about in this chapter was about the double standard that most people hold when it comes to premarital sex. When a young man has sexual experience in his adolescence years it is viewed as normal and even praised by some. It's a young man just being a man and experimenting and exploring. However, when a young woman gains some sort of sexual experience before marriage, she's viewed as a harlot and disgraced by others (for the most part). I have to admit to believing this myself, to an extent. For some reason, I tend to believe that it is less acceptable for women to be sleeping around or to have any sort of involvement in premarital sex than it is for men. Maybe that's a hypocritical, sexist part of me speaking. I don't know. I have heard it compared to a key and a lock. A key that can open many different locks is called a master key and is highly coveted and valuable while a lock that can be opened by many different keys is just considered to be a crappy lock. I believe that my attitude about this stems from the fact that a female is being penetrated by a man and not vice-versa. That seems a little worse to me. It's hard to explain.

The other thing that really stood out to me is how normal sex is. When you think about it, species on this earth have two purposes in life; to survive and reproduce. As we all know, sex is the way to reproduce. It is completely natural for us to have these desires and thoughts in life. It becomes unacceptable when we decide to linger on those thoughts/temptations or to act upon them before marriage. I feel as if a lot of LDS people don't understand that it's okay to think about and desire sex. To do so is completely normal and healthy. Our church has done a great job of making the subject taboo and creating an awkward situation whenever the topic is brought up. I wish more people could be open with their sexuality within the church without having members turn their noses up at them and judge. I think the youth would have a better understanding of what sex is and how to appropriately deal with those desires and thoughts.