I waited till marriage. How can I talk to my daughters about sex in a healthy way? Feminist Advice Friday
A reader wants some scripts for sexual empowerment.
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A reader asks…
I need your help in creating an empowering script when speaking to my children about a safe and fulfilling future sex life. My daughters are very young now, so hopefully they won’t need this until they’re much older. But I can’t help but be concerned by the ridiculous amounts of toxic social media messaging about women’s “value.” I grew up in the 90s and was heavily influenced by movies that depicted boys as being after just one thing—to get into girls’ pants—and who would use girls for sex and dump them. This, coupled with my family’s conservative Catholicism, led me to wait to have sex until marriage. Today on social media I see so many conservative influencers basically warning women about the same thing.
But the thing is, waiting until marriage didn’t give me the sex life of my dreams. Sure, I maybe avoided some male jerks and users in my dating life because of my no pre-marital sex stand, but the end result is that my husband and I barely have any sex at all! All that waiting just led to diminished libidos and unfulfillment. And I definitely don’t want my children to experience that either!
That doesn’t mean I want them to “sleep around a lot” per se (I’m sorry for saying it that way, forgive me. I know that’s probably a sexist way to say it, but I don’t know what other words to use)— certainly not as teenagers. And of course I don’t want their hearts to get broken or for them to be taken advantage of by misogynistic assholes. But I also don’t want them to be afraid of sex! I want them to have sex when they’re ready and not just save it for some patriarchal, religious b.s. milestone—because that certainly did not work for me and I regret it. Above all I want them to be empowered, having sex on their own terms with full agency, rather than feeling pressured into having or not having sex by external influencers and norms. But I have no idea how to put that into words a teen would understand. Please help! (And for the purposes of this letter, let’s assume my daughters are heterosexual, since it’s males and patriarchal misogyny that worries me most here). Thank you!
My answer
It is so wise of you to understand how your own conditioning set you up for a lifetime of suffering, and to want something different for your daughters. To be able to give them the best start, though, you have to fully reject what you have been taught. It doesn’t sound like you’re there yet, and here’s why:
You talk about not wanting them to “sleep around a lot.” Why is that a concern for you? It’s noteworthy that this is the first concern you list when you think about women’s sexual empowerment. This tells me that you’re still holding onto a lot of religious conditioning. Sleeping around can certainly be harmful, but so can only having sex with one person, and so, as you know firsthand, can waiting till marriage. What matters is how your children approach sex—not when or how much they have. I hope you’ll sit with this fear, and unpack why it’s important to you, because until you do, you may subtly pass on slut-shaming and harmful beliefs that make them less likely to come to you when they need help or information.
You talk a lot about not wanting your daughters to have sex because of external influences or social norms. This is great! But the culture in which you grew up indoctrinates people to believe that women never have sex of their own accord. They only do it for other people. It’s important for you to unpack that conditioning so that you can begin talking to your daughters about sexual agency.
I urge you to work with a therapist—but not just any therapist, since therapists, too, can have deeply problematic ideas about sex. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists is an exceptionally good resource for finding sex-positive, highly educated therapists near you.
A lot of parents think they need to have a single Sex Talk with their kids when they become teenagers. The reality is that bodies, sex, sexuality, and similar topics are basic biology. Your children are entitled to basic knowledge about their bodies and their lives, and discussions of sex and sexuality should begin at a very young age.
Follow your child’s lead and interest. In general, preschoolers need to know the names of all their body parts and how they work (clitoris included). By early elementary, your child should have a fairly extensive knowledge of how bodies work, including things like periods and puberty. They should also know where babies come from, and this knowledge should expand with their ability to understand.
The Sex Talk is not a single talk, but an ongoing and evolving conversation. Integrate this conversation into daily lives. Doing so destigmatizes sex, making it easier for you to talk and for your kids to listen. Talking about sex and bodies from birth can help reduce anxiety and give you lots of practice. Frequent conversations can also take the weight out of any single conversation. There’s less pressure to get every word right, because you’re talking a lot and so can correct as you go. There’s also less pressure to pack it all into a single conversation, allowing you to wait for things to come up naturally and thematically.
As you teach your kids basic scientific knowledge, you can incorporate feminist values, too. Some sample scripts might include:
“That’s your clitoris. It’s there solely for pleasure, because sex is supposed to be pleasurable for women.”
“Those are your genitals. They are private, and no one should ever touch you there unless you are really happy for them to, and are old enough to make that decision. No one will ever suffer because they’re not allowed to touch you there.”
“Breasts feed babies, and they belong only to you. No one can tell you what to do with them. No one should ever shame you for having breasts, or for wearing clothes that shows you have normal female anatomy.”
As your kids grow and begin to understand more of the basics, it’s really important to talk to them about sexuality in a way that encourages conversation. Don’t lecture. Ask them how they feel, what they want, what they think. They may have different views than you do, and different concerns than you anticipate. The only way you can help them with those concerns is by learning what they are.
Some general lessons that your daughters need to learn include:
They do not owe anyone any specific behavior with their bodies. This includes abstaining from sex.
Someone who loves and cares about them will not reject them for their sexual behavior—whether that behavior is having or not having sex.
Sex is for pleasure and connection. They should experience both.
They should feel comfortable discussing sex with their partners, and if they do not, they should not have sex.
Sex can be dangerous, especially if they get pregnant. Talk in great detail about birth control, and offer to procure it for them. Have Plan B on hand. If you can, have an abortion pill on hand too. These are terrifying times when abortion may not be available, and you must be prepared to protect your daughters.
Sex does not permanently change them.
They do not have to share your sexual values to be good people.
When they become teenagers, it’s wise to talk to them about your own sexual experiences—how waiting was a mistake, how it has damaged you. If your husband is a noticeably bad partner, you might talk about how the pressure to wait also caused you to feel pressured to choose someone who was unworthy of you. The model we offer to our children is important, and so too is talking about where and how that model might have failed.
It’s also important to raise them with more general feminist sensibilities, since doing so will help inoculate them at some of the more obvious sexist bullshit they’ll encounter as sexual beings. Here are some pieces I’ve written on this topic:
Readers, what strategies have you tried?
This is so important. The only conversations I recall my mother having with me about sex were shame based, and through the lens that men only use women for sex. I remember one time I came home with a friend, and my mom was watching a Dr. Phil episode about a girl who gave blowjobs to a number of guys. My mom made me sit down with my friend and watch it, so I understood the "ramifications" of blowing guys, who would only be using me. I liked to make out with different guys and she would tell me I would never find a man if I just gave away the store. When I had my first serious boyfriend, she asked me if he told me he loved me. When I responded yes, she told me he likely only said it so I'd sleep with him.
It's really f'ed up my head, and caused me to have a view that men use me for sex, when I am looking for sexual gratification as well. It's also caused me to try to hard to receive male attention and affection. I ended up marrying too young, to someone I should not have married because of the emphasis on finding a husband, not necessarily someone I was compatible with or who treated me well. I had negative views around sex with him, and then when I became more confident and sexually empowered, he began to withhold sex (I think I chose a narcissist due to the way my mother spoke to me and treated me), creating even more issues for me surrounding sex.
Sex positive conversations are so important, and help women establish healthy relationships that transcend the entire relationship, not just the sexual aspect.
I was raised in a religious you-better-wait-till-marriage household too. One thing that helped me was to realize that the whole “you must stay pure because your body belongs to God” stuff is deeply anti-consent. In order to have the agency to say no to sex, you also have to have the power to say yes. In other words, consent works both ways or it doesn’t work at all.
Regarding the part about not wanting your daughters to sleep around: fundamentalist religions tend to cast women in madonna/whore dichotomies. This makes sleeping around always seem like a bad thing. I clearly recall being told that having pre-marital sex would make me “un-holy,” sinful, dirty, etc. But we all make mistakes in life, including when it comes to sex, and making mistakes doesn’t make us bad people. So what if your daughter has sex that later feels like a mistake? Mistakes are not the end of the world! And whether we wait till marriage or have a ton of casual sex, our sexual decisions don’t have to define us.