‘you’re just obsessed with sex.’ yes, I am actually. and here’s why
I can probably trace it back to pre-puberty. My mum used to lend me her library card so that I could access the books with the ‘above 14 only’ stamps on the inside covers. She wasn’t bothered – this was a woman who gave me The Bell Jar to read when I was nine. My favourite books were always the ones with the sexy bits in. That feels weird to admit. But it’s true, and I doubt I’m the only one.
I remember the feeling of pure excitement the day I walked into my PSHE class at school to a load of flavoured condoms on the teacher’s desk and ‘Sex and Relationships’ written on the board. I tried to act casual, or even embarrassed like the rest of the class. But my glee was hard to hide. I was hungry for knowledge. The fact that I didn’t get much from that class only spurred me on.
When it came to actually having sex I was – to put it politely – keen. Keen with bells on. It wasn’t even the literal act of sex that I was into, more the conversation and the experience that came with it. I loved the taboo. I loved hearing about other people’s experiences and the insight that gave me into their secret worlds.
Now I read books about sex and review them on Instagram. My friends send me links to every article they read on the subject (thanks for that, by the way).
In this social media bubble I'm in, I don't think any of this is particularly unusual. But in real life a lot of people think I’m weird. People have told me they thought I was a little too open, or a little too interested… or something.
So here’s why.
Feminism
I am a feminist. I believe in gender equality for all genders. I also believe that championing equal rights for all the genders is pointless without also fighting for other groups that are marginalised along the lines of race, sexuality, ability, class… I could go on. That’s what being a feminist is, though of course you can’t be blamed for being a bit confused given the shit that’s spouted on the internet about man haters and snowflakes. But I’ve gone off topic already.
Feminism, to me, is all encompassing, but one of the areas in which people raised as girls have been basically ignored, ridiculed and beaten down is sex. It goes without saying that I’m speaking from an immense place of privilege – I received some (if not particularly good quality) sex education. I grew up in the UK as a cis-gender girl who fancied boys and more or less followed the expected timetable for growing up. But despite all of that I was still told by the media and books I read that I was too fat for anyone to ever want to have sex with me. I was told that the most important thing I could be was small and fragile and then a man would want to look after me and he would love me (thanks Twilight). I wasn’t told about my own pleasure. I was told that boys ‘couldn’t help themselves’. I was told that boys had a higher sex drive than girls. I was told that you shouldn’t have sex too soon into a relationship or a boy would never, ever respect you. I was told that ‘losing your virginity’ was supposed to hurt (in case you didn’t know, it isn’t supposed to hurt, and the concept of virginity is made up anyway). I was told that sex would come easily and naturally when I found someone I really liked. I was told that sex was a penis jabbing repeatedly into a vagina. That list was exhausting to write.
I am obsessed with sex now because none of that is true. Imagine finding out that something you thought was a hundred million percent accurate your whole life was just… made up (don’t get me started on diet culture). You probably don’t have to imagine because all of this is likely true for you, too. So you could say that I’m obsessed with sex because I’m making up for lost time.
2. Selfishness
So it turns out that, upon challenging these preconceptions, I really like sex. I have a pretty easy breezy relationship to it a lot of the time. It’s a place where I can be playful and put on a different character for a minute. I can use it for connection, or for introspection, relaxation and celebration. Once I realised that it was for me, I realised that I had so much more to learn. And that’s when the education really started. I discovered that I was on level one of an infinite game! And the best thing about it was that I didn't even need a partner to play! And even if you personally are not into sex (with others or solo), surely pleasure is something you can get behind. To me, sex is an extension of any type of feeling nice in your body. Eat a nice meal. Have a shower. Get sweaty. Stay in bed and nap. Have a good, proper, big laugh. To me there isn’t much difference between all that and sex.
Another selfish reason that I am obsessed with sex is because it’s done wonders for my body image. I know this isn’t the case for everyone, but for me, the realisation that people I’m having sex with literally could not give less of a fuck about my thighs/ belly/ knees was incredibly liberating. You probably know this already, but if someone wants to have sex with you, by the time you get down to it they probably have some kind of inkling of what your body is going to be like under your clothes, and they usually don’t hate it. And if they do then it’s them who have the problem, not you.
It’s nice to know that I’m normal. Reading books about sex has made me think about my own behaviour, my own preferences, and my own knee-jerk judgements of other people. I’m confident about what I enjoy and what I most certainly do not. I have had so many moments where I read something that transports me back to a situation, good or bad, where I thought I was unusual. It turns out, I wasn’t.
Learning about sex has made me realise that I do not have to tolerate pain and discomfort. It’s broadened my ideas about what pleasure is. And in my own personal life it is honestly delightful to know that I still have a long way to go.
3. Shut up, loads of people are obsessed, they just don’t talk about it
We’ve built a whole culture around sex, sexuality, sexualisation of the female body but for some reason we’re not allowed to talk about it or admit to thinking about it? I feel like for a lot of us the anxiety comes mostly from the things that are left unsaid. Sex doesn’t relate to everything, of course I would never claim that - I’m not Freud - but in this weird world we live in… it sort of does. Sure, lads mags have taken a downturn, but so have all mags. They’ve been replaced by hardcore porn anyway.
I’m not trying to take anything away from porn. Porn in general is great; it’s been around forever and it isn’t harmful as a concept. It is weird though that we only ever talk about it in very specific, mostly negative, circumstances. Even now I’m feeling awkward and wondering if I should talk about my own porn watching habits. You’d be lucky to find a person over the age of sixteen in the UK who hasn’t at least accidentally stumbled across some porn. And yet we think that if we just ignore it it’ll go away, and young people won’t find things they find disturbing and have no one responsible to talk to about it. We’re getting better as a society at telling young people that ‘real sex isn’t like porn’, but we are still pretty poor at telling them what, then, real sex is like.
Maybe if we were better at being a bit less embarrassed about something that is literally everywhere, all the time, then there would be a lot less bad sex and harmful sex. I don’t know, it’s nice to dream.
4. Sex is just a part of human behaviour, anyway
Sex isn’t just about things going in holes and orgasms and sex toys. Sex is about interaction; it’s about culture and the psychology of human behaviour. Some people aren’t interested in sex, but for those who are, sex, or the promise of it, can change our whole outlook on a situation. It goes without saying that lots of our sexual urges come from evolution. I am far from an expert on this, I’m just pointing out that sex isn’t just some weird societal thing we’ve made up in the last 20 years like reality TV or gender reveal parties. It’s something that’s always been around. So why aren’t we used to it yet?
I love learning about why we behave the way we do. How come when people give you great advice like ‘block him, delete his number, don’t speak to him for at least a year’, they are often right? How do we know what will be right for someone else based on just our own experiences? It must be because we are all human beings and no matter how different we all are and how varied our lives and preferences are, there are some things that are kind of universal. I guess that’s why we love memes so much. Sex brings us together, just like that distracted boyfriend meme.
Speaking of human behaviour, my personal sex education has led me to other areas of learning - body image and LGBTQ+ issues and history being a couple of main examples. It’s important to have some kind of idea about the potential sexual freedoms that are available to me, but also to know about how many people in this world, in this 2020, still have their bodies and their sexuality policed. It’s important to be aware of the people out there who still think that it is their right to have an opinion on what someone else is doing consensually for pleasure. It’s only by knowing this stuff that we can hopefully help to make a change.
Connie Byrne-Shore is a reader and a writer with a particular interest in all things sexuality and social justice. You can find her book reviews at Flicking the Page.