“If you can’t say F#@k, then you can’t do F#@k.”
– Sgt Green
“A man should never disrespect a woman by talking about sex in her presence.”
– Rich E.
My friend Rich and I grew up good Catholic boys back in the 1960s. One tenet of our Catholic education taught us that talking about sex, or even mentioning anything related to it in front of females was disrespectful and rude. We were taught that sex was just something a male should avoid discussing at almost any cost whenever there were women around. Later in life, once he and I grew into full-grown adults, I no longer held such a belief, while Rich clung to the belief with a bionic grip.
Because Rich never relinquished his belief about avoiding talking about sex around women, his sex life suffered enormously. Perhaps it was because of something I learned during my hitch in the U.S. Army. As our platoon was getting ready to go off base for our first weekend pass, one of our sergeants made the comment, “If you can’t say F#@K, how are you supposed to do F#@K?” In other words, if a person is too timid to even talk about sex, how are they going to actually engage in sex?
I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my Catholic mom about this issue. My mom came from a family of jokesters. She and her ten sisters and two brothers were constantly making light about one thing or another. In fact, over the years, their family was often referred to as the “clown college.” So when I asked my mom how she felt about men talking about sex around women, she stopped to think about it momentarily. Then a serious and contemplative grin crept across her face as she said matter-of-factly:
“Let me put it this way. Women don’t spend all that time trying to look good not to hear about it. But a man doesn’t have to be vulgar about it. They shouldn’t be disrespectful when giving a woman a compliment.”
What my mom was saying was that a man doesn’t necessarily have to swear off talking about sex around women. Instead, he should be concerned about not talking about sex in a vulgar manner. There is a huge difference between having a conversation about sex and acting like a perverted sex maniac.
On the other hand, after discussing this matter with a plethora of women from a variety of backgrounds, one of them put her feelings about the matter this way, “No woman wants to date or marry an altar boy.” Thus, there has to be a balance between being vulgar and acting like an altar boy.
Many women have disclosed to me that they enjoy a man with a plan. That is, they want a man who is sexually confident, but who is respectful at the same time. Many women felt that it was the man’s role to initiate sex. Plus, they felt that the when the man did initiate sex, that he should do it with some confidence; like he knows what he is doing. A majority of women mentioned that it was a huge turnoff if they were the ones who had to take the lead when it came to initiating sex.
Many of the women I discussed this issue with also said that they disliked it when men needed too much sexual coaching. Their point was that too much talking during sex tended to kill the mood; or at least dampen it rather significantly. These women admitted to believing in a small learning curve, but added that a man should know what he is doing with a woman by the time he is old enough to take a woman on a date.
Another issue these women frequently commented on was when a man asked for permission before “advancing” to each “base.”* Many of the women complained that their lover asked them, “Are you okay with doing this?” right in the middle of a passionate love-making session. One woman said that one time when a man asked her whether or not she was okay with what they were doing, she quipped, “Honey, I wouldn’t have my legs wrapped around you like a pretzel if I wasn’t okay with it!” From what I could gather from my many conversations with women about this subject, women preferred a man who was sexually self-confident and didn’t need to ask for directions every other minute.
Many women also shared with me that men should learn to read the queues and clues that women provide when they engage in sex. These same women commented that whenever a man had to ask questions about what they were doing, that these men looked like novices and thus as amateurs. The advice I would give men about this issue is, when it comes to sex, most of the time let actions speak louder than words.
So far we have discussed only how males should behave around women when it comes to talking about, or engaging in sexual activity. Let’s make this a balanced discussion and talk about how women should behave when talking about, or engaging in sex.
During my career as a sociology professor, social issues that related to sexual relations were a regular staple of class discussions. I always kept in mind the small nugget of wisdom that my mom had shared with me regarding talking about sex when women were present. I always managed to incorporate her advice into my classroom lectures.
One day during a sociology lecture on human sexuality; I used the word “penis” to denote the male genitalia. Almost as soon as the word came out of my mouth, one of the female students, who happened to be seated in the front row, came unglued. She immediately got upset and strongly expressed her misgivings about me saying “such a vulgar word” in class.
Honestly, this incident took me by complete surprise. After all, this was during a college-level class lecture. Not to mention that I had chosen the most benign and least offensive word I could think of for the male genitalia.
As the female student was giving me a piece of her mind, I couldn’t help but notice that she was wearing a huge diamond wedding ring. So I asked her if she was married. She told me that she was. I then asked her if she had any children. She said that she had two young kids. Then she asked what those things had to do with the issue at hand. It was then that I asked her, “So you can engage with a man’s tally whacker, but you don’t want to hear it said out loud?”
Unfortunately, the other students in the classroom started laughing when they heard this exchange. This only made the female student even more upset. She ended up gathering up her belongings and storming out of class. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed, and quipped out loud, “I can’t believe what just happened. Heck, even Ripley wouldn’t believe it!”
As I figured would happen, the woman made a formal complaint against me for sexual harassment. However, the case didn’t hold water because in order for such a sexual interaction to qualify as sexual harassment, the person feeling harassed must not be able to leave the scene. Believe me, after this unfortunate incident, I always made it a point to let students know that they were free to leave class at any time if they ever felt uncomfortable. As you may have guessed, that simple disclaimer saved me on a few occasions after that initial incident.
Breaking the Ice During Class Discussion
In order to break the ice during class discussion on sex, I came up with a class activity that usually did the trick. First, I wrote these headings on the top of the chalkboard: intercourse; fellatio; cunnilingus; masturbation; and “freaky.” It was the students’ job to chose one of the categories and then to come up with a term for it. After the students came up with a term, I would write it in a column underneath the appropriate heading that I had written on the chalkboard.
Next, rather than allowing the discussion to proceed randomly, I would go down each row and seat in an orderly fashion. This way the class activity wouldn’t turn into a circus of crazy shout-outs. Another rule was that any student who didn’t want to participate could simply say “pass,” and I would move on to the next seat in the systematic order.
I would start the class activity on one side of the classroom and give the person in the first seat a chance to participate. After their turn, I would go to the next seat in the order I described above.
Here is how this class activity almost always played out. First, after the first female chose to “pass,” about half of the women in the class would follow her lead and would decline to participate in the exercise. Second, almost all of the males in class chose to take part in the class activity. However, most of the males would come up with some crazy nickname or slang term a word that fit into one of the categories. Then they and their fellow male classmates would get a good laugh about whatever sexual term they had blurted out. Third, as this exercise progressed, it always seemed to turn into a game of who could think of the most shocking or funny slang terms for the chosen categories.
As you may have guessed, the male students were the ones who actively participated. In any given instance, only about half of the female students chose to join in the class exercise. And only once or twice did any student say a “normal” word to describe a particular category. Two women said “Making love” for the intercourse category. And in both instances, the entire class said, “Awwwwww!”
After each of the students in the class had either contributed a term for one of the categories, or chose to pass, the entire class now discussed what had just happened during the class exercise. In all instances, it was the males who were extremely animated about saying a non-technical term for any of the categories. Remember, I never said that the terms they came up with had to be slang or silly. In all, about half of the females in class chose not to contribute a term.
This participation pattern seemed to be a microcosm of how comfortable our society is when talking about the subject of sex. Males tend to be somewhat immature about sex talk while females tend to be rather passive and disinclined to talk about sex in a public setting. In short, males were no altar boys when it came time to talk about sex in public. Yet they tended to act somewhat sophomoric when it came to sex talk.
Females, on the other hand, weren’t as comfortable talking about sex in a crowd as were their male counterparts. In all of my years teaching sociology courses, I did see a rare few male altar boy types in class. I also saw a number of what I would call female “nun” types. These women were extremely uncomfortable talking about sex in any forum. I encountered significantly more “nuns” than I did “altar boys.”
The social dynamic we have been discussing creates a problem when it comes time for men and women to communicate about sex. This is especially true when they are in a relationships and are actually engaging in sexual activity.
The way men and women communicate about sex during sexual activity is they don’t normally use words. Instead, communication is based in silence. Usually the male “advances” sexually until the female puts the brakes on whatever the male is attempting to do. Thus, the men are the aggressors, and the women serve as the sexual gatekeepers. In other words, sexual consent is given by saying nothing at all. Silence becomes “permission.”
But the problem with this approach is that whenever a man or a woman becomes uncomfortable with their partner’s sexual advances, they may “freeze” and not know what to do say or do. In these instances, the frightened state my render them silent, as they are too afraid to say anything out of the fear they are experiencing. The problem is that the silence of the scared sexual partner may be mistaken for permission to proceed with whatever it is that is happening.
Conclusion
An “altar boy” who is too afraid to talk about sex around women may end up having problems communicating with them whenever they become sexual partners. On the other hand, a “nun” who is afraid to talk about sex may become too shy or frightened to communicate with their sexual partner before they engage in sexual activity as well as during a sexual encounter. On that note, a “nun” who is too frightened to talk about sex may have a hard time letting their sex partner know that she had not given sexual consent to her partner even when it is after-the-fact. In either of these cases, being too afraid to talk about sex may present a problem for these types during their adult sex lives. The main thing to remember is that people need to socialize their children to be able to communicate about sex when they are young. Perhaps we should teach these sexual communication skills shortly before puberty when Mother Nature is going to have something to say about their becoming sexual. In either case, our present system where silence is consent is causing a lot of people to suffer in silence. As a society, we need to change this.
* The term “base” refers to the baseball analogy that labels first base as kissing; second base as above the waist; third base below the waist; and home-run means to “do the deed.”
