Musings on my Sexual Upbringing

When I was a little girl, I was told forthrightly by my mother to ask her any questions about sex that I wanted. My mom is a part of the generation which believes a fulfilled life is one that includes sexual exploration. Let me give you a couple of examples:

1)      When I was a teenager, probably fifteen or sixteen, I said to my mom: “I think sex is gross. I don’t want to have sex until I’m at least twenty-five.” To which my mother replied with a gasp, “Oh, I hope not!” And then something to the effect of sex being fun and me missing out if I waited that long.

2)      When I came out to my mother my sophomore year of college, she asked me if my best friend, who had come out to me a few months before (which I had told my mother), and I were “experimenting together.” (She also told me that she wished she were attracted to women because she believed women were much better communicators.)

Until I started to have sex, I did not see my mom’s point. In fact, I maintained into my early twenties that sex was something in which I had no interest taking part. Why did I feel this way? Did my mother’s enthusiasm for sex push me away from it? Should she have fast-forwarded through the sex and stripper scenes in The Graduate when I was ten? If I had had parents who did not talk about sex, would I have been curious to research it on my own?

You’d think that at least I wouldn’t have been nervous to come out to my mom, hearing how accepting she is about sex. I knew it would be no big deal to her, sure, but I just wasn’t able to tell her for months. It was a big deal to me, but I knew she wouldn’t think it was a big deal, wouldn’t acknowledge how much of an internal struggle I had gone through, because she was so (or too, in my younger opinion) comfortable with sex and sexuality.

So here’s the thing: I don’t think I would have reacted any differently to sex if I had grown up in an alternate household. It was high school, when my friends were starting to talk about sex, that I began to move away from thinking sex was completely icky. It was the environment outside the home, my peer relationships, and later my girlfriend, that helped me change my thinking.