For Your Reflection: Sex 101
About the Series & Our Counselor Reflections: “Sex 101”
It seems fitting that the beginning of Sagittarius season marks the end of our “Sex 101” series, as our counselors were able to celebrate the romance and sex-filled seasons of Libra and Scorpio by reflecting on their experiences of learning about all things sex and dating, no matter how unconventional. Although we may be entering a more noncommittal time, these lessons on love continue to shape us and our individual or partnered lives even when cuffing season comes to an end next spring. So, to continue its legacy even with its close, our camp counselors have shared with us a formative moment that exposed them to sex and dating, whether that be an experience in a sex ed classroom, a scene from the media, or even a conversation with a parent or friend.
Elena Phethean:
In seventh grade, my class went to a nature reservation on an overnight trip for all kinds of learning: classifying leaves for Biology, writing inspired poetry for English class, even making acorn flour pancakes for Home Skills class. But the learning I really remember happened in our all-girls bunk, where we had a high schooler as our counselor and things got racy real quick. She invited us to ask her anything, so one girl asked The Question — "Have you ever had sex?" The energy instantly shifted, with some girls subtly perking their ears up, and others turning away in embarrassment. I remember the feeling of curiosity swimming around in my stomach went hand in hand with fear. Would I ever have sex? What actually was it? Did it hurt? I remember the inexplicable jittery excitement of talking about sex around my friends (something I later realized was because I wondered if I could have sex with them). One girl asked, to the sound of much laughter, if sex was "pleasure-ful." But I kind of wondered the same thing myself — if it was supposed to feel good, why was no one ever talking about it?
When we got home from the trip, our counselor got suspended from school since some of the girls told their parents, the parents told the school, and, in accordance with the rules of suburbia, the shit hit the fan. Thinking back, that was one of my only sex education experiences before college, and in this experience, I had been conditioned to believe sex was something to be ashamed of. I was taught by observation that talking about sex was deviant, something that required punishment and town-wide shunning.
Regardless of how much I've been taught to repress my feelings about sexuality, I've been able to progress to where I am today by myself, in spite of the shame thrown upon me for most of my existence. And I'm proud that now, I can keep educating myself (and others) about sex to keep chipping away at that internalized guilt to reveal my unashamed and curious self.
Natalie Geisel:
I remember that whenever I watched heterosexual sex on a screen, thanks to my copious amounts of watching television in high school, I could never imagine myself doing it — a big, fat sign that I was gay. Yet, in middle school, I can vividly recall the moment of me watching Skins for the first time and having all sorts of feelings for the blossoming relationship between Emily and Naomi, probably one of the first lesbian couples I had ever been exposed to, next to Brittany and Santana from Glee who practically had zero on-screen sex scenes. Emily and Naomi’s first time was too sweet to forget — after swimming in a lake together, they “blowbacked” a joint, which felt even more intimate than the brief sex scene I was about to witness. They nervously kissed after, leading to a lot more kissing, taking each other's shirts off, and, well, you get my drift. It definitely wasn’t the most groundbreaking sex scene I had ever encountered — it hardly showed the ropes of what sex between two women actually looked like — but it was my first conscious exposure to lesbian sex and, even more importantly, sex that I wouldn’t mind having myself.
I watched the scene, and the continual progression of their relationship, for the first time at age 12 and thought that doing that with a cute girl in the middle of a forest sounded not half-bad. I continued to rewatch Skins at least five more times throughout the rest of middle and high school, realizing each time that that scene was even more appealing the more I rewatched it. I obviously learned a lot more about queer sex through other experiences that weren’t trapped inside my T.V. screen, but Emily and Naomi, or Naomily, as Tumblr liked to call them, felt like my stepping stone into stanning lesbian romances and soon realizing that I wanted to be in one myself.
Maura Fallon:
With such a bleak sexual coming of age story, I wanted to share a positive formative moment in my understanding of sex and love. I was 19, lucky enough to be falling in love in Paris during the springtime. It was days before my 20th birthday, which I would commemorate by dyeing my hair pink and drinking copious amounts of whiskey from the bottle. I knew I was becoming someone else, someone freer, someone filled with a burgeoning desire for very many things, but mainly, with a strong desire for myself. So like any girl who felt she was about to really become a woman, in a city where my friends and I counted how many old people we saw practically horizontal making out on park benches, I bought my first vibrator in a Paris sex shop. It was simple, pink, and modestly priced. It made my relationship to pleasure a special secret, not a shameful one, and I'm grateful to the city of Paris for clearing the slate on everything that came before both that love and my understanding of sex.
Shira Strongin:
Growing up, I was taught two polar opposites: that sex for was to be saved for marriage or that it's your body, your choice and to have sex with whoever you want to. Somehow the iconic movie Dirty Dancing found a middle ground and by extent completely blew my mind when I first watched it. In one scene Baby tells her little sister not to sleep with the player busboy, Robby, knowing he is a jerk who will only hurt her in the end. This is refreshing because Baby's concern isn't about her sister having sex, but rather who her sister is potentially having sex with. It showed that choosing partners you trust is important, but that there should not be any shame around the act itself.
