Why is it damaging to define 'sex' in reproductive terms?

Posted by Valentina





Content warning: coerced sexuality. Originally published in a less structured form here.

In the UK, it has generally been mandatory for sex education classes in state schools to include information on anatomy, puberty, hormonal control of fertility, and the biological aspects of sexual reproduction: namely, penile-vaginal intercourse. (Source: FPA) Information on other forms of sex, on safer sex, on relationships and queer identities and consent and negotiation - all of that is optional. Outside of the school curriculum, 'sex' everywhere seems to be defined primarily in terms of penile-vaginal penetration (I'll just call it 'intercourse' here.) It is called 'real sex', 'full sex' or something else meaning 'the pinnacle of sexual experience.' It is fourth base, it is the only way to really lose one's virginity. This definition is heteronormative, phallocentric, and harmful to most of the population. Why?

Choosing Not To Have Sex: Why The Big Deal?

Posted by Jenni

As anyone who read my last post will know, I'm asexual.

(Recap time, boys and girls, and those others inside, outside or somewhere in between that binary! An asexual is someone who doesn't experience sexual attraction. Simple, right?)

My aim today is to give you a brief glimpse of some of the difficulties I encountered whilst beginning to identify as an asexual feminist. These opinions may be of the few, but they were a vocal few, and it made it pretty hard to reconcile those two labels for me at first.

On Identity And Choice

Posted by Sally Outen

This post begins, as so many things do, with a Google search. This might not have been the case a decade ago; it might not be the case for somebody lacking the situational privileges that I enjoy - but an estimate of the percentage of my life I spend using Google these days would probably bring me out in a cold sweat. The thing is, Google is so very helpful. It can find over 15,000 images of "cute little naked mole rats". It can give me all the heady thrills of traversing the streets of Swindon, from the comfort of my own home (that's one £5 train ticket I'll never need to buy). It can even present me with a helpful drop-down list of predicted search terms when I start typing a standard search, just in case I wasn't sure what I was looking for in the first place.

That drop-down list does occasionally make for a fascinating (if entirely unscientific) survey of people's opinions. "My favourite animal is" yields "cat", "dog", "tiger", "rabbit", and, thanks to Fran Lebowitz, "steak". Now let's try "Being gay is a". Depressingly, the four suggestions provided are, in order, "choice", "sin", "mental illness", and "disease". OK, so the wording I used was always likely to reveal more of the usual hate and misconceptions than anything else. The point I'd like to run with is that "choice" was at the top of the list.

In this post, I'll make a quick examination of the concept of choice as it applies to sexual and gender identities; then I'll explain why I feel that such attempts at analysis are ultimately futile; then I'll explain why that shouldn't be a problem.