“If you can’t talk about sex, you shouldn’t be having sex.”

Abstinence Lite™

Learn to teach consent! Educator Training starts 4/15.

“If you can’t talk about sex, you shouldn’t be having sex.” We’ve all heard this sentiment from authority figures in our lives or the media. But saying this doesn’t stop people from having sex before they can talk about it. People are gonna keep fucking; we know this. A not-so controversial take would be to say that we can’t tell people, “You can’t have sex if you can’t talk about sex” without teaching them to talk about it. But I’d argue that we can’t tell people, “You can’t have sex if you can’t talk about sex” because they probably won’t be able to talk about sex without having sex.

                  Why is sex different?

                  What other activity would anyone say this about? “If you can’t talk about music, you shouldn’t make music.” “If you can’t talk about cooking, you shouldn’t cook.” This would be outrageous. So why is it different with sex?

                  It’s different with sex because sex is emotionally charged and physically and emotionally risky. We can get sick from sex. We can can hurt from sex. For these reasons, the risk of physical and emotional trauma from sex is high. But this is a risk many of us choose to take anyway. We do our best to learn the risks (informed consent), mitigate them, use safe practices, and then we decide how to proceed.

                  It’s different with sex because our culture has a lot of moral panic around sex, and often the powers that be who decide how we teach (or don’t teach) sex and consent air on the side of what’s “safest” without dealing with what’s real, practical, or based in lived human experience. “If you can’t talk about sex, you shouldn’t be having sex” is like Abstinence™. It’s promoting no sex as the safest sex, without tools, skills, or practices for how to begin to learn to talk about sex.