as a normal part of adulthood, which meant there was no need to police it with harsh measures.
Basically, sex is a part of life so be chill.
Then there were eras where people put it in the law that you couldn’t even show your ankles and having a sexual appetite was so pathologised women had to visit their local GP. Should I even quote the Victorian greatest hits here or do we all know them?
Society has gone back and forth on how to engage in comprehensive sex education and is now (again) at a crossroads: shall we scare the living heebie-jeebies out of everyone and put everyone in a sexual box? Or should we have a holistic and healthy approach that looks at everything around us in an ever-changing growing world?
The great debate rages on and here are the two main contenders: a risk-based approach and a pleasure approach.
| Risk-based approach | Pleasure approach |
| 1.When the message that goes out it is all about classic spook tactics: HIV, STIs, unwanted pregnancies and other deep and scary parts of sex. | 1.The message is about practices that promote pleasure and wellbeing, and sex being about living your best life (rather than sex leading to your worst life). |
| 2.Completely forgets about the lovely parts of why people have sex, like pleasure and enjoyment. | 2.Sexual pleasure is not about ignoring the negative parts of sexual activity like STIs, HIV and unwanted pregnancies but giving accurate information about them. It is about giving this information in a way that empowers rather than scares people. It revolves around changing the messages from ‘Feel fear and shame!’ to ‘Here is some info, make an informed decision.’ |
| 3.Focuses on shaming people and making them scared of sex in order to avoid it. Freaks people out so they protect themselves: e.g. if you do not use a condom you will get HIV and become pregnant, and also be generally an awful person. | 3.Understands that people are having sex for pleasure and it is what drives people to do the things that happen between the sheets, so pleasure drives how we make decisions about our sex lives. |
| 4.Only looks at the medical/biological information that comes with the negative consequences of sex (STD symptoms, testing, treatment). | 4.Pleasure = key ingredient when people practise safe sex. The two are not mutually exclusive but intrinsically linked, e.g. super thin condoms that allow for skin-to-skin stimulation, the internal (female) condom is able to stimulate the clitoris, using lube can make vaginal or anal sex more pleasurable, getting tested for STIs gives peace of mind if you want to go wildin’ out at any given time. |
| 5.Reinforces traditional stigmas around sex and sexuality when spreading info/educating people/counselling/ providing services on sexual health e.g.•Having many partners = being high risk•Sex below a certain age is wrong•Sex outside certain relationships = high risk. | 5.Promotes conversations, thoughts and discussions that bring together sexual pleasure, sexual rights and sexual health, e.g. looking at consent, privacy, safety, diversity, self-confidence, communication. |
| 6.Asking about someone’s sexuality within a clinical setting is a ‘no no’ because that is private. | 6.Makes sexual pleasure a part of the collective conversation around sexual health and sexual rights, e.g. It is a sexual right to have as many sexual partners as you want; the important thing is that you are able to decide when, how and with whom to have sexual relationships, to be confident to talk to your partner(s) about pleasure and bring up topics of safety. Speaking about sexual pleasure is a key part of making proper decisions for sexual health. |
| 7.Gay men engage in high risk practices. |
Adapted from material produced by Global Advisory Board for Sexual Health and Wellbeing (2018).
5
MORE SEX? DIFFERENT SEX? SOME SEX? TIPS FOR CHATTING COITUS
Speaking about sex can be hard, sticky and tricky. Often people will dance around the conversation or simply avoid the conversation all together and stumble into bed/the back seat of a car/against the wall. The problem with not having the conversation is that this leads to a lot of mishaps, misunderstanding and a general dumpster fire of a sex life. It leads to a life filled with bad sex and awkward interactions where you now have to either stay in a situation with crappy sex or switch off the ‘last seen’ feature on your WhatsApp as you try to ghost the person. So in order to have the happiest healthiest sex you possibly can have it is time to communicate. Here is how:
1. Step up and speak up
Partners are not mind readers, if you want something you have to speak up. This is the important part: communicate, communicate, communicate. The conversation can feel a little bit silly, sometimes awkward, sometimes plain hard. The focus here is to be brave about what you want and vocalise it. You shall find the pleasure if you actively go looking for it.
2. Be 100 about it (the truth will set you free)
Lying or half-truthing about what you want will not get any-one anywhere. It isn’t helpful to get you to O-town and it doesn’t give your partner a map to find your pleasure palace. You need to be open and honest about what you want so that it can go from fantasy to reality. It also means if you don’t start with the truth that bringing it up later will be hard.
3. Be focused about what you want
Be specific about your wants. One of the key ways to take control of your pleasure is knowing what that entails. Do you want to be spanked? How hard? Do you want to be licked near your thigh? Do you want sexy texts in the middle of the day to get your blood racing? Do you want to be bent over the kitchen sink as the light streams in on a Sunday afternoon? Say. It. Being vague and shy is not going to help you here. Granted we do not live in a world where people can just throw out what they want sexually without being judged, so acknowledge that there are some internal and external barriers to chatting about coitus and then try and work through them.
And if you cannot be specific take the time to learn by either experimenting by yourself or with a partner and get specific. Know what the playbook says before you get in the game and then you can teach the other players.
4. Keep a sex diary
Being able to vocalise your desires before you give them to another person can be helpful. You can order your sexy thoughts before you share them with someone else. Obviously writing down (or recording them on voice notes or in images and videos) can be risky, so make sure that you keep them safe. Having them in front of you can help you see which ones you really want, which ones can stay as fantasies, which ones can be changed up to suit your partner and which ones are just plain impractical – like having sex on the beach, with the sea crashing over your ankles, when you originally live in a land-locked country.
5. Find examples of what you want
When you are bringing new ideas to a partner sometimes saying ‘just watch this thing right here/peep this article here/ check out this Instagram post’ can be a lot more effective than trying to stumble through an explanation that is full of ‘ummms’ and ‘ahhhs’ and ‘ermms’. It will also give your partner the ability to process your desires and to see that you are not alone as a couple trying something new. It allows you to process separately and then come together when you are ready. Finding examples can help with the awkward (and sometimes accusatory) ‘Where did you learn about this?’ vibe that comes up when new sex stuff is happening.
6. Speak about safe sex (even if you think it’s a yawn)
Safe sex is important. What is also important is speaking about safe sex. There are many conversations that fall under this umbrella from ‘Have you been tested?’ to ‘What sort of protection are we going to be using?’ Having the safe sex talk is an important part of having great sex.
In bed what is consensual
