Having (and talking) about sex

To many (not all, but many) people the word sex do not like. Some more, some less, but more or less all * we think about it often and willingly, yet when it comes to talking about it we start to get confused.

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Some time ago a boy I barely knew for fifty minutes asked me: “Shall we make love?” I replied that love is a great word. “I don’t feel like using that word, and then love is so many things,” he says. “Eh, sex is many things too,” I reply. Precisely because it is so many things, sex tends to have a reputation that precedes it: it is done in a certain way and not in another, it is done only after a while, it is done too much or not enough, it is done well or it is hurt. Above all, sex is done but not said. When I first heard about it I was ten and the older cousins ​​were talking about putting that in there, inseminating, and delivering a baby. What an obscene story, I thought at the time. So do you have sex to procreate? The socially accepted line would appear to be that. Or if nothing else, you do it with someone * you really like, in a stable relationship. Because this is healthy and safe, in life as in the pandemic.

And what happens to those who don’t have a partner and have sex for the fun of it? This is where some conversations are likely to nail down. It always seems that sex has some specific purpose, proving first of all useful and noble in the eyes of society: it is a conduct with which we have been indoctrinated from an early age, and whether you want it or not, it makes us feel right with our conscience or in the thoughts of our former catechist. In this regard, when I went to confession for First Communion, among my three sins as an eleven year old one was having answered badly to mom, the other two having leafed through porn magazines and thought dirty things (I quote exact words).

From an early age I got used to understanding excitement and curiosity about sex as something dirty, to say softly to the parish priest, clean up with an act of pain, and keep it in my head without ever exposing it to sunlight. Everything I have discovered since post-puberty has been without warning or preparation, both physically and emotionally. There is a happy ending: you are wrong, you learn, you don’t die.

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But at the same time I ask myself: how would things have gone if they had immediately explained sex to me as the most natural and common thing in the world? Talking about sex not as an obligation or performance, but as any aspect of the human being, with its characteristics, contradictions, micro differences that vary depending on the person and the context (starting with the fact that not all sexual relationships are between a man and a woman, and isn’t there always a penis or a vagina to penetrate? Just to give an example). If no one tells you about it, and you are curious *, there always comes a point that you are looking for it yourself, but when I tried to find out on my own and without knowing who to ask, be it in the media or through pornography, sex was always presented as a performance, something spectacular and mind-blowing, where both parties involved seemed to compete to prove to each other how good they are without ever making a mistake.

What I have found is that having sex is also embarrassing, imperfect, messy, and occasionally smelly as the case may be. There is always an anxiety to disappoint the expectations of the other, to not respect that model that we have instilled in our heads and at the first failure the insecurities start with the flamethrower.

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Even more than among our friends or during any conversation, we should learn to talk openly about sex with who we sleep with (whoever it is, current or occasional partner, first or 50th fuck of your life): recognize that every body is different, that if we like it in one way, the other might not, or vice versa, and know how to express it without shame or hesitation. That sexual-phobic and Christian Democratic cultural heritage, in our country more than ever, alas, we will always carry it with us. It is precisely for this reason that we must not stop questioning ourselves, asking ourselves more questions, and looking at those mental barriers that have been instilled in us, to understand when and how to overcome them. Not to compete with who is more explicit or for the sake of shocking and displaying an impudence as an end in itself, but to realize that sex like the human being is made up of many things. Some surprising, some mundane, but none to be ashamed of.