Sometimes I think I want to have sex. I’ve tried sex a couple times before, and I almost think I’d like to try it again, but I keep running into a problem.
The problem isn’t finding someone to have sex with. Although I’m not some charismatic ladies’ man, I do think I have enough personality to make an emotional connection with some eccentric person out there, so I’m pretty sure that if I tried hard enough that I could find a woman willing to have sex with me.
What keeps holding me back is that I know sex is dangerous and that it carries many potential negative consequences. I repeatedly remind myself of this, and when I take the whole truth into account, I find that I actually don’t want to have sex.
I think this dichotomy is interesting because it only began a few years ago. It was when I finally realized the truth about sex. (The irony is that I came to this conclusion soon after I became an atheist, which is the opposite direction some might have expected me to go considering that it’s usually the religious who oppose sex and the secular liberals who think people should have lots and all different kinds of sex.)
Growing up, I had a view of sex that was based on my interpretation of popular media (movies, TV, and magazines). I seemed to be continually inundated with the following misleading message:
- It’s fun when people, especially women, act sexy in public.
- Everyone has sex. It’s embarrassing to be a virgin. Virginity is a sign of immaturity.
- Sex is admittedly dangerous, because of sexually transmitted diseases. Fortunately, condoms were invented so that people could enjoy “safe sex”. So, be a good citizen and use a condom to “protect” both you and your partner.
- Forget the advice about condoms for a moment. If you’re sexually active, be a good citizen and get tested for sexually transmitted diseases on a regular basis. You can never be too careful.
- If you really trust your partner and know that you are both disease-free (because you’ve been tested), you can use birth control pills or a special sponge to prevent pregnancy and then have all the sex you want with each other without any consequences.
I never thought much about this message because, being a social misfit, I didn’t think it applied to me. I didn’t think I’d ever actually have the opportunity to have sex. Actually, my first few years of high school, I didn’t even want to have sex because both my own innocent instincts and my religious upbringing told me that it would cheapen an otherwise loving relationship. It was only when I eventually did get to have sex that I did a little research on the reality of my potential future plans and was horrified to find that even all the secular ideas I thought about sex were wrong:
- People who act sexy in public encourage other people to get themselves into trouble with sex. They also break the hearts of people who actually care about them and don’t want to see them degraded and disrespected.
- It is pure nonsense to use something (sex) that often leads to pregnancy as a status symbol without even being married or having a full-time job, which are things that would be needed to support such a pregnancy in the real world. Sexual experience is only a status symbol in the minds of naive, short-sighted teenagers (who often carry such juvenile misconceptions with them into adulthood).
- Condoms are not 100% reliable in preventing either sexually transmitted diseases or pregnancy. Herpes, in particular, is an incurable (and annoying) disease that condoms can’t prevent.
- Testing for sexually transmitted diseases is not reliable because it takes a few months for most diseases to show up in a test. Also, with regard to women dealing with sexually transmitted diseases, they may face a choice of either taking their chances and enduring a disease or with being subjected to invasive and embarrassing pelvic exams, both of which make their promiscuous behavior seem a little less fun.
- Birth control pills are not 100% reliable in preventing pregnancy. Neither is the sponge. There actually is no technology that can prevent pregnancy with 100% reliability without some sort of health risks. Contraception is unnatural. Sex is meant to create babies. If you are trying to defy nature and have genital-to-genital sexual intercourse with another person without creating babies, then you are a fool.
– I’m leaving out the emotional component of the act of sex. Sex is a drug that can delude you into feeling like you are in love with a person, but this feeling can become lame and frustrating if the actual relationship has no meaningful foundation. –
Porn is the worst form of the lies the media portrays about sex because it deceptively depicts thousands of actual people having dangerous, casual sex with seemingly no consequences. (I know porn stars get tested often for sexually transmitted diseases, but it’s not frequent enough to be 100% reliable compared to the number of sex scenes they film, and that doesn’t even take their personal lives into account.)
People should realize that porn is a fantasy. Porn stars are like circus performers or stuntmen (except that you should feel sorry for them because they are emotionally and sometimes even physically destroying their lives). They make something that’s really dangerous look exciting, fun, and easy, but if you were to actually attempt to imitate what you see on screen then you would likely get seriously hurt (and porn stars are being hurt on a regular basis if not physically then emotionally). Porn stars are not role models.
When it comes to recommended practices of sexual behavior, I think the religious got it right. Although I normally oppose religion (on principle), I agree that abstinence is the best policy on sex. If you’re not going to start a family, then it’s a bad idea to have sex with anyone.
I’ve always thought that the best form of physical affection is cuddling. It’s a lot more relaxing, a lot safer, and a lot less messy than sex.
