Sex and Shame PDF
Sex and Shame PDF
Sex and Shame PDF
who we feel sexual desire for who we want to have sex with the kinds of sex we want to have our sexual thoughts and fantasies the ways that we see ourselves as sexual (which often includes how we understand our gender)
Sexual shame doesn't just come from "doing" things. Many of us experience sexual shame whether or not we ever act out our thoughts, feelings, or beliefs. One of the most dangerous parts of sexual shame is how easy it is to believe that the shame originates from within us. For example, someone who likes to watch pornography may feel shame about their desire. They may feel that they are bad for wanting to watch pornography or bad because of the kinds of activities they like to watch. And they may feel as if that shame is "natural" which is to say that it's something they were born with. This can lead that person to never question their feelings of shame, and certainly to keep it private and never talk about it with others. Unfortunately, questioning and talking about the things we feel sexual shame about are two key ways of working with those feelings of shame and, if it's our goal, of
transforming those feelings of shame into other kinds of feelings. Not enough of us ask ourselves the question...
partners can create a lot of physical, emotional, and spiritual pleasure, and an overall sense of well being. And yet we're told much of it is wrong, and wanting it makes us bad people. It's easy to get stuck in a cycle of wanting something so badly, but making ourselves feel terrible even in the wanting of it. The impact of all this is devastating to our sexuality. If you ask most sex therapists and educators they will tell you that one of the biggest obstacles to experiencing sexual health is the sexual shame that most of us carry around with us. And for many professionals, helping people to move towards greater sexual health means helping them uncover where their sense of shame comes from, and working with them to decide how they want to deal with it. Our sexual shame can keep us from letting people get close to us. It can keep us from feeling comfortable in our own bodies. We can also come to feel as if our sexual shame is more of a rule book for how everyone should be sexual, and our sense of shame can lead us to judge and mistreat others. This can have an obvious impact on our ability to find sexual partners that we want, or sexual partners who will accept us for who we are. Our sexual shame can keep us from exploring specific sexual activities we may want to explore, and it can keep us from being with the sexual or romantic partners we want to be with. In this way sexual shame can not only prevent us from experiencing the possibilities of sexual pleasure, but also love, intimacy, companionship. One of the biggest ways that shame affects our sexuality is by making us silent. When we feel ashamed about something we usually don't want to talk about it, we want to hide that part of us that we feel shame about. Shame leads us to compartmentalize our sexuality, to only show people (or even ourselves) the parts we think are acceptable and to hide the other parts. This compartmentalizing of our sexuality is artificial. It is something we impose and it can lead to many different kinds of sexual problems.
way to talk about their shame can sometimes begin to change the way you feel about your own shame.
Talk to Yourself
If you think talking to yourself is something only people with mental illness do, think again. Talking to yourself is not, in and of itself, a problem. In fact it can be an important tool in changing the way you think about things. Often when we experience sexual shame it comes with a lot of negative self talk. We can tell ourselves that we're disgusting or dirty or unlovable. We can say the most horrible things to ourselves. But you can also make a conscious effort to say different things to yourself. To tell yourself that it's okay. Even if you're feeling shame you may not always feel this way. That you don't need to feel ashamed, and that you could stop feeling ashamed and still make whatever decisions you want about your sex life and your sexuality. Something as simple as saying to yourself "oh, that's sexual shame I'm feeling" every time you notice you're feeling ashamed can be a useful exercise.
Talk to Others
One of the most powerful ways to reduce or eliminate feelings of shame is to talk with others about your feelings honestly and openly. Of course, depending on what your feeling shame about, you need to choose those others carefully. Because of abuses of human rights around the world, there are some of us who risk arrest, imprisonment, even death if we reveal the thing we feel ashamed of (particularly when that shame is tied to our sexual orientation, identity, and/or gender identity). The truth is that not everyone is safe to talk to about our sexual shame, not everyone has the boundaries to accept our vulnerability. Even professionals who are trained to deal appropriately with personal disclosures can let their own values and judgments come out when hearing someone be honest about their feelings of shame about sexuality. This is one of the reasons why talking with a professional who has some training in human sexuality can be a good idea. Although talking to a partner or family member or friend who has proven trustworthy can be just as good or better. Talking with others may not be something you ever choose to do, which is okay too. But for many people this is an important part of the process once they've worked through a lot of their own feelings and thoughts about whatever it is they feel ashamed of.
Sex is genetic: Its the puppe t-master and were lucky to be getting our strings pulled now and then.
Because procreation is tied to our species survival, evolutionary scientists and pop psychologists alike argue that the most important understanding of sexuality is the one that links our sexual behavior to procreation. Thus we are told that male sexuality 1 is voracious and dangerous, that female sexuality is a side effect of the need for women to have babies, and that the psychological, emotional, and spiritual aspects of sexuality are not as important as the genetic ones. There is clearly a genetic component to sex,2 but that doesnt mean that this is either the most useful, or truest perspective from which to think about our sexuality.
Sex is natural and simple: You should just know how to do it.
Sex is natural, were told, because we have to do it to survive. But this doesnt accurately describe what human sexuality has become. Intercourse 3may be instinctual for some (but clearly not all) of us, but sexuality is much more than intercourse,4 and none of it actually comes easily. Its it strange that we are taught how to perform most other basic human behaviors (how to eat, how to communicate, how to go to the bathroom) and as we get older we learn the more complicated ones (how to read, write, drive a car, work) and yet were just supposed to know how to have sex.
Sex is gender: Men are from sex-crazed Mars; women are from soft and romantic Venus.
This lie takes many forms:
Women just want to cuddle, men want to have raunchy sex. Women are sexual communicators, men cant talk about their sexual feelings. Real sex takes place between a man and a woman. Men and women cant ever be friends, sex always gets in the way. Men want sex all the time, and women dont. Men are more visual than women when it comes to sexual arousal. 5
All of these are variations on the big double-shot sex lie: That sex is 100% tied to our gender, and we are all only one gender. The fact is that how we think about, feel about, and actually have sex is infinitely more complicated than which door we walk through in a public washroom.
Sex is special: Its a rare transformative moment that only comes once in a while.
On one hand, its true that sex can be transformative and that some of us dont get to have sex as often as wed like, but on the other hand, sex is an incredibly common and regular occurrence. Yet many of us are raised to think of sex like its a nonrenewable resource thats about to dry up. If instead we put sex in its place among all our other activities of daily living and all the ways we communicate with the people around us, we might have a lot less anxiety about how were doing it, when were doing it, if were doing it right, and who were doing it with. Sex doesnt need to be treated with kid gloves, it can take it, if we start to dish it out.
We can make it on our own: Sexual agency is the same as sexual independence.
We can thank the mostly positive influence of the womens movement on sexual expression for this subtle lie. Whats true is that we all have a right to sexual agencyto experience sexual pleasure on our own terms, think sexual thoughts, and have sexual desires separate from those around us. But the silent lie is that sexual agency equals complete independence. In truth, none of us are completely independent from those around us, and we rely on others in ways few of us
acknowledge. Among the few people who have managed to really figure this out are folks living with disabilities who require assistance with regular daily activities. When you rely on others for some form of help, it becomes very apparent the way we are all connected. If you dont, you can go through life imagining that youd be fine without anyone around. Yet even masturbation, which is often fueled by sexual fantasy, requires some external stimulation (even if youre only d reaming of the UPS guy or gal, theyre still involved to some extent).