Teaching Girls the Truth About Sex by Temma Ehrenfeld

Temma Ehrenfeld 

Remember the slogan, "Take back the night,"? It is a call for women to protect themselves from sexual violence. A foundation of that name has been holding powerful yearly events on campus for decades.
We must teach young women to defend themselves from violence and to actively seek its opposite. We can teach them to take back the night for love and pleasure.   
The increasing openness about sex seems to be serving male orgasm much more than female pleasure. Girls are having sex and see porn often before they even know how to have an orgasm.
Isn't that putting the cart way before the horse?
The largest survey of American sexual behavior in recent years found that only a third of girls between ages 14 and 17 masturbated. Fewer than half had even tried. They might have boyfriends playing with their private parts, but that doesn't mean that they ever came.
When I was in my twenties I passed around the book For Yourself: the fulfillment of female sexuality, by Lonnie Barbach, which taught women how to masturbate to cum Many of my friends who were already having sex thanked me for it and reported progress. We needed instruction.
Meanwhile teens are seeing clips of strangers having sex: 93 percent of boys and 62 percent of girls will see online porn, according to one study. Most may see it first inadvertently, as display ads on file-sharing sites or through a mistaken click.
Boys expect oral sex but rarely give it. Girls are also having anal sex: 20 percent of women 18 to 19 have, 40 percent by ages 20 to 24.
What are the chances that girls are getting orgasms giving boys blow jobs or receiving anal sex?
This all sounds like male-oriented sex to me. But if you want further proof, researchers from the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University found that 70 percent of women report pain in their sexual encounters, if anal sex is included. Excluding anal sex, a third of young women have pain during sex. And they often tell researchers that they consider a sexual encounter successful if the male came; their own satisfaction isn't necessary.
I don't blame boys. They're young and they're learning. It's time for parents to teach our kids to link love, responsibility, joy and pleasure.
I'll confess that when I was in high school, a boy gave me a bunch of queludes and raped me. I couldn't even pick up my hand or head to protest I was so zonked.
I also didn't tell my feminist mother, who loved me dearly. Or my father.
Why? I thought sex was about giving boys an orgasm and this was just an extension of that idea.   
I propose new coming of age ceremonies that provide an expected discussion of love and sex. What if every girl at 16 had a party attended only by her female friends and family members or older women she was close to. She would pick the guest list, knowing that the members of the group would be talking about questions like "What I most like about being a woman,"  "What I wish I knew about love when I was sixteen," and "The most important thing about love to me now." Also, "The most important thing I've learned about sex." "What I wish I'd known sooner about sex." And so on.
People could get creative, putting on skits or giving girls books or sex toys.  
Boys could have a gathering of men to talk about sex as well, with discussions about how to know if a girl was really willing and how to give her pleasure.
Why leave our children to learn about sex from each other and from porn and clinical information in a class room?
Our world is teaching kids to have "junk sex," the same way we feed them junk food. The "slow sex" movement focuses on building desire in a woman through slow touching of her entire body (men like it, too, I can testify).
Teens can spend an hour exploring sensations--what it does feel like to have someone glide a finger along your upper arm, your inner arm? What happens if your partner kisses your toes? Let's talk about "sexplay" instead of "foreplay," which makes having orgasms the star event. Let's talk about looking into each other's eyes and staying in touch with each other, instead of going off into private fantasies. Let's remind girls not to hold their breath. Most of all, let's tell our daughters that they don't need to let their bodies be used to make a boy have an orgasm. Fair is fair.
Teens are curious about sex because it's new and can transform their lives  For many of us, the partners we choose and the way we communicate with them are enormous factors in our lives. The first lesson a girl can learn is choose someone who genuinely wants to share and give her pleasure. Then she can experiment with how. If girls focus on their pleasure, the chances are we'll be seeing much more kissing and hugging and teasing your arm with a feather.  The first lesson a boy can learn is to choose someone who inspires generosity, teaches patience and helps him expand. Men are also missing their full sexual and romantic potential. We can learn these lessons from a same-sex partner, too.  
Barbach has also written a book for couples highly ranked by psychologists: For Each Other: sharing sexual intimacy. If your daughter already has a partner, consider giving it to her.
Read a book from the "slow sex" movement for yourself if you'd like to have a grander vision of the potential for your romantic and sexual life. Then decide if you'd like to give any of them to your daughter, who may be 18, 25, or 35 or 50. Here are two:
Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality, by Diana Richardson
Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female, by Nicole Dadeone.
Enjoy. If you have a talk with your daughter or a talk with your wife or husband, and good things come of it, let me know.