Today’s post is to announce that the Mythatypical Café will be extending the blog to Mythatypes After Midnight, for the discussion of topics potentially too mature or challenging for a general posting site. Questions and issues have come up that really need to be addressed, and a slightly restricted alternative site seems to be the best way to address them. If you’ve followed any of the threads at the Mythatypical Café or are new to this blog, I hope you’ll drop in at Mythatypes After Midnight with any of your questions or concerns, or even just to take a look. I want you to feel that there’s a place where you can ask any question to which you really want a responsible answer. I will always do my best to answer you in good faith and to the best of my knowledge; when I can, I’ll refer you to sources where you can read further, for yourself.
The first topic under discussion will be “Understanding Sex in the U.S.” We really need to talk about this.
There seems to be a growing movement to return to the practice of chastity of varying degrees before marriage, running concurrently with an expanding age range of elementary school-age children and the elderly who are—willingly or at someone else’s instigation—involved in sexual activity. These increasing social ranges of sexual abstinence and sexual indulgence mean that when people meet and wish to communicate to each other their interest in each other, they may find themselves inadvertently placed in very awkward, potentially relationship-ending, or perhaps even questionable or illegal positions.
The means of carrying out sexual activity among the general population have also expanded, so that practices once considered risqué or limited to professional sexual practitioners can be observed on any movie with a more restricted rating than PG. I am not at all opposed to adults’ rights to observe sexual acts so that they can learn how to please their consenting adult partners; but I do believe that when people need to understand conflicted feelings after such acts, or unexpected desires to perform such acts, or insecurities about a partner’s request to cooperate in the performance of such acts, or confusion when their children, siblings, parents, or friends ask them about such acts, they should have someone neutral they can turn to, to say, “What does this mean? What do you think of my place, as I’ve described it, in this situation?” Or whatever else they need to say, ask, argue, or bounce off of others.
- So you, the reader, will be anonymous, if you choose. (I sincerely support your decision to remain anonymous, in case, someday in the future, you would like to make sure no one who should not know about your “After Midnight” concerns does know about them.)
- Please comment, as Anonymous, absolutely anything that you sincerely wish to read a discussion about; I will not mind, no matter how difficult, challenging, or surprising you may think your comment or question is, as long as you try not to use unnecessarily offensive language to say it or ask it. Read below, to find out why I feel this way about you and any potential question you may wish you could ask someone.
- I, of course, am not anonymous and feel no concern about that. Here is a brief, relevant disclosure about who I am, in relation to this topic, and why I think I can and should offer you a place to read about and discuss sexual relations in the U.S. today:
- I am a heterosexual mixed-race African American woman who has been married for most of my adult life since age eighteen, and chaste for the past nine years, this upcoming Christmas, since separating from my ex-husband.
- I read a great deal about sex as a teenager, given that my mother, who was completing her Ph.D. in Comparative Education, thought that the books she read regarding sexual acts and sexual relations were appropriate preparation for maturity for a teen in 1970s Los Angeles.
- I studied lay midwifery—and the varieties of sexual issues inherently related to that study—as a university student.
- Next, I read a great deal about love and sexual relations for my Independent Study thesis on love, loss and betrayal in European short stories in English, French, Italian, and Spanish.
- After that, I read a great deal about African American women’s and men’s struggles with an enslaved history as breed cattle and the confusing social and sexual roles that resulted, upon liberation from chattel enslavement.
- In pursuit of my Ph.D., I read a great deal about Ancient Greek, Old Testament, early Christian, and psychoanalytic heterosexual, hetero-erotic, homosexual, and homoerotic relations, acts and theories about love, gender and eroticism.
- For my specialty in the study of the literatures of women of African descent in the languages mentioned above, I read a great deal more about what may be considered sexually aberrant behaviors, practices and abuses, including genital cutting and mutilation, polygamy, polygyny and polyandry (marrying more than one woman or man at a time), castration of abusive men, sexual abuse in many forms, including coercive and violent rape, and practices intended to induce sexual attraction or produce sexual allure.
- Though this is an unpleasant fact, it is probably not unique to me: I was married to a mental health practitioner for whom I did most of his theoretical and case reading and writing; he dealt with the purely medical aspects of his practice. (I will here note that the United States should institute a federal policy or—better yet—law and course of action so that when a spouse is so used and attempts to report such malpractice, the supervisor to whom she reports it is liable to lose his own license if he chooses to protect the mal-practitioner rather than institute a thorough investigation of such potentially felonious misconduct.)
- For the nineteen years since I began teaching in colleges and universities and having my students write daily journal entries about their relationship with the class’s reading material, I have learned that young women and men of every race in the United States are desperately in need of some basic, down-to-earth, ask-me-anything truth-telling sessions about sexual relations.
- For the four years since my own young adult children began making the transition from premarital chastity to marriage, I have realized that the landmines of dating chastely in a nation that thinks dating means sexual intimacy is only one phase of adapting one’s sexual behavior to his or her definition of self.
- Choosing to practice chastity in the United States needs a great deal of frank conversation. If you are doing this or contemplating it, it won’t be easy, not only because you will be tempted (that will be the least of your problems), but because many of the people you like or want to get to know or marry may misunderstand you and reject you, thinking you have “rejected” them.
- The transition from sexual chastity to marriage needs a great deal of conversation. No matter how well read you are, there are simply not enough easily available, non-sensationally-written books on how to perform and enjoy sexual activity, easily and readily available in American English. I hope our posts can remedy that deficiency. (Maybe we will inspire lots of medical and sexual health counselors to start blogging their information for you, for free.)
- The transition from a sexually active relationship to marriage with that or another sexual partner needs a great deal of conversation. Personal commitment is not binding in the same way that a legal contract is binding; marriage exerts particular pressures that even the most committed non-marital relationships do not and cannot exert. Moreover, intimacy is not transferable; one sexual partner is not interchangeable with another. The habits, physical communications and preferences one has learned as a sexual partner in an uncommitted relationship rarely seem to transfer smoothly, completely or well into marital sexual relations with that same partner, let alone with another. I hope we can discuss this thoroughly, openly, and helpfully.
- The transition from sexual non-exclusivity (more than one partner) to marriage needs—as you might already suspect—a great deal of conversation. The previously non-exclusive sexual partner in a marriage can come into this stable committed relationship with unshakeable intentions to be faithful; she or he may well succeed. But both the previously non-exclusive partner and his or her new spouse will need to open up dialogue somewhere (and lots of it) about a great deal of mutual insecurity, denial, and desire to trust. It’s okay, by the way, to feel this way (some of it, in any combination, or all of it, all at once). It’s healthy to feel pain and hope about intimate relations, as long as no one is deliberately inflicting pain on another. That, we would need to discuss in its own category.
- Abuse: we really, really need to talk about sexual abuse.
Further disclosure: I am a member of a formal religion. I don’t expect you to follow my religious beliefs, nor do I wish to influence you to do so. I will, if you ask me, tell you what I think is best for you to do generally or in a given situation, and I am sure that what I think is best will be influenced by my most deeply held beliefs. However, you are in no way obligated to ask my opinion about the courses of action you should take, and if you do ask for my opinion or advice, you are not obligated to follow it.
My goal is to create a space where we can openly and honestly discuss issues and experiences that may be of concern to you. If you have read my posts about “How to Teach Someone You Love to Read,” then you know that I think reading is the safest way to find out about absolutely anything you feel you need to know.
Hoping to hear from you soon. -ABdV
