Why We Should Empower Girls to Embrace their Sexuality Instead.

Growing up in the church, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that I would wait until my wedding night to lose my virginity.

The summer I came home from my first year away at college, a man attempted to rape me.

Luckily, he was approximately my size and I was able to fight him off. The thought that fueled my strength was, “I am not going to lose my virginity this way.”

While he didn’t manage to get my shorts off during the fight, he was able to rub himself off between my breasts. It was a sweaty battle, ending with him ejaculating all over me. The smell of strong body odor still brings me back to that day in ways I would rather not remember.

Nearly 20 years later, I have finally allowed myself to be angry. I now believe that rape is a form of social control of women that is systematically overlooked.

Current U.S. rape statistics tell us that 44 percent of victims are under the age of 18. 15 percent of sexual assault and rape victims are under age 12. Girls ages 16 to 19 are four times more likely than the general population to be victims of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault.

And 97 percent of rapists will never spend one day in jail.

I have always thought if we started castrating rapists, we would have fewer rapes.

Somehow, the male genitalia is so sacred, that option is thought extreme. And yet, the fact that one in six women is raped is not extreme.

As June Jordan aptly wrote, “What in the hell is everybody being reasonable about?” If women can be raped at any given moment, how can we tell girls they should remain virgins?

The threat of rape alone is enough to scare most women into submission. We grow up terrified of being raped and that terror stays with us throughout our lives. It influences our decisions about nearly everything.

The constant threat of rape keeps women from fully embracing ourselves and, most importantly, our sexuality.

We place a premium on women who are virgins although we do not protect them. We say we do, but what we actually do is place restrictions on women as though they have control over whether or not they are raped.

We shame women for being overtly sexual and we shame rape victims, whether they are virgins or not. So why shouldn’t women just enjoy their sexuality freely and openly?

For a long time I was proud that I held out on giving up my virginity until my twenties.

In retrospect, I know for a fact that I would have enjoyed losing my virginity a whole lot more with my high school sweetheart than the stoned guy I did lose it with many years later.

I would also venture to say that had I lost my virginity earlier, I would have left the confines of the patriarchal church much earlier. That is to say, I would have realized my own power sooner, and known that much of what I had been taught was a lie.

There is not one verse in the Bible where Jesus says, “Hold on to your virginity.”

Although the commonly misunderstood use of the word virgin before Mary’s name certainly has been used to mind-fuck women for centuries. As told in Imagine a Woman in Love with Herself: Embracing Your Wisdom and Wholeness, virgin actually originally meant “woman, complete in herself, owned by no man, creator of her own destiny.”

I now know that children are born sexual.

They begin touching themselves very early on. What most parents do is shame the child in some way so that they don’t do it publicly and embarrass the parent. What if we allowed, even encouraged, our children to explore their bodies in peace?

We often talk about virginity as if it were a prize to be won by someone else. What we fail to teach our daughters is that our sexuality is the prize—and it is our prize.

The purpose of sex is to connect at the deepest level and pleasure each other.

If sex is one-sided, as it often is for the woman initially, she is better off with a good dildo or another woman. When we talk primarily about sex being between a man and a woman, it leaves a lot of things off the table.

I much prefer buying teen girls dildos so they can learn to have orgasms on their own rather than primping them to service men. Many girls are now freely giving blow jobs or having anal sex so they can keep their virginity. Who benefits from this choice?

We scare girls about what could happen if they dress like they are asking for it or walk in the wrong part of town. However, it is usually the men who know us who rape us. Approximately 2/3 of rapes are committed by someone known to the victim.

How many parents talk to their sons about what rape is?

This definition is important. Boys must grow up knowing that sex must always be 100 percent mutual. They must learn that their sexual pleasure is equal to, and not more important than, their female counterparts.

We have fewer restrictions on boys because they have fewer repercussions from early sexual activity. If men had equal responsibility for parenting perhaps we would be equally as protective of our sons.

As a mother who has both a son and a daughter, I have often been frustrated in talking to parents who have only boys. For many, it seems that this conversation is not important because it does not relate directly to their kids. However, in my opinion it does.

The empowerment of women benefits everyone.

Studies show that mutual respect has a high correlation to satisfaction in the bedroom for both genders.

I have also known many men whose relationships were ruined because the woman they loved could never enjoy sex or intimacy due to some sort of sexual abuse.

In addition to the obvious trauma during and immediately following a rape, the long-term effects of rape are difficult to overcome.

Victims of sexual assault are:

•   Three times more likely to suffer from depression.

•   Six times more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

•   13 times more likely to abuse alcohol.

•   26 times more likely to abuse drugs.

•   Four times more likely to contemplate suicide.

I’d also venture to say that women who have been raped have a much harder time coming to terms with their own sexuality and the sense of joy and pleasure that should go along with it. That is something that is very difficult to quantify.

What is your sexuality worth to you?

Often we hear economics cited as the reason why rape kits are not processed, but what is the cost to the victim for years of therapy? What are the costs of never getting therapy?

Why are victims forced to pay these costs? This is just as crazy as asking them to pay for their own rape kits.

How would you feel if you were flooded with fear during intercourse instead of pleasure?

How would you feel if you could never achieve orgasm?

Why is the rapist’s so-called need for immediate release more important than the victim’s long-term sexual and mental health?

If there were 683,000 (the average number of rapes per year in the United States) men walking around castrated every year, would we view rape differently?

What if one in four men had lost their manhood? Would rape then be an epidemic worth our concern? Would we talk to our sons more urgently then?

Being attacked caused me to see life with greater clarity. Had my attacker been a larger man, I would not have been able to fight him off. And the same men and church-folk who insisted on my virginity would have been nowhere to be found, either in that fight or later, in finding, jailing and prosecuting him.

I would have become only a statistic.

I believe that daily sexual release is just as critical to us as human beings as food and sleep. I also believe mutual (and consensual) orgasm is a human right. And it is a right that is worth fighting for and demanding for both ourselves and our daughters.

Whereas I had initially thought my greatest asset was my virginity, I now know that my greatest jewel is my unabashed sexuality, which is, as Eve Ensler asserts, mine and mine and mine.

When we stop placing such a high premium on the innocence of girls they won’t be the primary target of rapists. And when we prosecute rape the same way we do petty theft and drug charges, we will drastically slow the frequency of attacks.

I also believe that when women are empowered they are more likely to report a rape.

Had I known what I do now, I would have reported my attacker instead of living with fear, shame and regret. Had I understood my right to claim my sexuality as my own, I would have embraced it fully and enjoyed it sooner.

I hope my daughter loses her virginity blissfully and freely.

I hope it’s after a long, hot summer day filled with flirting and teasing and kissing that ends with a glorious romp under the moon with someone she loves enormously.

I hope she skips home and tells me about it in the morning with a huge smile on her face, proud to have used up every last condom I gave her.

But if she comes to me in tears instead, I won’t ask why but where. As in, “Where the f@ck is he?”

So, please, teach your sons to honor and respect women. And teach your daughters to embrace their sexual power.

When we realize that our sexuality is our own, it cannot be given away or taken from us by anyone. That is the message we should be teaching girls from the start.

Trista Hendren is a Certified Coach with Imagine a Woman International and author of The Girl God.  She is fond of Kundalini Yoga, multiple orgasms and Velomobiles. Trista prefers to be sitting in the sun surrounded by several books, a picnic basket and her children. She lives between Portland, Oregon with her kids and Bergen, Norway with her soon-husband. You can read more about her project with Elisabeth Slettnes at www.thegirgod.com.

 

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Editor: Lara Chassin

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