I’m going to say something that might be controversial, but
that I wish someone had said to me
when I was a teenager: sex is not inherently immoral, even outside marriage.
I’m not going to address anyone’s religious reasons for
wanting to wait until they are married to have sex, or have the desire to only
share their body with one person. Beliefs are personal; I’m not sharing mine
and I’m certainly not discounting yours.
I am going to say
that the reason that ancient texts (including religious texts) insist that
women save themselves for marriage have a very specific reason for doing so—in
the ancient world, inheritance was a monumental concern. Nothing was more
important than ensuring that property was passed down to legal heirs, and the
only way to do that was to ensure that a woman never had sex with anyone who
was not their husband.
So, sex was confined to marriage mainly to ensure property
inheritance stayed within a family.
Nowadays, we have a nifty little thing called genetic
testing, which negates previous (legitimate) inheritance concerns with multiple
sex partners.
Now, there are still significant
mental and physical health concerns when it comes to who and how many
people you share your body with, and I would argue that the best way to stay
healthy (as a female), mind and body, is to choose those partners wisely.
But if you have sex with someone you love but are not
married to, and you’re smart about it, you are not dirty, disgusting, slutty, or any other pejorative name that
comes into your mind. The act of sex is not, in itself, wrong or evil or
immoral. It’s human. It’s biology. It’s genetics.
It’s sad that we’ve spent centuries telling women that
something is wrong with them because they have the desire for sex. Shaming
young girls—scaring them into not having sex for by using the wrong
argument—can stall healthy sexual
development and give them a complex, even after a marriage, that a normal
sex drive should make them ashamed.
No, I’m not a psychologist, I don’t have a degree on the
wall or hours of research under my belt.
But it happened to me.
So, if you have a daughter or teenage girls that respect
your opinion, please consider using reasons other than shame to talk to them
about choosing sexual partners wisely. If they give in to their natural desires
before you think they should, you’ll be risking their self-image, self-worth,
and ability to form healthy attachments if you don’t. If you are a teenage girl
struggling to make the decision about when to have sex, my advice is to consider
carefully. Think about whether or not you want to do it before you get into the situation where your body can convince you
otherwise.
Consider the consequences, but do not, in those considerations, wonder if having sex makes you a bad
person.
If you read Broken at
Love, you’ll hopefully see a portrait of a confident, strong young woman
who knows exactly what she wants. Emilie isn’t ashamed of her attraction to
Quinn, and she doesn’t feel shame after sleeping with him, even though she’s
aware their relationship might be short-lived.
Part of me wrote Emilie because I wish I could have been
more like her. And if I can show one single girl that being like her is totally
acceptable and healthy, then the book is worth it.