Sex!
Navigating topics around sex as emerging Asian American adults
What are your views towards how sex was addressed in your childhood?
I never got the “birds-and-the-bees” talk. All I knew about sex was to not get pregnant in college.
Then school came. From gossip, my friends’ stories, and the occasional dirty joke, I learned more about sex. For instance, the infamous 69. I did take two health classes, vaguely remembering anatomy diagrams of a vagina and penis (sex education was not exactly prevalent).
Yet, I feel very comfortable talking about sex — with my peers. However, I’m *not* comfortable talking about sex with my parents. Which is ironic, considering the number of sex scenes that appear during family movie nights.
For me, this certainly created a stigma surrounding sex and sexual health. But it wasn't the sort of stigma that made me embarrassed to talk about sex - rather, it was the stigma for me to explore or even have sexual desires.
Sex is a real thing. And yet, I didn't really know anything about safe sex other than to use a condom. If I wanted to learn more, I'd secretly read WebMD using incognito tabs, as if I was doing something illegal.
Why? When did safe sex become something to be ashamed of?
Everyone has their own preferences on sex, why hide from that? It's not going away, and everyone is going to face it at one point or another. And believe me, when I faced it, it came hurling at me like a ten-ton truck. Just remember - sex and your body is never something to be ashamed of. -Alexis
I never had “The Talk” with my parents, and this was a topic that I didn’t actually have a lot of contextual knowledge in until I became a teenager. Even though I did not grow up in a very conservative household, I rarely talked to my parents about sex. I think retrospectively it would have been good for me to have learned about reproductive health much earlier on because I had to educate myself on these topics once I matured. Asian culture in general is a lot more conservative when it comes to talking about or expressing intimacy compared to Western culture, and most forms of physical intimacy I saw were from media growing up. I think as an Asian woman especially, it can feel a bit uncomfortable to discuss sex because I never had the vocabulary to articulate it well and much of film history has oversexualized Asian women — though there’s been more consciousness around this, I still do think all women in our society are constantly sexually objectified. At the end of the day, I think that what’s really important is to know your worth and to know what your boundaries are. There’s so much pressure on young people to have done certain things at certain time, but everyone has a different timeline for everything, and you shouldn’t let other people’s expectations dictate your life decisions.
-Tiffany
In mainstream media, sex is glorified. It’s depicted as this amazing, incredible sensation between two individuals, (generally, a male and female). It’s hot, steamy, and sensual. They show the kissing and the touching. I remember when Fifty Shades of Grey first came out and how everyone was freaking out over the trailer (for context, I was 12).
But they don’t show contraception. They don’t show how to give consent or what consent even looks like.
Truth is, sex is awkward, vulnerable, and different for everyone. It’s not always sexy and it’s not always heterosexual.
Now, I’m not saying mainstream media needs to depict all the nitty-gritty of sex. But it would be nice for legitimate sexual wellness, which is more than just two insanely hot people going at it, to be promoted and seen.
In my experience, the media constantly glorifying sex just made it harder for me to be honest with myself on my own views of sex and my body. I never looked like the people on screen or had the same body. And I sure had no idea what sexual wellness was other than simple pleasure.
And for the record, sexual wellness is way more than just being comfortable talking about sex. It's being able to talk about sex seriously, your own sexual desires, and safe sex practices. In my experience, that is where the stigma is and the barrier that needs to be removed. -Alexis