by Sarah Mirk
This book is dedicated to Tillie and Kit, who have to grow up in this world.
Text copyright © 2020 by Sarah Mirk
All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.
Twenty-First Century Books
An imprint of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.
241 First Avenue North
Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
For reading levels and more information, look up this title at www.lernerbooks.com.
Main body text set in Adrianna Condensed 11/15. Typeface provided by Chank.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mirk, Sarah, author.
Title: You do you : figuring out your body, dating, and sexuality / by Sarah Mirk.
Description: Minneapolis : Twenty-First Century Books, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018040394 (print) | LCCN 2018042116 (ebook) | ISBN 9781541562714 (eb pdf) | ISBN 9781541540224 (lb : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Sex—Juvenile literature. | Teenagers—Sexual behavior—Juvenile literature. | Dating (Social customs)—Juvenile literature. | Adolescence—Juvenile literature.
Classification: LCC HQ35 (ebook) | LCC HQ35 .M59155 2019 (print) | DDC 306.70835—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018040394
Manufactured in the United States of America
1-45227-36609-5/2/2019
Contents
Chapter One
Your Body, Your Rules
Chapter Two
There Is No Normal
Chapter Three
Macho Men and Girly Girls
Chapter Four
Take Care Down There
Chapter Five
Know Your Germs
Chapter Six
Talking about Feelings
Chapter Seven
Do What Feels Good
Chapter Eight
You Deserve to Be Happy
Glossary
Source Notes
Selected Bibliography
Further Information
Index
Chapter One
Your Body, Your Rules
The first thing to know about your body is that it’s yours. You get to decide what to do with your body—what it looks like, what feels good, what feels bad, and who to share it with and how. That may sound super obvious, but it’s actually the basis of a big idea that’s the foundation of all dating and sexuality: consent.
Consent refers to granting permission for something to happen or agreeing to do something. When it comes to your body, consent is crucial. If someone’s going to touch your body, they need your permission. If you’re going to touch someone else’s body, you need their permission. If you don’t like the way someone touches you, talks to you, or makes you feel, you have the right to tell them to treat you differently. Establishing boundaries and making sure they’re respected is hard work. But everyone, including you, has the right to be happy, healthy, and respected.
What’s Important to You?
How do you decide what you want to do with your body? How do you decide what to wear? How to spend your free time? Who to kiss? Who to date? Who to have sex with? Whether to kiss, date, or have sex with anyone at all? The answers to these giant, complicated questions come from you and your values.
Values are the set of principles that define the way you want to be in the world. They guide not just what you do but what you believe. Values come from all parts of your life—from your family, your friends, your culture, and your communities. Sometimes these values match your feelings and beliefs perfectly. Sometimes they don’t. If they don’t, you have the right to question them and to shape your values in a way that makes sense for you. If you find yourself questioning the values of people in your life, look for people who share values closer to yours and talk to them. You get to pick what values feel most important to you and what defines the absolute core of who you are. You define your values for yourself.
Not everyone has the same values. What’s important to you is not the same as what’s important to everyone else. Recognizing that difference is essential for helping you make decisions and understanding the decisions other people make. Whenever you face a difficult situation, it’s helpful to ask, “Well, what choice is most in line with my values?”
Figuring out your values requires examining the big ideas behind your desires. Here are some examples. Do any of these describe what’s most important to you? Make a list of your core values. Here are some ideas to get started:
living an independent life
respecting privacy and personal choices
exploring the world as much as possible
respecting my parents’ wishes
supporting my family
being a compassionate friend
behaving as my religion tells me to
making the world a better place
doing whatever makes me happy
living sustainably, so I impact the environment as little as possible
being honest about my life with my family and friends
taking care of my body and health above all else
working as hard as possible to be the absolute best
Scenarios: We Want Different Things
Explore contrasting values in these two scenarios:
Elyse and Jessie go to the homecoming dance. The DJ plays a song that Elyse hates—it’s about how men only like women with big butts. She thinks it’s demeaning to women. But to her surprise, Jessie runs out on the dance floor and starts dancing along. She loves the song! She seems to have fun dancing in a super-sexy way that shocks Elyse, who feels left out and abandoned. When the song is over, Elyse tells Jessie that she was dancing like a total idiot. Jessie feels really hurt and starts crying.
What values might Elyse have that make her not want to participate in dancing along to this song?
What values might Jessie have that make her feel good about dancing to this song?
How could Jessie and Elyse have handled this situation differently to be true to themselves but not hurt each other?
Amisa has been accepted to two colleges: her dream school in Los Angeles, where she could pursue her passion of filmmaking, and the more affordable state school nearby. Her boyfriend is going to the state school too. If she goes there, they could stay together and maybe get married soon. Her parents, who are paying for half the cost of college, also want her to go to the state school because it will be cheaper. Amisa is wondering whether she should take out bigger student loans and leave her boyfriend so she can follow her ambition to be a film director.
What values are important to Amisa?
What will she be sacrificing by making either decision?
What pressures is she facing? Which should she take seriously, and which should she maybe ignore?
Call Out Catcalling
“Hey sexy!” “Nice butt!” “I’d hit that!” One of the most common examples of consent violating is street harassment. The group Stop Street Harassment defines gender-based street harassment as any unwanted comments, gestures, and actions forced on a stranger in a public place without their consent and directed at them because of their actual or perceived sex, gender, gender expression, or sexual orientation. Street harassment involves someone leering, whistling, honking, making a sexist comment, calling out a slur, following you, or blocking your path. In the United States, 65 percent of women and 25 percent of men have experienced s
ome form of sexual harassment. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people face higher rates of harassment. People often try to brush off street harassment by saying it’s a compliment or “just a joke.” But it’s not okay to make sexual comments to anyone without their permission.
Your Body, Your Rules
Consent is linked to values. You get to make rules about your body. And it’s also your job to respect other people’s decisions about what they want for their bodies. That means listening to what they like or don’t like. It also means listening to what they’re not saying and paying close attention to their body language.
Consent is the foundation of all good relationships—friendships, professional situations, dating, marriage, and interacting with strangers. Consent requires communication. That means clearly agreeing (out loud or in writing) to whatever is going on. Consent takes the place of making assumptions about how another person is feeling. You often don’t know! Or you get it wrong.
Scenario: Broken Trust
Here is an example of friends working out consent:
Byron and Kelly are good friends who are in art class together. For his final project, Byron takes some artistic photos of parts of his body that he doesn’t usually show people—his chest, his stomach, and his butt. Kelly says she’d love to see the project, so he emails her the photos and she gives him some feedback. He asks her to delete the photos after she’s seen them because he doesn’t want other people to see them or for them to wind up online. Kelly does exactly that, deleting the photos without showing them to anyone else.
Byron communicated his boundaries in clear words: it was okay for Kelly to see these photos but no one else. He was trusting her to respect his rules. He didn’t just send her the photos out of the blue. Sending someone photos that could be perceived as sexual is something for which you always need consent first. If Kelly had forwarded the photos to other friends or posted them online, that would have violated Byron’s consent. Kelly would have broken his trust.
Their Body, Their Rules
In dating, it’s super important to get someone’s verbal consent before getting up in their personal space, touching their body, or touching them in a new way. Consent is checking in, with words, to make sure the person you’re with is feeling good. One simple example of good consent comes from the 2013 Disney film Frozen. In a cute, romantic moment, hunky ice harvester Kristoff asks heroine Anna if he may kiss her. She leans in and kisses him on the cheek, replying that he may.
When you have permission to kiss someone, it’s not a blanket permission to touch them anywhere you want. Instead, if you want to touch their breasts or genitalia, you need to get consent, asking again, “Can I. . . ?” Another way to ask for consent is to offer to do something you want to do. For example, “I’d love to take your shirt off. Is that okay?” or “I want to do something nice for you. Can I give you a massage?”
Then you need to closely listen to what they say. If someone seems hesitant or uncertain, that’s not consent. Consent needs to be certain. So take the cue and don’t push. If you’re the person giving consent, know that it’s always okay to say no. No one is entitled to your body—not even your boyfriend, girlfriend, or long-term partner. And it’s okay to change your mind and say no after you already said yes if something doesn’t feel good or you just don’t want to anymore.
The University of Michigan Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center has this great guide to consent issues:
Appearance or clothing. The way a person dresses, dances, or smiles doesn’t give you permission to touch them without asking.
Relationship status. Just because someone is your girlfriend or boyfriend doesn’t mean they want to have sex with you.
Previous activity. If you’ve had sex in the past, it doesn’t mean you consent to all future sex. Same thing goes for kissing and anything else involving your body.
Silence, passivity, lack of resistance, or immobility. A person’s silence isn’t consent. A person who does not respond to attempts to engage in sexual activity, even if they do not verbally say no or resist physically, is not clearly agreeing to sexual activity.
Incapacitation. Alcohol consumption or use of other drugs can render a person incapable of giving consent. Alcohol is often used to target individuals and by perpetrators to excuse their own actions.
Scenario: Make Space to Listen
Here is an example of people respecting consent in romantic relationships:
Margot and Alison hang out and make out whenever they can, but they haven’t had sex. One weekend, Alison’s parents are going out of town and she decides to invite Margot to stay the night. But Alison is nervous because she doesn’t want to have sex—she doesn’t feel emotionally ready. Via text, she asks Margot if she’d like to sleep over and adds that she would love to make out but isn’t ready to have sex. Margot texts back, “Yes!! Of course! We can keep our shorts on.” That weekend is great. They watch a movie, then make out. Margot makes sure to check in a few times and ask if Alison is cool with everything they’re doing.
Consent relates to respecting values. Alison was able to communicate what was important to her, and Margot respected that, even if she would have liked to have sex. When Alison made her needs clear, Margot didn’t get angry, tell her she was wrong, or try to convince her to change her mind. Instead, Alison established a clear ground rule that they could both understand.
Here is an example of an interaction where consent is violated:
Darren is sitting on the couch at a party when Latoya comes over and sits on his lap without asking. She wraps her arms around his neck and starts playing with his hair. It feels super flirty to Darren. He’s embarrassed—he likes Latoya as a friend, but he’s not attracted to her. He asks her to move off his lap and give him a little space, but she gets mad and says, “What? You don’t want a girl on you? Are you gay?”
Latoya makes a pretty nasty accusation: that if Darren doesn’t want her in his personal space, it must be because he’s not attracted to women at all. This is both homophobic and rude. If Latoya wants to sit on Darren’s lap, she needs to ask him first. If he says no, she needs to respect that decision without making any assumptions about his sexuality. What should she do now that she’s violated his personal boundaries? What steps can Darren take to feel more okay after this interaction?
Questions to Think About
I made out with this guy I have a crush on at a party—I’m a sophomore and he’s a senior who has a lot of friends and is really popular. I’m really into him. But after the party, he found me on Snapchat and sent me a photo of his dick! I didn’t know what to do, so I just erased it. Then he sent me a message that said to send him a photo of my boobs. I don’t want to, because I’ve heard about photos like that winding up online. But if I don’t, he will probably lose interest in me and that could kill our chances of ever dating. Should I just send him a photo?
This guy violated your consent by sending you a photo of his penis without your requesting it. And now he’s asking you to cross your own boundaries. Those are two big red flags. You wouldn’t want someone to flash you their genitalia in public, and online is no different! You have good instincts here. Listen to yourself. Anything you send digitally can be downloaded, copied, and shared without your knowing about it. Don’t send a sexy photo to someone you don’t entirely trust. If a guy doesn’t respect your right to privacy and your boundaries, he’s not someone you want to date.
Chapter Two
There Is No Normal
The one thing humans around the world have in common is that every single one of us is different. So whether you’re comparing height, weight, body hair, or breast size, what’s normal for one person is not normal for another.
Below the Belt
Just as no two humans have exactly the same personality, no two humans have exactly the same genitalia. Instead, reproductive and sexual organs come in many shapes and sizes. In the womb, every fetus starts out with th
e same genitalia. As the fetus grows, the cells that make up its genitalia shift around. Sex researcher Emily Nagoski says, “We’re all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways.”
Our reproductive and sexual organs serve three basic purposes:
Getting rid of waste. Your genitals are where poop, pee, and menstrual fluid come out of your body. Yep.
Feeling good. Human genitalia is hardwired to feel pleasure. It’s full of nerve endings that send good vibes straight to your brain.
Making babies. Babies are made when sperm (reproductive cells made in the testes) fertilize an egg, a large reproductive cell that’s made in the ovaries. Sperm can get into the ovaries in a couple of different ways. One way is that a penis is inserted into the vulva. When the penis ejaculates, or releases, sperm in the vagina, the sperm swim up the vagina, through the cervix, and into the ovaries, where the sperm and egg can meet. This can also sometimes happen if sperm is ejaculated just on the lips of the vulva, not all the way inside. Fertilization can also happen through artificial insemination, when doctors collect sperm from one person and inject it into someone who wants to get pregnant.
Biological sex is based on someone’s anatomy and hormones. In the United States, legally recognized sexes are male, female and, in some states, intersex and nonbinary. Gender identity is defined by you based on how you think about yourself. The most common gender descriptions are woman and man, but many people describe their gender as nonbinary, agender, genderqueer, and lots of other options.
When a baby is born, doctors and parents look at the baby’s reproductive and sexual organs and its chromosomes and make a determination about the baby’s sex. If a baby has testes, a penis, and XY chromosomes, it’s classified as male. If a baby has a vulva, a womb, and XX chromosomes, it’s classified as female. For the majority of people, the sex assigned at birth is the same as their gender identity. This is being cisgender. If someone’s sex assigned at birth does not match their gender identity later in life, that’s being transgender.
