The Sex Myth

by Rachel Hills

  To achieve true sexual freedom, we need to do more than just change the rules under which our sexual behavior is governed. We must eradicate the Sex Myth altogether.

  Conclusion: Beyond the Sex Myth

  Looking back, the insecurities that plagued me in my early twenties feel a bit absurd. It seems obvious now that the fact that I wasn’t sexually active didn’t mean there was something terribly wrong with me. Nor did my lack of a sex life negate any of the good qualities I had in my possession. It didn’t erase my connections with other people, my enthusiasm, my emotional generosity, or my wicked sense of fun. It didn’t make me ugly or unwanted. My sexual history wasn’t a window into the “truth” of who I was or what others saw in me—rather, it was a series of events that made up one part of my life story. The only thing that made me “defective” back then was my belief that I was defective.

  I did eventually have sex for the first time, in a manner that was casual and loving and—dare I say it—“liberated” all at once, in the sense that it was something I sought out and had control over. Once I had done the deed, I realized that sex was not the transformative force I had believed it to be. It didn’t render me suddenly experienced, any more than not having had a penis inside of that particular part of my body the day before had made me “pure.” I was pleased and relieved that I had finally done it, but it did not metamorphize me.

  My sex life was not the only one that changed shape over the course of my researching the Sex Myth. I spoke with Cara, the sexually circumspect Seattleite who thought she might be asexual, over the phone two years after I first interviewed her, as she nursed a hangover one Sunday morning. She was living with a boyfriend now, a man she had met at the grocery store around the corner from her office, shortly after we had met. He had first struck up a conversation with her about a book she was reading for the feminist book club she had joined—although it took him almost a year after that to work up the courage to ask her out. When they started dating, he was sensitive to her fears and reservations, and happy to wait until she was ready to have sex.

  “It wasn’t that a magical man came around, it was that I was finally comfortable with myself,” Cara said when we talked. “When you and I met, I was in a really bad place. I had friends, but they weren’t connected to each other. I was just kind of lonely.” Through her book club and other activities, Cara has made new friends, “women who are super comfortable with themselves and with their bodies. It made me realize that, okay, I am a worthy person”—however “normal” or otherwise her sex life might be.

  When I first met Henry, he was a virgin who was overwhelmed with anxiety about his self-perceived unattractiveness. Less than a year and a half later, he was a star of his local BDSM scene, sought after for his skills in Japanese bondage. Monica, my friend who inspired me to write this book, went through another two years of semi-involuntary celibacy before finally having sex again. As I wrote this chapter, she was hanging out with her Dutch anthropologist lover on a beach in the South China Sea, and as I edited it, she asked me to let you know that she was single and celibate once again.

  For me, these stories serve as reminders that nothing in life is permanent, least of all during the period of rapid personal change that takes place in our twenties. Our sexual histories are not unblemished mirrors of our souls but an ever-changing and unpredictable series of events that, while they may have meaning in our lives at any particular moment, do not define us. As one commenter on the feminist website Jezebel put it: “Getting laid is mostly a matter of luck, opportunity and sex drive, not desirability.”

  I still don’t feel like my own sexual history accurately reflects the person that I am inside. It feels less gregarious than I am, less inclined to take risks—like it belongs to someone more meticulously virtuous and self-contained. But it is not the source of insecurity it used to be, either. I don’t feel like my sex life needs to define me the way I once did.

  Of course, it’s easy not to worry about your sex life when it fits the ideal that has been set out for you by your culture. The Sex Myth fades into the background when we are secure in our choices. It is when our footing is less solid that it is most powerful. That I am no longer haunted by those feelings of inadequacy is a small personal victory. But it would be a greater victory still if no one was consumed by those feelings. And that requires more than individuals changing their behavior to fit the established norms, or even denouncing the terms upon which those norms are set. It means challenging the centrality of sex in our society and reframing what it means to be sexually “free.”

  * * *

  There are signs that the way our culture speaks about sex is starting to change—that we are starting to question the standards that have been laid out for us, and even beginning to question the Sex Myth itself.

  The major force driving this shift is the Internet, which with its plurality of voices and lower barriers to publishing has allowed a greater variety of sexual stories to be heard than ever before. New websites such as Jezebel, Role Reboot, the Good Men Project, the Hairpin, and Feministing have carved a niche for themselves as myth busters that question received wisdom and challenge our perceptions of what it means to be “normal” in the process. The crowd-sourced Tumblr site Do Tell collates anonymous sex stories from women that look nothing like the confessions typically aired in women’s media. Instead of stories about public sex or bikini waxes gone wrong, the accounts on Do Tell are tales of profound triumph and shame. “If I let him spend more than three minutes—one minute—between my legs, I feel greedy, defective, and somehow less like a woman,” confesses one contributor, while another writes, “I’ve always been lucky in love/sex. . . . I’m happily having casual sex right now and feeling great about it.”

  These changes in the dialogue have begun to trickle down to popular culture, too. When Lena Dunham’s cult HBO series Girls first hit screens in 2012, it was praised for its unglamorous, “awkward” depictions of young people’s sex lives. “I feel like I was cruelly duped by much of the television I saw,” Dunham told the New York Times. With her show, she said, she aspired to create a more realistic picture of twentysomething sex.

  And the sex on Girls is certainly less romanticized than the sex portrayed in other television comedies. In one scene in the first season of the show, Dunham’s character, Hannah, is hooking up with her sometime boyfriend Adam when he shifts them into a role play, with her as a preteen prostitute and him as her pimp. In another scene, he pees on her in the shower, not as an act of kink or titillation, but to make her laugh. In the second season, Hannah has sex with her friend’s teenage stepbrother in a graveyard. The sex on Girls is less aspirational than it is uncomfortable, both physically and emotionally.

  But what is even more radical about the show—and what sets Girls apart from previous “gritty” or confronting depictions of young people and sex, such as Skins or Gossip Girl—is the relatively tangential role that sex plays in its characters’ lives. The young women on Girls have sex—in some cases quite a lot of it—but sex isn’t what keeps them up at night or what they grill each other about, Sex and the City–style, over brunch. On Girls, sex is just an ordinary part of life, something that happens (or doesn’t happen) between eating a cupcake, going to the bathroom, and ruminating on the state of your creative and economic prospects. Sometimes it is great, sometimes it is terrible, but most of the time it is just a thing.

  There are signs, too, that we are beginning to grow tired of the Sex Myth and its mystical elevation of sex as the most powerful and profound act known to humankind. When third-wave feminist author Naomi Wolf published her book Vagina in 2012, she was criticized by New Yorker journalist Ariel Levy for “situating the essence of the female” in the body, and specifically, in one particular part of it: the vagina. Where Wolf believed that the vagina was “a gateway to a woman’s happiness and to her creative life” and even the source of her connection to “the Goddess,” Levy argued it was just another body part like any other—and ce
rtainly no substitute for a woman’s brain.

  Levy’s essay did not name the Sex Myth explicitly, but it did circle and dismantle some of its core tenets. Levy critiqued the notion that, as she put it, “sex is the solution to every problem and the source of everything worth anything.” She was also critical of the idea that sex was intrinsically liberating. “Orgasms are swell,” she quipped, “but they are not the remedy to every injustice.”

  There are rumblings too of a reemergence of what some young women are calling “sex negative” feminism, suggesting that we may be headed for a break from an idea that has dominated popular feminism for the past twenty years: that in a world where women’s sexuality is repressed, a woman being sexual is an inherently powerful act. In 2013, xoJane.com published an opinion piece by young radical feminist Jillian Horowitz, arguing that “the way you fuck is not ‘private,’ apolitical, or outside the realm of critique.” In 2014, in an article for the Toast, asexual writer Julie Decker argued that one unintended consequence of the sexual revolution had been that people now assumed that “everyone who doesn’t celebrate sex or include it liberally in their lives is suffering from internalized oppression.”

  Decker wrote: “Until women’s sexual agency includes acceptance of those who abstain, we’ll continue to see it celebrated only if it manifests along normative lines to serve dudekind.” The same might be said of men’s sexual agency, or the agency of people whose gender identity doesn’t neatly fit into the male/female binary.

  I have trouble getting behind the idea of a “sex negative” future. As you and I know by now, sex is neither inherently good nor bad, neither intrinsically empowering nor oppressive. We don’t need to bottle it up and restrict its use in order to keep ourselves safe, but nor do we need to worship it in order to set ourselves free. And just as attempts to reframe sex as a transcendent, emancipating force haven’t made it free from cultural regulation, nor will problematizing it as a “negative” force eliminate the pressure to be sexual in particular, socially desirable ways.

  Dismantling the Sex Myth means seeking a previously unarticulated middle ground, one that is neither blindly affirming nor formidably fearful. It means embracing sex not as a source of transcendence or transformation, but as sociologist Stevi Jackson puts it, “as part of the fabric of routine day-to-day social life,” an act like any other.

  At first glance, the Sex Myth appears to make our relationship with sex richer, infusing it with meaning, imagination, and pleasure. But in practice, our cultural investment in sex—and its status as an act unlike any other—limits the ways in which we allow ourselves and other people to be sexual. It is not just the content of our current media discourses and popular culture that produce our sexual malaise, but the special importance that we invest in sexuality itself.

  Making sex the key to our selfhood renders it more emotionally powerful, particularly in the early stages of our sexual lives when we are still figuring out how we want to engage with sex and what role we want it to play in our lives and relationships. It positions sexuality as something that is fixed and unchangeable, rather than as something to be played with and explored.

  As we grow a little older and more secure in ourselves and our experiences, this anxiety starts to dissolve. Anecdotal evidence, at least, suggests that there are fewer sexual neurotics at the age of thirty-five than there are at twenty. But as the example of Pamela Haag, the “marital misfit” in chapter 3, shows, sexual disquiet can raise its head at any time we feel uncertain or otherwise off balance in our lives.

  We need an alternative way of speaking about sex, one that appreciates the role it plays in our lives without overhyping it as the most important thing. The next iteration of the sexual revolution needs to challenge the root of sexual power in our culture. And that will mean confronting the Sex Myth.

  It is time to forge a new brand of sexual freedom, a freedom that incorporates the right not to do as much as the right to do. A freedom in which our sexual choices and histories are not burdened with such an excess of significance, in which there is no stigma attached to the gay, the transgendered, or the sexually audacious, but in which there is equally no stigma attached to the asexual, the vanilla, or the carnally prudent.

  And then there is the ultimate freedom: the freedom in which these desires and experiences can be just one small part of the puzzle of who each of us is, instead of the load that defines us.

  It is we who are responsible for creating the future. We are creating it already, in the things we say, do, and choose to believe. The Sex Myth may be powerful, but we have the ability to dismantle it. You just need to cast off the stories and the symbolism, and let yourself be.

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you to everyone who reached out to me to be interviewed for this book: for your honesty, your hospitality, and your perfect turns of phrase that alternate between incisive, heartfelt, and hilarious. After spending years mulling over your words, many of you feel like friends to me. And it was your enthusiasm for the ideas in this book that buoyed me when writing it was tough.

  Thank you to Rebecca Friedman, for being the first person I met whose dreams for The Sex Myth were as big as my own. To Karyn Marcus, for seeing its potential, and to Sydney Tanigawa, whose expert guidance helped me to achieve that potential. To Brooke Warner, who put me through the wringer to create a “bulletproof” proposal, and to Kate Crawford, for teaching me to HTFU. Each one of you has made me a clearer thinker and a better writer.

  Thank you to all the friends, family, and colleagues who gave feedback on early drafts, brainstormed ideas, listened to me vent, or provided support in some other way. Given that this book has spanned seven years from conception to completion, there are a lot of you! Thanks to Akshay Shanker, Anna Rose, Anna Samson, Anna Sussman, Autumn Whitefield-Madrano, Bethany Peterson, BJ Jackson, Cate Blake, Catharine Lumby, Charles McPhederan, Chloe Angyal, Elena Rossini, Elisha London, Emerald Fitzgerald, Eric Anderson, Feona Attwood, Fiona Cox, Hannah Tattersall, Jeanne Ellard, Jordan Hewson, Judith Rowland, Julia Baird, Kate Fridkis, Kirsten Albrecht, Kylie Stott, Larissa Brown, Lauren Sams, Lena Chen, Lisa Wade, Matti Navellou, Monica Tan, Nicola Slawson, Nicole Comforto, Nina Funnell, Penny Crossley, Penny Sullivan, Rachel Rabbit White, Rosalind Gill, Samantha Rea, Sara Fagir, Sarah Christie, Sarah Jansen, Sarah Oakes, Sarah Tarca, Scarlett Harris, Symmie Swil, Tim Andrews, Tony Moore, Zach Alexopoulos, and more.

  Thank you to the writers and thinkers whose work has influenced and inspired my own: Ariel Levy, Gail Hawkes, Gayle Rubin, Ken Plummer, John Gagnon, Leonore Tiefer, Michael Kimmel, Michel Foucault, Naomi Wolf, Paula England, Stevi Jackson, and William Simon. What I have written is only possible because of what you have written before me.

  Thank you to my family for believing that “writer” was a viable career, and for being so unruffled by the topic I chose to write about.

  And finally, thank you to Simon. Without your love, generosity, and support in all ways, this book might never have happened. To the ideas that we will pursue together for many years to come.

  Questions for Readers

  To discuss with your friends, students, or book club, or to consider by yourself.

  Do you believe that sex is “an act unlike any other” in your culture? Why/why not? Is this status deserved?

  Which people, groups, or institutions do you think play the biggest role in perpetuating the Sex Myth?

  In what ways have you been affected by the Sex Myth? In what ways have you perpetuated it?

  How have you seen the Sex Myth play out among people you know?

  What role does sex play in shaping how you feel about yourself?

  Which sexual behaviors do you think are embraced as “normal” today? Which are treated as abnormal or problematic?

  Have you ever thought you were abnormal when it comes to your sex life? When? Why? How did it make you feel?

  How do the conversations we have about sex help to shape our ideas of how we should be sexually?

&
nbsp; How does the Sex Myth play out differently for men and for women? For gay people and straight people? For people of different races, economic classes, or religious backgrounds?

  How are our experiences of sex shaped by social and cultural factors? How are they shaped by biology?

  How is sex connected to our ideas about what it means to be successful?

  What is the relationship between the Sex Myth and consumer culture?

  What are the differences in the ways that conservatives and progressives talk about sex? What are the similarities?

  In chapter 1, Rachel argues that “sex doesn’t need to be actively suppressed in order to be controlled.” Do you agree? How is sex regulated today?

  What actions can you take in your own life to combat the Sex Myth?

  About the Author

  © BEOWULF SHEEHAN

  Rachel Hills is an Australian journalist living in New York City. As in The Sex Myth, her writing deals with big ideas in gender, sociology, and popular culture in ways that are accessible and relatable. Her work has been published widely both in print and online, in publications including Vogue, Cosmopolitan, the Atlantic, Time, the New Republic, New York, the Sydney Morning Herald, and many others.

  Rachel’s blog, Musings of an Inappropriate Woman (RachelHills.tumblr.com), has more than one hundred thousand subscribers spanning the globe. You can connect with her on Twitter at @rachelhills, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/rachelhillswriter, or sign up to receive occasional letters from her at www.tinyletter.com/rachelhills.