SPEAKING ABOUT SEX — HONESTLY

In our society, there is both too much and too little talk about sex. The way sex is disembodied in advertising and in the media often makes us think there’s just too much of it. Too many commercials for Viagra or Cialis, too many sitcoms with off-color jokes on at the hour the kids are watching and too many harsh references to sex on radio shows when the alarm goes off in the morning. On the other hand, there is also way too little talk about the complex issues or sexuality and relationships or the intersection of sexism and racism or the constant misunderstandings of child sexual abuse. For parents, policy makers and progressive people, there needs to be more softness and depth to our public and private discourse on sex.

Too often, we understand ideas from their dark sides first. For sexual issues to be discussed, it seems they must either be illicit, traumatizing, abusive, or disconnected. The term sexual honesty is seen mostly through its antithesis. The dark side of sexuality is the dishonesty which comes form duplicity, faithlessness, infidelity, deviousness, deceit, guile, and cunning. Why is adulteration such a common word in our language? These concerns come up in the public as well as the private discourse about sex.

When we speak of honesty, we think of truth, principles, ethical behavior, goodness, and completeness. When we integrate it with the word sexual, it becomes clearer how we are using the terms in harmony. Words like intimacy, loving, erotic, sensual, carnal, genital, and libido come to mind. Sexual honesty is the integration of intimacy with truth, love with principles, ethics with libido, goodness with eroticism.

Sexual honesty is the ability to connect our principles with our sexuality.
It is eroticism with truth, love with ethics, intimacy with honor.
To thine own self and spirit be true.