Dismantling Female Sexual Shame and Stigma

Let’s speak more broadly. This is a personal blog about parental hesitation, but anyone reading this understands where babies come from. So . . . let’s talk about sex! It certainly sparks attention.

I’ve been grappling with the Puritan moral roots underpinning white America since I was in high school. It is unbearably hypocritical that sexual activity is shamed and stigmatized (for both males and females) but child rearing is revered as the holiest duty of women. It’s the Madonna/Whore complex. Untouchable, immaculately conceiving mothers, or Earthly, sexually reproducing “whores”. There is no in-between. And more than anything, there is nothing more sinful than a woman who enjoys sex. Just ask Eve.

Now, I fully understand why parents tell their kids to wait. They want to protect them from having sex too early, when they aren’t emotionally, physically, financially, or mentally prepared for child rearing. But that’s just it: we fear the consequences of sex, not necessarily the sex itself. But instead of teaching our teenagers how to engage safely, we make it an altogether taboo subject. This has always lead to (and will continue to lead to) irresponsible couplings resulting in unwanted pregnancies. Ignorance leads to mistakes. Even worse, religious indoctrination leads to outright denial of tools (i.e. birth control of all varieties) meant to reduce disease and prevent abortions. And quick side note: I cringe when I hear people say things like, “God decides when you have children.” Like, no. God gave us free will to shape our own destinies. Having unprotected sex is a choice, and pregnancy is the inevitable result for those with functioning reproductive systems. This is biology. This is the law of sexual reproduction. I understand why eager expecting mothers consider their babies gifts from God, but certainly the women who have been raped wouldn’t see it that way. Likewise, barren women shouldn’t feel as though God is punishing them. Reproductive systems go wrong for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with one’s morality. To frame pregnancy in terms of divine intervention is all around unfair.

Society has to do a better job thoroughly educating our young people on how to have consensual, protected sex. Are we doing that? No. We most certainly are not. With a few household exceptions, in this country we shame teenagers into feeling dirty and sinful for having normal hormonal urges. We scold them into keeping their hands to themselves. Threaten them with punishment. Threaten them with eternal damnation. Whatever it takes to scare the desire right out of them. But fear-inducing, bullying tactics will always remain as ineffective as abstinence-only education: a waste of time that leads to lifelong regret.

(As a quick aside, I’d like to mention that I was blessed to have a very open, honest relationship with both of my parents. My father is a urologist and has been for more than 30 years. So, whenever I had questions about male reproductive organs, I could count on him to give me a thorough text-book answer. I went to my mother for all questions regarding female reproductive organs, as well as the more nuanced realm of emotions surrounding sex. Both of my parents gave me good advice. They never once shamed me or made me feel bad for being curious about sex. Instead, they gave me the tools and knowledge I needed to make good choices for myself and my future. Not everyone has this type of relationship with their parents. And even if they had a fairly healthy relationship with their life-givers, it might still have been too taboo or embarrassing to discuss sex. I cannot overemphasize how lucky I am to have parents like mine, who gave me the resources I needed when I needed them, without judgement or condemnation. My privilege exists in many forms.)

More recently I’ve been applying a variation of this sexual shaming lens to my own life, and to this particular stage of my life. The shame didn’t come from my parents, but from other moral figures in my life. It should probably be apparent from the way that I write that I had sex before I was ever married. GASP! I know. Sinful, shameful, I’m a ho, etc. But the truth is, having sexual freedom allowed me to find my voice, my agency, my boundaries, and my sexually-specific values in a partner. I was lucky enough to have good relationships that allowed me to learn and grow in safe environments and with people who genuinely, deeply cared about me and my happiness. Mid-paragraph trigger-warning for sexual violence! Yes, I was raped in college and yes, people who know me quite well are already aware of this. So, I undeniably carry emotional baggage about consent and bodily autonomy just like most of the ladies I know. I am most assuredly not alone in carrying this burden.

All that being said, even though I had sexual relationships prior to finding the most wonderful husband and best friend I could have ever hoped for, I’m tremendously relieved and grateful that I’ve never been pregnant. I didn’t get saddled with a lifelong commitment gestating and raising the spawn of an abusive asshole. I didn’t get trapped in an unhappy marriage raising kids with a checked-out, lack-luster partner. I didn’t have my agency taken away from me by any man or any embryo. Millions of women are not so lucky.

It should go without saying that when we stigmatize sex, remove or restrict access to birth control, and then specifically ostracize women who dare take their destinies back into their hands by terminating unwanted pregnancies, we break down as a functioning society. We can’t reasonably treat our females like second-class citizens with fewer rights than cadavers, fewer rights than gun owners, and expect to keep up any semblance of civilization. To strip women of the right to keep their blood and their cells to themselves, to force them to grow traumatizing fetuses using their own nutrients and energy, is to subjugate half the population to sexual slavery. Calling it anything less than this minimizes its severity.

In my opinion, subjecting women to sexual slavery actually diminishes the sanctity of life. What do I mean? Well, I’ll use myself as an example. I have waited and waited, and seriously doubted that I would ever find a suitable husband/man that I deemed worthy of fatherhood. I was convinced I would become a spinster just from my sheer stubbornness and unreasonable standards. But now that I’m nearing my 30th birthday, now that I’ve found a partner who has loved and cherished me through thick and thin and would willingly and steadfastly stand by my side through all of the ups and downs of parenthood, now that I have fulfilled several lifelong dreams of cross-country travel, adventures in Alaska, and endeavors in creative and non-fiction writing, now that I have a stable income in a job within my field, I am at last mentally and emotionally ready to attempt conception. I have no nagging desire to spontaneously travel, no lingering projects haunting me. I just have an abundance of maternal energy and love waiting to be showered upon the child that may one day be borne of mine and Jack’s own flesh. I didn’t “save my vagina for marriage” (which is an altogether stupid and unrealistic request) but I did save my uterus for true love, and I think that that’s more important. I have waited until the opportune time to start a family and to serve it in perpetuity. This behavior protects and upholds the sanctity of life.

Meanwhile, due to our barbaric reproductive policies, any male-female coupling might result in a life that will go unloved, unfed, un-housed, dumped into foster care. Refusing to care for a baby after it is “Earth-side” is the complete and utter opposite of protecting the sanctity of life.

Wouldn’t it be better for individuals and for society as a whole if ALL prospective parents were working from the same strong, well-weaved safety net that I am so privileged and fortunate to have? What if every parent had embarked on their own soul’s journey and acquired fulfilling work that paid them enough to thrive PRIOR to producing biological offspring? And if it seems like a pipe dream to have every couple starting from a solid foundation, then that defeatist mentality only reveals the deep and pervasive cracks in how we relate to one another on a personal, intimate level, and how we relate to the generations that will come after us.

Time and time again we prove that we discount the future and we value our grandchildren less than we value our own unbridled, unreasonable freedom in the present moment. We prove this with our reproductive policies, with our lack of action on climate change, and with our vicious defense of unfettered gun rights.

I haven’t been to church since I was fourteen years old. But I pray every night: Heaven help us all. Free us from our own violence and ignorance. Help us reassess how we value existing human life and help us shed our stubborn unwillingness to provide for the children we forced women to birth. This culture of sexual shame and female sexual enslavement cannot be sustained. We all deserve better.

My Mother and I Finally See Eye-to-Eye

Yes, the mother-daughter relationship is by its very nature complex. While I adore my own mother, she does often vex and challenge me. My fear and torment over whether or not to become a mother myself always confused her. During graduate school I called her often, usually when I was walking to my next engagement. Being steeped in the global tragedy of climate change at a deeply thorough, academic level really shook me to my core.

“What kind of future are we building here?” I’d cry to my mum. “Everything aspect of our society is unsustainable and I can’t possibly fix anything by myself.” At that point in time, I didn’t know whether or not Jack and I would wed. We’d been apart for months and the idea of child-rearing was still just an intellectual exercise, but one that weighed me down the more I thought about our planetary peril.

“Your time will come. I know you’re scared, but you’ll know which decision is right for you when you reach that bridge. Heck, I waited until the Gulf War was over before we conceived you. I understand.”

“But you really don’t, mom. Foreign wars have next to no impact on day-to-day domestic affairs in the U.S. You weren’t in any real danger back then and neither was I. Global warming is different. War and peace can be waged and forged with political will. Meanwhile, there’s no political will to cut our carbon emissions. We’re killing our future-children today, right now, by refusing to decarbonize our energy infrastructure.”

She’d argue back, change the subject, or fall silent. This went on for months. We’d repeat the conversation just for the fact that I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t think or speak of anything else. If I couldn’t convince my own parents to vote for policies that will slow down and mitigate our own hastening doom, how could I convince anyone else in my life to take the threat seriously? Just as I’ve written before, parents want what’s best for their children, but more than that they want grandchildren. Once you reach a certain age, to produce anything less than a human child is to be viewed as less-than.

These phone calls took place back in 2018-2019. Just a few weeks ago, in mid-October 2021, my mother became the first family member to stay in our new house. We went sight-seeing and window-shopping, we ate delicious food, and we introduced her to our Trinity County friends. Overall, it was an excellent visit.

One night, over our second bottle of wine, my mother turned to me and said, “I finally understand why you don’t want children.”

I balked. “Well, I WANT kids, mom. But I don’t want them to starve to death. I don’t want us to run out of water where we live.”

She laid her hand on my arm. “Let me rephrase. I finally understand why you’re so hesitant to have children.”

“You do?” I asked skeptically.

“Yeah. I can feel it now. Everything is different. It’s tangible. Even I can’t ignore it. Massachusetts never used to get tornadoes and hurricanes and now we need to brace for them regularly. I hate snow, but that’s not why we’re getting less and less of it. Society is restless, hostile. It’s a dangerous time to be alive, just as it always has been, but I can feel it getting worse.”

I gaped in disbelief. At long last we were on the same page. I felt seen. I felt heard. I felt like I wasn’t crazy, wasn’t being shamed for the war between my heart and my brain, which only grows louder the older I get and the closer I creep to the end of my reproductive window.

I cried. As I so often do. “Then what do I do, mom? I’m doing everything I can and it’s only going to get worse.”

“Only you know the answer to that, Megan. I, for one, think that you would make a lovely mother some day. But I understand now why you might choose to live out your life with Jack without any kids to care for. I spend every waking minute worrying about my daughters even though they’re grown. To know what you know, to carry a burden that heavy, will undoubtedly strain your mind and your nervous system to its breaking point.”

Damn, mom. “I’ll feel selfish if I have kids.”

“But you will act selflessly once they’re born.”

“What if they hate me for bringing them into a collapsing world filled with death?”

“Even if Earth were perfectly stable and prosperous, you would always run the risk of having your children resent you. For whatever reason. Could be any reason at all. We all take that risk when we choose to bring a new family member into the world. Some families become alienated and estranged due to poor individual choices, some fall apart due to addiction and mental illness, some can’t even function on a basic level. The best you can do is work as a team with Jack to create a supportive, loving home. And I know you two are more than up to the task. I don’t think your fate is to be hated by your own sons or daughters.”

Ah, the platitudes we cling to in our darkest days. I wanted her to be right, still want her to be right. Everyone is moving forward with their lives as if the world as we know it isn’t literally ending. Babies everywhere. Babies galore. I barely scroll on Facebook anymore because it’s flooded with images of children I’ll most likely never meet. To be clear, I like seeing family portraits where my friends are presenting their newest family members. But so many photos are just of their children alone, and I feel weird looking at it because I come to Facebook to consume content generated by my adult friends and peers, not to consume images of children (yikes). The next chapter is beginning for so many people, the human population continues to boom, and all of it comes at the expense of the biodiversity upon which we depend for our own existence. Our happiness and comfort today will bring much suffering to those recently born before they even reach my present age (29).

And there are no answers.

I certainly have no answers.

People are going to bareback fuck until the end of time, regardless of whether or not they make decent parent material. What’s the harm, really, in gestating and birthing two more humans? Jack and I would work tirelessly to provide a happy life to our next generation. Isn’t that a good enough reason to take the plunge? But of course, multiply that thinking by a billion and here we all are. Too many mouths to feed, not enough land to grow food.

I am not a good writer. I’ve never claimed to be. I am “a writer” merely for the fact that I try to write regularly in the hopes that repetition will one day lead to true, masterful artistic expression. I don’t think hardly anyone reads these posts, and I don’t think they’re particularly interesting to anyone except me and a few select people, perhaps other young women fighting the same internal battle between mothering and not-mothering.

I don’t have enough life experience to offer wisdom, and I don’t have the talent to move people toward combatting global warming on a mass scale. All I have is this blog as a form of catharsis. But, for the first time since writing it, I can say that my mother is on my side. She sees the world through my eyes, sees the grimness of the future, and through all of it is still supportive of me and whatever decisions I might make.

The yearning for motherhood grows stronger all the time, despite myself. I can’t write a single one of these posts without crying through the entirety of my typing. I would love nothing more than to present a newborn baby to my own mother, so that she might hold him or her and say, “My baby has a baby.”

And until that day arrives, all I can afford to repeat to myself is, “You’ve got time. You’ve got time.”