When I was 16, I decided to do my science class project on human sexuality. I drafted surveys regarding what men and women found sexuality attractive and I passed it out to each of my schoolmates, picking up the answered surveys red-faced and embarrassed. The survey answers were anonymous, and I didn’t reveal any personal details of my own sexual (in)experience, and yet I felt a little, well, dirty.
My entire life sex has always been this core idea I’ve gravitated towards. It’s something that has always made sense in my mind. Everything about it just clicks. Which is why, at the same time, sex as a concept was always so weird for me. Because, while I’ve always had this kinship with it, many others I know are so uncomfortable with the topic, that it made me uncomfortable.
I think sex is by far one of the most beautiful things in this world ever. There’s nothing like sharing that level of intimacy with one you love, or even just experimenting and having fun with a short-term partner. And yet for some reason people don’t want to talk about it. We can plaster the idea of sex all over our advertisements and radio-singles, but when it comes to actually opening up and revealing about ourselves and discussing the topic, things get awkward.
It’s understandable though. Opening up like that leaves many of us feeling vulnerable and exposed. You have barely come to terms with your own sexual desires, how can you even begin to tell someone else what you think? What if they think you’re a freak? What if they tell everyone your dirty sexual fetishes?
Ten years have gone by since I did that science project and not much has changed about me. Human sexuality still fascinates me; reading about it, writing about it, talking about it. That’s why I started AreYouShaved.net. It’s time we let down our guards and talk free and honest about what we like and dislike, and what we expect from one another.
I love the fact that friends ask me for advice on how to go down on their men, or anonymous sexual gourmandizers write to ask me how to masturbate. The questions are there, now it’s just a matter of getting the conversation going.
That’s what the sex-positive movement is all about. Recognizing the beauty that is sex, and not being ashamed to discuss and education ourselves on the topic. Sex is more than just the act of penetration, it’s an entity mixed with a million shades of gray, a union of love and lust, power and submission, strength and vulnerability, purity and filth.
— melysa, AreYouShaved.com
Comments
I drew a penis on a stick mans forehead in 9th grade and put it on my teachers desk. She never did figure out it was me.