Our Bodies, Ourselves (32 page)

Francesca:
I am approaching forty-nine and have not been in a relationship for more than twenty years. Having never been married, I often now truly wonder if marriage is something I desire. With aging for me comes a sense that I will experience an increased sense of freedom and exploration in this phase of my life. I am now more interested in making intimate connections that have nothing to do with sex before the possibility of sex occurs.

Jordan:
I've noticed that as I have grown older, I've gotten a lot less tolerant of, well, to put it frankly, bullshit. When I was younger, I had more of a tendency to be accepting of things that I would find unacceptable now; I would shrink myself to become smaller and less out-spoken, for example, and the opinions of the friends of a partner were really important to me. Now I don't really care what people might think of me, and I won't compromise myself. If I have a partner who does or says something I disagree with, I say so, bluntly. I don't stay silent and seethe. And I'm much more choosy about partners in the first place. I don't like to use the word
“settle,” because it has some bad connotations, but I won't overlook things that I know will become deal breakers later on like I used to do.

I think that this has happened because I've grown into myself much more. I'm perfectly comfortable being alone (as I am now) and prefer it to being in a relationship that doesn't make me happy.

Mags:
As I have grown older, I have explored outside the norm. I have been with other women because of a curiosity that I have had since I was younger, but due to the home I was raised in, it was not acceptable to love another person of the same sex. Unfortunately, I do not feel comfortable enough to talk this over with my family because of them being so judgmental and thinking that same-sex relationships are [for] people who are confused or because they were in a bad relationship.

Sophia:
Now that my husband and I are approaching our fifties and looking at being empty nesters, we find that we are rediscovering each other in different ways. We don't have the energy or the bodies we had when we were younger. We aren't moving around because of career choices. Our relationship has grown and matured. We are definitely more relaxed with each other and our lives. We enjoy each other's touch and caress, and reach climax or orgasm slower, and sometimes experience it longer. We don't feel as though we have to do everything together as a couple, but we enjoy being a couple. I am glad we are growing old together.

Cecilia:
When
Our Bodies, Ourselves
first appeared, I learned to think about my about my body as being sexual. The idea of taking a mirror to see what I looked like “down there” was literally revolutionary. Each year I've gotten older and wiser—and sexier. Now, at sixty-three, I have to begin to think about the next twenty-plus years when the sexy parts of our bodies lose their form. In the past six months I had a startling body change. I lost a lot of weight very fast, and at the same time suffered nearly crippling muscle loss due to a statin drug. My strong, fit, curvy body—one I was proud of—suddenly had loose, wrinkled, empty skin hanging all over it. It was painful to roll over in bed; raising my arms or bending my knees was too uncomfortable to do if I was trying to find physical pleasure.

My husband was wonderful about it, truly concerned about my health and apparently able to get past whatever the visual experience was so that I never felt any hesitation from him about physical intimacy. This month my health has returned; I'm able to exercise, I'm gaining strength, and I think the skin will tighten up to some degree over the next year. But mine will never be a middle-aged body again.

And I have become fascinated by it. Just to get to know it better, I've started taking photographs of my naked self in the mirror—close-ups of the wrinkles, side shots where my chest is nearly flat and my once whistle-inducing ass has disappeared. I don't dislike it, probably because I came into the change with a contented attitude about myself, but it definitely is an adjustment for both my husband and me. My sexuality hasn't diminished, but I think to look at me, one would assume a considerably lower sex drive than I have. My husband says although there is less of me, I feel much the same. I don't quite believe that, but if his senses do, I'm not going to interfere.

I'm also very reassured by this because I can now imagine our physical life as an elderly couple and I can imagine how it will be fulfilling. And what a luxury it is, as I get older, to enjoy the freedom of not feeling I have to work, work, work at everything—just enjoy what I am.

Nina:
I had this idea that I would be married by twenty-five and on my first baby by twenty-eight.
I am twenty-five right now and I have been single for the last six years. I used to beat myself up for it, but my mom reminded me of all I have accomplished in my twenty-five years. I feel more equipped now to emotionally handle the kind of relationship I want. I don't think it's an issue of an accepted time line. I think it's up to each individual to determine which time line is good for them.

Faith:
As a young person, I feel that when you meet someone who is attracted to you and you are attracted to, you're supposed to instantly act on that physically. This is the feeling I get through dating and talking to friends on college campuses, at any rate. I've always found the whole thing really confusing. For a nontraditional person, I consider myself very traditional when it comes to dating. Mostly, this is just because I like dating. I like the “getting-to-know-you” parts, I like the awkwardness, I like the suspense. However, now it seems more and more like “hanging out” is replacing dating, and there's some sort of sexual expectation that comes with just hanging out in someone's apartment.

Nasir:
I agree. There was a sexual time line in my teens and a relationship time line once I hit my midtwenties. The sexual time line to me was more subtle in the sense that you kinda knew where you fit in relation to others your age, but not really, because people lied about how sexually active they were. As for the relationship time line, I feel like I'm way ahead of schedule, being married at twenty-eight. My plan was to start thinking about marriage at thirty, and hopefully be married before thirty-five.

Jaime:
My mother is so convinced I'll get married and have kids, though I keep informing her it's not happening. My grandmother (mom's mom) passed last fall, and after the funeral, my mom sorta gave me Grandma's wedding and engagement rings (I'm the oldest granddaughter). That is, she told me that I would get them when I got married. I reminded her it's not happening and suggested that I might have them at some set age if I was then still unmarried. Since then my mom has said I could have the wedding band now and the engagement ring when I get engaged. Which is an improvement.

Lola:
As I get older, I also notice that being poly and queer—both identifying as such and being perceived as such—is getting paradoxically both harder and easier. It's getting harder because there is more of a push to get “on the track”—one partner, long term, preferably opposite gendered, engaged in three years, married a year after that, kids within five years after that. It's getting easier for two reasons. First, well, I stand out more. A lot more. In some ways I feel like I'm going to be the last woman standing and I'm afraid that people are going to start yelling louder for me to grow up and get heterosexual and monogamous. Second, and this is more of a positive, I am starting, iota by iota, to figure out who I am, and feel more strength to be that person.

CHAPTER 6
Social Influences on Sexuality

S
omething I really love about sex is the way it makes me feel alive and at home in my body…. It's kind of amazing to realize how much pleasure I can experience in this body.

Sexuality is a state of being, a way of experiencing and giving pleasure to ourselves and others. It has the potential to be a powerful and positive force, deepening our most intimate connections; it also can be a source of great pain. Not everyone has, or wants, sexual feelings. This, too, is part of the range of experiences.

This chapter looks at how sexuality develops through individual desire as well as social and cultural influences. It includes the voices of many women who have shared their diverse experiences around sex and sexuality.

What influences sexuality? Nearly everything. Child-rearing practices, government policies, religion, media images, pharmaceutical companies, drug advertisements, violence, and sexual abuse—all these affect how we experience sexuality. Stereotypes based on race, class, gender and gender identity, age, relationship status, disability, and sexual orientation also play a role. Understanding the social and personal influences on our sexuality can help us claim our right to pleasure.

Our sexual desires may reflect social influences and contradictions. For example, a particular sexual act may feel affirming in one situation but degrading in another. You might think someone whistling at you on the street is crude but also enjoy the attention. Or you might fantasize about sexual acts you've been told, or believe, are taboo. It's not uncommon to feel conflicted about what you want sexually. Sometimes it takes time and experience to know what we want and how and when to set boundaries.

In an ideal world, we would all grow up with adults who talk comfortably and openly about sex and respect our boundaries. If we learn to think of sex as bad and shameful, or if we experience childhood sexual abuse or violence, it may take years of positive experiences later on to heal the relationship with our bodies and sex.

Most of us who experience or are assigned a female gender learn at a young age that we are supposed to make ourselves beautiful and sexy in order to become objects of (boys') desire—but not to enjoy our bodies, not to have desires ourselves. We may come to fear that having desires will automatically lead us into risky sexual behaviors that will, in turn, lead to unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, or sexual assault.

© Maaike Bernstrom

These fears are instilled in us by a culture that sees female sexuality as dangerous and dirty. When we become aware of our desires, we are in a better position to choose whether and how to act on them, and to protect ourselves from risks.

The term “virginity” doesn't mean anything, really, but people still use the word like we all know what it means.

Cultural notions of virginity have long shaped sexual attitudes and practices for young women on the verge of exploring sex. A virgin is most commonly considered someone who hasn't had sex—heterosexual intercourse, specifically.