Note from Nicholas Ducote, HA Community Coordinator:
I have often wrestled with what I will tell my children (when my wife and I decide to have children) when they start becoming “sexually aware.” It’s easy for me, as a newly married twenty-five year old to critique the way I was raised.
I feel that this article by “Jef With One F,” recently published by the Houston Press, is one that I would pass on to my daughters when the time came.
It offers succinct, practical advice for sex and sexual relationships in the twenty-first century. The Houston Press gave me permission to provide an excerpt here on Homeschoolers Anonymous.
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10 Things I Plan to Tell My Daughter About Sex That Aren’t That Purity Movement Crap
By Jef With One F
Against my better judgment I’ve been doing a lot of reading on the purity movement. If you’ve never been exposed to it, then I’ll explain. The idea is basically that you, as a father, are supposed to serve as the sole male influence in your daughter’s life until she gets married. You “guard her heart (and vagina)” because only you can be trusted with it…
…Better writers than I, like Libby Anne, have tackled the subject in depth, and you should spend an afternoon reading her work. She went through it as a daughter of movement, though. I’m a dad, and I am perfectly aware that the sexual health of this child is going to be part of my job…
Here are the ten things I know I need to tell a modern girl about sex once she matures enough to roll her eyes throughout the conversation.
10. That sex is beautiful and fun as hell, but so is driving a car and a bunch of other things that come with responsibilities. You need to ask yourself if you can handle those. I knew I couldn’t be trusted with a car at 16, so I didn’t ask for one. Same with sex. I waited until I knew I was with someone that wouldn’t use me wrong and knew what they were doing. You shouldn’t be afraid of it, but you should respect its possible consequences, such a pregnancy, disease, and just the general mess that sometimes come from sleeping with someone you shouldn’t have.
9. That someone that feels the need to lie, trick, or force you into sex is never going to be the slightest bit interested in your enjoyment of it. You might as well be a gym sock as far as they’re concerned. Don’t be a trophy.
8. That you should never do anything that will make you hate yourself to gain another person’s approval. You are not defined by the approval of others, and anyone who says you are wants to control you. You are your own person with your own unique value to yourself.
7. Your body belongs to you. Anyone that doesn’t respect that is an enemy. Run if you can, fight if you can’t, and never let someone convince you asked for or deserved it if all else fails. If a person makes you feel that they can fire you or fail you in a class or something if you don’t return their affections then they are just a rapist that doesn’t like to go out. Leave and tell someone immediately, because if it wasn’t you it will be someone else…
Homeschoolers Anonymous 