Sexuality.

Pleasure and Contraception

By Cory Silverberg, About.com Guide April 25, 2011

It's time for another About.com Health blog carnival! There isn't a topic that sexuality doesn't connect well to, so I have to pick and choose which carnivals to attend, and which to skip (one can only eat so much virtual cotton candy, and last month I heard the tilt-a-whirl flew off it's track, which made me want to avoid the topic altogether). But when I found out that May was the Contraception carnival I couldn't resist.

If your sex life includes the possibility of unintended pregnancy you've probably worried about contraception more than once in your life. In fact many people spend their early sexually active years worrying about not getting pregnant, only to begin, twenty years later, to worry about how to get pregnant. The impact of all this anxiety and worry on people's sex lives is very real, and not very sexy.

Our public conversations about contraception are so fraught, in part, because our public conversations about sexuality are so limited. Try this exercise. First make a list of all the sexual activities you can think of (if you get stuck, here's a list to get you started). Next, make a list of all the possible combinations of genders of people you could have sex with. Finally, make a list of sexual activities you could engage in that have a remote chance of leading to pregnancy. Your first list could include thousands of items. Your second could have dozens (maybe hundreds) of options. Your third list would have one, or possibly two things on it.

So how come so much of our public discussion about sex is about birth control and how to either stop certain people from getting pregnant and help other people to get pregnant (it's a different blog carnival where we get to talk about which group is which, and who is pulling those particular strings)? One reason is that the first two lists are mostly about personal expression and pleasure, whereas the third list focuses on medical aspects of sex. The medical model of sexuality is the one most sexual health educators, public health experts, politicians, media makers, researchers, and just about everyone else who gets to have a say over your sexual life, are comfortable with.

And more often than not, when we talk about contraception we talk about it as if it is unrelated to pleasure or sexual identity. As if contraception is this unrelated medical thing we have to figure out, and then when we do, we're ready to be sexual. In fact, to the extent that fertility is part of your sexual reality, contraception is too. Imagine what conversations about contraception would be like if it were understood to be as much a part of our sexuality (in medical model lingo, as "natural a part of our sexuality") as fantasy, desire, lubrication, or orgasm?

Imagine a world where we gave equal weight to talking about other aspects of sexual health besides contraception and protection from sexually transmitted infections. What about a sex education industry that spoke to our sexual curiosities and desires as much as our sexual fears? If you like these ideas, try to have a conversation about contraception this week that is also a conversation about sexual pleasure and identity. See how it's different than the last conversation you had (with someone else or by yourself) about contraception. Even if contraception isn't a part of your sex life because getting pregnant isn't a possibility given the sex you're having and who you're having it with, try it with a friend who does care. They aren't that hard to find.

(source:sexuality.about.com)

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