[The tragic story of Elliot Rodger and his misogynistic path to murder in Santa Barbara should compel us to have a truthful conversation about sex ed and intimacy with our teens. It's time.]
By Jaclyn Friedman
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Credit: Madison Leigh Rose
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Most
sex education messages in the U.S.
Under this paradigm, women’s bodies are a means to an end for men, whether that end is physical gratification, validation of their masculinity, or both. For women, that means that sex may be about us, but it’s not for us. When you cut pleasure out of the sex ed equation, you cut out women’s humanity as well: if we sleep with men we’re sluts who are “asking for” sexual assault, and if we say no we’re cruel bitches, a crime which Elliot Rodger, the young man who murdered six people in Santa Barbara last Friday, and his ilk, see as punishable by death.
And that’s why, in the wake of this
particular massacre, it’s time to talk about sex.
Yes, I know the gunman appears to have struggled
with mental health issues and most people with mental health problems don’t
ever hurt anyone. But this tragedy shouldn’t be written off as the isolated
outburst of a madman. While Rodger’s killing spree was extreme and his situation
unique, we should note that he’s hardly the
first man to respond to sexual rejection with violence against women. He’s not even the first (or last) one
to do so this month.
So yeah, it’s time to talk about sex, because,
judging from his videos, Rodger was obsessed with “getting” it. That verb right
there, the one in quotes, is key. His last words before the rampage weren’t
about the desire to experience sexual intimacy with another, equally human
person. His rage erupted in part because he was “refused” something he felt
innately entitled to: namely, the bodies of women.
As someone who spends a lot of time with college
students discussing their sexual attitudes, none of that surprises me. It’s
just an extension of the constant message men receive that they’re only men if
they can “get some,” and equally ubiquitous warnings to women about the dangers
of “giving it up” without a real commitment, because (we’re told) our sexual
purity is the most valuable thing we have.
Those messages are at the heart of the misogynist
web sites Rodger frequented, and they’re all over Rodger’s videos and the
screed he left behind. But they’re also embedded in the way most of us learn
about sex, whether from church, media, or school-based sex education.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Let’s take a deep
breath and tell young people the whole truth about sex, not just the scary
parts. Shifting emphasis from how much sex we “get” or “give up” to instead
emphasize the quality and context of our sexual encounters will pay dividends
for everyone, even the majority of us who would never hurt someone else. When
we truly show up for our partners, we become better lovers. When we’re free to
decide when and how we want to be sexual with someone else, regardless of our
gender, we’re free to more fully enjoy the sex we do have. When we stop
treating sex like an accomplishment and start approaching it as a creative,
collaborative encounter with a fellow human being, we learn to expect more
satisfaction from our sex lives, and we increase our odds of getting it.
Obviously, it wasn’t the sexual culture alone that
drove Rodger to kill. Most of us who are exposed to these damaging messages
don’t stockpile weapons, let alone loose them on our community. But Rodger
himself was pretty clear that his beliefs about women and sex were a big part
of the fuel that caught fire inside of him. And it didn’t have to be that way.
What if instead young men like Rodger could grow up
learning that sex is about communication, not consumption, and that being a man
has nothing to do with your number. What if we all learned take care of each
other during sex rather than taking advantage? We’d find ourselves in a world that
doesn’t shame women (or men) for either being sexual or declining to be sexual,
because the important thing is that we’re free to decide what works for us.
It’s scary to propose changes to the sexual
culture. But ask yourself this: when the current paradigm leads to an epidemic of sexual assault, and to men
who don’t “get” the women they want gunning down strangers in the street, who
is being protected by the status quo? Of course no changes to sex education
will prevent people from feeling the sting of rejection. It can be immensely
painful to feel shut out of such a basic and profound human experience. But
when we talk frankly about sex, we can better prepare everyone to navigate the
downs as well as the ups. Besides vanishingly few sexually-rejected women hurt
another person over it. The kind of violence we saw in Santa Barbara comes not
from simple pain but from the toxic combination of pain and the belief that one
is entitled to be free of that pain, even when that freedom costs others their
lives. And that’s something we can — and must — change.
@ Time
