69293 - Singleness and Celibacy

[Emiliana]

http://theboard.byu.edu/questions/69293/

Can we all please, please, please disabuse ourselves of the notion that only men have sex drives? You're horny. I'm horny. We're all horny. What you choose to do about that is between yourself and your God, but it's nothing to feel guilty about. I spent so many years thinking there was something wrong with me because I was a woman with a high sex drive, and it is simply not true.

[NerdGirl]

Preach it, sister!

[UnluckyStuntman]

*fist pump*

[TheBlackSheep]

Testify!

[Marduk]

Booo! Hiss!

[krebscout]

*Make out!*

[Whistler]

and some of us are still sexually repressed. I didn't have any sex dreams that I could remember until after I got married...

[UffishThought]

I get amazingly frustrated by this, too. In the last chastity talk I heard, when the speaker explained that guys' sex drives are very strong, much stronger than girls', and so the women in the room probably can't understand how tempting it can be for guys to cross the line.

Way to make me feel like a freak of nature, since in all of my relationships I have been just as likely (if not more so) to be pushing boundaries as any of my boyfriends.

[Zedability]

I think this paradigm also undermines the guy's responsibility to stick to his own boundaries in relationships. I remember reading some Jeffery R Holland quote where he came out pretty strongly against this idea, but I can't find it :/

[Emiliana]

I get amazingly frustrated by this, too. In the last chastity talk I heard, when the speaker explained that guys' sex drives are very strong, much stronger than girls', and so the women in the room probably can't understand how tempting it can be for guys to cross the line.

Way to make me feel like a freak of nature, since in all of my relationships I have been just as likely (if not more so) to be pushing boundaries as any of my boyfriends.

Yeah, it's just not as easy to divide these things along gender lines as people make it out to be. Maybe it's marginally more likely for a woman to be sexually repressed than a man, because of either biological or (more likely) societal factors. Maybe it's marginally more likely for a man to be turned on all the time. But that doesn't mean that there's anything abnormal about it being the other way around.

(I'm preaching to the choir, though. It's pretty generally acknowledged that many of the chicks 'round here do, in fact, have quite healthy sex drives.)

[Portia]

There is so such a "mechanism" for women. Female masturbation exists, yo. What do you think all these 50 Shades readers are doing, knitting?

(If you're still confused You Know the Answer, Four words: Betty Draper. Washing Machine. I'll leave it at that.)

[yayfulness]

I believe the reader was referring to one that doesn't violate the Law of Chastity, though.

[Portia]

I believe the reader was referring to one that doesn't violate the Law of Chastity, though.

Wow, I missed that question. Wet dreams are like pornography? Wow. Just . . . wow. I have dreamed about having sex with a whole boatload of people I wouldn't pursue in real life (an early one, my high school friend's boyfreind). And this started back before I had touched elbows.

You said

How would you feel if some future boyfriend of yours decided he wanted to have a sexual relationship with you not because he loved you and wanted to share his whole self with you but simply because he wanted sex?

I would probably be skipping through the tulips. This sounds awesome to me. Not only are women sometimes more sexual, sometimes they're less emotionally intimate too.

(Not that I'm necessarily going to have an NSA relationship anytime soon, but I definitely would feel just fine about it. I don't like emotions.)

(Not saying she should masturbate either, but it exists, and was my first thought, quite frankly.)

[yayfulness]

Yeah, I recognized that that question may not have much of an impact on her. I figured it wouldn't hurt to include it, though.

[Portia]

Dang, all these board readers whose great temptation is getting a tat. It's like, "what do I have to sacrifice, Portia, to stay in the Church. The hot, no-strings-attached hookups with the gorgeous men who proposition you monthly and this would so get you thrown out of BYU faster than you can say 'HCO.'" I've been celibate before but I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to lock myself into a study room in the HBLL and never look at a man for 4 to 8 straight months or my resolve (not strong to begin with) will fail.

[UffishThought]

Speaking of pornography, this is another pet peeve of mine: I hate when Relief Society lessons on pornography are all about how women can be supportive of men trying to overcome addictions. Especially when I happen to know there are women in the room who have actual pornography addictions they're struggling with (and not just sappy romance novel addictions). I guess the teachers could be trying to make the lessons applicable to everyone in the room, but talking about pornography but refusing to acknowledge that it's applicable to women too strikes me as both insulting and damaging. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive because it's an issue several of my friends have had, but it seems like another frustrating symptom of pretending women have no sex drives.

[yayfulness]

They certainly don't "try to make the lessons applicable to everyone in the room" in that sense in Priesthood. We all get the same pornography lecture there. (In other words, bad excuse, if it is the excuse.)

[Portia]

Speaking of pornography, this is another pet peeve of mine: I hate when Relief Society lessons on pornography are all about how women can be supportive of men trying to overcome addictions. Especially when I happen to know there are women in the room who have actual pornography addictions they're struggling with (and not just sappy romance novel addictions). I guess the teachers could be trying to make the lessons applicable to everyone in the room, but talking about pornography but refusing to acknowledge that it's applicable to women too strikes me as both insulting and damaging. Maybe I'm just hypersensitive because it's an issue several of my friends have had, but it seems like another frustrating symptom of pretending women have no sex drives.

Yes, this may be a generational thing, but the attitude you describe is both stupid and wrong. The second counselor in the General R.S. Presidency actually spoke otherwise at a YSA retreat I attended. She talked about her OWN struggle (whether that was with body image, envy, or lust) when walking past magazine racks, and definitely framed it as a we-all-struggle-with-temptation.

[Marduk]

Yeah, nocturnal emissions don't even put a dent in it. She's got no idea what it is like. (The same goes for me, too, obviously. Male and female sex drives are like apples and oranges, in my opinion. I understand the female sex drive in theory, but I can't say what it'd be like to live with it.)

[Whistler]

I guess I felt like a lot of you gals do... that I had just as much sex drive as any man! But now that I'm married, I find that I'm not as interested in sex as my husband is. Maybe I just wanted what I couldn't have?