Positive sexuality is something that has been oppressed by a number of things, including but not limited to religious, cultural, and psychological factors. The repression of humanity's inherent sexuality in the past was an artificial construct, intended to further divide us from our relatives, animals. Aside from this division, the dirtying of sexuality for women but not men is a construct by those who wish to force the perpetuity of the patriarchy. Sexuality should be a positive thing universally, and the sociological factors that currently sully sexuality�s allure should be dropped as the inaccurate dinosaurs they are.

Sexuality does not mean having sex with every single person you walk up to on the street, but can mean so many other things. Sexuality can be a reflection of how one imbues normal, everyday actions with sex, or it can be involved in how one directs relationships. The act of sex itself can be seen as a commodity, a physical way to show love, a way to gain power, or even as a conversational tool. Contrary to the way the patriarchy would have people think, women are not the only ones to exude, or even use their sexuality negatively. It only benefits those already in power to have people believe that one whole segment of people are the emotional beings, those that are the jezebels, those that need to be fulfilled, those who tempt innocent men into all other sorts of lewd and indecent acts. This is not a critique of just the institutions of American patriarchy, either. Anyone remember the myth of Pandora's box, or any of the other comparable myths in pre-common era civilizations?

Those who are not familiar, the myth of Pandora's box was that a deity created the first woman, Pandora, and gave her along with a box that the deity instructed the man never to open. I think we all know where the story is going by now, right? The woman, being naturally curious and unable to control her emotions, opens the box, leaving out all the evils to a world that until then did not know them. I don�t feel that I need to go into the status of women in practically every society up to today, but placing this negative spin on womankind is old hat, being done for thousands of years. What does this have to do with any discussion of sexuality that one might have?

Throughout mythology, woman has always been the bringer of negative things. This says much for the objectification of woman by mankind, as Pandora and her ilk are treated as something one can own, albeit imbued with bad luck. The choice to do what she wants with her body, the choice to be a sexual creature or imbue her actions with sexuality, was something that couldn't be truly taken away by men. Women could be beaten, they could be forced to bear children at an early age, but sexuality is something that is inborn, something that can not be physically taken away. So what does mankind do to ensure dominance in this field? They create all sorts of mores and cultural phenomena that originally demonized sexuality of all sorts, placing laws and regulations over women (e.g. dress codes, ability to work, complex arrangement of marriage systems).

To bring this dialogue into a 21st century frame, we have to look at the United States specifically. Here, horror to the "evil" kind of sexuality exuded by women is something that remains from our Puritanical legacy, tightly tied in with American morality. This is why a man can sleep with twenty people and be called a "stud" while a woman is called a "slut" if she sleeps with any number of people. We, as all sexes, sexualities, races, ages, handicaps, must do something to combat this holdover from a much earlier slice of society. We must debunk sexuality�s double nature and make it okay to make love, give kisses, be married, and to prostitute one�s self to whoever one chooses.

Change your mindframe, change your vocabulary. Jane may sleep with a lot of people, but she's not a slut. Bill may have sex a lot, but he is not a manwhore. Why impede with something that they decide to do themselves? When one uses harmful terminology to refer to one's sexual practices in a negative way, they are still creating a whole dialogue in which they are bashing people down just to raise themselves up. I've heard some of the most atrocious things come from the mouths of those who consider themselves "enlightened" and still don�t realize that when they say that someone is a slut/whore/whatever they are still committing a hate crime on a person. Just as hate crimes can be committed on those with differing ages, races, sexualities, impediments, they can be committed on anyone, anyone at all that has different ways of living their own life.