Beyond Pregnancy and Penetration

Redefining sex for the next generation

Oct 04, 2023

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Last summer, I read an interview with Ruby Warrington, author of Women Without Kids. In her book, she unpacks how we can make room in our society for the choice some women make not to procreate. She’s even positing a new term: areproductive, as well as the concept that the desire for motherhood can be a spectrum. The book calls for “a total reimagining of our sexual selves.” In her interview with Mary Katharine Tramontana in The New York Times, she says this:

“Rather than a biological imperative, what if human sexual expression was primarily about well-being, fulfillment, connection, relaxation ‌— pleasure ‌— and sex as procreation a conscious choice? What if religious and cultural heteropatriarchal ideology about sex had never existed? If human beings had been given permission to engage with sexuality in whatever ways felt good.”

Her comment made me wonder:

What if the presumption of motherhood stems from the way we introduce sex to our children?

Think about it. Sex is still primarily introduced to children as something that happens to “make a baby,” despite the fact that most of the time, sex is not aiming to be a procreative act. Because of this, sex is also often first described as a heterosexual act: penis into vagina, release of sperm, sperm meets egg, fertilized egg turns into baby. But that is a very small percentage of sex. Plus this description reinforces heteronormativity.

The problem with introducing sex as a reproductive act is:

It erases pleasure from the equation.
It erases queer sex.
It places the focus on penetration.
It presumes that if you become sexually active, eventually you will have a baby.

Thus the presumption of motherhood. Parenthood is just what adults do (along with sex!).

Now, perhaps the first time we mention sex to our children, it is because they have asked where babies come from. We’re just being honest! But much of how we have learned to describe sex even after those initial questions is baby focused rather than pleasure focused. Sometimes I think we’ve learned to introduce sex as a procreative act as a scare tactic. We hope that by emphasizing sex=pregnancy or sex=possible disease, we might stave off their hormonal inclinations for a few more years.

But this approach is destructive for a multitude of reasons.

If we were honest with our children about what sex is from the start, we might frame it this way:

Sex is a way to feel good.

You can enjoy sex on your own, making yourself feel good. You can enjoy sex with other people, exploring together how to experience pleasure. There are so many different ways to have sex and enjoy sexual feelings.

Do you see what the common denominator is? Pleasure. Not penetration. And not pregnancy.

When we focus on SEX=PREGNANCY, we miss the mark. We make sex something it is not.

Pregnancy is a by-product of sex. It is a consequence, not always a reason. Now yes, sometimes sex is solely embarked upon to make a baby. But again, that is a small percentage of sex.

If we can separate sex from its overidentification with pregnancy when we are first taught about the act, we might open up the spectrum of motherhood and make it seem more like a conscious choice rather than an inevitability. And by tuning back into what sex is for, pleasure, women can learn to be active participants, rather than simple receptables.

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Our current sex education is what Esther Perel calls “a public health crisis” in the video I link below. Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study featured Queering Sex Ed last year, a helpful start. Peggy Orenstein wrote about the work of Charis Denisen and Jen Devine in her book Girls & Sex. This is tricky terrain. Many people think that sex education should only come from parents. But we don’t know how to talk about sex ourselves, as a society, as grownups, let alone with our children. Kids don’t want to hear about sex from their parents which is why sex ed in schools is often the only real sexual education children get (apart from the internet, sigh). But too often, sex ed is an afterthought, something no one really wants to tackle. A begrudging assignment to get through as quickly as possible so we can move on to better, more comfortable subjects.

Are they still segregating genders for the puberty talk? If so, this is even more misguided. Not all girls have vulvas and not all boys have penises (and where do those who are non-binary go?). Separating genders prevents us from learning about how every body works. Why shouldn’t girls with vulvas understand what it means to have an erection? Why shouldn’t boys with penises understand what menstruation is? Especially if they might be partnered with a person of the opposite sex, or go into the field of medicine, it seems like we should know how all bodies work to increase our empathy and understanding.

Imagine if we were introduced to sex in a different way. If when we learned about sex, we heard about pleasure, not penetration, exploration not implantation. What would it have meant for us as women to be introduced to sex not as something that happens to make a baby but a way to discover how we can make ourselves feel good? If that were the focus from the very start, then anything that did not feel good would not equal sex. It would allow girls to be more active participants in their own sex lives, to feel entitled to a sense of agency and participation and pleasure rather being passive vessels for seed.

It might sound, something like this…

Sex is sometimes an aspect of adult life. It is something that you can do with another person to feel good. There are also ways to feel good sexually on your own. That is traditionally called masturbation. It can also be called self-pleasure.
Pleasure is a key part of the human experience. You can make yourself feel good right now by softly stroking your own arm. That may feel kind of tickly and warm. That is your body experiencing pleasure. That may not feel good to you. That’s because everybody enjoys different things. Pleasure does not always mean sexual pleasure. Pleasure is defined as “a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment.” You feel pleasure when it’s a beautiful day and there’s a nice breeze or when the sun warms your skin. You feel pleasure when you eat something delicious. You feel pleasure when you curl up on the couch with your dog and snuggle. You feel pleasure when your favorite song comes on the radio.
Our bodies were made to feel pleasure. And sex is another way to experience pleasure once you go through puberty. For some people, they feel sexual pleasure through their penis. For others, they feel pleasure via their clitoris, a specific part of people who have vulvas. There are a million different ways you can feel sexual pleasure, apart from your genitals. Some people aren’t interested in sharing sexual feelings with others. Those people are sometimes called asexual. But for others, they may develop romantic and sometimes sexual feelings towards another person. Then they can choose to act on those feelings. Often it begins with kissing. But then there are a number of actions that can stem from there. Sometimes those actions lead to an orgasm for one or both people.
Orgasm is a feeling of intense pleasure that culminates in ejaculation for a person with a penis. For people with vulvas, there is not always an outward sign. For many people, they want to have an orgasm if they choose to have sex. But it doesn’t always happen. And that’s okay.
If you choose to have sex with a person of the opposite sex, you must take precautions to not get pregnant. Because guess what? In addition to being an experience you can share with another person that feels good and creates a strong feeling of connection, sex is also often how babies are made. Sometimes people will have sex specifically for this purpose. When sperm is released from a penis via ejaculation and the sperm connects with an egg that is in a uterus, this is called fertilization. The fertilized egg implants in a uterus and then becomes an embryo. That embryo can develop into a baby.
You can also make a baby without having sex. You just need an egg, sperm, and a chance for those two to meet. Sometimes this happens in a laboratory and the embryo is then implanted into a person with a uterus. The process of having a baby without sex is called in vitro fertilization.
There is not always an egg in the uterus for the sperm to find. People with vulvas only have an egg in their uterus six days a month. If that egg is not fertilized during this time, it is flushed out of the body along with other fluids in what is known as menstruation, or having a period. This is a key part of puberty for people born with vulvas. Once they get their first period, it means that if they were to engage in sexual intercourse with a person with a penis, they could get pregnant.
In order to prevent creating a baby through the act of sex, the person with a penis wears a condom. This keeps the sperm contained upon ejaculation so that there is a very small chance of creating a pregnancy.
A condom is also used to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Thus any time a person with a penis plans to put their penis into another person, they should wear a condom. This is called safe sex.
There are a lot of different ways you can have sex that does not create a baby. The only kind of sex where a baby can be made is if a penis goes into a vagina.
Sex is something you can choose to share with someone else, or not. We should not have sex with other people because they want to, but we do not. We should not have sex to maintain a relationship. Sex is something that should always be entered into willingly, not because other people want you to, or because you feel like you should. Some people have active sex lives. Other people don’t. All ways of being are okay.
Some people call this practice of making sure the other person wants to consent. This is important. In fact, it is illegal to make someone do something sexually that they do not want to do. At any point, someone can change their mind and decide they no longer want to continue in the sexual activity. This is quite normal. You are the only authority on what feels good to your body, so if something stops feeling good, you are allowed to speak up and say so, and in fact, you should. This is why many people believe it is best to only engage in sexual activity with someone you know, trust, and love. So that you feel comfortable speaking up about what feels good and what doesn’t. However, other people learn to have these conversations even with people they have just met. It just depends. But communication is key to having a good, pleasurable sexual experience.
You may hear a lot of different things about when people should have sex. Some religions believe that sex should only happen between people who are married. Other people believe you should only have sex once you are in love. This is a very personal decision that is often tied with your, or your family’s, values. People’s opinions on these values can change over time. In fact, it used to be quite common that people assumed you would wait to have sex until you were married and that sex should only be enjoyed if you were trying to have a baby. People no longer believe this (although some people do).
Figuring out what you believe about sex, who you’re attracted to, or what decisions you want to make, will take time. There is no rush. Talk to people you trust, rather than turning to information on the internet.

Now, I am not a sex educator, I’m just a writer who uses her imagination to try and envision new ways of doing things. I’m trying to make room for all experiences in that conversation, rather than the very small picture we currently paint about what sex is and who should be having it. I’m trying to be expansive about all the different ways there are to live, including the various ways you make a baby. I’m trying to make room for sex with parenthood as an asterisk, not the whole kit and caboodle. So we can chose motherhood, rather than feel like it is an inevitability to be a woman, and a human.

It all goes back to this question from Warrington: What if religious and cultural heteropatriarchal ideology about sex had never existed?

What if, indeed. We would no longer tie sex to pregnancy, and therefore no longer presume parenthood must be in our future if we hope to have sex. We would no longer obsess over virginity, a false concept that posits that the only “real” sex is the kind with penetration with a penis. We would focus on pleasure, and stop avoiding the fact that feeling good is one of the main reasons we have sex. We would stop centering men and erections and ejaculation and focus on the experiences of all people.

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