Untangling the Knots of The Sex Talk for women

Sex. So, what runs in your mind when you hear the word Sex. What has come to your mind right now? Are you looking down, are you blushing, have you reduced your phone’s brightness, are you speaking in tongues right now (I know we have extreme tendencies). Do you think I have backslidden?

My friend cracked a joke that got to me. She asked, “what is your sex,” then she laughed and said, “if you have taken that long to answer then your mind is really a mess. I laughed and I could understand where she was coming from.

 The sex territory has been one that we tend to keep off until we are about to say “I do.”

Just because the church is not categorically speaking about sex does not mean that we are not getting the information from other sources. So I think we got to have some things straight, especially on how we package the sex talk.

The Sex talk just before campus

I know that every lady has ever had the sex talk with a guardian before going to high school or campus. My talk with my mum was on the eve of going to campus. She said, “I hear in campus people do everything they want to do. Charity, I want you to know that if you get pregnant, that will be the end of your education; I am not ready to be a grandmother; You will just leave school and come back home to take care of your child.”

 My mum sold me fear, very well packaged; she did a good job because I did not get pregnant in campus.

 Therefore, my not “engaging” in campus was because there was my mother’s voice in my head telling me that if I got pregnant, she would not take care of my baby. Maybe you were told that people are sick out there and you would get infected. So, if you did not sleep around in campus, why did you not? Was honoring God really the first reason honestly?

The sex talk in church

There were these sermons in church; The one of if you lie with a harlot, you become one with them. Well, that had to give you some jitters. But then again, could you actually view your boyfriend as a harlot surely? Of course not. He is a born-again Christian that has needs, calling him a harlot is ludicrous. So maybe that one you said is for those people that sell their bodies and you are too saved to sell your body.

However, there was this one that really had many followers. This sermon went something like this, “please ‘keep’ yourself for your husband; he will honor and respect you for that; he will love you.” Or there was this other one, “keep yourself and God will reward you with a good husband.”

What then happens to the person that did have a clue about “keeping” themselves? Secondary virginity?

Secondary virginity has been sold more than anointing oil and brooms. But is there really any secondary virginity? My perspective, you are either a virgin or you’re not. Let’s stop imposing secondary and tertiary virginities on people. There is so much to a woman to just narrow her down with whether her hymen is intact or not. I mean, you might be a virgin but a foolish one; the bible has five who were foolish.

Sex and the subconscious

The subconscious mind is a very powerful I hear. It is what keeps your heart beating, makes you not forget to breath, heals your wounds and every other thing that your body does so effortlessly. Once something has been imprinted in the subconscious mind, blotting it out would be some piece of work. The subconscious mind does not understand jokes. If you call yourself poor for a long time and it gets imprinted there, then you are doomed.

Am just thinking of the first time I was told to keep off from boys because they were bad. To add salt to the matter, how old was I when my guardian told me that sex, ni tabia mbaya? I had not even started Nursery, or Playgroup of today. So, for ten years, I was told boys are bad, and that sex ni tabia mbaya.

The society became a bit lenient with the boychild and I was allowed to interact with them but sex was still tabia mbaya up until now. This especially has been the narrative for the girlchild and not so the case for the boychild. Boys are celebrated for having sex early while girls are condemned (please, I don’t want to lose you here.) Boys are seen are mafias for having information about sex or knowing a thing or two while girls are made to fear the thing. So, we have two categories of people with totally different energies and viewpoints on the same thing. We expect these to people to come together after sometime.

I hear that most men take sex very seriously. They actually prioritize it; that if the bedroom matters are bad then, everything else goes haywire. In addition, most men have their number one love language as physical touch, hehe.

Then we have a woman whose subconscious has been told over and over again that sex is bad manners (sidenote: have you envisioned sex being done in a well-lit room with worship songs being the background music?), what would stop her from handling this very beautiful act as a chore? What would stop her from using it as a tool of barter trade to her husband?

Well, you told her that she was keeping her virginity to give to her husband, not to enjoy it with him; that might not have been what you meant but that is what you said and the subconscious mind stored that. In as much as FGM has been made illegal, don’t you think that this is a modernized FGM of sorts because the reasons are still being implemented; sexual pleasure for men.

The dilemma

In other words, we have a woman that has been told that sex is bad since the day she was born; a woman who I hear that contraceptive and child birth tend to lower her sex drive; a woman who has not been taught anything about her body; a woman who is timid to talk about sex paired up with a man that has been taught by the world what sex is all about. Are they not doomed, onset?

I am not called to celibacy; I will get married soon. The same society expects me to unsuppress (not grammatical) the very thing that they have taught me for more than 25 years to suppress so well. The same society expects me to tell my subconscious that sex is no longer tabia mbaya but something good. All these things I am expected to do immediately after I say “I do.”

I am not saying that the information which our elders have been giving us is bad; it is the framing of this information that is the problem. Sex is not bad, fornication is; fornication could lead to unwanted pregnancy which would affect your life. Fornication, not sex, is sinful before God as we are supposed to honor God with our bodies.

We had a talk with another friend about sex and for the first time in 20 something years, I did not blush, I wasn’t aroused, it was something like a talk on money you know. Just general beautiful conversation. That talk about sex on that day kind of changed my view on sex, I was able to see its sacredness and everything; I was able to say that everything that was created was created for Christ, even Sex. For the first time this term “sex” was not translating as “tabia mbaya” in my head. It was something beautiful.

So, if sex is not tabia mbaya, why should I not have it now?

Some people would tell me that I should keep myself for my husband. So, what happens if the husband has not kept himself for me? Would I not be resentful towards him? How would I even know that he kept himself for me, there is no way to tell.

Does God owe me?

How about “keeping myself so that God can bless me with a good husband?” Does God owe me a good husband because I did what I was supposed to do. So, what happens if I do not get in my own definition a “good husband”? Has God wronged me? Is He unfaithful? What happens, if the one that has not “kept” herself gets a “good” husband according to you? Does that make God unjust. Am I entitled to having a good husband because I did not engage in sex, really?

Dearly betrothed, if you have still kept yourself (this is direct translation and I am okay using it) let it be for the right reasons. Let the reasons be stronger than just giving yourself your husband, which is not bad in and of itself. Let is not be for showing off to your peers and lording it over them as being better than them; remember it is your mum that knew how to package that fear to you, then the Lord had mercy.

Let your abstinence be an expression of Love to God; the kind of Love that made the three Hebrew young men not to bow down to the golden calf because they knew that God would save them. But this did not stop there, they were bold enough to declare that even if He did not save them, they would still not bow down.

“Perfect love casts out fear, there is no fear in love” John the beloved reminds us. Anything you do or don’t do because of fear, is already corrupted. The soul often secretly gravitates towards that which it loves and also that which it fears. Free yourself from the fear of sex, it is not the elephant in the room. Stop allowing the enemy paint sex as his and ugly. It was created for Christ and it is of the light.

Cheers.