(hell, yeah) Scarleteen

…one of the coolest things about sex is that it’s a lot like our taste in music.

When it comes to music, we get to like what we like, and listen only to what we want to listen to when we get a choice. Obviously, in the grocery store or at a club what we hear is not going to be up to us, but that’s not how it goes with sex: consensual sex always involves having a choice, just like listening to music in our own space does. With music, we also get to try listening to something to see how we feel about it, and if we don’t like it, we can turn it off or switch to another station or song. We can try listening to music other people like, too, to see if we also like it, and it’s okay whether we do or we don’t.

Sometimes we’ll find we like different music at different times or in different situations. I love listening to Aimee Mann when I’m feeling low, but it’s not at all what I like to listen to when I want to get happy. When I’m high energy or want to get revved up it’s great to listen to the beloved punk of my youth, but if I want to chill out or my head hurts, that music is like torture. We might have music we love to listen to any time, and music we know we never like, but we’ll also tend to have plenty of music that we like or want sometimes, but don’t at other times.

While sex can be more loaded than music, I’d say that has more to do with what people choose to load it with, or sign on to, than what it’s really supposed to be like when we’re all coming to it in a healthy way. Because really, all those things up there that are true of what music a person likes, don’t like, listens to or chooses not to are just as true of sex and the way we not only can, but ideally should, approach it ourselves and with others.

Sex itself should always be a choice, not an obligation or requirement, and that also goes for how we choose to have sex, for what kinds of sex we choose to have. And just like there’s no “right” taste in music, only what taste each person has, in general, or at any given time, the same is true about sex.

Read the rest of the answer to a lesbian user asking if she has to like or want sex with vaginal intercourse or entry (we’re un-fans of the word penetration with consensual sex, since the vagina isn’t a passive object) here.

(We just saw someone saying they couldn’t find anywhere online that didn’t say they needed “fixing” if they didn’t want this, which made us sad, so thought we’d share one of the pieces we’ve got that addresses this.)