How My Guilt Informs Me about a Woman’s Right to Choose

I was a boy of twelve, in a sprawling field of tall grass. I was alone — very alone.

I climbed my favorite tree — my favorite because perched on the higher branches, I could swing side to side until I almost touched the ground. The ‘to and fro’ that day was halted by a persistent thought.

The swinging momentum stopped and left the tree upright again, making it a perfect lookout station. From there, I could see the whole field and beyond. I was considering masturbation. Not from a should I or shouldn’t I angle (too late for that), but from a could I or couldn’t I position. Since I hadn’t done it before, I didn’t know if the hardware would work. Meanwhile, the software was working overtime.

Taking this step into pubescent validation conjures images of an epic battle with dinosaurs, armed only with my unproven sword. These adversaries were fossilized, but still animate, in the form of outdated norms about sex from the Catholic church and armored with the petrified bones of Protestant puritanism.

What I was about to do was wrong. So wrong (and dangerous) I couldn’t try it at home, not even in the seclusion of my own room. (Especially since my mother had inexplicably removed the door to my bedroom a year earlier).

Sidebar — I always wondered about that door but never asked why.

It was later, as a 30-year-old, that I discovered a plausible reason. They informed me my mother was sexually assaulted at thirteen. (She was married by the time she was sixteen). Not surprisingly, she was terrified of her first son reaching puberty.

My dad was culpable in that he never talked about sex. They never showed affection. They had eight children together and I virtually never saw them kiss. I was so confused that until about age three; I thought my dad was another one of my siblings. How else could he have gotten there?

So, I went into the field test that day with a lot of baggage. I was determined it was going to be a one-way trip because I was tired of carrying it. I climbed down from the tree and stair stepped my way to the bottom of a nearby irrigation ditch. It was long, deep, dry, and secluded. I looked left and right and there wasn’t anyone else as far as the eye could see.

I felt raw and primitive. Alive! I started stroking, slowly at first. As I sped up — seeing the tall grass above me — I felt like a lion on a savanna ready to claim his kingdom. As I came, I let out a guttural roar that (in essence) proclaimed once and for all, “My body, my choice.”

The dinosaurs were slain. I became a legend in my own mind. I was free.

I have had my share of orgasms since, and they were pretty good, but there is nothing that can compare to my ejaculation emancipation.

There is a caveat. A big one.

Being sexually free is only the beginning. Capability begets responsibility. That’s the harder part. As a young adult, it took me years and several relationships to balance my own needs with the needs of the women in my life. It took even longer to even fathom what some women must experience.

At the risk of blatant mansplaining, or being accused of dwelling on the obvious, (or being flat out wrong) I offer my theory to you.

I believe women want to be sexually free just as much as men. However, sex for them is not just about pleasure, or even reproduction. It’s about who owns them.

To be able to express my sexuality, I had to reject ideas from the past. The ideas that inhibit women are still highly prevalent today, not to mention the practical inconveniences of pregnancy and motherhood. If I produce a child, it barely changes the trajectory of my life. Even if I walk away, it doesn’t threaten my career and only partially diminishes my sense of self. It may hurt, but it doesn’t necessarily define me.

So, there was me in the tree, wanting to take ownership of my sexuality. But, if I were a woman, it would be more like a real savannah, with real lions waiting to pounce. I would be facing killing the sexuality within me or trying to kill the lions — armed only with the strength of my will. I would be confronted with the same historical guilt about sex as men, but I would also be feeling the pressure of contemporary sexism. I would need my sisters and other allies for this battle. I would cry out!

For some, it’s a battle worth waging. The stakes are too high to submit or run away.

In case my analogies fall short, I will be more direct. If you take away a woman’s right to choose, you are committing the cruelest form of identity theft. You are telling her who she must be for the rest of her life. Her ability to bear a child defines her. You are taking away her grassy field and her roar — her life force. If you are a man, you are telling her that YOU can seek sex just for pleasure, but SHE can’t. Yet, you want her to be a lioness in bed so you can feel more manly? You are placing her in an impossible bind. It’s not just a double standard, but also double jeopardy. Shamed if she does, and blamed if she doesn’t.