Sex and Cultural Assumptions

For the record, I ended a friendship with someone while in high school in part because they talked trash about her having a baby.

This post expands on what I knew about the two girls in question. 

One of my good friends in high school was one-quarter Cherokee. She had an extremely dysfunctional relationship with a guy and I tried to tell her "Girl, he doesn't care about you and please get some self respect." and it didn't accomplish anything.

She spent enormous time and energy picking out a Christmas gift for him. He bought nothing for her for Christmas.

She was trying to paint a picture of having big feels for him and this must be LOVE ... while climbing in his window at night for sex while not being introduced as his girlfriend or anything like that.

And maybe she thought her relationship was "like" the relationship I was in and so I should understand. But I was having convenience sex with a guy I viewed as a LOSER and didn't really find attractive because his mother and my parents all agreed it was fine for me to go to his apartment alone when his mom was at work "because Doreen is a paragon of virtue and we can trust her and believe nothing will happen."

I wasn't climbing in windows. I was saying "I'm going to his apartment to go swimming. See ya!" And everyone was giving that the thumbs up.

And he and I were both seventeen and made polite noises about marriage and children in the most pathetically unbelievable fashion imaginable and then he invited someone else to his high school prom and I wasn't offended because I didn't want anyone to think I was with him anyway.

And then I dumped him and got with someone I actually liked and later married. And some time after getting with the future ex, I just kind of stopped calling her and let my friendship to her quietly die rather than continue to listen to this STUFF from her.

I'm not interested in dragging her. That's not my point. She was my friend and she was a close friend for a time and she was just a teenager.

I was also just a teenager and a victim of incest and trying desperately to make MY LIFE work. I tried to help her and didn't know how and I felt I could go down with her or save myself. So I saved myself.

She was part Cherokee and her love interest -- whom I never met -- was almost certainly a White guy from a wealthy family and he was blatantly using her. And I didn't know how to address any of that. 

I didn't know how to engage with whatever cultural expectations she was bringing to the table and how rich White boys aren't likely to do what she expects and she wanted to believe this was love and didn't want to hear any criticisms of him even if it was said in hopes of helping her.

I'm now 61 and I've read piles of books and articles and taken classes and talked to people and blogged for years about Native American and White culture and women's issues and sexual stuff and on and on. I still don't think I could talk sense into a smitten seventeen year old and I didn't have any of that to bring to the table at that time.

I was at a loss as to how to stop this raging dumpster fire and decided I just need to stop standing this close to it because that's dangerous for ME. 

My life wasn't in good shape. I was in no position to play hero for her while trying to not drown myself.

I write in hopes of helping other people, not to hurt her or say anything bad about her.

She ultimately dropped out of high school and began drinking heavily and started giving me tips on how to flirt with men at bars with no plans to sleep with them as a means to get free drinks. And once she started giving me tips on how to become an alcoholic on the cheap, I just stopped calling her and stopped returning her calls and the relationship quietly died with no drama and no goodbyes.

It's being posted here though I never really discussed her sex life with her because this is a piece about good sex. 

I NEVER asked "Are you having orgasms? Is that why you climb in his window at night?" I wasn't having orgasms with my convenient sex relationship. I probably didn't tell her that either.

Whatever she was assuming about my relationship, I was assuming her relationship was as awful as mine and he was just using her for sex and not giving her a good time. Maybe the sex was good for her and she just couldn't believe a White boy from a wealthy family was never going to stand up to Mom and Dad and bring home a mixed-race chick to dinner.

White guys from dysfunctional wealthy families frequently do whatever Mom and Dad expect to keep access to family money. And then marginalized people seem to imagine "People with money have more power than I have!" and fail to understand that power doesn't include standing up to daddy or their boss or the like.

They don't understand that power is limited in scope and applies to their relationships to other people while they may be a complete doormat in relation to the "source of their power/money."

Anyway, The Boss -- as I called her in the post linked above -- is someone I was assuming at age seventeen likely had a nice relationship to her boyfriend and her family. Her family didn't kick her out for ending up pregnant or make her get an abortion or make her give the baby up and studies show that female orgasm promotes pregnancy.

I didn't really know her at all. This was a chick in my high school class of around 200 people and I never talked to her in high school. We weren't even really acquainted socially. We weren't close enough to describe her as my acquaintance.

But I was kind of thinking "My friend who is so critical is probably having bad sex like I'm having and this chick having a baby is probably having good sex with a guy being decent to her and her family seems chill and not nutso. And if you want to promote women's rights, you need to accept that sometimes babies happen and find reasonable ways to be good to mom, dad and baby. And I think SHE looks like a good example of how to do THAT."

And I did talk with her some decades later when I worked at the same department in the same company and she seemed like a very grounded person. She was the only woman I met at the company who was like "I never learned to cook. I can't get the timing right." and wasn't bothered by my sons taking over the lion's share of the women's work at home after I stopped being a full-time homemaker and got a corporate job.

Everyone else was freaking out about that. She didn't seem to realize how weird she was for a modern career woman with not being still chained to the stove and not giving me the evil eye for announcing "I'm no longer chained to the stove!" Women higher ranking than her were upset with me for mentioning that.

And she said she just stayed home when her own kids were teens and quietly denied them the opportunity to repeat her mistakes without being all judgy and controlling.

That's rare. Frequently, the young people who thought Mom and Dad were fuddy duddies and got burned by not listening become even more "conservative" and screechy and controlling than their parents and try extra hard to scare everyone into listening to the harsh pronouncements of things THOU SHALL NOT do!

So having met her and talked with her some and she's not just some classmate whose name and dirty laundry I was vaguely aware of, I still think she's what women's lib should look like.

Women should have nice personal lives and careers. We shouldn't be asked to choose between "love" and "career." Men aren't asked that.

And it's here and not somewhere else because the assumption society makes is whether you are a good little wifey or a career woman, good women are all frigid bitches and holier than thou and don't really like men or sex.

And that's an assumption that all men are merely using women for sex and no one is really making love.

And that's a foundation stone of rape culture and a concept you need to get over to recover from sexual assault which likely occurred in a context where people around you all think of sex pretty much like that and don't really see anything fundamentally wrong with their assumptions.

Let me tell you: If the people around you didn't assume that, the world would be a vastly safer place.