I've been reading and researching and studying and thinking about this a lot and I've come to the conclusion: most of the taboos of female sexuality stems from a confusion between female sexuality and male desire.
This is a rather simplistic, cisgender way of seeing things, but bear with me.
Think about it. We accept and understand that women have sex, but 'too much' (whatever the hell that means) or starting 'too early' or 'too late' - are all taboos. We're beginning to understand female sexual pleasure, and the right for all women to sexual pleasure...but women still aren't allowed to actively seek it, or include sexual desire as a reason for wanting a partner, or worse, wanting sex without wanting a partner. Bisexuality, lesbianism, watching porn, self pleasure - anything that involves 'women' and 'pleasure' but not necessarily 'men' is immediately stigmatized, even though we know that guys can be gay, bi, watch porn and jerk off and we're somehow meant to be okay with that when they're all dirty little secrets for women. We're obsessed with virginity and look down on women who are interested and curious and open about sex - sex, for women, is all about 'losing' something, 'giving' things, having things 'taken', 'letting' someone do something to you. The connection between women and sex and babies is obvious, natural and beautiful, but severely overstated in a world where working women is empowering, a legal right and often an economic necessity and childrearing is no longer the sole purpose of a woman's life, or solely a woman's occupation. The idea that a woman's sexuality is solely to continue the species may seem ridiculously anachronistic, but it manifests in a phenomenon that continues today: we don't see women as sexual beings, but rather as sexual objects. Because we confuse female sexuality with male desire.
I'm all for sexual expression and freedom, but the ways for women to express themselves sexually is less about what they want and how they feel about themselves, but as ways to garner a response out of men. Sexuality and desire are two totally separate things. Sexuality is innate - we are all born sexual beings (unless you're asexual) and it doesn't matter what you look like or what kind of relationships you have or your gender identification or orientation or whatever - it is part of who you are no matter how people react to that. It's kind of like being gay - you'll always be gay whether you embrace it, deny it, whether you have straight partners or gay partners...it's just part of who you are, like your eye colour. You'll still want and feel and desire and experience whether people like you or not - you don't become an asexual alien when you're not getting any attention and suddenly become a sexual being when someone's staring at your boobs. Being desirable is distinct in that being desirable means that you have, or acquire, traits that make you appealing to society, to a particular social group, or just to a particular person; it's less about you and more about them. Despite forty years of feminism, we fail to recognise women as sexual beings with individual sexual curiosities and preferences and desires; we only see them in a sexual context when they are desirable, and when a woman is being 'desirable' we confuse it with being 'sexual'. Sexuality is expression; desirability is a performance. It's all art, but it's not one and the same.
Sex is falsely seen as something that only boys want, and so the idea that a woman doesn't 'let' a guy have sex with her, but 'wants' a guy to have sex with her is still social taboo, even despite anyone with the most basic knowledge of biology understanding that women have hormones and nerve endings too. Girls accept from a very young age that teenage boys are totally ruled by hormones and in the absence of an outlet, they'll create one - porn, self pleasure, all of us girls are thoroughly aware. But this same kind of understanding and knowledge isn't really translated to the majority of boys, who are somehow threatened by the idea of girls getting pleasure from themselves or from women or from any other source that isn't men. It's a result of patriarchy.
Which is why there is so much hype about what girls and women wear - it's because we immediately associated 'looking good' and 'feeling good about one's appearance' to sexual availability, which may or may not be the intent. This is the theory behind our rape-positive culture - we somehow think that women set themselves up for crimes by acting or dressing a certain way, and constantly push women to hide themselves and feel ashamed of their bodies to discourage the sexual desires of men. I wear what I want, what I think looks good on me, and what I like - that's the only criterion for the cloth that I put on my body. Dressing up is not inviting anything, and there is a difference between thinking a girl is pretty in a dress or that the colour of her shirt sets off her eyes and raping someone you thought was dressed like a slut. Dressing like a slut - whatever that is - is not a crime. Rape is.
When I was growing up girls who weren't considered 'pretty' or 'popular' not only never got boyfriends, but were never considered to be 'worthy' of boyfriends, and we were constantly made to feel guilty about wanting relationships and intimacy. If you ask pre-teens and teenagers, they have this idea in their head - spread by media, movies and porn - that only attractive people are allowed to have sex, and once you've had babies or you get old or you're just born ugly, you've lost the licence. The emphasis on female physical appearance and the connection between sexual desire and physical appearance was bewildering, and extremely humiliating. It still feels like opportunities to express myself is some kind of prize for conforming to ridiculous standards of normality and beauty and popularity - becoming someone I will never be.
The sex ed system never told us explicitly that girls feel sexual desire and pleasure - it was something we figured out between the lines, and then confused with all the taboos and stereotypes surrounding women and sex. It was implied that we would feel 'weird' or 'strange'; never 'good' or 'normal' or 'nice'. Quoting Princesses and Pornstars by Emily Maguire:
I was so desperate for assurance that my desire was normal and didn't mean I was destined to be pregnant at sixteen and dying of AIDS by twenty, that I put my faith in a Year 9 Health and Development class at my school. I was disappointed. Female sexual development, according to my teacher, was an embarrassing, uncomfortable process, but it would allow me one day to experience the miracle of motherhood. I learned about ovulation and menstruation. I learned that the appearance of pubic hair on a girl signals an increase in androgen levels, and that tender breasts and swollen nipples indicate a rise in estrogen. I also learned that testosterone was surging through my body and might cause me to feel 'strange'.
Boys would not feel 'strange': they would feel horny. They would be distracted by sexual thoughts and feelings. Their genitals would engorge with blood for no reason at all. They would feel a deep, low ache which could only be eased by sexual release. They would have erotic dreams from which they would wake to find they had messed up their sheets and pyjamas. I am a boy, I thought, my face hot and my thighs pressed together.
The media is training men to consider women in a sexual context purely for their physical appearance - academically, professionally, women are now becoming 'people' and not just 'women', but in a sexual context it's all about what this looks like, what that looks like - we are judged not by what we want and what we can offer in a relationship, but what makes us aesthetically pleasing to the tastes of men. Magazines are constantly bombarding us with 'What MEN Want' and 'What boys have to say about THIS' and 'NO REALLY, THIS IS WHAT HE REALLY WANTS'...what about us? Huh? What about me? Men tell us not to wear heels and not to wear makeup not because it might be sexist or degrading for women to have to hide their natural states, but 'because we don't like it' or 'we don't understand why' - what if I like pink lipstick, huh? What if I like being taller than 5'3" occasionally, huh? Why do men automatically assume that everything we do to make ourselves look nice is about them and not about feeling good (or conforming to ridiculously high standards set by severely insecure popular girls)? We're judged by how well we can kiss people and how secure we can make our psychopathic jealous boyfriends feel and we're never taught how to ask for what we want, to speak up for what we do and don't like. And it's because people assume that female sexuality is intrinsically linked to the desires of men.
Men are also fed a false depiction of normal female physical appearance - to a greater extent than girls. As much as I perve on perfect six packs like any other teenage girl, I am under no illusion of how 'normal' guys look - imperfect. None of the guys I've liked have had ripped abs or perfect bodies or breathtakingly amazing faces, and yet we're constantly compared to images that girls are slowly beginning to realize are fake and boys clearly haven't seen the light yet. Feminists are constantly trying to promote the 'real women have curves' message in a desperate attempt to combat eating disorders that are killing young women at an alarming rate, and yet you ask a guy what he thinks is 'curvy'...it's just big boobs without the soft tummy and pudgy arms and fat thighs that come with adipose tissue in the chest area. Normal people aren't perfect, and yet there are disturbing statistics of men expecting women to conform to the physical standards set by figures in popular culture - unhealthily thin, with unnaturally large this and unusually small that, everything plucked and painted even when they're going 'all natural'; living up to these standards is unhealthy, sexist, degrading, and ridiculously time consuming and expensive. Studies show that teenage boys really have no idea what women look like, and are supposed to look like, and aren't always shown the real and healthy distinction between what a normal, bare-faced, non-airbrushed girl looks like compared to a glamorously anorexic model or a surgically mutilated pornstar. The fact that I don't look like the bodies splashed across magazine covers for us to pick on is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Girls are constantly taught what Emily Maguire calls 'defensive sex education'. We're taught that sex is a bad thing that leads to pregnancy and fucked up feelings and boys taking advantage of us. We're taught that if we don't dress right or if we think about it too much or if we're too eager we'll get raped or coerced and get some kind of disease. We're taught that boys can't control themselves and it's up to us to set up boundaries, to insist on standards and rules that are imposed onto us by society - by a society that has no understanding or sympathy for female sexuality. We're not taught that even though sex is heavily tied to emotions for girls and that boys can take advantage of our vulnerabilities girls can also be curious and be affected by the cocktail of hormones of adolescence without the shame, guilt, bewilderment and embarrassment that is forced upon us.
There are exceptions, of course, to this misunderstanding. The first person who really accepted - or actually, kind of assumed - that I had some kind of curiosity about sex and relationships was a guy, and I think because guys our age are trained to be so terrified of babies and parenting and pregnancy that they're not as likely to link sexuality with babies as much as the older generations, or the faithful worshippers of patriarchy, or other girls. But a few enlightened guys doesn't lift the pressure and insecurity and misunderstandings about being a girl. Exceptions to the rule are still...exceptions. And exceptionally hard to find.
A lot of the pressure for girls to be perfect comes from...well, girls - yes, even straight ones. The bitchiness and jealousy and hierarchy of teenage girls is a toxic blend of self hate and insecurity and pushing people down to get a moment of glory at the top. But the pressure also comes from boys, from potential partners, who have been denied the understanding of women and of female sexuality as it really is, and so react negatively to something that is an intrinsic part of being a woman, being a person. Have we really moved on from the housewives and baby-makers of the 50s? Not really. Not until people learn the difference between female sexuality and male desire and remove the stigmas and stereotypes of both.
