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Why I Don't Read Fiction Anymore contributed by k:
In 1970 I was a girl of 14, living against my will in a remote, desolate village with no friends. I came upon a collection of dirty stories from the late 1800s. What did I find but scenes where the woman gets hurt rather seriously during sex, if she has never done it before. I was horrified all through--it was gruesome indeed, but the very idea that some classes of people were destined to suffer in the course of their natural functions was not one I could stomach. Such factual books as I could find did not help. Nor did the adults I talked to--they just brushed it aside being wrapped up in bitter battles of their own. And nowadays you might run into that sort of thing in any fiction, and everyone just seems to believe it.
I decided it wasn't going to happen to me. Here the details get confused, I think it was something about stretching and something about how I could have made a nicer job of it--the mind recoils, but the last time I looked at the part of me that was involved it seemed unharmed, and I will go with that conclusion, just to stay sane. Anyway, by next summer I figured I had nothing to worry about if I ever got into sex and so on-- which question turned out to be moot, as I decided for other reasons to be celibate, but it was the idea that counted--the idea that my blood would never be spilled for the sake of someone else's myth.
Never told anyone after--no one who had a clue, anyway.
But why do today's books and websites still not tell teens enough about how to make damn sure that no part of them will be hurt, when they start to have sex? It seems so preventable, and we all deserve better.
You might say I should be glad to live in the US and not some country where, etc., etc. True enough, but the US has not come far enough, and that must change.
Human beings are not bubble-wrap.
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