Is THAT what the kids are calling it these days?

So there are a lot of ways to say "having sex". Even more than when I was a kid. So why is it so hard for us to use a simple, monosyllabic word that originated from Anglo-Saxon language? A lot of our fun words come from that language, so why is S-E-X so hard for people to say? We use fun euphemisms and crude hand gestures (I'm not knocking them; I'm one of the first people to throw up a crude gesture in any conversation) but rarely say the word. Why is that?

Back in my day... Hmm. Well wait a minute. "Sex" isn't a word I ever heard at home. In fact, I had to learn about sex from HBO. Not that my parents were negligent but perhaps it was that I was such an introvert that they never bothered. I was a smart kid and always watching documentaries and reading books. Sex was just not a topic that was discussed, either with proper terms or euphemisms. All I knew growing up is that my sister's boyfriend-- while living with us-- was heavily discouraged from sleeping in her room with her and that my Nana really didn't want my cousin sharing a bedroom with her girlfriend when they visited. Happy oblivion.

Now I'm all grown up and have no problem talking about sex, so it begs the question: why isn't everyone else? We're all adults, right? I would like to blame Christianity for this one. Okay, so they're an easy scapegoat, but really. Judeo-Christian dogma has, for centuries, deemed sex to be a sin unless for the express purpose of producing children, Thank you, no. I found this little snippet from this website quite interesting:

Those who believed the lie and chose the anti-sexual body-rejecting path to perfection soon found the Biblical account of Adam and Eve frolicking naked and unashamed through the Garden ( Genesis 2:25 ) a rather embarrassing quirk in the religious record that needed to be explained away. Hence, Adam's expulsion from the Garden was taken to mean that he had been booted out for having had sex with Eve [8], who was portrayed as an evil sexual seductress who caused the curse to fall upon an otherwise perfect man. Sex, therefore, was to be viewed as part of the curse, the evil deed that got man into trouble; and woman was responsible.

 Is that why we just can't talk about sex in plain words? It has been so deeply ingrained that it is evil and dirty and unmentionable. I also think the hesitation to talk about sex openly comes from people's fear of opening up and risking judgment from their peers. Sex is an incredibly intimate and personal act, and to open up about something that personal leaves a certain vulnerability for those who would otherwise label and judge. There's also kink factor; what other people enjoy is often seen as taboo by others. Shit, look at this blog. There's a whole lot of taboo on these pages. But I am comfortable enough to talk about it.

So, with that said, I leave you with a song from my childhood (1991, really? Jesus, I'm getting old).