The one time Gabby talked about sex with her Catholic parents, they made her pinky swear at 17 to wait until marriage.
That talk came up while her family watched “Jane the Virgin,” and Gabby, now a USC senior, said she related to the titular character’s upbringing in a conservative, Latinx household where losing one’s virginity was equated to crumpling a flower and trying to piece it back together.
She felt like her public school in New Jersey offered relatively comprehensive sex education, with class discussions about anatomy, sexually transmitted diseases and contraceptives, but at home her parents often skirted around the topic and instead criticized classmates who got pregnant or partied often. She dated a little in high school and early college before the pandemic, but it always felt “cringey” when she tried to flirt with a guy or make a move.
But amid COVID-19 lockdowns, Gabby, who still identifies as a virgin, decided she wanted to become more sex positive.
“Pre-COVID, I would see [some of my friends] having a fun time at parties and flirting and making out with boys, all this stuff,” she said. “They just seemed like they were doing it on their own terms, and they’re so empowered by it. Then with COVID I was more open to dating because I saw how easily the social scene could be taken away.”
Gabby, like a lot of other members of Gen Z, has wrestled with where she stands among the sex positive feminism movement that has grown in popularity in the last two decades.
Oftentimes, sex positivity is conflated with hookup culture in popular media. A February article in The Guardian featured young women criticizing the sex positivity movement as something that pushes straight women to want sex just as much as their male counterparts and shames them when they don’t. And in shows like “The Bold Type,” which some audiences applauded for its positive portrayal of female sexuality, sex positivity often focuses on portraying women who are open about their love for sex and pleasure.
But for many young people who label themselves as sex positive, the movement isn’t just about having wild one-night stands on the regular or masturbating free of shame. Instead, the process to becoming sex positive is often an introspective unlearning of negative connotations taught to young people through family, friends, school and religion. By unpacking their individual issues and learning to be sex positive, Gen Z’ers feel they’re more likely to enjoy sex and sexuality, but also have more open conversations about relationships, consent and pleasure with family, friends and partners.
Becoming sex positive
Much like many students across the U.S., Aastha, a USC senior, didn’t learn a lot about sex and pleasure while growing up in Dubai. The sex education courses they did receive were part of a biology curriculum that focused on contraceptives and STIs.
Up until high school, Aastha said their friend group wasn’t comfortable talking about sex. Their friends felt sex, alcohol, drugs and anything else they considered “bad” was reserved for the cooler, more popular students. Rather than date or do drugs, they would focus on academic success.
Because of the criminalization of homosexuality in Dubai and the lack of dialogue among her peers, Aastha also couldn’t explore their sexual identity until coming to USC. They knew coming to the U.S. that she wanted to learn more about sexuality and gender through classes and ended up making it one of their majors because the classes created a safe environment to discuss personal issues and questions they had.
Until college, Aastha said they had mainly been introduced to sex and sexuality by secretly streaming American television shows at night, but many depictions of sex created unrealistic expectations.
“It was this more like American benchmark,” they said. “Like a ‘Euphoria’ esque vibe, but I think being in those spaces really helped me confront a lot of the biases I had internalized.”
In college, Aastha also met friends like Misha, a senior from Pakistan, who helped them learn to discuss their queerness and sex life more openly with others. Like many students getting away from home for the first time, they each felt they had greater opportunities to explore their queerness and sex lives in college.
But beyond that, Aastha said surrounding themself with sex positive friends, and specifically queer, Brown, sex positive friends, has allowed her to feel more open asking questions, making mistakes and sharing their experiences in relationships and sex. As a group, they’ve been able to discuss the internalized biases they have to confront while exploring their identity, while also celebrating pleasure by going vibrator shopping together or talking about what they enjoyed and didn’t like following a sexual encounter.
Friends who couldn’t grow to become sex positive and queer positive by having or, at the least, listening to those conversations, didn’t stick around, Aastha said.
“I’m very open about talking about sex now and that’s a big part of who I am,” she said. “I definitely have like not too many people, but two or three key people that became super close to me, and we all just kind of simultaneously realized that we needed to be open to talking about it and like dispelled all of those notions of discomfort around it.”
Similar to Aastha, Misha also had to wait until heading to college to explore their gender identity and sexuality further. She never received a formal sex talk in high school in Pakistan and remembers also seeing any information on sex or genitalia removed from biology textbooks.
When they talked about sex and relationships with friends in high school, Misha said no one knew what they were doing. Instead of asking about boundaries or if her friends felt comfortable with what happened, they were all just excited to have a sexual experience to discuss. When they first got to college, she experienced sexual encounters that pushed their boundaries, but didn’t know how to communicate their negative feelings. Misha said they went through several traumatic experiences in relationships before going to therapy and understanding the agency they had in communicating sexual and romantic boundaries.
You’re kind of like, ‘Oh, how do I navigate boundaries now?’ And why wasn’t I taught this sooner? Like, why did I need to have something horrible happen to me to like, be able to navigate or learn what boundaries are or how I should set them, you know?”
Misha, a USC senior
Now, Misha said conversations with their college friend group focus far more on how they felt about a sexual encounter rather than breaking down the motions of what happened.
“Then you’re kind of like, ‘Oh, how do I navigate boundaries now?’” she said. “And why wasn’t I taught this sooner? Like, why did I need to have something horrible happen to me to like, be able to navigate or learn what boundaries are or how I should set them, you know?”
At some campuses, clubs form their mission around creating an open space for marginalized groups to discuss sex and sexuality. UCLA Sexperts is one such group that hosts weekly meetings where students can come for discussions on pleasure, consent, masturbation, contraception and body insecurities among other topics. Zz Khan, a sophomore, joined the group so they could feel more comfortable talking about sex and exploring their own sexuality and gender identity.
Khan said that, while they feel they received a better sex education than most public school students while growing up in San Jose, most curriculums focus on a heteronormative structure and only discuss penetrative vaginal sex between a man and a woman. They said groups like Sexperts fill a necessary gap by hosting workshops on condom use, consent talks and sex and pleasure in queer relationships because educators and family members often don’t include that information in formal sex talks.
If no one creates space for these discussions, Khan said they’re only perpetuating a culture that sees straight relationships as the norm and is often silent on issues like sexual assault and rape. Honest and open discussion spaces through Sexperts help to educate more people on consent and power dynamics within sexual relationships, while also encouraging them to speak up when they feel uncomfortable, Khan said.
“The only way you can do that really is through conversation,” they said. “It’s helping my friends start those conversations with their partners. We’re giving them the support that they need to be able to be like ‘this is something that I’m allowed to say and like, I’m allowed to establish my needs.’”
Gabby said her sex positive journey has involved pushing boundaries on her own terms. While she used to find flirting and affection uncomfortable, she has slowly opened herself up to being more intimate with potential partners. The most important thing, Gabby said, is knowing that she makes decisions based on what she feels comfortable with, rather than doing anything sexually because she feels like its what someone else wants.
“I think sex positivity is both embracing like your sexual desires and then also embracing your more like asexual tendencies,” Gabby said. “If you don’t want to do it and you don’t enjoy it then don’t do it, you know? That sounds easier said than done, but that kind of thing.”
I think sex positivity is both embracing like your sexual desires and then also embracing your more like asexual tendencies. If you don’t want to do it and you don’t enjoy it then don’t do it, you know? That sounds easier said than done, but that kind of thing.”
Gabby, a USC senior
Sex positivity in the classroom
When students walk into Mary Andres’ classroom for the first time, they’re met with a question many people aren’t used to. The survey that greets them asks what kind of household they were raised in – one they consider to be sex positive, negative or neutral.
Many of the students in her Perspectives on Human Sexuality course at the USC Rossier School of Education first believe they were raised in a sex-neutral household, Andres said. But as the semester goes on, they realize that by not openly talking about sex and sexuality, their families actually instilled negative views in them.
“I’ve had so many students that have been taught to be frightened,” Andres said. “I teach in a program that is predominantly female, but I have so many students that were told to be afraid of men – then now ‘go out and marry one.’ It’s kind of like we’re being raised in cultures where … you don’t date until you’re ready to get married, but then how do you know who you even like or not?”
As a former marriage and family therapist, Andres knows the importance of comfortably discussing sex and sexuality with clients.
Training to become a clinical psychologist required her to take at least 15 hours worth of courses on sex and sex therapy. But Andres said the course offered at the time felt too clinical. Instead of helping future therapists feel more comfortable discussing sex and sexuality with their clients, she said the class lasted one weekend and focused on the statistics and science surrounding those topics.
I teach in a program that is predominantly female, but I have so many students that were told to be afraid of men – then now ‘go out and marry one.’ It’s kind of like we’re being raised in cultures where … you don’t date until you’re ready to get married, but then how do you know who you even like or not?“
Mary Andres, professor of clinical education, USC Rossier
If a therapist can’t comfortably bring up sex in sessions, they miss out on a crucial aspect of their clients’ lives, Andres said.
When Andres became an educator for future therapists, she wanted them to have a more comprehensive education than her and her peers. She and a friend pitched the course to Rossier over a decade ago, and it was greenlit as an elective that she said has remained popular through the years.
The current course syllabus encompasses a range of topics including, gender identity, sexual orientation, consent, arousal, adult sexual behavior and contraceptives. Outside of the syllabus, Andres said students discuss newer issues like ghosting in more detail to better understand the psychological reasoning and responses both people may have.
“Are you just cutting somebody off because they’re a threat to you?” Andres said. “Or are you cutting somebody off because you are timid and you don’t know how to say something kind to the person? And then how do people internalize being ghosted?”
Other recent topics include masturbation, dating during pandemic lockdowns, the prevalence of hookup culture, gaslighting and female genital mutilation. Each semester, Andres said, the course changes depending on what students want to discuss and what experiences they bring to class discussions.
Andres hopes to give students a more comprehensive sex education experience and an open space to discuss these aspects of their lives, so that they’ll feel comfortable talking with clients.
Sex positivity at parties
Other Gen Z’ers see sex positivity as a way to open up conversations on consent and tackle systemic issues.
After reports of sexual assault at the Sigma Nu fraternity on USC’s campus, USC Flow took action, holding protests and talking with administrators and Greek life leaders to push for changes that would make students, especially women, queer students and students of color, feel safer at parties. Outside of a January 2022 report that said fraternities would need to hire security guards to block students from entering bedrooms, Parraz said little was done to change campus culture.
So Flow turned to a group at UC Berkeley that helped create trainings for safe parties. The first Flow party hosted in April included designated sober hosts, emergency student contact lists, mandatory consent talks and fentanyl testing strips.
“We’re hoping to change the party culture here at USC and show fraternities and USC [leadership] that we expect bigger changes,” Parraz said.
At UC Berkeley, the PATH to Care Center has worked since 2016 to provide mandatory safe party trainings to fraternities and sororities. Consent and consent education are key parts of the sex positivity movement, and for many students, activists and sex educators, parties are a major area to push for change because of the potential for sexual assault.
If a Berkeley Greek life organization hosts a party, its required to read a consent talk to all students in attendance and have designated sober people to help other partygoers in case of an emergency.
Julia Piccirillo-Stosser, a Berkeley student and peer coordinator for PATH to Care, said she’s never attended a college party without receiving a consent talk.
“If I don’t receive a consent talk, I will ask them, why am I not receiving a consent talk?” she said. “And maybe I’m biased because I work for a [sexual violence, sexual health] organization, but I would say that a lot of people attending these parties have that expectation as well.”
Even though fraternities and sororities are the only organizations required to get trainings on consent talks, Piccirillo-Stosser said over 100 student organizations seek training from PATH to Care throughout the school year. Over the years, she said consent and safety have become a larger part of party culture at UC Berkeley because of the requirement within Greek life.
Parraz hopes that, one day, the same can be said about USC student organizations and parties. Until then, she wants to continue expanding the conversation surrounding consent and safe sex and party culture across campus.
“We’ve needed these changes for a long time to keep marginalized students safe,” Parraz said. “I’m hoping parties like this will show the frats it’s not that hard to make these changes to help people be safer and have fun.”