Awkward/Risky Sex

            This is Niya. Awkward? Confusing? Sweaty? Smelly? These are all words used by John Gagnon to explain what may have happened during your first time. In his articles, “Scripts and the Coordination of Sexual Conduct” and “Theorizing Risky Sex”, Gagnon addresses similar topics from very different viewpoints. The early of the two articles, “Scripts and the Coordination of Sexual Conduct”, Gagnon elaborates on the inevitable awkwardness of a young people’s first coital sexual experiences. This first time, which he assumes will happen for most sometime in his or her late adolescence or young adult years, is unknowingly bound to a cultural script. This script, he explains, is socially implanted into most young men and women and essentially is an intimate physical expression of the mental gymnastics that each person experiences as he or she attempts to understand and navigate their way through normalized gender roles.

Gagnon’s extremely humorous portrayal of the social script for a couples first time depicts a couple as they make their way from socially accepted outdoor intimacy, although they are physically in a indoor and presumable private place, to an unabashed naked intimacy. As Gagnon goes through each possible exchange, he hesitates to concede that this first time will result in pleasure for both parties. However, it is likely to assume that one partner will reach some form of an orgasm to conclude this horribly awkward event. And as it ends, and both participants begin to clumsily search for their clothing and assess what if anything has changed about them, all the uncomfortable sounds, and smells both made and heard in the moment become what Gagnon terms a “process of fictionalization […] with a rearrangement of the past” (Gagnon, 2004:71).

            His premise, expanded on from the thoughts of novelist John Fowler that we as a people tend to romanticize our past. We take events narrate them in our own heads to make them what we had originally hoped they would be. This romanticization Gagnon offers is crucial in the way we explain and normalize sex to our children. For adults, their first sexual experience remains en enchanted event which should not be recreated for their children for a long time, however, when that time comes it should be within a loving situation as many adults (specifically women) will recreate their partner to have been.

            If this sexual script as Gagnon details in his first article does exist, one must question where one could apply the label risky sex as used in his article “Theorizing Risky Sex”. Gagnon admits that the understanding of risky sex is quiet relevant and malleable to the present society. Depending on moral or political affiliation the term risk can denotes use of contraceptives within a sex act or the sexual orientation of the partners. After reading his first article, I immediately thought of adolescent sex as risky sex. This is not to say without the proper contraceptives teenage sex could not be just as healthy as two consenting adults. However, using Gagnon’s previous framework sexual activity between two relatively inexperienced persons, none of whom are brave enough to admit their ignorance, seems mighty risky!

            So often children are safeguarded from the realities of sex; the false stories received either intentionally from their parents or through idyllic romantic script of the first sexual experiences. This seems much riskier than the concern over the way a “woman was dressed, whether she was drinking, whether she was alone in an inappropriate place, [...], or her entire prior sexual history” as was once a serious contention for risky sexual behavior (Gagnon, 2004: 214). It seems the real risk is the lack of information provided to young people moving closer towards sexual activity. These stories of love and romance which has previously dominated to cultural script need to be erased and replaced with honest stories of what one can and should expect, and how to remain safe whatever he or she may choose.