What Is Personal Freedom?

Posted: 10 years ago | By: Christine Somers | In: Life Management | Read Time: 3 minutes, 6 seconds

Each time I return home after seeing my grandchildren, I end up reflecting upon the wealth of wisdom I want to share with them, particularly my granddaughters. I don't love my granddaughters any more than my grandsons but I have a great deal of first hand experience being female. I believe the advice I have to offer will be useful, not like the confusing piece of advice my mother once gave me. "Don't go down a dirt road with a boy". The comment confused me because there wasn't a single dirt road in Jacksonville, Florida when I was growing up. But I agreed...got it covered Mom! Today, I do wonder if this advice came to her from personal experience or from the experience of another. I do hope it was the latter or that it was a "rural myth" started by grandmothers trying to protect their granddaughters.

I read a Time Magazine health article titled No Satisfaction: Woman Are Less Likely To Orgasm During Casual Sex and my first response was DUH! And my second thought was," I long for the days when headlines weren't so graphic". In an effort to be free, to be more like men, young women are engaging in one night stands (vocabulary for the Boomers) or hook-ups (vocabulary for the Millennials) and finding they are unfulfilled at the end of the um, evening.  Envision if you will a man and a woman who just met in a bar or restaurant, made each other laugh with a few funny stories about ex-lovers and then headed home to recreate the love scene from Mr. & Mrs. Smith. Yeah right!  Why would any young women think this was going to be good for her? Women don't even like to undress in front of other women at the gym and the guy you are with just spent 30 minutes talking about his fantasy football team. Do you really think he is going to be paying attention to you and your "needs"? For gosh sakes, haven't you seen American Pie...all it takes is an apple pie.

I am not bashing men here, honest. I am pointing out that men and women are different. Yes, I know you took basic biology but in an effort to reach equality on job opportunities, salary and to balance out a few other societally imposed limitations women and men have come to expect equal behavior in all areas of life. Today hooking up is considered a "fun" time for both sexes. But the research says something very different; women aren't getting the same enjoyment from the activity as men. It's every man for himself in a hook-up.

My granddaughters are little girls, under five and hopefully before they reach the age that this conversation is appropriate for them, the world will have evolved once again. Over the course of my lifetime I have watched as the place of women has evolved in the job market, in government and in the world of finance but sex remains the same. Young women are being told by the media, acquaintances and men that sex is nothing more than a recreationally activity. But research shows that women aren't getting the same benefits from recreational sex as men. When the time comes, I am going to tell my granddaughters and grandsons that true freedom in life not only comes from being able to say yes to what you want but it is also to be able to say no to what you don't want.  I will encourage them to intentionally do the necessary work to figure out what they truly want from life so they can answer yes or no to the opportunities that come their way.

Hugs,
C