In lieu of answering a question from readers this week, The BedPost columnists Steph Doan and Alex Bill looked back over the questions submitted this past quarter and addressed what they took away from this quarter.
“Would you give that advice to your daughter?” my friend said. This column will sit on the Internet until I am a parent, until after I die, until even my memory fades. Every word I write will sit before potential employers and potential lovers, before my friends, before that guy I pass on the way to class, and, thanks to Windows XP, before my grandparents.
I think about them reading, but, my friend, after reading about how to convince a girlfriend to have anal sex, I thought about my still-but-a-future-daydream-of-a daughter reading my advice. I hadn’t thought about her before.
I wrote this column for my daughter.
I love you.
I think that you are beautiful, an angel in the way that just seeing you brings me so much pride I have to fight back tears.
You are a person now. You no longer have me standing there to protect you, but I’d like to think that I will raise a person who does not need her father’s protection.
Be strong and don’t let any man or woman take away your strength. And when I say strength, I do not mean a soul of stone; I mean a mind of self-respect.
Self-respect is hard to build and easy to break. It means that you must, at all times, question what you want from life and why you want it. And then you must challenge those thoughts because, as soon as you walk outside, the world will challenge them.
Regarding sex and love: I’d say, a drink bought is not a contract signed and a base hit does not guarantee a run batted in.
Wanting sex does not make you a slut; it makes you a human. Wanting respect does not make you a prude; it makes you worthy of respect.
In your life, you will do things that I will never want to hear. But as your father, I say that, as long as you do them because you respect yourself and that your actions reflect that self-respect and that your friends and your lovers echo your self-respect, I support you with all my heart.
Because I love you.
Alex Bill is a junior studying psychology and criminology.
I’ve got to be honest — as the quarter went on, you guys got a lot less horny.
The BedPost got a running start with period and anal-sex questions, but as time expanded, the emails turned into people searching for answers about crossing the boundaries of sex and into the territories of love.
Isn’t that what we all do as we get older, anyway?
Not that I ever want to lose that sex fizzle or my own sizzle, my nizzle. But it means more now, with learning what all this sex stuff is about (instead of just jumping into bed clueless, which is also fun at times). Good people, like good wines, really do mature with age.
Your questions help me learn more and more about human sexuality.
Like, did you know that the vagina expands when it’s aroused? Women get the hots too. Also, that anal sex has potentially harmful psychological effects as well as physical ouchies? And men get just as self-conscious as women do about their body hair — enough so to buy laser hair removal at hefty prices.
What I learn most from readers is that you guys have questions, though, and they are often the same wonderings as the man or woman sitting next to you — like in the audience of a sex panel, for example. It is human nature to lean on each other for advice and support.
I do not care what anyone says in letters-to-the-editor or in life. You do not need to have if all figured out in order to be a sexy, confident woman or man.
Not every question has one answer and not every lover knows what he or she wants daily or even hourly. All those old scholar types with the beard-stroking always said life itself is a mystery. So, sex is a facet of life, and it’s no clearer.
And I’m not just talking sex, for once.
Steph Doan is a junior studying journalism.
