NSFW (If you want)- People in Generation X: Are we more sexually uptight than the older or younger due to AIDS education?

Being born at the very end of Gen X and the very beginning of Gen Next, I have to say my peers’ sexual behavior was greatly influenced by fear of AIDS. I believe we were probably among the first to have open discussions in the classrooms about the benefits of condoms.

@Blueroses Do you think your younger friends, in general, are more or less open to exploration?

My point of view only: When I was a teenager in the 70’s, aids wasn’t something anyone thought of or knew about. Sex was pretty much a free thing, most people did it without worry except for pregnancy. I don’t know that many people even used condoms. Sex was just something you did, but didn’t discuss.

I was born in 1980, so I remember concern about HIV and AIDS as I was first learning about sex. I don’t see any change in openness or exploration between generations, personally – aside from the gradual decline in age at which people have their first sexual experiences that’s taken place over the decades.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought I know many more pledged-virgins and straight-edge in the younger generation than I was aware of in mine. Dangers of sex/drugs was well-instilled into us at a young age and now my generation is parenting.

The scariness of AIDS was drilled into us pretty early on. Second grade, we had A Talk at school about how we can’t swap blood (like blood brothers/sisters?) because of AIDS. Forth and fifth grade, quilts about AIDS, where it’s basically “you get AIDS, you become that starving kid in Somalia and that kid in the other class with leukemia who needs the Make A Wish Foundation”. Middle school, use protection or AIDS. High school, use protection or AIDS. It actually wasn’t until I was out of high school that anyone let me know about antiretroviral drugs. I assume they didn’t tell us because they wanted to keep the fear of AIDS in us.

I don’t know about Gen X, but there are a lot of pledged virgins in my generation (mostly born-again/Evangelical Christians), and I know almost no one who has sex with random strangers – even for more liberal kinksters, that seems to be more of a fantasy than something they’d ever act upon.

The beauty of growing up in the 1970s (I’m 50) is it was the only “perfect” time in history: It was after “The Pill” and before AIDS. Anything goes.

@Aethelflaed‘s mention of blood brothers/sisters reminds me of a somewhat unrelated story.. but still illustrates how much things change in a relatively short period of time. I remember being in about 4th grade when my good friend decided we should be “blood sisters.” She pulled out a big kitchen knife, just in time for her mom to walk in, so she chucked it in my backpack which was nearby. The day went on, we forgot.. and you better believe I spent the next day at school walking around with a big knife in my backpack. I can’t even imagine what it would be like if that happened today. SWAT teams?

I’m not quite Gen X, though some people count it as the very last year. I was born in 1982, and I don’t know that I feel like it changed our likelihood to explore or be adventurous, sexually… but condoms and protection are/were a big deal. Of course, not everyone feels that way, but I would say that for myself (and most of my friends), having unprotected sex was pretty much unthinkable. You just don’t do that. But, I’ve had sex with strangers, and that isn’t particularly significant on my list of interesting sexual adventures in my history, so I think the only difference is in the use of condoms, really.

We didn’t learn how to put on condoms, though. That was sad. It was just “don’t have sex”, which, as you might have imagined, every single student obeyed with the traditional respect for authority and rules they normally displayed. Which then made it so that I was really freaked out that I was some kind of mutant or something with my first (sexual) boyfriend, not knowing how to put a condom on in 3 different ways, so we just didn’t use condoms the first few times. I wish they still taught that in schools.

@Aethelflaed I don’t remember them teaching us how to put them on, just that you had to use them. I don’t remember a lot of focus on abstinence, but that was a long time ago, so I may have just forgotten. Though, I suppose the horrific images of genitalia ravaged by various infections was enough to scare a lot of people away from the idea for a while.

@ANef_is_Enuf It was kind of a weird mix. It was like, if you do have sex, use protection – but we won’t tell you how to use it, or where to get it, or mention anything beyond condoms and The Pill (no diaphragms, no spermicide, no female condoms, no IUD, etc), or even mentioning how condoms protect against HIV but oral BC doesn’t… There was a lot of scare tactics that weren’t really backed by actual evidence. And they did show us scary pics of STDed genitals, but they didn’t have the intended effect, because if you take a picture of a ½ inch^2 area of either set of genitals and blow it up, it looks kinda funky and gross and, well, like guts, regardless of if it’s totally healthy or not, so everyone who’d see porn (or gotten a hand mirror) was like “and this is different how” and the teacher suddenly had to leave the room to get more coffee.It was a rather contradictory curriculum, on many fronts.

Did it make me more uptight? Uh..no. :P

I’ve always been highly sexual, curious, and explorative. HIV/AIDS and STDs in general have made me more cautious, for sure, but uptight? Nope. I am probably one of the least uptight people when it comes to sex.