Sex needs a new metaphor. Here's one ... - Al Vernacchio

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I'd like to talk to you today about a whole new way to think about sexual activity and sexuality education. By comparison, if you talk to someone today in America about sexual activity, you'll find pretty soon you're not just talking about sexual activity; you're also talking about baseball.

Because baseball is the dominant cultural metaphor that Americans use to think about and talk about sexual activity, we know that because there's all this language in English that seems to be talking about baseball, but that's really talking about sexual activity.

So, for example, you could be a pitcher or a catcher, and that corresponds to whether you perform a sexual act or receive a sexual act. Of course, there are the bases, which refer to specific sexual activities that happen in a very specific order ultimately resulting in scoring a run or hitting a home run, which is usually having vaginal intercourse to the point of orgasm, at least for the guy.

You can strike out, which means you don't get to have any sexual activity. And if you're a benchwarmer, you might be a virgin or somebody for whom whatever reason isn't in the game, maybe because of your age or because of your ability or because of your skill set.

A bat's a penis, and a nappy dugout is a vulva or a vagina. A glove or a catcher's mitt is a condom. A switch hitter is a bisexual person, and we gay and lesbian folks play for the other team. And then there's this one: "If there's grass on the field, play ball," and that usually refers to if a young person, specifically often a young woman, is old enough to have pubic hair, she's old enough to have sex.

This baseball model is incredibly problematic; it's sexist, it's heterosexist, it's competitive, it's goal-directed, and it can't result in healthy sexuality developing in young people or in adults. So, we need a new model. I'm here today to offer you that new model, and it's based on pizza.

Now, pizza is something that is universally understood and that most people associate with a positive experience. So, let's do this: let's take baseball and pizza and compare it when talking about three aspects of sexual activity: the trigger for sexual activity, what happens during sexual activity, and the expected outcome of sexual activity.

So, when do you play baseball? You play baseball when it's baseball season and when there's a game on the schedule. It's not exactly your choice. So if it's prom night, or wedding night, or at a party, or if our parents are in home, hey, it's just batter up.

Can you imagine saying to your coach, "Uh, not really feeling it today. I think I'll sit this game out"? That's just not the way it happens. And when you get together to play baseball, immediately you're with two opposing teams—one playing offense, one playing defense. Somebody's trying to move deeper into the field; that's usually assigned to the boys. Somebody's trying to defend people moving into the field; that's often given to the girl.

It's competitive; we're not playing with each other; we're playing against each other. And when you show up to play baseball, nobody needs to talk about what we're going to do or how this baseball game might be good for us. Everybody knows the rules; you just take your position and play the game.

But when you have pizza, well, you have pizza when you're hungry for pizza. It starts with an internal sense, an internal desire or a need: "Huh, I could go for some pizza." And because it's an internal desire, we actually have some sense of control over that. I can decide that I'm hungry, but know that it's not a great time to eat.

And then when we get together with someone for pizza, we're not competing with them; we're looking for an experience that both of us will share that’s satisfying for both of us. And when you get together for pizza with somebody, what's the first thing you do? You talk about it.

You talk about what you want; you talk about what you like. You may even negotiate: “How do you feel about pepperoni?” “Not so much; I'm kind of a mushroom guy myself.” “Well, maybe we can go half and half.”

And even if you've had pizza with somebody for a very long time, don't you still say things like, "Should we get the usual, or maybe something a little more adventurous?"

Okay, so when you're playing baseball—so if we talk about during sexual activity, when you're playing baseball, you're just supposed to round the bases in the proper order, one at a time. You can't hit the ball and run to right field; that doesn't work. And you also can't get to second base and say, "I like it here, I'm going to stay here." No.

And also, of course, with baseball, there's like the specific equipment and a specific skill set; not everybody can play baseball; it's pretty exclusive. Okay, but what about pizza? When we're trying to figure out what's good for pizza, isn't it all about what's our pleasure?

There are a million different kinds of pizza, there are a million different toppings, there are a million different ways to eat pizza, and none of them are wrong. They're different. And in this case, difference is good because that's going to increase the chance that we're having a satisfying experience.

And lastly, what's the expected outcome of baseball? Well, in baseball, you play to win; you score as many runs as you can. There's always a winner in baseball, and that means there's always a loser in baseball. But what about pizza?

Well, in pizza, we're not really—there's no winning. How do you win pizza? You don't. But you do look for: are we satisfied? And sometimes that can be different amounts over different times or with different people or in different days, and we get to decide when we feel satisfied. If we're still hungry, we might have some more. If you eat too much, though, you just feel gross.

So what if we could take this pizza model and overlay it on top of sexuality education? A lot of sexuality education that happens today is so influenced by the baseball model, and it sets up education that can't help but produce unhealthy sexuality in young people, and those young people become older people.

But if we could create sexuality education that was more like pizza, we could create education that invites people to think about their own desires, to make deliberate decisions about what they want, to talk about it with their partners, and to ultimately look for not some external outcome, but for what feels satisfying.

And we get to decide that! You may have noticed in the baseball and pizza comparison under the baseball, it's all commands; they're all exclamation points. But under the pizza model, they're questions.

And who gets to answer those questions? You do! I do!

So remember, when we're thinking about sexuality education and sexual activity: baseball—you're out; pizza is the way to think about healthy, satisfying sexual activity and good comprehensive sexuality education. Thank you very much for your time.

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