Salma El-Wardany (writtenbysalma) shares her own journey with sex as a young woman, and what it was like to navigate related conversations within her culture.
pick and a novel about three Muslim women as they navigate love, sex and friendship. In a personal essay for TODAY, El-Wardany shares her own journey with sex as a young woman, and what it was like to navigate related conversations within her culture.
It was talking to a girlfriend about my first sexual experience that taught me how lucky I was. She had been sworn to secrecy by the person she lost her virginity to. I had lost my virginity to a boy I was madly in love with, convinced we would be together forever — as you so often are when you’re young, in love and have yet to experience life. The entire experience was transcendental. It was one of the sweetest moments of my life.
I slouched into the house, chin down, shoulders slumped and a steely grimace on my face for fear the glow of sex would be shining through my pores. Of course, I had nothing to worry about and my mother wondered if perhaps I was coming down with a cold rather than floating on a cloud of new awareness and womanhood I had transcended to. Good Muslim girls didn’t have sex out of wedlock, and I had broken a cardinal rule.
The world doesn't offer women education on pleasure and sex. It's the conversations that give women the space to discuss these topics. Losing my virginity was beautiful, but having to keep it a secret was not. It’s also dangerous, because when women can’t talk about sex or ask questions, it can drive them into unsafe scenarios. My experience happened in my boyfriend’s family home, with his parents downstairs watching TV and the subconscious presence of adulthood bringing a reassurance to the proceedings. I knew, had anything gone wrong, we would both be supported by adults who would know what to do.
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