I don’t remember the first time I heard that sex was something girls should be careful about, but I know it came long before I understood what sex actually was. It was in the way adults said “be smart” with a knowing look, in the way teachers talked about “good decisions,” in the way every warning seemed to end with the same unspoken message: you have more to lose.
For women, sex has rarely been neutral. It’s treated as a risk, a transaction, and a reputation. From the moment we’re old enough to understand what it means, it comes with rules; how to avoid it, how to survive it, how not to want it too much.
Sex isn’t inherently negative. But the way society frames it for women almost always is.
The Double Standard
When men talk about sex, it’s power. When women talk about sex, it’s a problem.
We still live under a double standard that rewards male desire and punishes female agency. A man’s sexual experiences make him confident or experienced; a woman’s make her “easy,” “damaged,” or “too much.” Even the language reveals the imbalance—men sleep with women, but women give it up. That contradiction leaves women trapped between purity and performance: expected to be desirable but not desiring, attractive but not assertive, open but never too open. The line is so thin it’s almost impossible to walk without falling into judgment.
Shame as Social Training
Sex education doesn’t help. In many schools, girls are still taught to fear sex more than to understand it. Lessons focus on pregnancy, protection, and abstinence—never pleasure, boundaries, or communication. The silence fills in the blanks with shame. That shame sticks. It teaches women that their bodies are problems to be managed rather than parts of themselves to inhabit comfortably. So even as adults, many of us carry quiet guilt into our relationships—guilt for wanting too much, for not wanting enough, for feeling confused, for being human.
Sometimes, I think the first thing women have to unlearn isn’t fear of sex, it’s the belief that we should feel guilty for wanting to experience it fully.
The Cultural Noise
The culture doesn’t make it easier. Women’s bodies are everywhere; advertising, film, music videos, used to sell everything except autonomy. We’ve all seen that one Sydney Sweeney advert about jeans… Sexuality is presented as liberation, but only if it’s visually appealing and carefully controlled.
We’re told to “own our sexuality,” but what that really means is to perform confidence in ways that still appeal to the male gaze. The supposed empowerment of sexual freedom often comes with an asterisk: it’s fine to be sexual, as long as it’s beautiful, marketable, and doesn’t make anyone uncomfortable. So even the language of liberation can feel like another cage.
Rewriting the Script
If sex feels negative for women, it’s because the story was written that way. The shame, the silence, the double standards, they were never about protecting women. They were about controlling them.
But we can rewrite it. Reclaiming sexuality doesn’t mean ignoring its risks; it means expanding the narrative beyond them. It means giving women room to explore, to speak, to define desire on their own terms and not as something to hide, but something to understand.
The shift starts with honesty: talking about sex without lowering our voices, asking better questions, refusing to apologise for having bodies that want, ache, or change their minds.
Conclusion
Sex shouldn’t be a source of shame, but the way society frames it still makes it feel that way for many women. That’s not inevitable, it’s constructed. And what’s constructed can be unlearned. I don’t think sex itself is negative. What’s negative is a world that teaches women to fear their own desire and calls that morality. Until that changes, we’ll keep mistaking control for protection, and confusing shame for safety.