#sophie berrill
Author: Sophie Berrill.
Every sexually active and curious person knows the desperate demand for answers from your mates in moments of sexual panic.
“Should I take the morning after pill if I’m already on the pill?”
“Am I meant to get pap smears two years after I turn 18? What if I’ve only had sex with one person?”
“Wait, you’re supposed to wee after sex?”
“Where the fuck do you buy dental dams?”
It is such a relief to have pals you can talk out your sex-related concerns with, but sometimes it’s the clueless leading the clueless (no thanks to the sex education a lot of us received – or didn’t receive). Even when friends are preeetty sure their advice is accurate because they’re reading out verbatim the instructions in their own pill packs, everyone ends their advice with “I don’t know though”, in the event their guidance helps along an unwanted pregnancy.
Enter Victoria’s first sexual and reproductive health helpline for women: 1800 My Options. It launches March 19 and it is here to be your fully informed best friend for when you need an answer to all questions about pregnancy, contraception and sexual health. As well as providing information, the experienced staff who run the hotline can direct callers to services including counselling, contraception, sexual health clinics, abortion providers and more. All of this advice is free and your information confidential.
The Victorian Labor government funded 1800 My Options as part of Victoria’s first-ever Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Strategy, to help eliminate barriers impeding women’s access to reproductive and sexual health services. Women’s Health Victoria, an independent, not-for-profit organisation, will run the helpline.
The Executive Director at Women’s Health Victoria, Rita Butera says, “[The helpline] will provide Victorian women with easy access to contraception, pregnancy options and sexual health information, assisting them in navigating an often sensitive and complex service system.”
Although this is an initiative being introduced primarily for women, a Victorian State Government media advisor, Matilda Edwards Jézéquel, has confirmed that men with relevant concerns who want to use the helpline will also receive assistance. The helpline will be equipped for anyone, regardless of their gender or sexual identity, and can refer people to more specific services if necessary.
So if you live in Victoria and have a question, do not hesitate to call 1800 My Options. I certainly know that is where I will be directing my friends when I’m not 100 per cent sure (aka almost always).
Sophie Berrill used to laugh along at the “awkward couples” at school. The truth was though, she was utterly sexually inexperienced herself, and terrified of being laughed at in the same way. Realising that sex wasn’t just something for hot, cis, heterosexual movie stars was a major step in her personal and sexual journey.
When my cohort hit seventeen, I noticed a perception shift about the sex lives of our classmates. If someone was in a relationship, news they’d had sex became less surprising and more expected.
I think it is a widely experienced shift; at least it was at our Melbourne high school. I consider it a welcome shift, too, if you think about the cruel and naïve slut-shaming directed at any girl who dared to share her sexual experiences in early high school. Yet, as with most of humanity’s shitty approaches to the sex lives of others, it had its downsides.
On our quiet mound on the oval, my small group of friends and I would sit together and pluck at grass stems while discussing the happenings of other students. In our passing gossip, we would occasionally look at the school pairs and ponder: do the “awkward couples” have sex?
We went to a grammar school, so there was no lack of couples that were on the geeky side - neither super conventionally hot nor super popular. When the girls’ campus joined the boys’ during VCE they found each other and banded together. There was nothing nice, however, about the way my friends and I would evaluate these couples’ desirability and ability to be sexual based on a completely outside perspective. Sometimes it was just for a giggle that was not intended to be malicious; other times it was a genuine inquiry into the mechanisms of these partnerships, dissected with the gravity of a roundtable discussion.
The funny thing was, at this time I was utterly sexually inexperienced myself, yet I still spoke with the underlying assumption that if I had a boyfriend, I’d be having sex. Truthfully, I feared I would one day be part of the awkward couple upon which someone was taking pity. Despite a brimming sexual desire during my teens, I was – and still very much am – a fairly awkward person. And as such, at 18 years old, I picked out an introverted guy to match my heart.
When we didn’t have sex after being together for nearly a year, I got wind of a discussion between our friends where they questioned why we hadn’t done it yet. I knew this conversation would hold the same pity we’d always had of “awkward couples”, and I felt both embarrassed and ashamed that I had made any prior judgements about others, despite not knowing their private, intimate relationships.
My boyfriend and I had not had sex for a number of reasons (mostly that our living situations were about as awkward as we were; privacy was rare). When we eventually did, it was fun, full of laughs and comfortable. In the moment that we were naked together, completely alone, the fluster I felt in the busy outside world evaporated and I felt deeply at ease with him.
Yet, when I try to imagine having sex with someone new, I cringe at how I would be far too awkward or not perfectly sexy enough to do so.
There is one TV show, though, that still provides a powerful reminder to me that our outer shells – how conventionally attractive they are or how confidently they move – do not determine our right to be sexual beings, or how good our sex will be.
Luke Warm Sex is a short series by the Australian comedian Luke McGregor that does all the groundwork for Australians to “get better at sex”. This isn’t an “eat a donut off your man’s dick” kind of sex education, but a practical one that helps viewers overcome widely-held sexual hang ups. McGregor has classes with sexologists and tantric practitioners. He also shoots down a slip and slide covered in different types of lube to test their effectiveness.
At the very beginning of the series McGregor introduces himself as a “34-year-old comedian from Hobart, Tasmania”, who has had “almost no sex”. He pokes fun of how he looked as a teen with red hair, Coke bottle glasses and braces - his “sexual prime”. “The average Australian loses their virginity at 18,” he says. “I lost mine at 25”.
Sitting on my couch (alone) watching this series last year, my heart was so warmed to see a man whose voice often cracked nervously on the topic of sex, or who cringed into the camera while admitting he felt like crying before going nude, become the unapologetic face of better sex. He was so open about any sexual inexperience and being “scared” of sex but he always represented himself and all others as equal sexual beings.
I have come a long way from the girl who gossiped about others’ sex lives on the school oval. Sex was not designed for the small percentage of the world that is ultra attractive, confident in lingerie, able-bodied, cis and young, as mainstream film and TV might have us perceive. The only factors affecting whether a person deserves to participate in sex is their respect for partners and consent.
So if you’re like me and can’t seem to shake your body of its awkwardness: that’s okay. Go forth and fornicate because at the end of the day, sex is kind of weird and even Brad and Ange probably resembled two walruses smashing bellies - and that’s a beautiful thing.
