Last week, like every week, I wrote a column. Last week, unlike every week, over 1,400 people read my column.

So what about last week’s column attracted over 1,000 more viewers than usual?

Last week I wrote about blowjobs.

Expectedly, the responses were heated and diverse. While many people were very supportive of the piece — which I greatly appreciated — others loudly voiced their negative opinions. This led to a great deal of reflection on my part. What follows here are just a few thoughts of mine which will address many of the concerns expressed by friends, family and strangers.

While it may appear I only wrote this article for the shock value or shameless self-promotion to get views, I really wrote it to combat the stigmatization around girls discussing sex in public. Half the battle with the reactions I received was that people now see me as a promiscuous, classless human being. My question is, if a boy wrote a similar article about being OK with cunnilingus, would he be viewed the same way? Doubtful. He would probably be roughed-up by his buddies a little for writing about sex — because at the end of the day, it’s something almost all of us are intimidated by being blunt about — but nobody would deem him a whore.

We are a generation that craves gender equality. That starts with allowing girls to talk about sex and not sexualizing and chastising them in the process. While I am aware that these are grand expectations, I believe we should all begin to take steps toward normalizing talking about sex. And whether it was taken this way or not, this was the intention of my blunt article.

After the piece went live online, I received 17 Facebook friend requests from random boys followed by a few demeaning messages, unsupportive texts from male high school peers and less than uplifting comments from strangers on the website. As someone who values safe, healthy sex, it was slightly off-putting that just because I wrote about it I was suddenly subject to less than appropriate comments. It saddens me that simply because I decided to open up, I was in turn, sexualized.

Yet, it is not surprising. In a culture that is still slightly dominated by men, it is understandable that some of them could perceive these demeaning comments as acceptable behavior. But it is not OK. I implore anyone who falls into this category to reevaluate your comments. If we continue to react this way to women talking openly about sex, we will never be able to live in the gender equal world we are aiming for.

While I understand that on some level, sex is an intimate union between two people and perhaps parts of it should be kept private, we live in a world that shoves sex down our throats wherever we go — innuendo intended. From movies to advertisements, our society has been be so desensitized to sex that it floors me that people become uncomfortable when I write about it.

Many people have expressed concern about my future and my ability to be hired after this article was posted. OK, yes, it might be a little weird when I sit down for an interview and they begin with “So I was looking through your old work and found this article about swallowing.”

But please don’t think this wasn’t something I rolled around in my head for a while before deciding I was comfortable with sharing my opinions on oral. When looking for a job, I aspire to write for a publication that values open-mindedness and thoughtfulness and will hear out my decisions before slashing me off the list of potential employees.

So there it is, I long to live in a society where women can talk candidly about sex and not be belittled in the process. I never attempted to offend anyone nor brownnose the male population. I hope that one day, all women will feel confident publically discussing their sex lives without being scared of the backlash that comes with it and that more men will feel comfortable with those who do so.

Alex Archambault is a sophomore newspaper and online journalism major. You can email her at ararcham@syr.edu or follow her @Alex_And_Raa on Twitter.

Published on October 27, 2015 at 9:15 pm