A milestone!

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the press, your Majesty (who, for some reason, do not come under the title of 'ladies and gentlemen') I would like to announce a milestone! I have amazed myself and others and actually managed to remember my password long enough to have posted... a FIFTH entry! *insert mad whoops and cheers here*
So, what to write in this, my most significant blog yet?


...Hadn't actually thought about that yet.

OK, I have a query;
Why do we place such importance on sex?

When you think about it, there are two (biological) risks
1. Pregnancy (before you're ready)
2. An STD
Both of these can, as far as we know, be prevented with contraception. (There are some women who are so fertile they can pregnant even with contraception but, for the sake of this argument, we'll ignore that for now.)


Before people had connected sex and pregnancy, it wasn't really that big a deal. If a woman was pregnant before marriage it didn't damage her reputation at all because people thought pregnancy was a totally random event, over which they had no control. (This is why we talk about someone "falling pregnant" and "falling ill", people didn't realise there was a way to prevent either disease or pregnancy.)

STDs are something we've only discovered recently, true, they do place a need for trust on sexual relationships but sex had this hallowed place in our mind long before that.

Most religions tell us that sex should be in marriage and in marriage only. Is this because, when these religions were evolving, a woman couldn't trust a man to help her look after a baby without being married to him?
So is it just that we've had it drummed into us that sex is near sinful that we see it as such an uncomfortable subject?

Do we want to see ourselves as a step above animals who have sex whenever they like? But animals eat and drink whenever they like too and so do we.

I'm not saying we should be having orgies all the time or sleeping with anyone we see, but I'm curious. Why do people see sex as such a big deal? Why has our society now been divided into people who talk about sex constantly and read magazines telling them the best rated sexual positions, as opposed to people who still see it as something between to people, to be treasured and kept secret?
I've never been able to explain a boy why girls are so careful when it comes to sex. Sure, they say things like "I know it's a big deal for you" but I don't think they really know why. (Not wanting to offend anyone, I know not all boys are sex obsessed chauvinistic pigs)

So, tell me your thoughts on the subject.

(I could go on but, this post is getting pretty long and I'm sick of the sound of my own typing)