Author: David Hopkins
Date: May 24, 2011
I wrote this essay in high school, when I was about 16 or 17 years old. I had heard of gender segregation in dormitories and other sleeping quarters; about how mixing genders in the context of sleeping, except in the case of married partners, was widely regarded as immoral and sexually tempting. I began to question those policies.
Coed Sleepovers
We sleep to rest ourselves, to regain our energy to use for the next day. However, I do not understand why we always equate sleeping with sex.
I have two friends: Mike and Sarah. I have never had a sexual relationship with Sarah and I do not want to either. My father says that friends of the opposite gender do not even have sleepovers because their genders are different. If I were to have a sleepover with Mike, my father would feel fine. Nobody would assume that we would be engaging in sexual activity or that we are homosexual.
I have two friends: Mike and Sarah. I have never had a sexual relationship with Sarah and I do not want to either. My father says that friends of the opposite gender do not even have sleepovers because their genders are different. If I were to have a sleepover with Mike, my father would feel fine. Nobody would assume that we would be engaging in sexual activity or that we are homosexual.
However, if I asked to have a sleepover with Sarah, Dad would not let me and Sarah would refuse. Why? For the sole reason that she is a girl. It does seem rather sexist.
Besides, even if I did intend such a sleepover to be sexual, at a moderately intimate, but not risky level, so what? Teens go on dates which they intend to practice their sexuality. Yet, casual friends exist of the opposite gender. Casual friendship is about what friends are like by their character and interests, not about gender. Also, all through my childhood years, all of my birthday parties were a fairly even mix of boys and girls.
I understand parents' resentment in cases where they do not trust their children or know or trust their children's friends. If the children or their friends have a sexually risky, reckless, or other questionable, side, their parents would not permit them to have such a sleepover. If the children have behaved poorly, whether or not in a slumber party situation, parents may forbid them, for a significant period of time, to go out with friends or outside of parents' or a trusted person's view. That is what grounding is about. These consequences apply to life in general. A bank manager will not hire someone with a conviction of theft. A principal will not hire someone with a conviction of child molestation. Many universities will not accept a student who has cheated or plagiarized.
But why deny a person privileges when he or she has done nothing wrong and has no trace of sexual promiscuity? If parents trust their children and their children's friends, what harm is there in a coed sleepover? In my view, parents should also listen to their children's feelings and opinions instead of saying 'no' without any thought. Would friends entrusted with a coed sleepover really want to betray their parents' trust?
If I were to have a sleepover with Sarah, we would not actively be participating in sexual activity. We would merely have a presence of each other. Who is to dictate that by day, most people of the opposite gender are merely people, but by night, every single one of them transforms into a sex object? Let’s take into consideration gender equality.
Some people may argue that it is not necessary for friends of the opposite gender to spend a night together, that they can do all kinds of fun, nonsexual activities during the day. On the other hand, couldn't one also argue that, on the basis of casual friendship, it isn't necessary to segregate friends by gender whether they would want it or not? Also, couldn't friends engage in sexual activities during the day? We were born into a coed world and that is how we live our day to day lives. The fact is, the dark side of planet Earth is little more than a vast coed dormitory. At just what proximity on the continuum of distance does coed sleeping become immoral? Is it acceptable for hospital curtains to be so thin and easily pushed aside if mixed gender sleeping is so unacceptable?
Every single night, I sleep to rest myself, and I do not want people to tell me that I would be engaged in sexual activity if only a female, any female were sleeping in the room. People fall asleep on planes and buses in mixed-gender settings anyway. From time to time, I have also seen large groups of mallard ducks at the bird sanctuary sleeping in mixed gender without doing anything sexual on any of those occasions.
I have known parents who will not even let their children's friends, of opposite gender, spend the night in their house, let alone the same room. Would such a position make all bed and breakfasts unacceptable? However, it has happened that my father has allowed my sister to have a sleepover with a female friend at our house, even though I am male and in the same house as the friend.
Sure, sleeping with or near someone of the opposite sex can be sexual. I would feel aroused if it were someone on whom I felt sexual or had a relationship, but someone like Sarah? I could never feel aroused by someone by whom I did not feel sexual in the beginning. I do not understand, why, in a society, that preaches equality and frowns upon sexism, many people are repulsed by teens or children of mixed gender innocently spending a night together in a room.
There is also the question of a healthy child or youth having a friend of the same gender, known to have an STI, sleep over. Parents may fear sexual activity in coed sleepovers, even where everyone is healthy and the children insist the event will be innocent. With that in mind, might it also be logical for parents to forbid their child to have a sleepover with the same-sex infected friend, regardless of sexual orientation involved? Their child or the friend just might start to do something sexual anyway. On the other hand, suppose the parents do trust the friends enough to allow the unisex sleepover with the infected friend to happen. How would a coed sleepover, where no participants are infected and the friends are just friends, be different? If a student resident had an STI, would he or she even be accepted into a dormitory?
Several years from now, I do hope to marry, and when I do, our bed will become the most sexual place we could possibly be. Probably, another part of the reason why we sleep is so that we can spend some intimate time alone with our partners.
In my opinion, forbidding coed sleeping is like Stan and Jan Berenstein's Berenstein Bears story, 'No Girls Allowed' in which the boys make a club just to shut Sister Bear and the other girls out. If the people involved in the sleepover are not intimately bonded, forcing sex segregation is unfair and unnecessary.
Should all dormitories be coed then? I would say not. We must respect other peoples' opinion of how they would feel about people of the opposite gender of a dormitory. Therefore, I believe we must also respect peoples' opinion of how they would feel regarding their own friends.
Would such a slumber party automatically, inevitably, and uncontrollably transform into an orgy party? Casual friends of the opposite gender do many things together: eat, play, watch movies, talk, go out; so, why not sleep? We only see two or more people of the opposite gender sleeping together as only sexual because that is typically the context in which people of the opposite sex do it.
If coed sleeping were only sexual, homosexual people would never be able to have a nonsexual sleepover, or sleep in a dormitory without people of their sex arousing them or their arousing people of the opposite sex. Describing coed sleeping as solely sexual violates equality rights between genders, and compromises principles which encourage other people, especially between friends, to evaluate a person from his or her inside. If parents are uncomfortable with coed sleepovers, regardless of what happens or not, or do not trust their children with such an event, my advice would be for such parents to smoothly, gently tell their children those feelings, and, perhaps, to forbid all sleepovers regardless of gender. That may sound cold, but it will probably eliminate a sense of double standards between friends that the child could otherwise feel if only the opposite gender were forbidden. As stated earlier, there are many activities for friends to do with each other besides sleeping.
