Manifesto

I got to thinking today about the latest round of government sex scandals and sex in general and I ended up thinking about my personal manifesto on sex, if you will. And suddenly, I feel compelled to share it with the internet.

While I think sex with someone you love is a truly wonderful thing and is the ideal (no sarcasm there at all, it really can be amazing beyond words), in my mind sex isn't exactly on any sort of pedestal and hasn't been since I was about twenty and realized that sometimes the subtext of sex is love and sometimes the subtext of sex is need/lust/want/experimentation/fun/passion/revenge/power. And some of those things, while not as mind-blowingly wonderful as sex-with-a-subtext-of-love, offer some interesting and memorable and FUN experiences.
Is there a line that needs to be drawn somewhere? Sure. I have no doubt in my mind that my opinion on sex is based entirely on my own personal sex life and could become something very different if I ever have an extremely negative, frightening experience. All of my experiences have been healthy and empowering for me. I have been lucky, and I realize that. The thought of sex ever being something other than fun and enjoyable is very upsetting to me, and there are no words to express how afraid I am of the idea of sexual assault and how much I feel for anyone who has had to deal with that.
So I definitely acknowledge a line between positive sexual experiences and negative ones. I also used to think that there was some sort of line that needed to be drawn to distinguish "normal" women from "slutty" ones. But the older I get, the less I believe that. First of all, there's always the major problem that guys never, ever get labeled as sluts regardless of what they do. Sure, they get called sluts or man-whores or players, but it's generally in a joking manner, and, especially when one guy is saying it to another, the comment is usually tinged with reverence. I do believe that things are starting to equal out on this front a bit, thankfully, but in general, when a woman is referred to as a slut or a whore, the context is negative. So if we're not going to call men sluts in a serious, hurtful way, then we don't need to be doing it to women, either.
Plus it's just so arbitrary. At what point does a woman become a "slut"? If you're eighteen and you've had sex with ten people in your lifetime, are you a slut? What about if you're forty and you've had sex with ten people? How many partners is too many in a lifetime, anyway? Two? Ten? Fifty? More? Does it count towards that number if you did everything else but never had intercourse? And do you get a bit of leeway if you don't settle down into a monogamous relationship until much later in life or never at all, or is a "good" girl only allowed a finite amount of sexual partners in a lifetime whether she gets married at 21 or 46? Are you a slut if you don't know the last name of everyone you've slept with? Or if you have to think really hard to recall all of their first names? What if you don't even know your "number", gee, that probably makes you a slut, huh? What if you give blowjobs but won't go all the way, are you still a slut then? Is it okay to sleep with two different guys in the same month? What about the same week? How about that time you woke up with one guy and then went on a date with another guy that night and ended up in his bed, too; that means everyone is allowed to call you a slut, right?
I'm being a bit facetious, but I'm serious about this. I don't think we can judge anyone by the amount of sex partners they have or don't have. Obviously, there are some situations that I'm more comfortable with than others. For instance, I like to know quite a bit about people I sleep with. I pride myself on being able to recall my "list" easily. I'm comfortable with my number and consider it extremely reasonable for someone who has been sexually active for almost seven years but only in a monogamous relationship for two of them. But that's the point: I'm comfortable within my own standards. Do I judge other people by my standards? No. I try really hard not to. And I don't think anyone else should judge by their personal standards, either. Some people are much more conservative than I am. Some people are much more liberal. And that's fine.
Sure, there are some things that are pretty much universally frowned upon and probably should be. I'm not talking about the rightfully illegal things here, like having sex with minors, since I think we can all agree those things are wrong. I'm talking about things like having sex with people other than your partner when you are supposed to be in a committed relationship, for example. I do think it's fair to judge then. But in those cases I think we're actually judging based on something deeper than the sexual behavior itself.
When it comes to sex,there are things that I would never do. I would never have sex for money. I would never have sex solely for the purpose of advancing my career. I would never feel comfortable having sex with more than one guy in the same night, etc. On the other hand, life experience has shown me that there are things that I'm comfortable with that plenty of other people are not comfortable with at all. In short, you can do whatever you want and it really makes no difference to me as long as you're practicing safe sex and not spreading STDs around. I don't judge, and I don't think anyone else should be judging either. It accomplishes nothing other than pitting women against each other. Which is not to say that I don't still engage in the knee-jerk reaction of referring to women as slutty or trashy or whores. But I'm trying really, really hard to stop and I wish everyone else would, too.