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Blogs Relationship Wars Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby by Drew Stewart | Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby by Drew Stewart |
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| Written by Foresight | |
| Friday, 16 November 2007 | |
Our society has fenced off many subjects as “taboo”. However, the number of taboos associated with sex is unmatched. To name a few, there’s the taboo on masturbation, anal sex, adultery, homosexuality, incest, animal-human sex, pedophilia, necrophilia and paraphilias. And while most of us will never be questioned about any of the abovementioned taboos, there is one touchy question that you will very likely be asked at some point during your dating or married life:
"In his second autobiography, A View From Above, Lifelong-bachelor Wilt Chamberlain claimed he had sex with 20,000 women"
And then there’s the issue of what “counts” as sex (remember Bill Clinton argued that he didn’t commit perjury because oral sex was not "sex" per se). One of my favorite scenes from the movie Wedding Crashers is the scene where Vince Vaughn wants to play a game called “Just the Tip”, “just to see how it feels.” Along with oral sex, the tip drill game and the “it was only one time” excuse are scapegoats we use to keep our numbers down. “What is sex?” may be a follow up question to ask after you ask “how many?” since how one defines “sex” can make the difference between five or fifteen partners. But who’s counting? Comments
(14)
I'm 24 and I've been with 11 men. However, I've never---not once---had unprotected sex. I guess that makes me a ho to a lot of people, but I'm secure enough in my sexuality not to let society's norms dictitate how I choose to live my life.
This article was deep...Im so glad you touched on the double standard part. That has always bugged me. Im so sick of men calling women hoes and sluts for sleeping with less men than they (men) have slept with women, yet its ok for men and not for women.
Jovanni, i'm so sick of women's response to the double standard! The response shouldn't be, it's ok for men to be sluts, so it should be ok for women to be sluts too! That is flawed logic!! The point is, it shouldn't be ok for men to be sluts either! It's still worst for women to be promiscuous in this society. That's why the world is coming to an end b/c of this new "Superhead" mentality that it's ok for women to sleep around b/c men do it. That's stupid! Try helping men to be less promiscuous and you continue to keep your numbers down!
 written by anonymous , November 16, 2007
I don't think it's good to have a double standard, but sexually..women gotta be smarter with the decisions they make. A woman's body is way more fragile than a man's. My ex told me from the break that she had contracted HPV and Mono and she didn't know who it came from. She said she's only been with 4 1/2 guys (yea..i know right) and she didn't start having sex until she was 20. I met her when she was 25. All that meant is that every year, she let a person hit it raw. It's one thing to be in a serious relationship and let your man hit it raw, but if you are in 1 situation a year when you let someone hit it raw, that says a lot about you. Anytime you can't detect where your sickness came from, that meant you were being irresponsible..... and with certain diseases, men are only carriers...they don't get the same symptoms and breakouts that women can get. In general, people need to take sex a lot more serious than they do because it seems like every year there is a new risk. I bet you in like 5 years, there's gon be a virus that can burn right through a rubber. I mean technically, being a whore is leisurely and casually having sex with a partner you do not anticipate being with in the future. Over ther years, the term "hoe" has taken on a negative meaning, but when I was six I had rainbows all over my bedroom wall. Now, if I have rainbows all over my wall, I'd be perceived as homo. Same shit, just a different day now. I mean, if you are gonna sleep around with people you dont want anything serious with....lace the shoe up if it fits. Point blank. If you are gonna call yourself a mature adult and do what you wanna do, you shouldnt be preoccupied with the label you will get from someone as a result.
I think you have a very good point. I met my wife of 12 years and she was a virgin. I know so because i met her when she was 20. Her sister married my best friend and they were always telling her to go out and meet someone. I met her the knight before their wedding because i had to walk her down the isle. I do know she was a virgin and did not want to take advantage. She was a church girl so i did not put pressure on her so i waited a year befor we had sex i would have waited longer. She new i had a friend and she under stood. I would not jugde a person because i don't want them to do it to me but you have a good point.
I like to think about WHY someone would ask that question. It's all about INTENT. That's what usually keeps me from answering. What exactly can you learn about someone by knowing how many people they have had sex with? What kinds of things can you accurately assume? What kinds of things might you be ignoring (or ignorant of?)?
What about virgins who love to give head? Aren't they considered slutty? (i knew a few when i was in high school) What about the many young women who have been forced into sex at a young age? What about the unfortunate people who get STDs when they they're in a monogamous relatioonship? I do think people make too many ASSumptions based off numbers. I am soooo much more than my vagina. I think men place too much stock into this whole madonna/whore complex thing. But you know what I just realized? If a women is really pretty, she's much more likely to get wifed, no matter how much of whore she is. And if you think about it, in 30 years, what will it matter? Who gone say, Man 30 years ago, your wife was a slut. wtf? LOL. that's ridiculous.
"Man 30 years ago, your wife was a slut. " Coming from a man, that's as damaging a remark about my wife, that I think I could hear. If your significant other was a slut, then their past is essentially a culmination of their choices, decision-making, and habits that have come to be a part of the person as the face that lies before you.
If a person had a set of habits with which they chose to live, then this lifestyle is something that is an acceptable way of living for them, and although they may alter their lifestyle temporarily, it is clear that they have no issue with resuming that manner of living, as it was once very natural to them. It isn't crazy to use past behavior as a predictive indicator of future actions, and although it is not true in every case, most of the time, its pretty similar to what we have established as a way of living for ourselves. If a person has had a past sexual history that I'm not comfortable with, if I end up being a victim of some of those past behaviors, to some degree, I am responsible for making an intelligent and practical decision based on what I've been given (their history). This either leads to brutal honesty and hurt feelings, or lies with a sincere desire to be accepted. Which is worse? Both are uneasy to bear once having all the facts on the table. Check this, if you had an athlete that was a player, known for slanging his stuff around indiscriminately, and eventually cheated on a person he was with...yes that's messed up, but someone would quitely concede that he was just being himself, and if you look at him he hasn't changed much at all. Now take a girl who has the reputation of being easy and not to opposed to many a guy being in her sheets...If she later did the same thing, immediately she'd be branded as (insert insult here) and many would say that this was her nature. In both cases, the only thing that changed between the behavior (promiscuity) and the act (infidelity) was time and another person being in the picture. My point is, even if there is another person in the picture, how long can you prevent that person from reverting to the behavior that came to define their way of life from the start? If you have the seed of apples, can you really be mad years down the line when you've grown an apple tree?
Sixty people isn't a lot. I know people who've had in the hundreds.
"It isn't crazy to use past behavior as a predictive indicator of future actions, and although it is not true in every case, most of the time, its pretty similar to what we have established as a way of living for ourselves."
This is true. But the question before is us, How many people have you had sex with? The rote answer to this question only speaks to a small and ambiguous facet of someone's complete sexual history. And that's something that I think most people, especially men, don't realize. That's the point I'm trying to make. I believe that when most men ask that question, they are advertently or inadvertently trying to factor your answer into their complete assesment of your value to them. By answering that seemingly simple question that's really wrought with implications and assumptions, you are completely at the mercy of someone's arbitrary judgments of how a woman should act or live their life. The answer to that question (and there is hardly ever an acceptable answer for a man's standard) causes the "logical" male mind to discount the things that he knows about the woman, and to completely deny (or forget about) the existence of the many things that he doesn't know about her life and history, sexual and nonsexual. And THAT is the double standard that I totally disagree with.
The argument that I am making is the same argument that people make about overreliance on statistics. As a black person (and historian), I know just how damaging someone else's judgment of a mere number can be.
If I ask black man anywhere in America if he's ever been arrested, and he says Yes, what can I assume about him? NOT A DAMN THING! many factors go into why black men are arrested at higher rates than whites in our society, but looking at a statistic won't express any of those reasons. Just like looking at a sexual statistic won't reveal very much about a person and actually serves to obscure the complexity of a person's totality. The only thing a sexual statistic (quantitave) can accurately reveal is the morals and perspective of the asker (by their qualitative reaction).
It's not so easy to get over a current love interests past sex capades. Dating a reformed "ho" has it problems certainly. They always have those "ho tendencies" to return to their wicked ways. That's always something to be concerned with.
As far as the double standard, some women amazingly find it more attractive if a man has "been around" though it has the opposite effect on men for women who have high numbers. The reason is precisely what you mentioned: Men are deemed to sleep with any decent woman willing (though this is not true for all men, it's pretty damn close for most). Women, being the selective by nature and mainly interested in quality) appear to go against nature by being having sex in a quantatitive rather than qualitative manner. But let's just be real with ourselves: If she bangin, then she's has had her fair share and you can not hate on that.
My friends and I were actually talking about this last week. One of my girls just started dating a man, and she stated, "I really like this one, so I"m gonna wait awhile before I sleep w/ him. I NEVER sleep w/ guys I actually like because I don't want them to think I"m fast." So that sparked questions like: "So you sleep with guys you DON'T really like?"; "What if he asks about your past? You can't play Ms. Sweet & Innocent forever."; and "Girl, you know you're a freak! How're you gonna hold off?"
I think one of the biggest myths about women is that they cannot separate sex from emotion. Therefore, when a guy asks his girlfriend how many partners she's had, the question is partly about how many men have been between her sheets and partly about how many men have been in her heart. If she's a known whore or if he only wants sex, then he's not going to care what the answer is. (He probably won't even ask to begin with.) It's when he's developed feelings for the woman that this question even becomes an issue. As graduate students, my friends and I are often stressed and isolated. Some of us suffer quietly, some have battery toys, and some have boy toys to ease the pressure. In fact, the friend who's not sleeping with her current guy is notorious for having random trysts w/ men she's physically attracted to and then cutting them off before it gets serious. Of course, no man wants to think that the woman they're making love to has a history speckled with guys who she was just f**king because she was lonely. Then again, women not only accept the serious relationships that a man has had in the past, but they also come to EXPECT their men to have slept w/ a few women because "she was cute but i never wanted to be with her," or "i was drunk and she was there," or "it just happened a few times when we were bored." Yes, the double-standard is alive and well.... Bottom Line: If you don't really want to know, don't ask the question!!
Drew, as aLWAYS..i FUCKIN LOVE IT
Geoff Alls addressed the issue here as well. Check it out:
http://www.imperiousent.com/film-tv-critics-corner/theres-nothing-wrong-with-a-little-sex-is-it-2.html#jc_allComments Excerpt: If sex is indeed meaningless how did it get this way? The abundance of contraception, the acceptance of abortion, lack of education about STDs, a media drenched with sexual images? The answer isn’t clear, but what is clear is, they all separate sex from its inherent consequences. Sex is unlike anything else in society, it is a necessity, it is enjoyable, and it has serious consequences when misused. But, instead of ceasing to misuse sex, mankind has opted to limit and destroy its consequences. What if one day mankind can completely control STD’s and procreation? Would there be any reasons to regard sex as “sacred”? And if sex isn’t sacred is there any reason to be monogamous? Everything we define as evil has harsh consequences and everything that society promotes has positive consequences (or we believe them to have positive consequences). If sex no longer has any negative consequences should the decision to have sex be one that is made with caution or is sex inherently sacred and intimate? One things for sure, we don’t live in a world where sex no longer has negative consequences therefore, having sex isn’t a decision we should take lightly. Yet more and more I hear the argument, “You don’t call a man a whore when he is promiscuous so don’t call a woman one.” This statement is drenched in stupidity and misinterprets a good argument. The double standard is wrong, but I don't think it means women should imitate the sexual behavior of men. It means men should be judged by the same standard as women. In other words, if you’re a promiscuous woman, you should still be called names but when a man does the same thing, he should be called names too. Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.       |
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| Last Updated ( Friday, 21 December 2007 ) |
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