Author's note: This whole thing is probably a classic case of too much information. Because it's a classic case of blogging-as-therapy (because I'm too poor to afford an actual therapist). So, SPOILER ALERT: I'm being pretty frank about my sexual history, and if you don't want to know for whatever reason, just stop reading, ok? This really is an exercise in purging for me, but I do need to make it public in order for that purging to be complete.
I'm sure my intimacy issues have many causes, but at least one of them is the general culture of fear and shame around sex. I say this as someone that didn't grow up in one of those crazy fundamentalist, abstinence, purity-pledges to your father kind of homes, either. No, I think we were pretty average on the topic of sexuality, which is to say that we just didn't talk about it. There wasn't any active effort to shame or instill fear, but there wasn't any discouragement of that, either. The broader culture was allowed to shape my opinion on sex without interference.
Yeah, explains a lot, doesn't it?
Because the culture we live in is downright bipolar about sex.
Do it, don't do it. Do it a LOT, do it with anyone you like, only do it with people you love, don't do it all. Masturbate! Don't masturbate. Experiment! Don't get yourself in situations you'll regret. Take responsibility for your own pleasure! It's all your responsibility! Even violence is your responsibility. It's your fault if you get raped, it's a man's fault for not being controlled enough. Everything about sex and the way we deal with it is dual: for every person proclaiming something from the rooftops, there is another person standing on the rooftop across the street yelling the exact opposite thing.
Seriously, guys? INFORMATION OVERLOAD. I can't handle it. Shut UP already.
The constant that my mind and soul and heart have always siezed on is the word "slut." The battle for the meaning of the word is apparently being waged in my flesh, because I'm fed up with both sides.
I probably am a slut. But unlike all those women out there working to reclaim the label, I cringe. I know it's meant to be hurtful. I know it's meant to be a cut on my moral character, and I know it's meant to characterize me as less than worthy. There's no reclaiming that. I don't know why anyone would bother trying. One side of our culture, despite its rampant sexualization, still cleaves to narrow strictures of acceptable behavior, and a girl or even a woman that has a lot of sex with a lot of people is a slut, and that is BAD. There is no way around the fact that word is meant to shame and demean and alter behavior back towards socially acceptable norms.
So let's just lay this out. Cold hard facts, cold comfort numbers. I've had intercourse with something like 30 men in my life. No, I don't remember the exact number. No, I don't remember all their names. No, I wasn't always as careful as I should have been, although I escaped STDs, and I do know that.
I've had sexual contact short of intercourse with an additional 15 or so men.
I have had four mutually committed, serious relationships in my life. So the greatest part of my sexual experience has had happened outside the bounds of a close or loving relationship.
I have had incredibly lopsided relationships, in which one person cares far more than the other, three times. I've been on both sides of that inequality.
So the majority of my sexual experience has been outside of any sort of relationship at all.
I have been pregnant twice, and I have one child.
I'm a slut.
Honestly, my experience has taught me that sleeping around and lots of random one-night stands are not very satisfying. I don't recommend it as a course of action or a lifestyle. But I don't know if I would have ever gotten to the point I'm at right now, of not merely desiring real intimacy, but of understanding what real intimacy actually is because I've experience the contrast. Some people can't learn from the mistakes of others; they have to make the mistakes themselves. I am very much one of those people. So, despite 10+ years of heartache and yearning, I'm glad to have had the experiences I've had.
On the other hand, the sex-positive messaging can become overbearing and oppressive. The attempt to reclaim "slut" has led to a bizarro world of opposite sexual pressures: to do as much as possible, and be proud of it, to experiment and try everything, and to enjoy it all. And I haven't done that.
For example, I don't really get masturbation. My fuzzy-headed spiritualist view of the world and relationships idealizes sex as an energy exchange between people, and the fulfillment (the orgasm) comes from that exchange. This is why all those one-night stands were so bad. I can't get off without another person, and another person that's open. So I don't masturbate. But I spent a lot of time, at one point in my life, being pretty ashamed and wondering what was wrong with me because the "sex-positive" message of self-love was so relentless.
I wasn't slutty enough for that side of the culture, because I didn't have a lot of orgasms to go along with all that sex I was having. In fact, I pretty much never really enjoyed myself at all. And it was my fault, completely, that I was failing to understand the physical needs of my body so much that I couldn't or wouldn't comunicate them. Because in the sex-positive world, orgasm is a purely physical event that should be able to be brought about by purely physical means. That's why masturbation is so important, because it shows you what you respond to physically. And that message, as powerful as it may indeed be to a lot of people, was intensely damaging to my own ideas about pleasure and intimacy and what I needed. I doubted myself, terribly doubted myself, for years. And I still do.
I'm ashamed of having been a slut. I'm ashamed for having not been slutty enough to bring myself to orgasm. Right now, I'm ashamed that I've written all this and I'm going to share it with the world, because it's so confused.
But I'm going to hit that publish button anyway, because the only way to stop being ashamed is to just deal with the reality. So here we go. REALITY.
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