Casual sex and its detractors

Casual sex is probably one of the toughest, and touchiest, subjects I’m writing about in Sexual Freedom for All. When I wrote that column way back when, it seemed so simple and non-controversial to me, but I got a lot of criticism (praise too) about it, and since then I’ve seen casual sex attacked all over—and not just from conservatives. Last weekend, while talking about Sex and the City, someone, who was clearly a fan of the show, followed up quoting it by saying, “They were all sluts anyway. I mean, they had all those one-night stands.” My jaw did not literally drop, but I basically felt like I’d just been called a slut. Not that I really care and most of the time I really don’t mind, but I know this person would not have called me a slut to my face. And once again, it’s women policing women’s sexual behavior.

But joy! It’s not just women who are jumping on women’s case, telling us we’re causing the downfall of society and, even more gallingly, the downfall of feminism. Over and over and over, like they all drank the same Kool-aid, we see writers compare the gains feminism made to the gains in sexual opportunities women now have, and conclude that Jenna Jameson trumps Hillary Clinton. Shmuley Boteach’s Hating Women: America’s Hostile Campaign Against the Fairer Sex, on only a cursory reading, is like the slut comment times infinity, and one of the most insulting books I’ve ever skimmed through—will be reading it ASAP. He suggests that women are increasingly bi-curious because they want to “get away from men,” urges a “casual sex freeze-out” (at least half the book seems to be things I read in Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty dressed up in different language, not to mention at least half a dozen other recent books all pointing to casual sex, basically women being slutty, as the absolute nadir of everything female), and points to Natalie Krinsky (former Yale sex columnist), and pretty much any woman who’s ever taken her clothes off, for money or not, as the absolute downfall of feminism. Part of the problem is—whose feminism? Victoria Woodhull’s? Nina Hartley’s? Mine? That would be a no. Boteach is literally asking for women to go back up on the pedestal, mistakenly thinking that’s what feminism ever was all about:

No single factor has led to the greater debasement of women than the widespread availability of casual sex. If a man can get a woman without having to earn her, what incentive does he have to try to become a gentleman? And men want sex more than anything else. He’ll take the easiest path to get it if that is what is offered to him. (emphasis mine)

The problem I’m seeing with this new strain of feminism and protectiveness toward women is that we want women back up on that pedestal. We see the ways sexuality works against women, and instead of fighting for equality, we’re fighting for superiority.

Casual sex is not a panacea. Like abortion rights, arguing in favor of choice does not mean one is in favor of casual sex per se. It doesn’t mean advocating having as much sex as you can, as often as you can or that every time you’ll come, or that it will lead to blissful relationships, or that you’ll never walk away from it miserable. But it’s almost as if because

As the headline to a recent Germaine Greer piece in The Times of London goes, “I never said the sexual revolution would be pretty.” That seems to be the crux of the problem—we now say “slut” in new ways like “women are having sex like men,” by which we assume too that men are totally happy with the sexual status quo. News flash: not all men are. Men’s sexual options are limited as well, but the answer is not to narrow those options even further, but to expand them, and truly expand them, not just nominally say, “okay, you can do whatever you want,” but secretly we’ll be judging you.

Arguing in favor of the right to have casual sex, to have sex “like men,” if you will, even though that whole phrase is horribly offensive, is one part of the freedom I’m talking about. With freedom comes autonomy and responsibility. I’m purging old magazines around here and just read an article by Linda Fairstein about women who make up false rape accusations—some, she wrote, wanted revenge, but some felt guilty about having casual sex.

I would be absolutely hypocritical if I tried to say that whenever I’ve had casual sex, it’s been fabulous. Certainly in the last year or so, a lot of it’s been quite awful. I’ve wanted to walk away from those situations thinking all men are assholes, and I had to realize, no, just those particular guys, especially the ones dressed up as “nice guys.” But the point is that I had to figure out my comfort level with casual sex for myself. I also had one of the hottest, best, most healing sexual experiences of my life with a one-night stand, one that was all-out dirty, but also very sweet in its way, and helped me get over someone else.

But we can’t have it both ways. We can demand sexual equality, or we can demand chauvinism, as it were. We can ask that no one ever ogle us, we can pretend that our sexuality should be tucked away in our boxes and only brought out under special, mysterious, and certainly only marital circumstances. We can pretend we, as women, are better than men, thereby keeping all of our nasty stereotypes of brutish male sexuality intact.

Sadly, it’s just not that simple of an equation to say breast implants, pussy waxing, pole dancing and casual sex are either liberating or destructive. I’m not gonna lie and say either. They’re choices. Whenever women write about their abortions with anything but utter glee, anti-choice folks jump all over it—see? Abortions are hard, it’s not as easy as the pro-choice literature makes it sound. But they confuse, again, the right to do something with its consequences. All actions have consequences, and often come with a mixed set of emotions. In my case, I’ve often skipped home or to work under a walk of shame cloud, bursting with happiness, a la Valentine’s Day, only to realize that my expectations and the guy’s were so divergent we might as well be on Mars and Venus. And if I’d known that, I never would’ve gotten into their bed. But how can I be omniscient? I can only use those lessons and apply them in the future. I started reading a book by Laurie Seale called The Questions to Ask Before You Jump Into Bed: What to Bring Up Before You Get Down precisely because I do want to learn from my mistakes, I want to know what I can do better in the future, but she too falls into the trap of denigrating sex itself in order to make her point.

Almost all of this applies to the chapter I’m writing called “Dangerous Fantasies: Rape and Other Taboo Topics.” Women aren’t supposed to have rape fantasies because people see them as negating all the hard work Take Back the Night marches and date rape awareness have done, but what we fail to understand is that our brains are murky and complex. When given free reign, they may come up with some disturbing, scary, complex fantasies, ones that scare us even as they turn us on. But to say, “No, no, just shut up, you’re not a real woman if you believe or do ____” (or a real feminist, or a real man) is not helping anyone. It’s not just women who are scared of their fantasies. In the last month, a man came up to me in New York City and wanted to know how he could bring up getting fucked in the ass with his partners. He was worried that the women in his social circle would laugh at him. This is but one variant on thoughts so many people have, and what we do with that is lash out at others—oh, you’re a slut, but I’m pure, I’m good, I’m okay.

The easy answer is to say, casual sex is wrong, casual sex is bad, I once did it, now I’ve learned my lesson (as an O article by Lisa Dierbeck basically said). But we all have to learn our own lessons, which for some may mean no sex until marriage, for some it may mean an avid fantasy life, for some it may mean discovering our bodies and desires through sex. Again, like abortion, I think people are upset because women and men are having sex for various reasons—because they’re in love, in lust, they’re horny, or maybe drunk, bored, curious, sad, lonely, angry, want connection, have low self-esteem, etc. But the minute we start putting qualifiers on your reasons, and say you can only do it because of X, or in these circumstances, we’re taking away your decision-making ability, infantilizing you.

Same exact thing with abortion—you can’t argue in favor of women’s right to choose and then say those decisions were wrong. It’s a lesson we all have to learn and I’m not against giving or getting guidance, but we can be so heavy-handed about it, so harsh. All this talk of a “casual sex freeze-out” also posits the idea that it’s men who want sex, and women who go along with it, that women have sex for reasons that only have to do with getting ahead, pleasing other people, or conforming to what the culture wants. It’s the same arguments about all these topics, and the reason women get pissed when you tell them not to get their pussies waxed, not to give blowjobs, not to pose topless, not to have casual sex, is not necessarily because they have the time of their lives doing these things, but because feminism’s ongoing legacy has been that we’ve grown up thinking we can (shockingly) make our own decisions. We DO take that for granted. And call me crazy, but I think that whole wacky thinking for ourselves thing is good on many levels. Not envying other people’s sex lives or drives or actions, but figuring out how you can optimize your own happiness, sexually and otherwise. This is really not a feminist issue, which I mean facetiously, because it’s not just a “women’s” issue. It’s not about Hating Women, it’s about hating sex, it’s about blaming sex for the ills of society when it’s how we react to sex, what we do with it, that ultimately shapes who we are.