Like a virgin...

When I first heard the song “Like a Virgin,” I was probably 10 years old. I didn’t know what a virgin really was, let alone an orgasm. My best friend, Jodie, and I loved the song though, as anyone who came to the Rejection Show last summer witnessed us singing it (on video). When I grew up and learned what it was all about, I didn’t really think it applied to me. I mean, you’re only a virgin once, right? I remember losing my virginity very well, not just that one instance, but that whole first sexual relationship.

And let’s hear it for gender stereotyping in the year 2007. By who, you ask? Well, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear it’s by the owner of Dontdatehimgirl.com answering the question “Can women behave like men in relationships?”

The short answer is no, not if they want to be accepted in society. It’s unfortunate, but women are held to a much different standard when it comes to affairs of the heart than men are. Why? Maybe it’s because women will eventually become mothers and no one wants to think that the mother of a child has slept with many men, had a one-night stand or had an affair. After all, mothers are supposed to be chaste, just like the Virgin Mary, right? I think women should not aspire to behave like men anyway. Who wants to behave like an alley cat, sneaking around and jumping from woman to woman with abandon? If a woman behaves that way, eventually she’ll be labeled one of the many niceties society has attached to such behavior. You know the ones – slut, bitch, whore, etc. It’s not fair, but it’s the way it is! The Average Guy says...Women should not behave like men, period…

Men don’t want to marry somebody they think half the town has slept with. We want to believe that a sexual relationship between us and a woman that we have feelings for is special. We don’t want to walk into a bar and feel like our woman has slept with half of the men in there. However, it is also time for men to adopt a more woman-like attitude and sleep with one person at a time. And try to develop an emotional connection with the people that you sleep with. And this is something that both men and women should do.

I’m not arguing that this isn’t probably true for a lot of guys with fucked up double standards. But what I will say in regards to the whole thing I was talking about above is that for me, when I’m with someone new, whether I’m in the flirting stage or the fucking stage or whatever, if I’m into them, I’m so wrapped up in them it really is, in many ways, like my sexual slate is wiped clean. Not that I don’t have certainly knowledge about my body or my fantasies or recognize that I have had sex before, but it all feels new and exciting in a really mind-expanding way. I don’t sit around and say “well, this one is like my ex or an old lover because x, y and z.” It’s not about comparison or about anything in the past, for me, but all about the present. And sometimes, I will freely admit, I give too much of myself, and by that I do not mean bodily, but my time, my energy, my heart. I leap before I really look at the other person and that’s what got me in so much trouble emotionally last year.

I’m trying to turn over a new leaf in 2007 and be a little more realistic. Trying to put aside my goals and just take people as they are and be open to new possibilities. But to me, this thinking above is ass backwards. Mothers are supposed to be chaste? I’m not a man, but speaking as a bisexual woman, I would much rather be with partners who’ve been around the block, who know what they want both sexually and emotionally, who knows what’s worked and what hasn’t. And I guess, for me, as someone who is interested in men romantically, I don’t want to think of them as “alley cats.” That seems like such a hostile attitude, not one conducive to anything approaching love. And of course I’m not saying I haven’t been on the side of really awful betrayals, my last relationship, case in point. But I can’t walk around expecting every other guy I might meet to be a total asshole if I actually want to try to date any of them.

My point is really just that I love that giddy, new, exciting stage of a budding flirtation/relationship. I am trying to calm down a bit and take my interactions with other people, as well as my own thoughts and actions, one day at a time, rather than mentally leaping way into the future. And while I’m living in that day-to-day, moment-to-moment reality, I am fully present. I’m not dredging along the past with me as some sort of shield, though I may be the wiser and a little bit more heartbroken. We all are, in our own ways, and I’m starting to realize that, in a sense, it’s even more remarkable when someone can pull you out of that self-imposed shell and crawl through the armor you’ve built to protect yourself. I wouldn’t want to be with anyone who would, instead of treating me like a real, live, complex person, resort to societal “niceties,” as Tasha put it. I would so much rather be on my own than ever come near anyone who thinks like that. Which is not to say I’m against people making their own decisions and choosing their own paths, and that may include chastity or periods of celibacy (for me as well). But I think simply assuming that societal values will never change and that we, as women, are stuck with the worst-case-scenario scum-of-the-earth judgment loser guys of the world, well, that’s sad, and I know there are plenty of people out there who can actually approach other people and not see massive stereotypes, but see people, individuals, the kinds with hearts and brains and histories.