We received the following in response to our Metro article on negotiating a night of casual sex. Sometimes, it’s the hate mail that brings us the most joy:
I read your “article” in Metro this morning. Ironically I NEVER read that rag but for some reason I did this morning and I’m glad…it is critical to know who your enemies are and there you were “Negotiating for a Night of Casual Sex”. Ladies, please…this city, the internet and the world at large is filled with single women looking for relationships and not succeeding for many reasons not the least of which is the availability of casual sex. Shame and guilt have their place in this world, they are functional and who the hell are you to liberate anyone of those powerful and functional emotions. Sex is one of the universe’s most powerful and generous gifts and who are you to drag it through the muck? Seriously, who are you women? Don’t answer me, that is a question for you to answer in the privacy of your own heart and mind.
If you have no interest in seeing a person in the context of a relationship, you have no business engaging in sex with them-end of story. The extent of the damage you cause with your “perspective” and sharing it is beyond your comprehension.
Please consider what I’m saying, I suspect I’m not in the minority although I suspect you think I am.
I believe you owe us all an apology.
Very sincerely,
Jill
I think the words prudish and slutty are both harmful. They both put negative connotations into something that needn’t be. There’s nothing wrong with having sex nor is there anything wrong with not having sex. The idea that either choice is wrong is ridiculous. Shame and guilt need only apply to harming oneself or others; not to deciding or not deciding to have casual sex. As far as this sentence from B “If my shallowness was not being actively indulged by legions of slutty women, I would have to do more to make myself respectable and attractive to nice girls.”
It’s too bad women want to have sex with you considering how disrespectful you are towards them. Women who decide to have sex are just as nice as women who decide not to. Not having sex does not make a women nice.If women are sluts for having casual sex so are men. Thus B according to logic as well as yours: you are slut and if you are a slut you are not nice.If the choices of women to have casual sex is so wrong then you are also wrong which i suppose you admitted but you also acted as if the fact that “legion of slutty women” were egging you on. If you disagree with casual sex stop doing it and find some poor girl who will take years to realize that you view women who want to have sex and are just as comfortable as men having it be casual as “bad”. As far as culture influencing casual sex as a norm…..people are always going to want sex and i think it’s a blessing that people can freely follow their desires. Romantic relationships may perhaps be more meaningful but everyone has different levels of comfort with who they have sex with and in what situation. As people we have freedom and no one should be chastised for living their lives how they choose with regards to sex. There is no such thing as a slut or a prude. Only people who want to have sex a lot and those who don’t want to have a lot of sex or haven’t reached a point where they feel comfortable. Finally….guys in this day and age likely have far more casual sex than women. If my statement is true…it is men who are easy and should at the beginning of time begun to be called sluts. In either context it is wrong to treat humans as the objects of their sex lives and use words that undermine the power of women’s choices in regards to their own bodies.
Ngirl- I think you should sharpen your thinking, or cool your heels or at least tame your venom. No where in my screed did I suggest that threatening punishment was the solution to any of this. I simply suggested that the original letter writer was right about slutty people making dating life tougher for the chaste. I challenge you to produce a quote from what I have written that gives the impression that I favor a punitive solution to the issue.
Further, if you are going to go the ridicule route at least make sure you don’t hoist yourself on your own petard. I claimed to enjoy sleeping around because it is fun. You claim to also, yet you claim that I have a warped view of the world because of my attitudes on sex. If that were true then surely you and I share a warped view on sex and the world in general.
All I claim is that if the culture was different it would be easier to make better choices. This should not be at all controversial and yet I am treated like I just advocated slavery. If someone can tell me why that thought is in error with out just heaping vitriol I’m open to hearing it – instead I seem to have touched a nerve and no one can respond without getting their panties in a twist about what a bad person I am in. And they further claim to read a punitive streak in what I have said.
B-
Your explanation of where you stand with sex and relationships is very revealing. However, you make the mistake of assuming that we all require, as you seem to, the threat of punishment in order not to sleep around.
Well guess what, some of us have actually matured into adults, and we don’t need the threat of punishment to make sound life decisions. We sometimes choose to sleep around, because it’s fun, and we sometimes choose to develop deep, meaningful relationships. Adults are free to do that.
I hope someday you’ll be able to grow up and stop imagining that everyone shares your warped view of the world.
Meg, You seem to be jumping to conclusions, I’m not against slutty people I’m just in favor on acknowledging the consequences of widespread promiscuity.
So lets cut to the chase – I dig slutty chicks and I expect sex early on in a relationship. Perhaps I could overcome such attitudes but doing so is very difficult when so much free sex is on offer. Now I also know that there are people out there who might like to date me but know that unless they ‘sweeten the deal’ it probably won’t happen. I also think that I might like to settle down with someone like that, but the ease of sowing my oats makes me reluctant to take that step – I put it off.
Now you can blame me for being shallow and not overcoming my urges but the fact remains that if the culture was different I would be inclined to make different choices. If my shallowness was not being actively indulged by legions of slutty women, I would have to do more to make myself respectable and attractive to nice girls. So I bear some of the responsibility for corrupting myself by not exercising more control over my desires, but I think the culture is to blame too. And I would like to see those that promote such a culture acknowledge their role in making corrupting oneself far easier.
Further I will be the first to admit that by engaging in the behavior I do I help create a culture of promiscuity and I make it harder for those who don’t wish to choose that road to see themselves as normal and not as prudish or repressed. The way I act has consequences for others that I can see are real harms. Attitudes affect far more than the intimates involved in a coupling. Why is this point so hard to acknowledge? and similarly why is it so hard to acknowledge the corollary? When these attitudes are widespread it serves to normalize a culture of hookups over a culture of moderation and commitment?
No apologies necessary! The man or woman who likes to have casual sex has as little for which to beg forgiveness as those who choose to wait until married or in another type of long-term, committed relationship. Jill, B, and Liese clearly feel they do not have to answer or apologize to anyone for their decisions about when, if, or with whom they have sex, and they are absolutely right. The problem arises when they refuse to extend this same basic courtesy to others who believe and may act differently. It is this intolerance, I would suggest, that makes it difficult for them or those like them to form lasting relationships. I would suggest their prospective partners are more put off by their inflexibility than by their “prudishness”. Narrowmindedness, discourtesy, and boorishness are unattractive in any form. These, in my opinion, are where shame and guilt ought more properly to reside.
(And Liese, how long have I gone? Over 40 dates or one year. But I also indulged much earlier than that, with a very special person. And, dear reader, I married HIM.)
Let’s take a step back here. I think the real issue is that in the modern relationship, [1st date, etc] Is sex expected from both parties?
I am in my 30’s and I remember clearly sex was a BIG issue when dating. It was just done.
Sex is perhaps taken for granted as a given in any new “budding” relationship.
What’s the longest you’ve gone? 1st date, 2nd, 3rd…. etc…?
I respect both men and women who chose to wait to get to know the person first.
In my 20’s I didn’t know that was an option.
~L
mum of 1 and a lovely hubby
Not to mention I think it’s personally insulting to men to assume that all of them are only going to go after “slutty” girls and ignore girls who don’t sleep around as much.
B, if you want to be with someone who doesn’t sleep around you will have no problem finding them. It’s not like all the sudden their an endangered species or something. If other people doing what they want privately affects you THAT MUCH, maybe you need to take a step back and look at yourself.
Its not that men are only in it for the sex, it is that easy sex acts as a significant ‘deal sweetner’ in the early stages of a relationship. I don’t see anything implausible about the thought that sluts put prudes at a competitive disadvantage in the dating market, just as I don’t see anything implausible about the thought that offering two donuts for the price of one puts one in a better position to attract customers than a competitor who is not running the promotion.
Indeed I think you don’t really address the substance of this at all. Instead you take the claims and give them an uncharitable interpretation and then heap ridicule on the argument by calling it old-fashioned. Slutty people would do better to admit the truth: their behavior has cultural consequences that bring a specifiable harm to other groups and they don’t care to do otherwise because they enjoy screwing too much.
Sorry to say, but I think people got that ‘substance’ you are talking about just fine (at least I did). It’s just that this point that she states, and that you summarize, is … how do I say that without insulting you … not all too plausible. The argument assumes that men are only in it for the sex, so that whenever a women comes along and supplies sex without relationships, they will always choose the no-strings-attached sex. As somebody above said, it’s now 2010 and I honestly hoped that people are over that crap by now.
I think it is telling that all of the commenters on here are quick to ridicule her but none of them saw fit to rebut the substance of what she is saying.
Indeed, I suspect she is right.
For those who value sex more than most and are unwilling to be casual about it, the presence of even a few slutty people makes it considerably more difficult to enter into and keep a relationship going. Worse still, encouraging such people to just get with it because its fun simply encourages a race to the bottom.
I wonder if Jill knows what year it is…
ATTENTION….ATTENTION…..IT IS NOW 2010 and more people are having casual sex because it is fun.
i thought the article was just to give people tips and some common sense-it never said it everyone *should* be sleeping around
i think jill was just too busy up on her high horse to see that
I’m confused. I thought that all us gals giving the milk for free would never be in relationships anyway. Our slutty, slutty ways would surely disqualify us from consideration by decent men, leaving the path wide and clear for Jill.
Dear Jill,
thank you for reminding everyone that feminism has still a long way to go. I believe you owe women in general an apology.
Very sincerely,
Philipp