moominmuppet

My Sluthood, Myself -- Although my more serious involvements are poly, not monogamous, there's a lot I find to resonate about this post. And frankly, casual sluttiness is often as much up for judgment from poly folk as from monogamous people (sometimes extra defensively, out of fear of making all poly folk "look bad"), so there may be little difference in our experiences there.

These bits felt extra-relevant to my own experiences:
I’m telling you this because sluthood requires support. Because any woman who indulges these urges carries with her a lifetime of censure and threat. That’s a loud chorus to overcome. A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue.

So, so true. My social network has a huge amount to do with the lack of conflict in my life over these issues. I have cheerful, wise, and nonjudgmental support from my friends and family, and that makes everything different.

Even now, with more time passed, now, when I am actually ready for and wanting a more emotional connection, sluthood keeps me centered. It keeps me from confusing desire and affection with something deeper. It means I have another choice besides celibacy and settling. It means I won’t enter another committed relationship just to satisfy my basic need for sex and affection. It gives me more choices, it makes room for relationships to evolve organically, to take the shape they will before anyone defines them.

Although I'm not at the same point emotionally that the author is (I'm not actively seeking a primary partner, and I'm not sure whether I'll end up desiring one again or not), I do understand the place that casual sluttiness has had in my healing from breakups and learning my own needs and desires more clearly. For a long time I did something similar to what the author did -- only getting involved in relationships that had "serious meaning". Although it was generally within a poly context, it was still very similar mentally to what she describes; sometimes confusing love and lust, jumping into commitments (platonic and romantic both), etc. Even when it was sex with friends, and was explicitly non-romantic, there was a lot of internal pressure for it to be justified by the depth and strength of the friendship (and in a multitude of ways I'm more hardcore about friendship than romance anyway). I don't think I got ok with my own desire for truly casual involvements until my early thirties, and it's been a big relief. I've pretty much stopped shoving involvements into molds they don't fit, and that's a huge improvement. It means what I honor and respect and value about different involvements is what they are, not what I want to pretend them to be for my own personal reassurance. And frankly, the way that self-reassurance worked was very much about me constructing how my sluttiness wasn't like their sluttiness (Ah, the mysterious "Them"). I wouldn't have recognized it at the time, but my mental maps were still tracing through all kinds of slut-shaming territory, I was just finding ways not to apply my own attitudes to myself, to come up with all sorts of "rules" on what counted as good sluttiness and what counted as bad sluttiness, and weaving those protectively about myself. These days I feel a lot less need for that kind of defensiveness. I no longer feel like I need to defend my "honor" by pointing out that I may be rather randomly sexual with people, but at least it's all "best friends", and "sex as expression of friendship". Not that this isn't sometimes true -- it's certainly a major element of my sexuality -- but the artificial justifications I was making were problematic in so many ways. Along the way since then I've learned that I can have valuable and positive sexual experiences with people who are no more suited to a deep friendship with me than a deep romance, and that was quite an eye-opener for me. Sure, I need trust and honesty and decent human beings, but there are a lot of trustworthy honest decent human beings who aren't going to be my bestest and lifelong friends, and that's ok.

Sluthood isn’t a disease, or a wrong path, or a trend that’s ruining our youth. It isn’t just for detached, unemotional women who “fuck like men,” (as if that actually meant something), consequences be damned. It isn’t ever inevitable that sluthood should inspire violence or shame. Sluthood isn’t just a choice we should let women make because women should be free to make even “bad” choices. It’s a choice we should all have access to because it has the potential to be liberating. Healing. Soul-fulfilling. I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me, in a small but life-altering way, and I want it to be available to you if you ever think it could save you, too. Or if you want it for any other reason at all. And because even if you don’t ever want sluthood for yourself, you’re going to be called upon to support a slut. I’m telling you this because when that happens, I want you to say yes.

Amen to all of that!

OK, I'm sure I'd have pages more to write about this if I were feeling more extraverted and talky, or if I were feeling more libidinous at the moment (I'm in one of my "off" phases), but this'll do for now.