Greta Christina
So much for new resolutions. I?ve been dissed in the liberal press again and I must answer the call. A person named Greta Christina has written Puritan Pundits Should Chill Out at alternet.org, a lefty rag promoting non-monogamous, non-heteronormative relationships for non-cisgendered, non-binary, poly folks who seek Good Pain through edgeplay. Or one of the endless variations under the alternative sexuality umbrella. In short, they promote ?love outside the box.?
Christina puts me in interesting company:
- Mark Regnerus,?a highly respected researcher from UT ? Austin who buys into the marketplace theory of sex
- Rachel Simmons, an ardent feminist who has expressed concern about the emotional health of girls participating in hookups
- Bill O?Reilly (bwahaha) who had the audacity to suggest that many women have casual sex when they are ?blasted out of their minds.?
She claims that my fellow Puritans and I subscribe to the following view:
?Why on earth would women want casual hookups?? They?re not asking, ?Why do some women have casual sex?? They?re asking, ?Why on earth would some women have casual sex, when it?s so clearly a bad idea that will do them and other women harm and is obviously not in their best interest??
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In fact, Regnerus, Simmons and myself have all said something very different about casual sex. (I won?t even begin to attempt to characterize O?Reilly). I think we all have a good understanding of the various reasons women choose to have casual sex. All of us have observed that many (not all) women do harm themselves this way, both physically and emotionally, and that in many cases it is not in their best interest. As far as I know, Regnerus and I are the only two who have suggested that casual sex hurts women en masse, so that another woman?s promiscuity may directly affect your own experience in a negative way.
Christina can?t understand how we could be so misguided, and offers an explanation of her own sexual history as a testament to the glories of casual sex:
?For many years, pretty much all the sex I had fell somewhere on the ?casual? spectrum. Personal ad hookups; occasional sex with friends; sex clubs and sex parties; ongoing sexual friendships? that?s what my sex life looked like for a long time.
And needless to say ? but I?m going to say it anyway ? a lot of this casual sex was a good idea. A wonderful idea, in fact. A lot of it was done for excellent, healthy reasons. And the effect it?s had on my sex life and my love life has been overwhelmingly positive.?
1. ?Fun
I had sex for the same reason billions of other people have sex: Pleasure. Period.?We evolved to enjoy sex. We are descended from thousands of generations of ancestors who really, really liked to fuck?It?s often more fun when it?s meaningful and done with people we love. But that?s not always an option, and it can still be pretty darned fun when it?s grabbed on the fly with acquaintances and strangers. We evolved to want to eat food. And we evolved to want to have sex. Like, duh.
2. Experimentation
I felt more comfortable asking for and trying some of my freakier desires with fuckbuddies and casual hookups than I had with long-term romantic partners?I haven?t stopped learning and experimenting now that I?m married?I think casual sex with a large-ish number of people was the only way I was going to get those experiments under my belt.
3: Pleasure without unwanted commitment.?
After my divorce and before I fell in love with Ingrid, I was single for 12 years?After my divorce, I was pretty confused, with some seriously messed-up ideas about love and relationships, and I had a strong tendency to be attracted to needy, fucked-up drug addicts.
Staying single for 12 years gave me a chance to get my head screwed on straight; to re-train myself to be attracted to people who had their act together; to wait for the right partner instead of jumping into commitment with whoever was available?But if I?d tried to be celibate during all those years, I would have gone bananas. I never would have stuck it out.
4: Independence and confidence.?
Catting around made me feel like a million bucks. And not just in the obvious way. It made me feel powerful, self-reliant, curious and playful, free and fun. It taught me the value of adventure. It taught me that awesome surprises can be around any corner if I?m open to them. It taught me that even crummy experiences can make for a really great story. It taught me strength and self-confidence. It taught me that saying ?No? didn?t make me a selfish jerk. It taught me that being told ?No? didn?t make me a pathetic loser.
5: Intimacy and connection.?
Casual doesn?t necessarily mean impersonal. A lot of the casual sex I had was fairly nonchalant. But a lot of it wasn?t. A lot of it was very intimate indeed? Things don?t have to be permanent to be valuable. A fleeting moment can have as much value as a stone monument.?
?I had a lot of things going for me that loaded the ?casual sex? dice in my favor ? among other things, I was mostly having all this casual sex with other women, so the gender imbalances and weird sexual/ romantic power dynamics between women and men were a non-issue.
I sometimes had casual sex, in part, to bolster my self-image as a nonconformist, or because that?s what everyone else in my social circle was doing (yes, those two things are contradictory ? what?s your point?), or as a salve for feeling lonely and unattractive, or because I didn?t want to hurt someone?s feelings by saying ?No.? Especially in the earlier days. Like most things in life, I got better at it as I went along.?
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I find myself wondering just how many people there are out there who subscribe to this approach to sex? I don?t think there are very many, and they all tend to hang in the same media circles and do SlutWalks together.?
While I strongly oppose sex-positive feminism, I?m starting to view it as more of a fringe element in the SMP than a real influence on young women. I think that casual sex among young women in college and afterwards is much more along the lines of Girls Gone Wild and Girrrrrlllll Empowerment, which is a cultural force, not a political one. The sex pozzies benefit from aligning themselves with the culture, but they don?t appear to be wanted outside the Women?s Studies departments.?
The divide between the two groups was highlighted recently when a new study correlating casual sex with sexism was published (Hall JA & Canterberry M.?Sexism and assertive courtship strategies.?Sex Roles, 2011.)
Hall and Canterberry set out to understand the characteristics of men who use aggressive court-ship strategies, based on speed seduction techniques described in the US bestseller ?The Game? by Neil Strauss and the popular cable TV program ?The Pickup Artist.? They also studied the characteristics of women who find such strategies appealing.
The results showed that men who were keen on ?one-night stands? were more likely to use aggressive strategies when flirting with women, and women who were also open to casual sex were more likely to respond to this type of aggressive courtship.
We know that feminists abhor Game and any notion of dominant male behavior. The feminist press was all over this story, writhing with disgust over these sexist women and men who subscribe to the belief that women are gatekeepers. And yet, of the 1,200 study volunteers, if there was a sex-positive representation, it did not merit inclusion in the study results.?
Sex-positive feminists have a parasitic relationship with hookup culture. While I may feel the need to respond from time to time, or do a bit of extermination, I?m going to chill on the political front, as Greta Christina suggested. The more I read, the more I realize they?re not really a factor in the culture where hetero-normative 20-somethings live. Nor do I think there are many swinging poly genderqueer bottoms looking for kink among my readers, the people I aim to serve. If you happen upon one of these misguided folks who has lost their way, please kindly redirect them to manboobz. :)
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Note: This does not open the floodgates for a free-for-all against sluts. This post is an observation about the SMP, and needn?t get personal. Any vitriol will be deleted.
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Source: http://www.hookingupsmart.com/2011/09/01/hookinguprealities/a-puritan-pundit-speaks-out/
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