Loved reading this essay! I do find it fascinating that a lot of men are complaining about not being able to find sexual partners or relationships but also have been slut-shaming to the high heavens.
Personally, I think our entire idea of sexuality, especially women's sexuality, has been totally skewed. Only a black and white version of sexuality for women exists. There is purity culture on the one hand and they there are the sluts and the 'used goods' on the other. Where is the middle ground? Personally, I really don't mind having casual sexual encounters as long as it's based in respect. If sex is a yearning for connection and it is an innate human desire, what's the issue? I prefer sex so much more in a loving and committed relationship of course, but that seems really hard to find. So what am I left to do? Deny myself sexual pleasure and connection?
After my first relationship, where I was cheated on multiple times, casual sex felt like a better option. One where my dignity could at least remain intact. Two people coming together with clear intentions and enjoying each other's company- it felt more fair and respectful, to be honest. Now, my most recent partner had the biggest problem with that. We had an otherwise very healthy relationship, but he continued to slut shame me and then acted very disrespectful towards me. He too, was concerned about male loneliness, the dating market, this unfair distribution of sex- so what gives? If a woman's worth is so heavily tied to her sexuality and if sex is only ever talked about under these strict dichotomies, I think we're giving ourselves a very unhealthy view of sex. And later ruin relationships that could have been otherwise very healthy and loving. Sure, I've had casual sex, but this was years and years ago, and it doesn't make me incapable of love or unworthy of a loving relationship? It certainly doesn't make me prone to cheating. I am a loving and faithful partner and my past shouldn't dictate whether to not I can be in a relationship now or in the future. It certainly doesn't make me a suitable victim for verbal abuse. And if it does, well then, I guess I'll have to have more casual sex?
I also really wonder if a lot of people have developed such an objectifying view of sex because of pornography. I have never been a user of pornography because I find it horribly degrading. Maybe that's why I see casual sex more harmless than most people do? I think so many men who are users think of sex as something like, a man 'using' a woman (at least this is how my ex would describe his visions as, me being 'used'). Well, it's not if it's consensual? It's two people enjoying each other's company. Thinking back to my casual sexual experiences, it felt kinda wholesome, maybe we went out together, shared some drinks, talked and cuddled, but we also had sex. I never felt used. I've felt more used and degraded in relationships lol.
“ I prefer sex so much more in a loving and committed relationship of course, but that seems really hard to find. So what am I left to do? Deny myself sexual pleasure and connection?”
You’re supposed to adapt your standards until you can find the relationship, with a guy that’s actually in your league. Most of the time, women don’t realize they’re chasing top guys, who have no incentive to commit, because there are more women who want them than them. The men you are casual with aren’t committing because they know they don’t have to in order to get what they want. Yes, you’re supposed to go without sex until you get a committed partner. You won’t though, because the guys available for that are less attractive .
I mean.. all my relationships the man did not commit lol. I do. The only reason why casual sex was alluring when I would PREFER a relationship is because I am not treated with respect and I’m not treated as an equal. I am lied to and cheated on lol. So if a man is not able to hold up his end of being loyal and committed in a relationship. Maybe I don’t want one. And I’m not going to drop my morals and be a cheater either just to meet him where he’s meeting me. If someone can prove to me that a relationship is a good option I’d love that cuz I DO want a relationship.
And if you read my post. I was not chasing a “top guy”. He didn’t have money and he wasn’t tall. Which is what I hear another complaint being. He was the same height as me. And In fact, I always told him I’d prefer him happy than doing something that will make him more miserable even if that meant more money lol. I’m literally just looking for someone to be a good PERSON lol and it’s very hard to find that. So if adapting my standards you mean lowering my standards of what it means to be a good human being- then no, I won’t be doing that.
With the current rates of casual polygyny, ordinary men who require their partners to have a body count as low as theirs have the same problem as ordinary women who require their partners to be tall high-earners. The current system produces a few men with very high body counts, many women with somewhat high body counts and many men with low body counts. If the two latter groups can't love and respect each other, then we have a problem for real.
Yes for real. I feel like these narratives that are being pushed are really just trying to divide all of us. Like of course I’m going to come into a relationship as a 33 year old woman with a past. I also feel like it’s making men resentful. One, because they won’t accept someone with a higher body count. But two, they’re being fed the narrative that women only want them when they’re financially successful. And when the economy has gone to shit- it’s harder for anyone to be financially successful. My ex also kept saying women are gold diggers and that women only “date up”. And at the time, I had a higher paying job than he did. I also dated him while he was in school and helped him pay for a lot of stuff. I never saw him as a wallet. Nor did I care about that at all. I don’t wanna argue about these things or hear these things, if I am not like that at all. Like it seems to be such a strong narrative going around and people are identifying with it so hard instead of just appreciating the actual human in front of them. It makes me sad.
loved this. two thoughts: I agree that promiscuity in women is not a sufficient condition for future infidelity, but as promiscuous women tend to couple more with promiscuous men the incidence of infidelity among these women will be higher. Even though coupling with this type of men would make any woman strategize to leave the union.
Second thought is I know absolutely non-promiscuous, even prudish women (only sex with bf, 1-2 bf by age 32) who cheat on their partners when they want out, and they have the advantage of no one suspecting on them, and when discovered, they're seen as victims rather than cheaters.
All seems intuitively correct to me. By the way, research does not actually confirm that women are judged more harshly for having a lot of sexual partners than men. That's a common assumption, but studies have not borne it out. Women and men are equally as likely to think someone with a ton of previous partners is not attractive for a relationship, and if anything men are actually somewhat more forgiving than women are about this, especially in the short term context. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2016.1232690
I guess you just never hear about slut shaming men because everyone assumes they would not actually be ashamed, and therefore don't bother trying to shame them. They accurately perceive women to be more sensitive to social criticism. But in reality, people's views about the opposite sex's history and body count are virtually identical between the sexes, with women being just slightly less accepting of slutty men.
Far as I can tell (feminist mythology notwithstanding), slutshaming was largely a female activity, the equivalent of denouncing scabs who undercut the union price.
This is a great essay. Veering into maybe-slightly-too-honest-territory ... I was kind-of-slutty while single up until I met my husband, often down for one-off make-out sessions after a night of partying but not sex. I was also a serial monogamist, often entering a new relationship weeks after ending an old one (and sleeping with the new boyfriend within a week or so of dating). One of my best friends and roommates in university was sluttier than me, and stunningly beautiful. Think Lindsay Lohan mashed up with Jennifer Lawrence mashed up with Ariel from the cartoon Little Mermaid. She also was smart and had a great personality, and men LOVED her and wanted to date her (many marry her). She ended up marrying a great guy.
Neither of us were "slut-shamed". And at least for me, I didn't experience the negative aspects of hook-up culture so many women talk about. The random guys I made out with were more likely to want a relationship with me than I did with them (the guys I liked who did reject me also never hooked up with me, being quite good guys who were aware of how I felt and didn't take advantage). The handful of times I tried online dating (on OKCupid), the meanest comment I ever got was a guy who called me a "nerd" (which I am). No guy ever lost interest in me for sleeping with him on the first date. I've never been dumped for another woman (to my knowledge -- I was the one to end over 90% of relationships), but I know of several women who were dumped for me (in most cases without the guy consulting me about that decision). The only guy who was ever really put off by the number of my past partners was quite obviously upset because he was scared I'd leave him for another guy -- and that insecurity, possessiveness, and general dysfunction was a major reason I dumped him.
My husband -- an attractive musician with a master's degree, a good regular-job, who still plays music professionally -- was also slutty in his youth. (When he told me his number, I raised my eyebrows, and he said, sheepishly, "I was a musician!"). We slept together on the first date, which lasted three days. I was fresh out of a bad relationship, and casually serial dating at the time -- he was the third guy I'd started "seeing" like this, and when I confessed this he didn't care, though quite reasonably encouraged me to break up with the other two, which I did (it was kind of a slutty Goldilocks story, the first guy was too "cold", too much into long conversations and not super cuddly, the second too "hot", always going for the body not the mind, and my husband was "just right"). He proposed after three months, and now we've been together for four years and are still very much in love and happy. I'm not worried about him cheating on me, and I don't think he's worried either (especially as we have one kid and another on the way).
It kind of feels like the modern dating world works great for people like us. I don't think either me or my husband are "10s" (the friend I mentioned earlier probably is), but we were fairly popular with the opposite sex and all the dating and hooking up was really because neither of us found the right person until we found each other. I have a high need for intimacy, and I think in a slut-shaming culture, I would have married one of my boyfriends from my early twenties and ended up significantly less happy. One of the reasons my mom married my dad at 23 was that she slept with him and having a Roman-Catholic background and it being the early 80s, she didn't like the idea of sleeping with more than one guy. Their marriage was not-so-great, my dad clearly not the right guy for her, and now they're divorced. I was more scared of committing to the wrong guy than I was letting my number of partners creep into the high teens and low twenties. So I shopped around.
People like me, my husband, and my friend seem to the be beneficiaries of this cultural shift, but far more people seem to be hurt by it. I have no solutions, I just sort of feel a bit guilty.
There were definitely beneficiaries and victims. I actually think your acknowledgement of that is in itself a reason to feel less guilty. A lot of women cannot, will not, acknowledge that the cultural shift only benefited a handful of women at the expense of many other women and men. To me, that’s the most egregious thing of all, the willful, tenacious blindness. Thank you for at least feeling something about other people. Congrats on your success 😉
Good point about makeouts, which matches my own experience: I kissed many women who went silent afterward, though they seemed to enjoy it, perhaps because what happened in that moment was enough for them.
It sounds like the insecure potential boyfriend who worried you'd leave him and go find another man may have been reasonable since you called off 90% of your relationships, often quickly finding a new boyfriend. Ofc I am missing a whole lot of context for the reasons those breakups occurred.
I don't know. I really liked my husband so he was just going to get away with a lot, no matter what. He only told me because I asked him, I think I would have been turned off by him volunteering that information. I think I'd find approaching 100 difficult, but it would depend on the guy. If I thought someone was BS-ing a way bigger number than was true, it would be a huge turn-off.
A very interesting piece. It endlessly frustrates me how most journalism on sexual relations is framed in terms of crude stereotypes...'Men' and 'Women'. Your piece does make subtle distinctions.....for instance between more/less promiscuous women and more/less randy men. But there are much bigger factors at play governing who gets more and who gets less of whatever they are after. I wrote about it in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired "What always strikes me when I read most sex relations journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. ..... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered.
>> Men still chased them, of course, but being a man who chased loose women was not a very honorable thing to be.
I would say that depending on the social context, it could go even more than that - into a form of male slut shaming.
Back in my high school days (15 years ago, in Poland), casual sex seemed unacceptable for both sexes. Hookup culture apparently didn't exist, the only acceptable options were to be single or have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Also, I recall no gossip about other people having casual sex whatsoever. Even discussing the desire for casual sex in a male group was frowned upon - I brought up the topic a couple of times and my friends thought I was a lunatic. I would then go home, watch American teenagers getting laid all the time in movies like American Pie and cry a little inside.
All of this was probably related to me attending one of the top schools in my city and/or hanging out with nerds. Shortly after graduating high school I found the local pickup artist community, the first people I met that truly believed in casual sex. But almost all of my high school friends went on to marry their high school or college girlfriends and, quite possibly, may have never experienced the joys of casual sex.
Anyways, it seems that the slut-shaming system worked exactly as described in the post, possibly to a greater extent. For some reason though, it didn't quite work on me - maybe I was too socially awkward / neurodivergent and focused too little on the social norms of real people around me (unable to give in to the 'casual sex is bad' (self)deception), and maybe too much on the social norms coming from the international mainstream pop culture, or the glimpses or American teenager life I saw in the online forums that included mentions of their sex lives.
I heard the same thing from a couple of Spanish friends from Madrid and Italians from Milan as well. Hookup culture was not the norm growing up to them because a bigger emphasis was placed on the idea of finding genuine affection and love and consequently building a family. The whole sexual ‘liberation-libertines’ was however present simultaneously, but got gradually accepted within the mainstream thinking
An incredibly thoughtful and empathetic piece. Thank you.
The world’s leading expert on sexual inactivity!
Competitive field
There is no mention of disease here at all. This seems like a massive oversight, if you're trying to explain slut-shaming.
Indeed. But that should apply more or less equally to both sexes.
Loved reading this essay! I do find it fascinating that a lot of men are complaining about not being able to find sexual partners or relationships but also have been slut-shaming to the high heavens.
Personally, I think our entire idea of sexuality, especially women's sexuality, has been totally skewed. Only a black and white version of sexuality for women exists. There is purity culture on the one hand and they there are the sluts and the 'used goods' on the other. Where is the middle ground? Personally, I really don't mind having casual sexual encounters as long as it's based in respect. If sex is a yearning for connection and it is an innate human desire, what's the issue? I prefer sex so much more in a loving and committed relationship of course, but that seems really hard to find. So what am I left to do? Deny myself sexual pleasure and connection?
After my first relationship, where I was cheated on multiple times, casual sex felt like a better option. One where my dignity could at least remain intact. Two people coming together with clear intentions and enjoying each other's company- it felt more fair and respectful, to be honest. Now, my most recent partner had the biggest problem with that. We had an otherwise very healthy relationship, but he continued to slut shame me and then acted very disrespectful towards me. He too, was concerned about male loneliness, the dating market, this unfair distribution of sex- so what gives? If a woman's worth is so heavily tied to her sexuality and if sex is only ever talked about under these strict dichotomies, I think we're giving ourselves a very unhealthy view of sex. And later ruin relationships that could have been otherwise very healthy and loving. Sure, I've had casual sex, but this was years and years ago, and it doesn't make me incapable of love or unworthy of a loving relationship? It certainly doesn't make me prone to cheating. I am a loving and faithful partner and my past shouldn't dictate whether to not I can be in a relationship now or in the future. It certainly doesn't make me a suitable victim for verbal abuse. And if it does, well then, I guess I'll have to have more casual sex?
I also really wonder if a lot of people have developed such an objectifying view of sex because of pornography. I have never been a user of pornography because I find it horribly degrading. Maybe that's why I see casual sex more harmless than most people do? I think so many men who are users think of sex as something like, a man 'using' a woman (at least this is how my ex would describe his visions as, me being 'used'). Well, it's not if it's consensual? It's two people enjoying each other's company. Thinking back to my casual sexual experiences, it felt kinda wholesome, maybe we went out together, shared some drinks, talked and cuddled, but we also had sex. I never felt used. I've felt more used and degraded in relationships lol.
“ I prefer sex so much more in a loving and committed relationship of course, but that seems really hard to find. So what am I left to do? Deny myself sexual pleasure and connection?”
You’re supposed to adapt your standards until you can find the relationship, with a guy that’s actually in your league. Most of the time, women don’t realize they’re chasing top guys, who have no incentive to commit, because there are more women who want them than them. The men you are casual with aren’t committing because they know they don’t have to in order to get what they want. Yes, you’re supposed to go without sex until you get a committed partner. You won’t though, because the guys available for that are less attractive .
I mean.. all my relationships the man did not commit lol. I do. The only reason why casual sex was alluring when I would PREFER a relationship is because I am not treated with respect and I’m not treated as an equal. I am lied to and cheated on lol. So if a man is not able to hold up his end of being loyal and committed in a relationship. Maybe I don’t want one. And I’m not going to drop my morals and be a cheater either just to meet him where he’s meeting me. If someone can prove to me that a relationship is a good option I’d love that cuz I DO want a relationship.
And if you read my post. I was not chasing a “top guy”. He didn’t have money and he wasn’t tall. Which is what I hear another complaint being. He was the same height as me. And In fact, I always told him I’d prefer him happy than doing something that will make him more miserable even if that meant more money lol. I’m literally just looking for someone to be a good PERSON lol and it’s very hard to find that. So if adapting my standards you mean lowering my standards of what it means to be a good human being- then no, I won’t be doing that.
With the current rates of casual polygyny, ordinary men who require their partners to have a body count as low as theirs have the same problem as ordinary women who require their partners to be tall high-earners. The current system produces a few men with very high body counts, many women with somewhat high body counts and many men with low body counts. If the two latter groups can't love and respect each other, then we have a problem for real.
Yes for real. I feel like these narratives that are being pushed are really just trying to divide all of us. Like of course I’m going to come into a relationship as a 33 year old woman with a past. I also feel like it’s making men resentful. One, because they won’t accept someone with a higher body count. But two, they’re being fed the narrative that women only want them when they’re financially successful. And when the economy has gone to shit- it’s harder for anyone to be financially successful. My ex also kept saying women are gold diggers and that women only “date up”. And at the time, I had a higher paying job than he did. I also dated him while he was in school and helped him pay for a lot of stuff. I never saw him as a wallet. Nor did I care about that at all. I don’t wanna argue about these things or hear these things, if I am not like that at all. Like it seems to be such a strong narrative going around and people are identifying with it so hard instead of just appreciating the actual human in front of them. It makes me sad.
We Don believe you. We watch what you do, rather than listening to what you say. The two are usually incongruent.
Yes I am aware there is no listening to what we say.. or belief in anything we say or do lol I am very aware
Huh
Skitbra!
loved this. two thoughts: I agree that promiscuity in women is not a sufficient condition for future infidelity, but as promiscuous women tend to couple more with promiscuous men the incidence of infidelity among these women will be higher. Even though coupling with this type of men would make any woman strategize to leave the union.
Second thought is I know absolutely non-promiscuous, even prudish women (only sex with bf, 1-2 bf by age 32) who cheat on their partners when they want out, and they have the advantage of no one suspecting on them, and when discovered, they're seen as victims rather than cheaters.
Fascinating
No, that’s retarded. Inshallah, all sex havers will be slapped into Titanium Burkhas to rot and never gaze upon flesh again.
Death to Coomerism.
Sluts are sluts only for tall chads.
Monogamy is the only solution.
Nope… men get along just fine because none of us is getting the girl. It is only men and women, let take a look at South Korea and the 4B movement
All seems intuitively correct to me. By the way, research does not actually confirm that women are judged more harshly for having a lot of sexual partners than men. That's a common assumption, but studies have not borne it out. Women and men are equally as likely to think someone with a ton of previous partners is not attractive for a relationship, and if anything men are actually somewhat more forgiving than women are about this, especially in the short term context. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2016.1232690
I guess you just never hear about slut shaming men because everyone assumes they would not actually be ashamed, and therefore don't bother trying to shame them. They accurately perceive women to be more sensitive to social criticism. But in reality, people's views about the opposite sex's history and body count are virtually identical between the sexes, with women being just slightly less accepting of slutty men.
Far as I can tell (feminist mythology notwithstanding), slutshaming was largely a female activity, the equivalent of denouncing scabs who undercut the union price.
This right here
I d
This is a great essay. Veering into maybe-slightly-too-honest-territory ... I was kind-of-slutty while single up until I met my husband, often down for one-off make-out sessions after a night of partying but not sex. I was also a serial monogamist, often entering a new relationship weeks after ending an old one (and sleeping with the new boyfriend within a week or so of dating). One of my best friends and roommates in university was sluttier than me, and stunningly beautiful. Think Lindsay Lohan mashed up with Jennifer Lawrence mashed up with Ariel from the cartoon Little Mermaid. She also was smart and had a great personality, and men LOVED her and wanted to date her (many marry her). She ended up marrying a great guy.
Neither of us were "slut-shamed". And at least for me, I didn't experience the negative aspects of hook-up culture so many women talk about. The random guys I made out with were more likely to want a relationship with me than I did with them (the guys I liked who did reject me also never hooked up with me, being quite good guys who were aware of how I felt and didn't take advantage). The handful of times I tried online dating (on OKCupid), the meanest comment I ever got was a guy who called me a "nerd" (which I am). No guy ever lost interest in me for sleeping with him on the first date. I've never been dumped for another woman (to my knowledge -- I was the one to end over 90% of relationships), but I know of several women who were dumped for me (in most cases without the guy consulting me about that decision). The only guy who was ever really put off by the number of my past partners was quite obviously upset because he was scared I'd leave him for another guy -- and that insecurity, possessiveness, and general dysfunction was a major reason I dumped him.
My husband -- an attractive musician with a master's degree, a good regular-job, who still plays music professionally -- was also slutty in his youth. (When he told me his number, I raised my eyebrows, and he said, sheepishly, "I was a musician!"). We slept together on the first date, which lasted three days. I was fresh out of a bad relationship, and casually serial dating at the time -- he was the third guy I'd started "seeing" like this, and when I confessed this he didn't care, though quite reasonably encouraged me to break up with the other two, which I did (it was kind of a slutty Goldilocks story, the first guy was too "cold", too much into long conversations and not super cuddly, the second too "hot", always going for the body not the mind, and my husband was "just right"). He proposed after three months, and now we've been together for four years and are still very much in love and happy. I'm not worried about him cheating on me, and I don't think he's worried either (especially as we have one kid and another on the way).
It kind of feels like the modern dating world works great for people like us. I don't think either me or my husband are "10s" (the friend I mentioned earlier probably is), but we were fairly popular with the opposite sex and all the dating and hooking up was really because neither of us found the right person until we found each other. I have a high need for intimacy, and I think in a slut-shaming culture, I would have married one of my boyfriends from my early twenties and ended up significantly less happy. One of the reasons my mom married my dad at 23 was that she slept with him and having a Roman-Catholic background and it being the early 80s, she didn't like the idea of sleeping with more than one guy. Their marriage was not-so-great, my dad clearly not the right guy for her, and now they're divorced. I was more scared of committing to the wrong guy than I was letting my number of partners creep into the high teens and low twenties. So I shopped around.
People like me, my husband, and my friend seem to the be beneficiaries of this cultural shift, but far more people seem to be hurt by it. I have no solutions, I just sort of feel a bit guilty.
There were definitely beneficiaries and victims. I actually think your acknowledgement of that is in itself a reason to feel less guilty. A lot of women cannot, will not, acknowledge that the cultural shift only benefited a handful of women at the expense of many other women and men. To me, that’s the most egregious thing of all, the willful, tenacious blindness. Thank you for at least feeling something about other people. Congrats on your success 😉
Good point about makeouts, which matches my own experience: I kissed many women who went silent afterward, though they seemed to enjoy it, perhaps because what happened in that moment was enough for them.
It sounds like the insecure potential boyfriend who worried you'd leave him and go find another man may have been reasonable since you called off 90% of your relationships, often quickly finding a new boyfriend. Ofc I am missing a whole lot of context for the reasons those breakups occurred.
He was right to be worried! It's a complicated story -- my husband doesn't worry about me leaving him and he doesn't need to.
Thanks for sharing your story! I enjoyed reading it.
I don't think you should feel guilty for the good outcome you landed - there's no causal pathway from your experience to the suffering of others.
"Over 50". Which seemed like a lot to me, but, again, I was only kind of fringe-slutty.
I don't know. I really liked my husband so he was just going to get away with a lot, no matter what. He only told me because I asked him, I think I would have been turned off by him volunteering that information. I think I'd find approaching 100 difficult, but it would depend on the guy. If I thought someone was BS-ing a way bigger number than was true, it would be a huge turn-off.
A very interesting piece. It endlessly frustrates me how most journalism on sexual relations is framed in terms of crude stereotypes...'Men' and 'Women'. Your piece does make subtle distinctions.....for instance between more/less promiscuous women and more/less randy men. But there are much bigger factors at play governing who gets more and who gets less of whatever they are after. I wrote about it in this piece: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired "What always strikes me when I read most sex relations journalism is how it is always framed in terms of a generic species called ‘Women’ and a generic species called ‘Men’; as if the perceived ‘unfair’ asymmetries under discussion are entirely ones between the sexes. ..... The huge intra-sexual differences between the experiences of pretty women and ‘plain’ ones; and between confident ‘alpha’ males and ‘betas’ – this never gets considered.
Dang, you’re relentlessly self-promoting I see 😅
>> Men still chased them, of course, but being a man who chased loose women was not a very honorable thing to be.
I would say that depending on the social context, it could go even more than that - into a form of male slut shaming.
Back in my high school days (15 years ago, in Poland), casual sex seemed unacceptable for both sexes. Hookup culture apparently didn't exist, the only acceptable options were to be single or have a boyfriend/girlfriend. Also, I recall no gossip about other people having casual sex whatsoever. Even discussing the desire for casual sex in a male group was frowned upon - I brought up the topic a couple of times and my friends thought I was a lunatic. I would then go home, watch American teenagers getting laid all the time in movies like American Pie and cry a little inside.
All of this was probably related to me attending one of the top schools in my city and/or hanging out with nerds. Shortly after graduating high school I found the local pickup artist community, the first people I met that truly believed in casual sex. But almost all of my high school friends went on to marry their high school or college girlfriends and, quite possibly, may have never experienced the joys of casual sex.
Anyways, it seems that the slut-shaming system worked exactly as described in the post, possibly to a greater extent. For some reason though, it didn't quite work on me - maybe I was too socially awkward / neurodivergent and focused too little on the social norms of real people around me (unable to give in to the 'casual sex is bad' (self)deception), and maybe too much on the social norms coming from the international mainstream pop culture, or the glimpses or American teenager life I saw in the online forums that included mentions of their sex lives.
I heard the same thing from a couple of Spanish friends from Madrid and Italians from Milan as well. Hookup culture was not the norm growing up to them because a bigger emphasis was placed on the idea of finding genuine affection and love and consequently building a family. The whole sexual ‘liberation-libertines’ was however present simultaneously, but got gradually accepted within the mainstream thinking
All of this was probably related to me attending one of the top schools in my city and/or hanging out with nerds.
Absolutely. There’s no way non-nerds, from 18-somethings to middle aged men and women weren’t at it like rabbits in early 2000’s Poland…