S.L.U.T. Is Lust Misspelled

Girl, nobody’s counting.

Call me greedy, but I love life.

I love good food, sex, travel, relaxing massages, walking barefoot on the beach, losing myself in a book, film, or any form of escapism.

I like pleasure in all shapes and forms. I crave new experiences and the feeling of being alive.

And that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Our bodies release endorphins when we laugh, eat chocolate or spicy foods, exercise, and receive physical touch.

In my 40+ years on this earth, I’ve never experienced bullying or been called names because of my passion for travel. No one’s judged me for my interest in wine or my wish to meet people and make new friends.

If we’re all wired to like food and sex to sustain and recreate our species, why should sex be any different?

The desire to have sex with one or multiple partners, while single or in an open relationship should be no different from any other form of living life to the fullest. All other forms we’ve come to evangelize but this one not.

The sexual double standard

Wait. I’m a woman. Did I forget to mention this little detail?

And while for a man, counting and recounting and telling the stories of intimacy is still not a faux pas for a woman it is.

I read this article recently and I couldn’t help but wonder why would a young woman have to justify her number.

What is this obsession with the number of sexual partners? What makes this question legit?

If we’re having this conversation in 2022 it’s because people are still judging.

I decided to dig a little deeper.

In contemporary American society, it is a commonly held belief that sexual behaviors are judged differently depending on the gender of a sexual actor. Boys and men are thought to receive praise and positive attributions from others for non-marital sexual contacts, while girls and women are believed to be derogated and stigmatized for similar behaviors.

Research suggests people are still quick to judge a person’s number (or their own) as too high or too low.

Some studies show people are less willing to date somebody as their number of sexual partners increases and may go as far as to view people as less intelligent, kind, honest, or trustworthy as that number goes up.

What is so scary or off-putting for men?

So you find yourself uneasy with the number of lovers that your girlfriend has been with in the past. Or you met this woman and you’re wondering if she’s more experienced in bed than you. You want to impress her. You want to feel special.

What seems like a large number to some people might appear to be normal to others. Some people only have one lover their entire life, and others may be well in the 3 digits.

At which point you can say “my girlfriend slept with too many guys in the past”? What is a high number? Should this matter to you?

If you find yourself judging a woman on her sexual history, take a pause and ask yourself why. Try to understand what drives this judgment, what conditioning, culture, or fear-based thought process lies behind it.

Recognize that your judgment may be unfairly gendered. Whatever triggers this, you don’t need to make a woman feel bad for having any number of lovers in the past.

Although we might not realize it or intend it this way, our instinct to judge women who sleep with a lot of men is rooted in sexism. While men are praised by their peers for having sex with a lot of people, women are shamed for it. Psychologists refer to this sexist phenomenon as a sexual double standard.

Internalized slut-shaming

It's not only men who judge women by their number of sexual partners. Women judge other women on this number, and what’s worse, we judge ourselves based on this number. According to this research paper,

Gender scholars also note that perceived promiscuity may be an unnecessary condition for young women to gain the “slut” label. Sexually suggestive clothing or early sexual development may be enough for females to be sexually stigmatized and rejected by peers. Indeed, White (2002) asserts that the association between the “slut” label and female intercourse is entirely a myth. Based on her interviews of adult women who were labeled as promiscuous in adolescence, she states that the term “slut” is typically applied by females to other females whose bodies or behaviors deviate from group norms.

Internalized slut shaming may manifest in different ways. From blaming your dress for getting sexually assaulted, to avoiding masturbation, to feeling bad about your number.

There is no wrong number.

Assigning moral value to the number of sex partners plays into old ideas that assigned a woman’s value to her virginity.

The magic number: how many people have you slept with?

Seeing more and more stories like this one can help move the needle. We can start changing the conversations we’re having around sex.

While my great-grandmother may have seen sex as a mandatory, not necessarily pleasant part of her job as a wife, we’ve moved past those days. Women today enjoy sex and this has made the act a thousand times more enjoyable for their partners too.

We are all equal towards our pleasure. Whether it is self-pleasure or sex with one or more partners, women, men, of all sexual orientations need not justify their number to anybody.

Let’s talk numbers

• According to 2011 to 2015 CDC data, women between ages 25 and 44 had a median of 4 sexual partners, while men in that age group had a median of 6 sexual partners.
• A 2015 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found millennials have an average of 8 sexual partners.
• A 2017 survey of 2,180 people from the U.S. and Europe found women had a lifetime average of 7 sexual partners. Men had an average of 8 sexual partners.
• In a 2017 Superdrug survey, men put the limit at 14 sexual partners maximum, and women drew the line at 15. Moreover, men saw fewer than 3 partners as too low. Women thought less than 2 sexual partners was too low.

Let’s talk about sex baby

Would you talk to your friends about a new mouthwatering recipe you tried? A delicious ice-cream flavor you tasted? An off-the-beaten-track town you discovered during your trip to the South of France?

What about a sex position you tried for the first time? Your first threesome or the first time you fingered a man? A one-night stand that went in a totally unexpected direction?

We don’t talk about sex enough. George Michael said it best. It’s natural, it’s chemical, it’s logical, habitual.

Talking about it normalizes it.

Closing thoughts

The number of people that you’ve slept with means one thing only and that’s that you’ve slept with that many people.

Men and women alike, your sexual history’s nobody’s business. You are legit to have sex with 1, 24, or 300 people. Don’t let anyone — yourself included — tell you that you should feel bad about it.

Slut is lust spelled wrong. It’s a strong sexual desire. It’s a sex drive that some of us have and it's nothing to feel bad about.