"I always liked sex": Women about slatshaming
What is "a lot of sexual partners"? It would seem that in 2019 there should be neither quantitative “standards” in sex, nor a conviction for “licentiousness”. Nevertheless, modern women are constantly faced with a call to limit sexual contact and are at risk of being slatted. We talked with girls about how they organize their sex life, why they don’t consider monogamy the only "right" choice and what to do so that people stop condemning others for sex.
Interview: Sasha Kazantseva, leading telegram channel "washed hands"
Alice
I always liked sex as I can remember. Casual sex - because it often brings something new, sex in relationships - because it’s about intimacy. I like to talk with people about experiments, fit into group sex, try different things.
When I was eighteen, my psychiatrist diagnosed nymphomania and prescribed medication so that I could “recover”, but this did not lead to any changes. Then one of my partners, with whom I was in a monogamous relationship, reproached me that I needed too much sex. That guy even got a “Sin” tattoo on the back of his head and often poked at it. I went through powerful self-condemnation and even self-loathing, considered myself “wrong”, “sick”. It is good that this hell is in the past.
Freedom in sexual relations is very important to me. It is strange for me to think that I can restrict someone or allow someone to restrict me. After all, I will not stop wanting a person, if they forbid me to do this - I will just hide my desire, that's all. Why most people think that sex with other people is a betrayal, I do not understand. Somehow I had a three-person relationship: at that time I worked a lot, got tired and was very happy that my loved ones can satisfy each other without my participation.
Now even if I have an exclusive relationship, then from the emergence of other connections, my partner or partner loses nothing. We talk about everything, discuss rules and agreements - the main thing is that everything happens by mutual agreement. I especially like when in a relationship I can talk about my sex with other people (by their consent again). For me, such trust is very important.
Problems arise when I want too many people. I keep a diary in which I register not only work tasks and meetings with friends, but also sex. And when I get acquainted with a new person that I like, I open the diary and ask myself the question: will I draw on resources? Sometimes I have to consciously filter existing contacts to make a new one.
I believe that the idea of restricting female sexuality to narrow limits is very toxic. Everyone has the right to enter into any contacts by mutual agreement. It seems to me that the condemnation of women is only the tip of the iceberg in a society where for some reason it is considered the norm to climb into someone else's personal life.
Kseniya
In adolescence, I was very insecure, it was difficult for me to build communication with strangers, and in the presence of boys my knees were shaking. I did not enjoy particular popularity, and when they began to pay attention to me, I jumped at it as an opportunity to raise my self-esteem. At first, I translated communication into a horizontal plane in order to feel "in demand", but over time such a format became a habitual way of life for me. Now sex is my favorite way of communicating with those I like.
Sometimes I spend one night with a man (or even a few hours), sometimes for years I keep close contact with friends, sometimes I try to build relationships. The most pleasant thing for me is emotions: when a person, just a few moments ago who was an outsider, touches the most intimate parts of my body, I feel euphoric. And I get a new experience in sexual practices and communication.
I used to get rid of slats very often. One day, my acquaintance from here away from me, having learned the number of my sexual partners (guess what kind of way our acquaintance with him developed). My ex-boyfriend kept asking me if I slept with a friend or another? Another said that my emancipation is cool, but he will not introduce me to his friends. Somehow a friend of her friend told her that if I started pestering him, he would immediately tell her about it - although he was not at all in my taste. Often the girlfriends of long-forgotten partners wrote unpleasant things to me on social networks, and the young people were very surprised at my refusal to sleep with them: I was with so many already, why I don’t want to go with them? As if to be in the same bed with me, it is enough just to have a penis.
Recently, the condemnation has become less - whether the views of people began to change, or whether I am now in a more comfortable and receiving environment. I find it hard to understand why the number of people with whom I slept should mean something at all? This is just a figure, and it does not describe me from either the bad or the good side. I think that someone else’s picture of the world simply doesn’t fit in that someone can just enjoy it so easily if they want to.
My former colleague was very proud that she behaves "decently, and not like sh *** and who sleep with everyone in a row," and that in her company she had the reputation of the most unapproachable girl. And the former neighbor, who had no one at that time for a long time, complained to me once: "You want sex so much, but you can't do it with anyone. What will they think of me?" And then she added: "Why can you sleep now, with whom you want, but I can't?" Probably because my own needs are more important to me, and not what they think of me. Such stories cause me sympathy. I would not be able to live in such a rigid, unknown framework set for the sake of a dubious award in the form of public approval.
Katya
Before the transgender transition, my relationships fit into all the conventional frameworks. For the seventeen years that we lived together, my wife and I did not have a desire to leave our monogamous world. But now I have an open relationship built on honesty and voluntariness. How do those around you react? Against the background of the fact that I am a transgender woman, a “father” of two children and I love BDSM, my polyamorism surprises few people.
I can have romantic feelings for several people at the same time, but at the same time I’m unlikely to build complicated relationship patterns - I’m too lazy for that. I do not understand the "cult" of jealousy and sexual "loyalty," the feeling of ownership is not close to me. Apparently, I am too freedom loving. But I like to know that I am in a relationship because I want, not because it is necessary, and that my partner is with me for the same reason.
What good can condemn female sexuality? The idea that a man with a lot of contacts is a hero-lover, and a woman is sh ***, in the 21st century looks like a moss-grown relic of the past. I do not feel awe of the "traditions", especially tied to reproductive rights and hierarchy.
It is clear that in one day the problem of condemning women is not solved - but, it seems to me, the world is moving in this direction. I think that society has yet to change the systemic attitude towards female sexuality, recognize the entire spectrum of polyamorous relationships, go through serious changes in the area of reproductive rights and obligations. In the meantime, with the help of my openness, I do what I can to reset the patriarchal values, which place on the dustbin of history.
Alice
Now I am in a family relationship with two men who are also in relationship with each other. With them I share household chores and rent, I plan trips and holidays. I also have a girlfriend, we just go on dates with her. She has other partners. Well, we all have separate microromans.
Perhaps it will sound radically, but I basically do not meet people who want to be in monogamous relations with me. I am of the opinion that whenever you want to have sex - you have to do it (assuming, of course, that the second person wants it too). I myself most often want to have sex with loved ones - those whom I have known for many years. Once I had only one such person, now there are two of them. It seems to me that finding people with whom you are comfortable and who you love is simply amazing luck. I do not understand why artificially limit their number.
All our parents know what kind of relationship we have, but only the parents of one of the partners perceived everything as normal. Although they are not without oddities: since I am the first woman with whom their son has been dating since 2003, they often and unpleasantly ask, when are the grandchildren? But at least they treat us all friendly and are always happy to see us.
My relatives react much worse. When I come with my partners to my parents, there is a ringing silence. My grandmother once called me a "whore" - but she doesn't even know half of it. My sister, who is now hard divorcing her traditional one-for-all-husband, also does not approve of my life. I am very sorry that instead of supporting women, they often condemn each other.
However, I can understand the older generation. When my grandmother became pregnant outside marriage, she was kicked out of work and expelled from the university. And only five years later, when she met a good guy who married her despite the child, her life began to improve. I think my grandmother is just hard and hurtful to watch me do everything the same and even more, but my life does not go downhill.
At the same time, the elderly owner of the apartment we are renting is up to date with our relations and does not ask any questions. A neighbor, 80-year-old granny, also guessed about everything: she is very lonely, and I work from home and always happy to drink tea with her. I think she would not stop communicating with me, even if I worshiped Satan.
Now it often happens that I should complain about any problem in the relationship, as they begin to explain to me that this is precisely because there are two partners. At such moments, I just remind myself that the most traditional couples are also full of problems. There is no relationship at all without problems.
Vika
Now there is one regular partner in my life, and I also often have parallel contacts. But no more than five people per month - otherwise I am emotionally difficult. With such people, I have no connection other than physical, I may not even know the name of the person.
After I began to talk openly about my connections, some acquaintances stopped communicating with me, someone became distant - although I remained the same person, did not change as a person. Some tell me that I have "wrong ideas" about sex life. Sometimes people run out of arguments and they name-calling w *** oh. I once did sex work, and maybe insults are related to this. It does not offend me, it allows me to draw conclusions about a person.
It seems to me that people are confused because of envy and narrow-mindedness - a misunderstanding that other people may have a different point of view. After all, I don’t ask each of my acquaintances to sleep with someone else’s for him, but please simply treat my choice with respect.
Now I am free to talk about my life to everyone who is willing to listen to me. I run a blog, and more than a thousand people read my reasoning and revelations. I am not ashamed. And even mom knows.
Sasha
Even as a child, I did not understand why adults are worried about some "cheating" - unless someone else may belong to other people's feelings and body? Almost all my relationships were open. Sex for me - the same format of communication as a conversation or a friendly hug. In my particular case, it seems to me humane not to try to close all my communication needs at the expense of one person. And I would not want other people to try to cover all their needs at the expense of me alone. Of course, this is my personal choice - everyone is different.
I like to just spend time with nice people, work together, make friends, sometimes have sex with someone. For sex, emotional contact is always important to me - but I quickly build it. Sometimes I offer sex to girlfriends, I can offer sex at the first tinder date or at a party. I try to be careful to someone else’s borders and to talk about sex carefully so that the person is comfortable.
In the family where I grew up, there was a very toxic situation, including in terms of sex - parents constantly quarreled because of it. Already at that time I thought that I would really like people to discuss their sex calmly and carefully. In the same place, in late childhood, I first encountered slatsharing - although I hadn’t even had sex yet, and I was very upset.
Now I try to openly talk about my sexual experience and collect the experience of those who are willing to share it. I think if sex becomes visible and understandable, it ceases to be a "forbidden" and "shameful" topic - then it will not be possible to shame them. An open conversation about sex helps to avoid sexual trauma and to take better care of each other.
When I write about my sexual experience in articles - sometimes I feel very vulnerable and afraid of condemnation, and sometimes I have a lot of fun and it seems that I am doing some kind of art action. In any case, I think that an open conversation about sexual diversity can help not to shame oneself and others for sexual characteristics and better understand each other.
Natalia
Once, in the instagram of one pastry chef, I saw a cake for a bachelorette party, it had a member of mastic and the inscription “One pie for life”. I was not only embarrassed by the sight of this cake, but also sad. The idea of a lifelong, ahem, pipisk seems creepy, not romantic. I know for sure that more than one person can attract me in one period of time. Serial monogamy solves this issue by betraying or parting - but I am not happy with such methods. This was one of the reasons why I came to polyamory: not for sex, but to expand the range of acceptable formats. I am interested in building close and long-term relationships with people.
The answer to the question "Is it possible for me to have sex with this man?" appears in my first half hour after dating. I’m not a fan of one-night sex at all: I don’t have the resources to constantly communicate with new people and at least minimal security is important to me. I generally do not understand well, why confine myself to one night if sex was great? I prefer the format "friends with benefits". It is very important for me that there is something to talk about and giggle with a person before, after, and even better during sex.
Sometimes I am tormented by paranoia about STIs: I always use condoms, I’m interested in my partner’s HIV status and monitor my health. But given that in a sense I am responsible not only for myself, but also for the health of my two regular partners, it becomes alarming. But there is no problem with the ethical aspect - I’m used to and I can discuss everything at once.
Until now, a voice of slatschiming may sound in my head. I think he has a lot of reasons: religious, cultural, social. But by tabulating physicality and sexuality, we do not make anyone happier. We get a world where people are afraid to talk about sex even with partners, do not feel pleasure, build relationships based on manipulations, stigmatize and therefore launch STIs. I believe that slotsharing is part of a culture of violence. And the fact that slatsharing comfortably feels inside the myth of romantic love does not justify it.
Sonya
I was confronted with a slatsharing only in the world of Let It Be Talked and sexist memesics. I have cleaned the circle of my acquaintances so long ago that, in principle, I do not encounter any aggression at all. And when my text happened on two hundred and fifty thousand views, the heavenly abominations opened: my acquaintances declined all cases, random readers wrote about “sperm receiver,” “sh ** xy” and “sh *** woo” in social networks, for one comment had three or four aggressive. This was despite the fact that I could not tell the most colorful stories, because the heroes would have known themselves a hundred percent, and did not want to cause inconvenience to anyone.
“Many partners” lasted nine months in my case - and two or three times a week I had sex with different men. Sometimes these people repeated, sometimes they were new. I started this experiment with myself, because I was only in long-term monogamous relationships and, to be honest, I did not know much about the possibilities of my body and the male idea of sexuality. Plus, in my case earlier, sex was necessarily connected with feelings, and feelings also do not appear two or three times a week. So I was pragmatic - and very honest with my men. It was ridiculous to read in the comments about some mythical men who give me gifts and expect love from me: no confessions and gifts were received, we just tried to communicate on equal terms. I met through applications Pure and sometimes Tinder - thank God, there are still people who do not want to marry and relationships (most consciously or unconsciously waiting for them).
In general, I am not against conventional monogamous relations with those you love: I am deeply faithful and faithful to the chosen person and in my world it works well. Просто на каком-то этапе экспериментов хочется понять, что вообще существует в мире отношений, построенных на сексуальности - и в моногамии такое познание устроено иначе. Плюс в юношеском периоде, когда люди пробуют многих партнёров, я часто попадала в опасные и абьюзивные ситуации и искала отношения, в том числе чтобы не испытывать боли.So I had only five deep love-sex relationships - not much, considering that I am twenty-eight years old.
I did not encounter harassment outside the Internet, but what I read in the comments was terrifying. Grieved, of course, the diagnosis on the avatar. If the girl broke up, then she is a "desperate divorce" - no options. Or she has a manic phase of bipolar disorder. "It’s not from a good life that a person does this." If you regularly sleep with new men - it means sh *** and a liar. If the editors publish such a text - this is punching the bottom. If the Pure application is mentioned there, it means a nativka. Of course, everyone wrote that the article was made by some abstract man.
I was incredibly supported by the reaction of my boyfriend, with whom the relationship was just beginning. He was proud of my honesty and said: "You imagine, people do not understand so much what to do with sex, that your story seems to them to be an invention." It is not clear why there is semen in 2019, but it is not a shame to write about it, but it should be a shame to write about it to madness - and if you do this, then something is wrong with that. I realized what a stream of shit is pouring on activists, sex bloggers and other women who talk about sexuality. That is why, it seems to me, they choose the path of recommendations and sex distribution, and not the path of personal experience. My closest friends also accepted and understood my period, laughed at my stories (they were ridiculously ridiculous) and worried about my safety.
The worst thing about this messy sex is, of course, the lack of security. Infections (I do not like condoms, and I wanted to avoid them). Do not say "cum in me" in a fit of a complete unconscious. Leave a whole from another apartment. Do not burn your apartment. Catching alarm flags (I did not have to, really lucky). Sex with strangers is a danger. That is why I did not trust, for example, in a tough BDSM - I was simply afraid of a stranger, at whose disposal I would be.
Now the format of sex with strangers has already interrupted, because I met a man with whom I was perfectly compatible with sex. Also, I'm sorry, I hate barrier contraception, and a regular partner you trust is the only way to avoid latex wipes, hateful condoms, and oral contraception, which is forbidden for my health. The choice of monogamy is often the choice of safe sex with a person whom you trust and with whom you are attuned to each other.
I will calmly tell about the period in the "nine months" that I experienced to any adequate person from the inner circle, but I will not write about it under my own name and will not make an open post on Facebook from this. Unfortunately, Russia is a very hypocritical country. And then you will not be called for a million jobs after such confessions. At the same time, I can’t imagine how to solve the problem of condemning women for sex - I don’t think that one sex inquiry will help. It seems to me that we need not so much an article on how to find the clitoris, but an offline gathering “I love to write on my boyfriend”, where you will see the same people who do not look away - there is nothing more important than this person. Would a woman planning future and professional growth want to arrange an all-Moscow forum for anal lovers? I do not believe in this. Maybe it's time to open a thematic group on Facebook, I even came up with the name - “Anal del Rey”.
Photo: SINDstudio / Etsy