Maybe it’s my gender. Maybe it’s my generation. Whichever, I’m not at all curious how many sex partners you’ve had just because we’re having sex.
Even when I was 20, 30 or 40 years younger I didn’t care. I assume, since we’re grown, and if you aren’t coming out of a decades old marriage, that there have been quite a few. Why do I assume that? Because if we’re of the same generation, we came of dating age after the sexual revolution.
I was divorced from my first — and until that point only — sexual partner at a time when all bets were off, HIV was undiscovered, and singles were swinging — between partners and from the chandeliers.
It was a culture shock for me, certainly. But I had a deeply bruised ego and a here-to-fore repressed libido, and it didn’t take long for me to adjust to the cultural zeitgeist.
When premarital and after divorce sex became the norm
My generation wasn’t the first to have sex before marriage and after divorce. We were the first to have access to reliable birth control, which freed women to be as sexually active as men had always been.
Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z followed lustily in our footsteps. They did and do have to use condoms to prevent HIV, Herpes and other STDs. They can get vaccines to prevent HPV and take regular medication to prevent HIV.
So they’re arguably safer than we were during the sexual revolution and second wave feminism. Vaccines, treatments, and prevention has had as great an impact on women’s sexual freedom as the arrival of birth control and the sexual revolution.
Sexual freedom reigns and rains, except for die-hard misogyny and patriarchy we all ingested with mother’s milk. Ironically.
Vaccines, treatments, and prevention of STDs has had as great an impact on women’s sexual freedom as the arrival of birth control and the sexual revolution.
Truth is, I’m tired of talking and even writing about it. We had the sexual revolution. We know that previous generations had sex outside of marriage, though likely not as often or with as many partners, given lack of birth control. And yet, we still have to talk and write about it.
Why? Because there are still so many misconceptions and judgements about women who engage sexually more frequently or with more partners.
Here is where all the guys who are riding the hobby-horse of hating women for having choices sexually, when they feel as if they don’t, will chime in. And I do get that it is more difficult for men to get laid than it is for women. I truly do. I have male friends and a son. However, none of them struggle as much as the guys who comment on these type stories say they do.
It is a confusing dichotomy for both heterosexual women and men. Personally, I have experienced the ease of finding sexual partners throughout my lifetime since that early divorce. I see that point some men are making.
On the other hand, are women supposed to say no just for the sake of saying no, or because misogynists think we should? Wouldn’t that make it even more difficult for men to find willing partners?
I have also experienced being judged by how many partners I’ve had, regardless of the fact that I was newly divorced at the peak of the sexual revolution, and that I’ve currently been single again for 24 years. Do potential life partners think I should have been celibate for much of my life?
Women my age still struggle with the “do I or don’t I” and when, how soon, how often, and with how many men. I hope this isn’t as difficult for later generations.
On the other hand, I have heard my son’s Millennial generation of heterosexual men express similar thoughts about women. Both that women have it easier in the sex game, and that there is some indefinable number of lovers a woman has that is ‘too many’.
Even more concerning is the political pushback against sexual freedom for women. With conservatives coming after abortion rights, Plan B pills, and possibly even birth control, all fertile women and men are in danger of being thrust back to the sexual struggles of the generations before. When women have fewer choices about when and whether to have babies, men’s access to sex will suffer as well.
I don’t care how many sexual partners you’ve had before me.
What I care about is if your experiences made you a better lover.
What I care about is if your experiences led you to be a champion for women’s sexual rights as well as your own.
Because ultimately, responsible sexual freedom benefits us all.
