Illustration by Sam Taylor. I can't remember the first time I got called a slutโprobably around the time I started cocking my leg up in alleyways and acting like one. But I never had a problem with that, about being a slut or announcing myself as such.
The problem I've always had is other people thinking that being a slut is a bad thing. Because it's not; being a slut is glorious. This debate about promiscuity is about judging and shaming peopleโthinking that you know what's best for them.
Well, sluts don't need your disapproval or advice on how we should live our lives. We're quite capable of making our own, terrible drunken decisions. What I can deal with, though, is your disapproval. It's hot. I don't know why, just like I don't know why other people's boyfriends taste betterโthey just do. We're all sluts now. I prefer the term "fun" to "promiscuity," because I'm a fan of good, clear English. I can only speak from my own admittedly vast sexual experience, but if I get into a car with a strange man, for example, and I'm pouting and he's looking at my legs and tits and stuff, he doesn't drive me off for a "bit of promiscuity"โhe drives me off for a "bit of fun.
The word is defined as "having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships. Also, where does time fit into all this? Let's say an year-old has had ten sexual partners over the course of her life. Is she promiscuous? Would we consider her to be a promiscuous person? Probably not. But what if she had slept with all ten of those people in the same weekโback in the summer of '69โand then never had sex again for the rest of her life? Would that "equal it out"? And if so, why?
What does the gap do? Why does spacing your booty calls out lend to respectability? None of it makes sense because it's just an idea, and a shitty one at that. Promiscuity doesn't exist. It's just a word people came up with to describe and judge certain human behaviors. It's about as real as doorism. Never heard of doorism? That's because I just made it up. It describes a tendency to open doors. I opened the bathroom door this morning to take a pee, and I also opened several doors to get me from my bed to my breakfast table.
