Society and Sluts

There are very few people who see me who would think me a slut. I wear tee-shirts and jeans when I go out. I tend to be fairly unassuming.

But people might read what I do and how I behave, without seeing me, without knowing me and perhaps assume that I am a “slut” or one those nasty words that society uses to describe women it doesn’t like or thinks might have “too much sex”. Despite the fact that no one every defines what “too much” is. My guess is that too much is more than the listener has had.

The average American woman has four sexual partners in her lifetime and the average American man has six to eight, according to the Kinsey Institute. Would too much be more than that? I guess I’ve still had more than too much for a woman–I’m looking at eight right now at 23. Now granted, that’s not a lot compared to some people (a friend recounted her total and came up with around 48 and she’s about four years older than I am). But it is more than a few people I know (many of my guy friends). Who’s counting?

Is frequency what counts? Well, geez, I guess I fit into that category too. Only 7.5% of partnered women my age have sex more than four times a week (same source).

Is it when first intercourse occurred? There’s another category in which I look like a slut to the statistics, though not by much: 16.6 compared to the average American female’s 17.4 (same source again).

But who’s counting, really?

The fact that I am a bisexual queer poly woman, with large-ish breasts would be enough for some people to judge me a slut based on stereotypes, even without knowing the numbers. Not that the numbers matter.

What matters is one thing: I do not define myself as a slut, therefore I am not. Period. End of sentence.