Finally, someone stands up for casual sex!
Okay, we’re sure that more than a few people have defended the age old practice of getting it on outside of a relationship, but Tracy Clark-Flory’s essay is a must read (and also, it’s in Salon, so, um, good!). Instead of hemming and hawing over the damage that penile penetration sans relationship can do to a young girl’s soul, Clark-Flory makes a case for the ways in which casual sex can teach a young person a great deal about who they are, what they want out of a relationship, what they’re looking for sexually, and what kind of person they’re looking for — before getting tied down to someone who may or may not fit the bill.
And, even better, she takes on that old pro-abstinence chestnut about how condoms don’t protect against heartbreak:
For example, abstinence advocates are fond of the saying: “There is no condom for the heart.” But heartbreak isn’t always sexually transmitted. In the New York Times Magazine piece on chastity, prominent Harvard activist Janie Fredell lamented the hurt she’d seen women go through in their pursuit of relationships via hooking up — as though abstaining from sex would have saved them a broken heart. If only.
(We’re really glad someone finally said it.)
[Photo by madhorse5]
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I think they call the pill for heartbreak ‘prozac’
Though on the lines of the hurt “women go through in their pursuit of relationships via hooking up” what about all the hurt of the women who are want to keep it locked up and then don’t understand why their marriages are miserable when they never want to put out? Or keep seeing the man of their dreams walk off with the girls who will put out?
Current western society keeps looking at marriage as being all about love and commitment, when the current marriage structure is pretty damn new. If you were living with someone as an established couple you were married under ‘common law’, that is until the church butted in and went ‘uh… so if we don’t marry you your naughty and your children are doomed.’ Even then marriage was still primarily a financial/political institution.
So now we’ve got a culture screaming that “this is the way its supposed to be: pure wife, loving husband, kids, home, etc” and all those who go to church seem to skip over the part where just about everyone had multiple wives, mistresses, etc.
Personally I think you can learn a lot from casual sex. What you like, what you don’t like, a new level of intimacy with a friend that doesn’t mean you’re falling in love with them, or just feeling better about yourself.
August 4th, 2008 at 6:14 pmI really don’t understand the point of casual sex other than physical pleasure. Mind you, I don’t do that kind of thing, so I really can’t know from experience, but I actually feel like not enough people seriously date anymore.
Then again, I’m in college, and a party college at that, so I’m surrounded by bad sexual decisions all the time. I could imagine it being not so bad if a mature adult has casual sex, but still, I just wonder if the benefits outweigh the risks.
On top of all that, it’s the pro-casual sex thing that makes me feel a little down on myself- I’ve had two serious boyfriends, no non-serious anything. Like I SHOULD be sleeping around or something. You know, like something is WRONG with me. Like if I stayed with my current boyfriend forever, I would be behind everyone else, or a loser, or a prude.
But that’s just me.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:35 pmI guess casual sex can be harmful if you’re a deep sort of spiritual person. A soulful person wants the sex act to go deeper; they want to touch the other person’s soul. But if that doesn’t happen, casual sex tends to leave the soulful person empty and dispassionate. Casual sex is usually between souless people who really don’t have much regard for the sex act and treat it more like a drug than an act of love, so most of the time it’s OK.
August 5th, 2008 at 2:15 amArianna,
I don’t think there’s any one way that’s right for everyone, and I definitely didn’t mean to send the message that everyone should be having casual sex. If there’s no one that you’re interested in being casually involved with, going out and sleeping around “just because” isn’t a good idea — and if you meet someone you want to be serious with, then that’s great, and you should go for it.
I used to have a fair amount of casual sex; but I haven’t been that way for a long time (though, ironically, when both of my last two serious relationships began, I thought they were going to be casual flings). That’s just where I’m at right now.
If anything, a defense of casual sex is more to argue against people who assume that women are irreparably damaged by any sexual act that occurs outside of a relationship — not to say that all women (or all people, for that matter) should be going out there getting naked for the next hot stranger.
August 5th, 2008 at 7:27 am@Swinger: You don’t have to be a “soulful” person to respect sex for what it is.
@Lux: Good point. Thanks
August 5th, 2008 at 12:09 pmSounds like the old “Learning the ropes vs Hanging yourself” dilemma
August 6th, 2008 at 8:57 pmLeave a reply :