First things first, Microsoft Word is suggesting I write this blog about “the one nightstand.” We can all appreciate a good furniture pun.
Moving on.
One day, not all that long ago, I decided I wanted to have a one night stand.
I can’t really say why I decided this, nor can I say why I decided now was a good time. I decided to do it like I decide what to have for lunch, what shoes I will wear, and what movie to watch.
One day, I decided to have a one night stand, so I did. But what fascinates me about it isn’t so much the experience itself as it is the expectations surrounding it. Casual sex is something the media likes to talk a lot about, without ever really saying much.
Like a lot of kids, and especially girls, I was taught growing up to deny my sexuality at all costs. The rhetoric in my house was that sex was for marriage, so keep your knees shut and wait for the right man. Dire things would happen if I didn’t, so I had better just do it.
(The joke’s on you mom and dad. Now I write a blog about sex for the whole Internet to read.)
When that didn’t really work for me, I was left with a few options. Boyfriends are fine and dandy but finding someone to share your fries with is a lot of work. Casual sex seemed like a decent idea.
Turns out I am not alone. While exact numbers about how many women have casual sex are hard to find, it’s a lot easier to find out why women have casual sex in the first place.
The University of Ottawa’s Human Sexuality Research Laboratory released a study earlier this year about the reasons why heterosexual women have casual sex.
Not surprisingly, the number one reason was “The person’s physical appearance turned me on.” The third most common reason was “I was horny.”
I read this and laughed. Of course women have sex because they’re horny. The variety of headlines I read on the subject made it seem like something groundbreaking was happening.
But thinking about it again, maybe something is shifting. Ever so slowly, maybe society’s attitudes about female sexuality are changing.
There’s a widespread perception (especially in the media) that women want to have sex for the emotional bond it brings.
This perception, while outdated, is harmful to women who have the agency for their own sexuality—agency that is stolen the minute sexual desire is dismissed as “mushy emotional stuff,” as one headline about the University of Ottawa study read.
It’s incredibly empowering to embrace sexuality, all forms of it. Whether or not your sexuality includes casual sex, and whether or not it does so at this point in your life, is irrelevant. What’s important is that women feel free to make that decision, and to do so without judgement.
So while critics may bemoan another notch in my figurative bedpost, I say fuck that. Women like sex and liking sex can be its own justification. Go figure.
