On sluttiness...

At this point, pretty much everyone knows I went to Catholic school. Catholicism has been a pretty heavy influence on my kinkiness, what with the penance and forgiveness and the saints and martyrs and their ecstatic suffering and so on and so forth. But Catholic school had a different influence altogether--all because of the idea of being a slut and the practice of slut shaming.

Despite the best efforts of abstinence only sex ed, pretty much everyone at my high school was having sex left, right, and center. It was also a small school, so everyone knew each other's business. And when a girl crossed some invisible, undefinable line, by performing the wrong sex act, or the right sex act on too many people, or with the wrong people, or in the wrong place, or did it and admitted to enjoying it too much, she was labeled a slut.

I was mostly a good girl. I had my (emotionally abusive) boyfriend and no one knew what we were doing in bed because he isolated me from my friends and he hated "sluts" and "sluttiness." I though his us-against-the-world, no-one-understands-our-love take on things was romantic, but really it was awful...but that's for another post. We had our quiet, dramatic, devastating, awful relationship and effectively hid what was really going on. And I was miserable for obvious reasons, but also, secretly, I was really jealous of the girls everyone else thought were slutty.

On the one hand, I didn't really want to be a good girl. When I heard about someone's ill-advised threesome or the girl who put on a sex show with her boyfriend at a party, taking requests for positions...everyone else acted disgusted, while I was secretly frustrated and turned on. I wanted to have adventures, I wanted to feel overwhelmed and taken over by sex. I wanted to lose control. But I was stuck in an awful relationship and vaguely terrified at the thought of the girls whose names were written on the bathroom walls.

I've gotten over a lot of that stuff. The boyfriend dumped me, I came to terms with the fact that I do, in fact, want someone to control me sometimes--but I want it to be consensual and sexy and not scary and abusive. I'm in an awesome relationship, I'm having those adventures I wanted. It's great.

And the results of watching other girls get whispered about and laughed at and slandered in graffiti stayed with me. On the one hand, it gets me incredibly hot when I'm called a slut in bed. I do the things the bad girls did in high school, and the leftover shame makes it super sexy.

On the other hand, I still have moments, even on websites designed for kinky people (where I'm pretty much 100% sure that no one cares) when I have a hard time talking about things I'm into, things I enjoy. It took me months to admit online that I enjoy anal sex, because on some ridiculous level I was sure someone, somewhere would be judging me for it. And after the first few play parties I went to, I spent days wondering if I'd done too much with too many people, if someone was laughing at me behind my back.

I've gotten over some of that fear...but now I want to make more of a conscious effort to get rid of the rest. I'll hang onto the hot remnants of slut shaming. I'll keep getting turned on by the thought of being a bad girl, a dirty girl, a slut. But I don't want to let those stupid girls in high school control me to the point where I'm dishonest anymore. I don't want to care what people think of me because of what turns me on. It's ridiculous and it's time to stop.