It’s 2022 and somehow, body count still counts. Scrolling through my VPN-enabled Twitter feed one afternoon, I stumbled across this tweet.
Naturally, the “alpha males,” and concerned body count activists camped in the comments with their unsolicited two cents, and the conversation spread much wider in next to no time. I find it jarring how quickly the body count conversation often gets sidetracked to finger-pointing. Many men in the comments drove the point that women want to live a sexually fluid lifestyle but not take responsibility for it. Women voiced out their distrust for men who ask these questions then make a U-turn and continually guilt trip them for being honest.
The ferocity of this body count conversation signals to me, a grey area in which we operate in relationships. Between opposing takes and below the belt jabs, it’s evident how defensive we feel when body count is brought up. It’s the twenty-first century, shaming women for their sexual history is very old and very sexist.
A 2018 survey by NectarSleep showed that men tend to have an average of 26 sexual partners before “getting hooked” while women had an average of 19 sexual partners.
However, I rarely see men shy away from their numbers, it’s actually very common to hear it spoken about with pride, which leads me to ponder on society’s reoccurring obsession with the sex lives of women. There’s also a school of thought which posits that a sexually fluid lifestyle equals a lack of contentment; I think if someone finds multiple people attractive then why not safely see all those endeavors through? Even Oliver Twist deserved some more.
Downplaying the number of past sexual partners seems to be a constant due to the fear of being judged, shamed and/or dumped. From my perspective, many of these barriers to a freer sexual life are rooted in religious beliefs, parenting styles, and societal constructs of what is acceptable as a body count figure and which gender is allowed to be promiscuous. This shouldn’t really matter in my opinion, but if you want it to matter to you, add your individualism to the mix to understand what you really want.
I had a conversation with a friend where she said “We all scream out for equality but no one really wants to accept the fact that we are different, equal or not.” Well, different or not I do think the least we could do is to respect each other’s decisions and choices, if you have a problem with your partner having double digits or more in body count then by all means voice it out and leave if you have to. I really do believe certain things are best left unsaid and if they do come up, you should be decent enough to respect whatever answer you get.
Someone in the comments suggested total abstinence and I considered it for a moment, but then I thought of a life without orgasms and it wasn’t a world I wanted to live in. A great sex game comes after much practice, having multiple partners is practice that will eventually make perfect.
We all want great sex and practice makes perfect so having multiple sex partners equals a ton of practice, in my book that’s a win-win situation. If you decide to live a sexually fluid lifestyle, you ought to do it with your chest. No matter your gender, sex is natural and anyone who tries to shame you for that needs to go get laid.
