It’s good to talk, especially when it comes to sex. We just need to remember two simple rules to kiss and tell respectfully.
Editor’s note: This article contains explicit sexual language.
I’ve heard it said that you shouldn’t kiss and tell. Apparently by talking about your sexual adventures you’re demeaning those you’ve been with, and putting off those you might be with in the future.
As a sex blogger who regularly posts about my partners, naturally I think this is crap. Talking about your past partners gives future partners a pretty good idea of what you like, what you don’t, and how they can best help push you towards the trembling orgasm they so deeply want you to have. Talking about your past is not just fine but welcome, but as my mother used to explain to me: it’s not what you say but the way that you say it.
I wrote this blog while sitting on a two hour train heading to London (so if you’re reading from anywhere other than England, brace yourself for some rather uncomfortable British slang). As on all weekend trains, the token group of loud people had decided to sit in my carriage.
They—a bunch of twenty-something men—were bragging about some pretty wild sex they had over the weekend. Strangely, if it weren’t for all the raucous laughter it would be impossible for me to tell whether they enjoyed themselves. This weekend they either met and slept with some women who fancied them, or made selfish sexual use of some sub-human creatures who made them want to puke. I can’t tell which.
“She was going at me so hard. Total slapper.”
“I thought there’d be blood, mate. She was so gaggin’”
“You nasty bastard.”
They were dissecting the sex they had. At one point the girls they slept with agreed to get it on with each other so the guys could watch.
“They were going right at each other’s minges, mate. It was disgusting.”
And it went downhill even from there:
“I could smell her tit sweat, man. It was gross.”
“Not as gross as the face on the one I had.”
Fascinating though this conversation was (and I assure you, I’ve toned it right down to make it even vaguely publishable) it made me want to scream.
There’s nothing wrong with having sex with a few women and a selection of your most obnoxious friends. In fact, I’d say that if a good time is had by all it might be one of my ideal ways to spend a weekend. I imagine I’d play the part of the lady who was not only ‘gagging’ but also getting fairly sweaty, because I find sex is a bit more fun if you put your back into it.
But the problem here isn’t that these guys are discussing the hot time they had, it’s that at no point have any of them suggested it was something they wanted to do. Something that they enjoyed. The caricatures that they draw with their tawdry, disdainful words make the girls look awful, ugly, desperate and pathetic. The sex itself sounds miserable and grotesque.
Of course this isn’t just a male thing—that’s part of what makes me so angry about it. We all have the capacity to be dismissive of past sexual encounters. Women don’t always dissect sexual activity with a shy smile and a neutral “well, to each his own.” For every guy bragging that “she was gaggin, mate” there’s a woman waving her little finger and giggling to her friends that he “wasn’t all that.”
These statements might be true, of course. To expect all sex to come with roses, romance and volcanoes of orgasmic fluid is naïve. But that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss these shags, it just means that—in order to avoid coming across like one of the train assholes—we have to follow two very simple rules:
Rule one: Keep the people anonymous.
An anonymous lover can always step forward and claim credit if they want it, but if you’ve named them you’re forcing them to be forever associated with a sexual mistake. To wear a badge that says “I’m the one with the tiny cock” or “I sometimes cry after orgasm.” When you introduce your friend Kelly to your other friends, do you really want them looking at her and thinking not “Oh, she seems nice,” but “Is this the Kelly who couldn’t give a decent blow job?”
Rule two: Speak well of them.
You don’t need to lie, or pretend that someone rocked your world when they only tickled your funny bone. You just need to treat your past lovers like real people: people with emotions and flaws and the capacity to be so pierced with shame that they want to curl up and cry.
This second rule is the most important. It’s not just good because it’s ethically the right thing to do, but because it’ll have a huge impact on whether you actually get laid in the future. If, when you’re telling me about a girl you slept with last year, it sounds like you did it with a vague sense of disgust, I am unlikely to drop my knickers and let you screw me with a similar degree of contempt. Being angry is fine, if someone gave you cause to be. Being upset or disappointed is okay, too. But being outright disdainful? Spewing bile because someone had the audacity to have sex with you in a way that either wasn’t as you expected or that you later came to regret? That’s cruel. And it’s not your partner that looks bad when you do this: it’s you.
I’ve had crap sex with some people. I disappoint men on a worryingly regular basis, and I’m more than happy for them to discuss my flaws. Tell people I was lazy. Tell them I was crap. Tell them I make stupid whining noises when I come and that I pull faces like I’m competing in a gurning contest at an ugly convention. But remember that somewhere within these truths is a real person with feelings and desires. A real person who, once upon a time, you desperately wanted to fuck.
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Image credit: El Bibliomata/Flickr
Thanks for speaking up on the subject. Totally agree.
Seems tacky to me to talk in a graphic way about one’s sexual partners (past or present). I don’t like it when either men or women do this. Frankly, I’d rather not know about it. I have never discussed my past sexual experiences with my current boyfriend. He’s brought a couple things up and I’ve always told him that I’d rather not hear about his sexual past because it just makes me insecure. Hearing about sex he had with a previous girlfriend pretty much ruins the mood for me completely. Anyway, I’m often boggled by the things people will say.… Read more »
Hi Jules – I agree. I mentioned in the piece that this isn’t just a male thing. I wouldn’t want to speculate on which gender is more likely to do it – I think it’s about the attitude of the particular individual. It’s just as hurtful and ugly when women speak cruelly of their ex-partners as it is when men do.
Are not women more guilty of this than men? Both are wrong of course. When I worked with a lot of women, I was really shocked at the very explicit and detailed nature of their conversations. They tend to share a lot of information about their lovers, except the men whom they are in LTR or marriage. Many women also share men and lovers whom they designate as good lover but not dating material. If the maintenance guy is a great lay, they tell other women who then also have sex with him. Next thing you know, the lucky guy… Read more »
All females do this. Some men too. Even Germaine Greer felt compelled to tell the world the name of the most famous man she had sex with. Judith Lucy did it in her interview in the Weekend Australian Magazine. A female has sex with the entire lacrosse team, rates them with extra points for sexual aggression, names them and publishes the results on the World Wide Web. Females even line up to fk famous men so they can brag about their score to other females. This lifts her status amongst her female peers. Like the slut (and it was proven… Read more »