I stumbled upon a forum today, on a
website where students can post in threads and ask each other questions on
anything from essay writing, to Uni applications, to movies. And of course sex.
Most of the sex related threads were your same old, troubled and bragging
teenager kind of questions. However there was one that caught my attention:
Ignoring the terrible and incomplete sentence (someone clearly didn’t pay enough attention at school!) I keenly read on. At first glance, I thought that it would be a bunch of boys trying to out-do (no pun intended!) each other on the number of girls they had managed to bang over the years (future generations will be grateful for Bang With Friends, I think!). I am the kind of girl who is very open about all this and who has extensive conversations about sex and related topics with my friend J. We have been friends for years now and I feel sorry for any prudish/conservative member of society sitting next to us at dinner. (*Thankfully for all those who are a bit shy about any talk involving nudity and related topics, I don’t see him nearly as much as I would like to.)
But I am getting off topic. Back to
the teenage boys. Bursting with curiosity in my seat, I clicked. As much as I don’t want
to, I knew it was inevitable, knew that there was no point resisting and I should just click on it already. Satisfy my curiosity at the expense of my pride. And so I did.
The boys were asked to state their age and the number of
girls that had had contact with their private bits. To my surprise I find the
complete opposite of what I expected. Here are some excerpts:
This got me think about numbers.
Numbers of sexual partners that we would consider to be ‘normal’. If there is
such a thing. Normal is a word I don’t like to use, because what is normal
these days? It has become such a tainted word, one that traps us in our heteronormative;
Christian-morale society and leaves very little room for anything else. Yes, we
have become more and more accepting but there is still a lot of prejudice and what
we think is ‘normal’ is very much dependent on your social background and
upbringing, your beliefs and your circle of friends.
The topic of ‘What’s your number?’
was explored in a Hollywood film, titled with the same question (Trailer here: 'What's your Number'). Very original
story of boy meets girl, boy helps girl find all her ex-lovers, boy and girl
fall in love and live happily ever after. She was in her, I think so at least,
mid to late 20’s and had slept with 19 guys. “That’s a lot” some of us might
think. To others this is either perfectly ‘normal’ or they have passed that
number long ago.
But at which point does the number
of people we have slept with stop being ‘normal’ and start being just plain
promiscuous? The dictionary (or in this case Google) define ‘Promiscuous’ as
According to research published in
the late 2000’s the UK has some of the most promiscuous teens and Uni students
in Europe (England has most promiscuous students).
My home country, Germany, came a close second and going by my friends I am a
little surprised. Most of the people I know have been in committed (or at least
as far as I know), long-term relationships. Some of them have only had that one
girlfriend/boyfriend. Also something that isn’t considered to be the norm, even
though it once was.
While I will not reveal my number,
even though I am neither proud nor ashamed of it, I cannot help but wonder if
our view and the portrayal of teenagers these days maybe skewed in a direction
that is much more exaggerated than reality. The hypo-sexualisation of both the
Internet and TV has given us the impression that sex is all teenagers do and
can think about. Great examples of this are Teen Mom and 16 and Pregnant. And while this may be true for a chunk of the population the
opposite is rarely portrayed or discussed.
The number of answers along the
lines of
was truly astonishing. Not something
I would have expected. Part of me thinks that in a society where, as we saw in
my previous post (Casual Sex in times of the Internet)
casual sex is becoming more and more the norm, it is refreshing to see that
there are some who are still willing to take their time. Willing to not to let
peer pressure influence them when it comes to giving something up that you can
never get back. Willing to put intimacy over a quick f**k.
The question ‘What’s your number?’
is certainly something that some people will find hard to talk about. Event impossible. Or at least uncomfortable. What if,
heavens forbid, the number of the person asking is much higher/lower than that of the person being asked. Will you
think less/more of them for it? Will it change your perception of them as a
person overall rather than just their sexual past? Will you pass judgement of
how good they must be in bed based on their number?