Kelly Moss: July 2016

Wednesday, 20 July 2016

Stop Asking Your Partners How Many People They've Slept With

What's the correct number? If they've slept with “too few” people, you'll look at them as some kind of chaste prude; but if they've slept with a number you deem “too high,” something must be wrong with them.

In my short lifetime, I feel like we've made a lot of developments in regards to relationships, sex, and sexuality.

While homophobia is by no means a thing of the past, marriage equality is law in the United States and is becoming more normalized. Sex doesn't immediately frighten us the way it used to. While most of our other social issues are still wildly out of control (see: racism, police brutality, transphobia, fatphobia, sizeism, classism, xenophobia, etc. etc. etc.), we're slowly cultivating a society in which we're capable of discussing these topics openly and free of judgment.

Though that isn't perfect, it's an important first step.

That being said, I'd like to open the floor to a discussion I think is long overdue, but somehow still manages to rear its ugly head in our casual conversation as well as our pop culture.

Can we please stop asking our partners how many people they've had sex with?

I'm trying to find a way to explain the importance of this without simply typing “It's fucking 2016, c'mon already” over and over again.

Let's take a moment to address the obvious sexist connotations that come with this idea. While disparaging someone based on their number of sexual partners is something I've definitely heard from men and women, this idea is heavily skewed towards degrading and slut shaming women.

Stop Asking Your Partners How Many People They've Slept With

Image: Emma Craig via Flickr

Growing up as a cis dude among mostly straight cis dudes, I've heard a lot of men make comments about how sleeping with a woman who's “been around” would lack any pleasure because she'd be “stretched out.” I've heard (and made, in my shittier days) a lot of bad jokes about sex with a woman being like “throwing a pencil into the Grand Canyon.”

See all the sarcastic quotation marks I'm using? I hope it properly signifies what bullshit that is.

I'm not going to give you a detailed lesson on how the vagina works. I'm far from an expert on vaginas (ask my ex - ba-dum-TSH!).

But here's something you should know, Shitty Dude making Shitty Comments: The vagina actually loosens up during arousal to allow for successful penetration.

If all the women you're sleeping with are super-tight, it's possibly because none of them are aroused by you, your backwards fitted cap, your pinky rings, or your soul patch.

As long as you are using any appropriate protection (and getting tested every 3-6 months -I know, it sucks, but better safe than sorry), let's stop feeling the need to treat your significant other like you're saving them from a life of debauchery and bar bathroom quickies.

Now that the awkward Sex-Ed lesson is over, let's talk about the underlying issue with asking your partner how many people they've slept with: Why the fuck does anybody care?

I'm not writing this in order to get defensive about my number of partners, by the way. I've had sex with around 25 people since the end of 2012, and I'm perfectly proud of and comfortable with that number.

However, asking someone you're dating about how many people they've slept with is a question meant to make them feel ashamed.

What's the correct number? If they've slept with “too few” people, you'll look at them as some kind of chaste prude; but if they've slept with a number you deem “too high,” something must be wrong with them. This idea is a trap, made to shame and guilt people with different sexual experiences and ideologies than you into feeling as though they've done something bad.

When I've asked people I'm sleeping with why they care how many people I've slept with, they often respond with, “If you've been with a lot of people, I wouldn't feel as special.”

First of all, no.

What you're doing is equating sex with intimacy, and though there's often a crossover between the two, one doesn't inherently mean the other. I'll discuss that in another piece later this week, so let's focus on another aspect of this problematic idea.

You don't feel special, just because I've slept with other people in the past?

I mean, I don't want to be all there's enough Matt Diaz to go around, but there's at least enough Matt Diaz to sleep with multiple people years apart and still have a romantically and emotionally fulfilling experience every time.

One of my favorite writers, John Green, once described this ridiculous idea using a metaphor that I love but will almost certainly misquote. Here's the general idea:

Let's say I start eating Ben & Jerry's ice cream. As I go along, I try different flavors I come across and think I might be interested: Cherry Garcia, Americone Dream, Chubby Hubby.

Over time I come across Chunky Monkey and decide that this is it - this is the flavor I want for the rest of my life.

However, Chunky Monkey says to me, “You've tried 28 other flavors before me - I don't feel special!”

Well damn, Chunky Monkey. I can't go back and un-eat all of those ice creams, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate your banana-flavored goodness.

(Shit. Now I want ice cream.)

Your sexual history does not increase or decrease your worth.

You aren't a napkin that's used up and deserves to be tossed aside; you're a human being, and no number of trips to the boneyard can take that away from you.

As long as you are using any appropriate protection (and getting tested every 3-6 months -I know, it sucks, but better safe than sorry), let's stop feeling the need to treat your significant other like you're saving them from a life of debauchery and bar bathroom quickies.

If you and I are in a monogamous relationship, our number of current sexual partners is the same: one. That should be all that matters, because regardless of how many one night stands or prior relationships I've had, those experiences do not detract from my ability to love you.

If anything, those experiences have granted me the perspective and knowledge to care for you more thoroughly.

My compassion for you is not a fuel gauge that starts at the beginning of my life and dissipates as the wrong people come into and walk out of my life. My compassion for you is a wick, a flame ignited each time you come into the room and demand to be seen in the light. I am not at risk of running out of love to give just because I've given love to others before you.

We shouldn't be made to feel ashamed of our pasts, just because they're different from what we want in the present.

Also, I mean, it's fucking 2016.

C'mon, already.

This story by Matt Joseph Diaz originally appeared on Ravishly, a feminist news+culture website.

Thursday, 7 July 2016

Dear male writers writing sexist think pieces about women in Hollywood: Stop!

As a writer, you always kind of hate to take a fellow writer to task. We're an eclectic bunch with opinions as sharp and varied as shards of glass, yet there's an inherent solidarity in the way we lay our voices (and souls) bare for the world through our words.

But, as is often the case in life, sometimes you come across something you just can't let fly under the radar - and, today, that something comes by way of a specific subset of my peers: The male journalists who are spinning the sexualization and oversimplification of women into a trend.

More: Rowan Blanchard was disgustingly catcalled when she was 12 years old

You may know them as the dudes who write sexist think pieces about actresses, female musicians and other women in entertainment.

This think piece is for you, guys.

Last month, you - and very specifically music critic Art Tavana - penned an overtly inflammatory think piece in LA Weekly about 23-year-old musician Sky Ferreira. It started by comparing Ferreira's breasts to that of Madonna's.

"Boobs", "knockers", "killer tits", all were qualifiers you used in describing these women who, last time I checked, didn't play guitar or sing to sold out arenas with their breasts.

And just when we thought there was a sliver of a chance you were attempting to (and failing at) being satirical, you described Ferreira as being "too nasty to be anyone's schoolgirl fantasy."

Congratulations! In one article supposedly about the promising future of an up-and-coming pop star, you managed to reduce not one, but two incredibly talented women to little more than the sum of their actual, anatomical parts.

The focus stalled out on Ferreira's perceived sexiness and never shifted into her actual craft. Because a woman's talent is, what? Contingent on her sex appeal?

For her part, Ferreira did not take kindly to being the wet dream you wordsmithed - she responded accordingly in a series of scathing tweets underscoring that she is "obviously a lot more than my 'sex appeal' or my 'knockers.'"

Sadly, though, Tavana isn't the only male journalist getting his rocks off by weighing in on how women in Hollywood look and why that's important to him.

More: From now on, here's the only acceptable commentary about Renée Zellweger's face

Last week, Variety's Chief Film Critic, Owen Gleiberman, devoted an entire think piece to why he is so damn concerned about Renée Zellweger's face. In an article titled, “Renée Zellweger: If She No Longer Looks Like Herself, Has She Become a Different Actress?" the writer cited his concerns with how our "vanity-fueled image culture" is sparking an epidemic of women in Hollywood suffering from a "rejection of self."

In no uncertain terms, Gleiberman admits he feels betrayed by the fact Zellweger doesn't look exactly like she did, say, five or ten years ago. And, what's worse, he tenders this complaint under the guise of concern... a sexist, ageist insult cloaked in a compliment.

Sure, Zellweger was beautiful, he said. Just not Julia Roberts beautiful, he said. Like Barbara Stanwyck, Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis, Zellweger was never one of Hollywood's "beauty contest winners," he said.

Gleiberman wrapped up his reductive observations about women by lamenting the "fascist standards of the new American beauty." Here is a man, writing an entire article devoted to devaluing a woman's professional worth based on her appearance, wondering why women in Hollywood feel so compelled to alter themselves to conform to such standards of beauty.

The irony of it is almost too much to bear.

Then, on Thursday, yet another illuminating commentary emerged from the camp of men who write about women in the entertainment industry through the lens of their looks, their sexuality.

This one comes courtesy of Rich Cohen, the co-creator of HBO's Vinyl, author of several books and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair - the latter of which housed his ridiculous think piece on cover subject, Margot Robbie.

"America is so far gone, we have to go to Australia to find a girl next door. In case you've missed it, her name is Margot Robbie. She is 26 and beautiful, not in that otherworldly, catwalk way but in a minor knock-around key, a blue mood, a slow dance. She is blonde, but dark at the roots. She is tall but only with the help of certain shoes. She can be sexy and composed even while naked but only in character."

Wait, what? On my first pass of Cohen's first paragraph, I felt certain this was some sort of misunderstanding. Perhaps he was going to use this unabashedly sexist introduction to segue into something more meaningful. Perhaps he was going to make a point other than the one everyone was reading between the lines: Cohen was sporting a stiff one for Robbie.

But, tragically, that was pretty much the gist of it. And when - after expounding at length about how her seductiveness nearly overshadows her ambition - he asks her point blank about her graphic sex scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street and how she prepared for them, you can basically picture her "painfully blue eyes" searching for the nearest exit.

Which, for the record, she found and took with little hesitation.

"We sat for a moment in silence. She was thinking of something; I was thinking of something else," he wrote. "Then she stood, said good-bye, and went to see a friend across the room."

For the record, Cohen, we're all pretty sure we know what you were thinking about. As for Robbie? Well, aside from scanning for that exit, she was probably wondering how she just sat through such a sexist exploitation of her time.

So, here's the thing, guys - don't. Just don't. For the love of all things holy, don't. If you start to write an article and think writing about women in a way that is undeniably misogynistic is somehow avant-garde and appropriately provocative, just don't.

Women's bodies are not foddered for your entertainment; women's bodies do not exist for you. Not for your viewing pleasure, not to sensationalize your think pieces, not to sub in when you have no other original thoughts rattling around in your head.

Women's bodies and our looks are not tied to our worth.

Who told you it was a good idea to start writing about women like this? Who gave your obviously sexist article the stamp of approval and set it live? They did you a disservice, dude. Unless you grow ovaries sometime in the near future, please refrain from writing about women's bodies in a way that is marginalizing and, quite frankly, gross.

Women can do whatever they want with their bodies. You cannot do whatever you want with women's bodies, and speaking about them like this makes you seem predatory. It feels like a violation. You see how that works?

I'm not saying there aren't any male journalists who write about women with the respect they deserve and who direct the focus of their think pieces where it belongs: On women's talents and contributions to the entertainment industry.

More: Kit Harington is taking a stance on Hollywood's sexism against... men?

And I'm not saying male journalists shouldn't write about women at all. The respectful ones I just described are doing a damn good job of it.

In fact, I encourage men to write about women in Hollywood from an allied perspective - we need more men taking a firm stance against pressing social issues that women struggle with like ageism and gendered double standards.

What we don't need are any more Tavanas, Gleibermans and Cohens churning out ill-conceived sexist think pieces.