Translation: "My friend with AIDS is still my friend"



"When I've rejected casual sex that appealed to me, it wasn't some sort of weird worry about disease or pregnancy, since I am acquainted with the concept of the condom. The fear of being treated like a slut overwhelmed me. That some men are willing to pass judgment on a woman they've just had sex with was also a problem"-Amanda in the infamous nice guys thread.

I have to admit I have seen this difference first hand. I have discussed my sex life in a lot of detail in other posts, but I have kept mum about the fact that I had had sex to the other people who were doing the study abroad with me. However, the guy I was with announced it to his room mate and our mutual internet friends immediately, and didn't seem to understand why I was embarrassed. We even discussed how all his friends would be patting him on the back about this but how another person who we both 'knew' on the internet was slagging off some girl he tried to have sex with. There of course was some casual sex on this trip by others- with one girl even bringing her conquest back to the dorm night after night, but in general, going back with 'sketchy' guys was discouraged due to the danger(although that might have been real). The event that stands out most in my mind was actually a story in which there was no casual sex.

The night before the bombings was also the night before our last day of class. Class even started one hour later as a special treat. One girl decided to meet one of her many new 'friends' (Yes, girls can have a harem effect too) across town. That night we thought she'd come back. But after the bombings, we started to become worried because she hadn't come back. We couldn't contact her, and the guy seemed seriously sketchy.

She finally returned at 9 pm noting that she wanted to come back earlier but the guy tricked her into coming back to his place and pressured her for sex. The other girls talked about how this was all her fault, and suchlike that she went with such a sketchy guy. I was angry at her too, but tried to note that no one made the guy act like that. I understand that some might have reasons why they'd like to concoct myths about why this couldn't happen to them, but I can see why girls wouldn't want to come clean about all their casual sex given this sort of environment.

I have seen women run down other women about how many men they have slept with. I have heard women claim that they can't be close friends with certain women because they have supposedly slept with whole frats. I am not surprised that many hold their tongues. I do not have a lot of sex, by anyone's standards, so wasn't so much the worry about the 'slut label' as much as I couldn't think of how to tell the story.

This wasn't a drunken oops, or anything related to relationships at all. Basically it was a you give me sexual favors if I give you sexual favors thing. Even fuckbuddies wouldn't be the correct way to frame it, and I never have had the 'cool' required to say "hey, we fucked, it was cool" in front of others. So how could I amend that into the world view of girls I barely knew? Easy. I didn't.

(As an aside, I notice that the same events and issues tend to come up repeatedly in my blog. I never seem to be able to process issues and emotions quickly, instead having to return to them again and again)