Me, Ke$ha and Promiscuity
Today I got to be part of a HuffPost Live episode about promiscuity, which they defined as “having sex where no one is interested in falling in love or having a relationship”, or something like that.
It’s a little bit interesting to me that Ke$ha’s promiscuity is even news. She’s a rock star. Aren’t they sort of canonically *supposed* to sleep around? I guess that’s just for men.
And me. The CDC says the average number of lifetime sexual partners for a woman is 3.6. I’ve had dates with more people than that this week (though I haven’t had sex with any of them due to various emergencies and distractions. But I totally meant to!).
So I was on this panel because I know a thing or three about fucking around, not because I know anything about Ke$ha. Which it turns out was fine, my co-panelists were also sex geeks and not music geeks, and we talked about sex for awhile.
Or they did. I barely got a turn to talk, and when I did it was just to briefly say on camera that I consider myself promiscuous, am in an open relationship, and no one gives me flak about it to my face. All these things are true, but they’re not very interesting.
Here’s something I noticed, and really wished I’d gotten a chance to say:
The two women on the panel (me and this cool lady) were there to talk about our personal sex lives and whether we’d experienced stigma because we’re slutty. The men on the panel were experts being called on in their professional roles as a doctor and an academic; they were never asked about their personal lives.
Which, you know, fuck that. I love talking about how awesome my sweeties are and how much I love my sexy life, but seriously. You think stigmatizing women’s sexual desire is a problem? Don’t subtly do it on your show.
That’s my only real complaint though; this was a fun gig with surprisingly smart and interesting things going on. And you know, yay promiscuity! I’m glad people are talking about it in a more or less positive way in highly visible places.
the whole bag of cookies! 
That observation makes me want to undermine the women=stories/men=experts pattern by discussing my personal life in public. And, uh, I guess also by emphasizing that I am totally an amateur stuff-knower.
Another perspective: My sense of the (mostly-liberal) media I consume these days is that men would be far *more* condemned for promiscuity. Promiscuous women are viewed with some suspicious and envy-driven-clucking; promiscuous men are viewed as scum.