Thanks to the Two Rules of Desire and other conventions, that men must automatically know more than women do about sex. This affectation is not without its consequences.
In a lovely post titled “Don’t be a slut, you prude,” Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon calls out slut-shamer Susan Walsh for claiming it’s tawdry and irrelevant to discuss how many partners women should have, a.k.a. their “number” when in fact Walsh has discussed it. All well and good.
I’ve got a question though. In her post about numbers Walsh makes the claim that
Your number is too high. OK, fine, you don’t want any guy who cares about how many people you’ve slept with. Problem is… that’s most guys.
Is that true? More specifically is that universally true? Is it true only for inexperienced or insecure men? Is it also true with sexually experienced men? Is it…
Well, admittedly an awful lot of men are sexually inexperienced, and a surprising number of experienced men are still insecure. At at this year’s Sex 2.0 conference Veronica Monet mentioned that when she was a sex worker a man paid her nearly $15,000 to help him learn how to give his partner an orgasm. Nor was he the only customer to pay her for similar advice. This, presumably, because they were anxious about asking their partners directly. For fear, it sounds like Susan Walsh would say, that they might know.
Anyway, seriously, what possible legitimate reason should real adult men have for caring about their partner’s “number?”
Um … insecurity? Jealousy?
Submitted by Sungold (not verified) on Thu, 2010-08-05 20:33.Um … insecurity? Jealousy? Fear he won’t “match up” to former partners?
Sounds like the litany of reasons why some men find a vibrator threatening. (And guys, if you can build a vibrator who can love my children and hug me tight when I’m disappointed or scared and kiss my breast while it continues to buzz below, then you might have to worry about the competition. Otherwise, not so much.)
I’m skeptical, though, about the ability of highly experienced men to rock my world in a way that an “average” guy can do it. I worry that it becomes a game of pinball. Flip the clit until you tilt. If women become fungible, I wonder how a man with dozens of former lovers will clue into the proclivities of this particular woman.
Is it something in the middle
Submitted by fiveofnine (not verified) on Fri, 2010-08-06 10:53.Is it something in the middle age hormones that men who didn’t care at twenty to care at sixty?
It’s indicative of potential
Submitted by Eurosabra (not verified) on Fri, 2010-08-06 12:26.It’s indicative of potential impulse-control issues w/regard to cheating such that you may have misgivings about your partner’s fidelity, and these misgivings will be justified, leading you to negotiate pre-emptive consensual non-monogamy?
Lots of the men who care about “the number” have experienced a situation of consistent sexual scarcity, and it resembles the anxiety about any depreciating asset, which is how women’s sexuality is framed. Straight men’s sexuality is framed as having no value, so the perspective is of someone in a drought who has somehow scored a depreciating asset, whose “Blue Book” value he must seek to maximize because of the reflection it makes on him.