Sunday, August 10, 2008

Easy Like Sunday Morning

Boys are jerks. Sorry. I know not all of them are, but seriously? This dude commenting in this post gives anybody with a penis a bad name. If you scroll down, there're a couple of trolls, and one of them makes a reference to the writer of the post lying about her experience. He then calls her 'easy', and asks for her number. Hur, hur, hur. Someone tell him "please take your penis back to the Stone Age where it belongs, until both you and it are ready to come back and play nicely”. The thing is...

Easy. I hate that word. I hate what it's come to mean, I hate when guys use it, and this troll reminded me of another jerk. True story time: I had an ex of mine, usually not a total misogynist, say 'easy' when he referred to the first time we got together. Why did he say this? Well, because later on in the evening of our first meeting, I decided: Hey, he's cool, I like him, and I'm single and horny with nothing better to do tonight. So I did something characteristically bold- I walked into the bathroom of my friend's house, removed my undies, walked out, and dropped them in his lap, saying, "So, you wanna?" No, I'm not kidding. Yes, the undies were clean (and lacy if I recall, not that it matters). Yes, he wanted. Yes, I did have (safe) sex with him that night. I wasn't really thinking about anything other than that I wanted this, and so did he. And I was cool with that. And you know something? He decided he liked me and asked me out, and I said no. Eventually I changed my mind, though- we ended up being together for 2 years. Not that that matters, either. What matters is, when we were talking about it months later, he made a comment like "Are you kidding? You were so easy that first night."

I actually got rather pissed about this. Let me explain why to you now, even though I couldn't explain to him then. 'Easy' implies that I am a contest, a conquest, something to challenge his manly skill, something to be won or attained. It feeds right back into that myth that "Women don't really want sex, so men have to persuade/coerce them." It completely leaves out any indication that I might have made a choice in this. In his case, it takes the agency away from me and gives it to him, even though I initiated the sex that night.
So then, 'easy' sounds like he didn't really have to try that hard to get my panties off. Well, technically he didn't. At all. ‘Cause I decided I wanted to have sex with him. And asked him. And had a condom in my purse. And took my own fucking panties off, thank you so fucking much.

I'm not a video game. I'm not a math quiz. I'm not a rape victim, either ('easy' also brings up the shudder-y connotation of some girl you got drunk because you knew it would be, ahem, easier for you to fuck her without all that pesky rational thought in the way). I'm not a box of pudding mix.
I'm not any of these things. I'm not a thing at all. I make decisions, I have autonomy, I want or don't want things, I have sex. I, I, I. Me. And if you're involved it becomes 'we'. We have sex. Me and you.

I like sex. I choose, usually, not to have casual sex because it’s less personal and I like learning what makes my sexual partner happy, and having that favor returned, which usually takes more time than a one-off involves. But if I want to have sex with a willing partner, I will, and I very much resent being slut-shamed for it.


I actually dislike the sentence structure, "X fucked Y". It automatically sets it up so that there's a subject-verb-object structure, very often with a woman as the object; "he fucked her".
(I won't even get into the linguistics wherein "being fucked" means someone has cheated you or done you wrong, or you're in trouble. That says so much about our society.)
And frankly, I hate it! Part of feminism is sexual equality; if you're having sex, do it as equals, as partners, as two people coming together for mutual pleasure. It's not that bad, really! You can do it!

Fucking isn't something you achieve with me as a vehicle or vessel. It's something we do together, if I want it and you want it.
And, dude? If we're having that sentence structure, if anybody's fucking anybody, it's gonna be me fucking you.
By the way, that doesn't make me 'easy'. If anything, it makes me difficult as hell. Deal with it.