The double standard about women and sex has always infuriated me, but it's never affected me quite so much until I started sleeping around (which is, honestly, an overstatement - but people seem to think five partners in the past year is a scandalous amount). All of a sudden people are letting me know in various ways that my behavior is unacceptable. A coworker - someone I considered a friend - called me a slut. But most people have just been expressing their disapproval couched in concern.

A friend of mine let me know the other day that she doesn't think I'm a slut, but that she worries about me, that she thinks I'm giving things away that I shouldn't (which is an example of the utterly sexist idea of women as givers and men as takers when it comes to sex), but it's my life and she can't judge. She only worries because she cares. Okay, how often do you think men get that speech? Pretty much never, right?

I don't have sex because I'm emotionally damaged, or have low self-esteem, or any other motive people seem to attribute to women who are sexually active. I have sex because I like it.

I honestly think people are worried, they're not just being disingenuous. But it sucks that our culture frames female sexuality in such a way that promiscuous women are seen as somehow screwed up or deviant.