Ok, I didn't expect the pedantry to come out for "tittyfucking." You are, technically, correct, but any time one can say "titty," one must say "titty."
Wait a sec - having slept with 39 guys in 25 years doesn't shock you, but an extra 11 is 15 years trips the trigger wire? Is this on the principle that you should have less sex as you get older?
I find the self-imposed version of this weirder, like when people I know (invariably women, but in principle it could be anyone) suddenly start struggling with a desire to keep their "count" below some quasi-arbitrary number.
That's a good point. I've felt unclean after finding out someone I slept with also slept with someone I didn't much like. Not long for that relationship.
any activity where I'm gonna get spunk on me counts as sex
Well, none of the handjobs I've received resulted in any spunk on you, B, and though you may be able to prove otherwise, I suspect the number of handjobs that have ended with sunk on you constitute a very tiny fraction of the whole. So no. Still not sex.
22 - There was a questionable article on that in the NYT style section a while back. It claimed that some women went back to old flames for flings instead of hooking up with a stranger just because that didn't count towards raising their number.
Unlike your average questionable Times article this has happened to me. Style Section article + personal anecdotes = truth. I don't complain, per se, but it's odd behavior.
Last "titty" discussion also led to a brief exchange on the difference between "lay" and "lie," which reminds me that last night Mr. B. asked if our bed was big enough for Ben Wolfson to occupy it along with both of us.
I think it's irrelevant to consider whether titfucking counts as sex because I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse, unless you're some sort of titfucking specialist.
26 - It's weird enough for someone to do it, but it's even weirder to think of someone admitting it to their partner. I can just imagine the phone call: "I'm horny and you don't count, so wanna come over?"
30: This is hilarious, but not necessarily true, as there might be a progression of sex acts in a relationship, where titfucking comes before intercourse, and the relationship might end before that progression is complete.
I'm just sayin'. Not that this is from personal experience or nothin'.
33: Is that even possible? What, did he make her wear one of those lobster bibs?
It's never gone that way. But say I was going out with a girl and we were talking and she mentioned that when she's single she sometimes likes to hook-up with some of her exes because that way she keeps her count down. Then say we break up. Then say a certain amount of random post-breakup sex takes place. Am I crazy to draw conclusions from that? And say this goes down with two different people. That's a trend in my book.
I've never had sex (vaginal, oral, hand, tits) with anyone besides my wife, and she had sex with somewhere in three figures men before she met me. It would be nice to at least be within a frigging order of magnitude . . . .
39 - Ah, I see. That reduces the weirdness of disclosing the motivation behind the hookup. To have worked out an understanding beforehand seems kind of prudent, if keeping one's number down is a concern.
Genghis Khan was definitely type II. Normally he killed the previous partner, so jealousy was somewhat moot. He had about 800 wives, but he was only close to 8 of them. Something like 0.5% of the world's population is his direct descendant, and if I'm not mistaken that's male-line descendants only.
titfucking is the most pointless semi-mainstream sexual activity ever invented
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
My second girlfriend not only had had sex with more than fifty before she was twenty, but carried a list (1st names only) on which she ranked them in order of performance. I think she thought it was important that she remember them all.
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice. I thought she taught me something about women, but I was probably wrong.
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
"Semi-mainstream"? Is that a pun? To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone. Concededly, I am no authority on this.
I should have known better than to think this thread might stay on topic. But I confess I don't see why y'all are hating on tittyfucking. Variety is the spice of life, people, and tittyfucking, with the right tits, is some nice variety.
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice.
Ohmigod. "Bob, you were at No. 47 out of 63 after our first time, but after that incredible performance I'm moving you up from 18 to 13!"
This is my favorite Stones trivia: Wyman and Jones three figures, Jagger two figures, Richards low single figures, Watts zero. This was on one tour several or many months long.
64: I'm with you. I can see why the tittyfuckee might think it stupid and annoying (although in my case, all of the recipients made the initial proposal) but I don't think it's quite as lame or deviant as it's been made out to be here.
66: I think those two categories overlap for some people.
I'm sure titfucking is great for guys, but as a girl, I gotta agree with Dan Savage's assessment that it's kind of like watching a turtle poke its head in and out between your breasts, and at the end the turtle pukes on your chin.
In other words, HOTT.
Ben, I told Mr. B. that although you are tall, you're kinda skinny, so probably we could fit you in, sure.
I'm sure my partner wwould be shocked and appalled with the number of partners I had before her.As a matter of fact,so am I.Some of that seems to be a Sam Malone-ish
inability to commit or unwilligness to grow up.A bit of advice:
1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever.
2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner.
But the point is, if it involves fluid, an orgasm, and another person, it's sex.
Rubbing someone through their jeans 'til they come? I have a line that may well exist only my own head that divides heavy petting and sex. and handjobs fall on the heavy petting side. Not that it really matters.
But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right.
It can also be instructive to imagine your reaction to hearing your wife say "while you were at work, the electrician was here and tittyfucked me."
Especially since I've always heard it used with the subject and object in a different order than you just placed them. I would certainly have to pause to try to figure out the mechanics of it all first.
Without getting more than halfway through, so many thoughts. One is that lesbians actually do have sex. Many, anyway.
Another is ObObvious that many men, both het and not, at least during some periods in their life, would screw anything more attractive than a tree. And a fair number would do the tree. But, of course, women are sluts if they like sex too much.
One woman in my past was too embarrassed to give me a figure, but allowed in a weak moment that it was well over a hundred before she got out of college. She happened to like sex a lot. Which made her like me (except, you know, not in the numbers, or in many other ways; in that). My reaction: kool. Man, was she good at sex. And, not oddly, ready any time.
Anyone who wants to tell me there's something bad there about having a sweetie like that, I will tell them they are nuts.
Also, the whole "what counts as sex" is, again, strange binarism; why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum? Am I the only one who lives in the latter universe?
Although, mind, I do make a distinction between woman I've done sexual things with, beyond talk, and those I have not; I'm not saying there are no binary distinctions to be made in the universe; I thought I'd get that out of the way before someone pointed it out to me.
One thing on the numbers -- they look much larger as a lump sum than spaced out. 40 before 25: Assume the girl was an early bloomer, having sex from 14. That's 11 years at under 4 partners a year. Not so bad. And 50 before 40? Starting from the age of 20 (just to be conservative), that's 2.5 partners a year. That really so shocking?
#86: Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs.
Also, one decent distinction between coming in your jeans and a handjob is that no one is put at risk of an STD if you keep your dick in your pants. Having said that, though, I'd go along with Gary and say that coming in your pants damn well can count as sex in some circumstances.
why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum?
You can always divide up a continuum and label that division. Ice->water->steam, ROYGBIV, etc.
As far as binarism, I don't think I've got just two categories on the sexuality spectrum. Hell I can start dicing it all up into more categories than Carter has little liver pills, as could we all. But any one divider on the line necessarily creates two segments.
"...I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse...."
As we all doubtless know, some women don't find that intercourse does anything for them; some actively dislike it. But still are thrilled with other practices. What other people's favored interests might be isn't my business, and I don't care as long as they're not scaring the horses in the street, but I don't think it's all unlikely in the least. "People" is an non-small set.
50: "I thought that was a stupid pr0n thing."
The only things done in pr0n not done by some in real life is engage in the awful acting, the bad camera angles, and pretense that sex is all plateau at orgasm, rather than arousal, plateau, and release (I'm leaving out a stage; I read about this stuff as a child, from my parents' bookshelf, with their permission).
No, wait, I'm sure some do those, as well.
Fond memory: early lover (I was 21, she was 23) who turned to me after we went through about six or eight things, and she came six times, and said "I thought it was only like that in porn films!"
But now I'm bragging. Sometimes the truth is just like that. Pinky-swear, no exaggeration.
"Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that."
It's long been my observation that sexual arousal is, commonly, strongly associationally based, and that this is cumulative. That's sufficient basis to understand that absolutely, literally, anything can be sexual to someone, and doubtless is (the internet also constitutes proof, I would argue).
That it's associated for some with a bodily function is even less surprising, if you think about it. It has more in common with mainstream sexuality than, say, being turned on by large rocks. Which I'm sure someone is.
96: matt, i was just going to comment the same thing. if we're going to base it on ogged's definition in the original post, i can come up with a number in a few minutes. i gotta use the way-back machine to think about it.
63: "To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone."
There are a variety of what we might loosely call "formal" practices, or traditions, of sex whose point is denial of orgasm. These traditions go back thousands of years. One of them is commonly known as "tantra."
Other folks merely get off on not getting off, but on frustration. Some are into BDSM. Some are not (depending upon definition, which I wouldn't dream of offering).
Really, sexual practice is varied, and more than what lives in our own heads and imagination.
And one common view probably runs something like this: I am enthusiastically open-minded, you are weird, they are horribly disgusting perverts who must die.
Another view is that it's common for many people's sexual development to be a long, slow, process of discarding previous notions of what's disgusting (or, at least, boring). Often for the sake of one's partner, if one is generous. But views, as I say, vary most widely. And plenty of people believe it would be evil to like anything they didn't start with (I think that's a shame, but it's their head and body).
79: "1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever."
An alternative way to go is that if you wish to have an honest, trusting, mutual relationship, learn to trust each other with that and almost everything else. I can vouch that this can work fine. (With the right person, of course; not those other people.)
"2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner."
I'm fully with you on that one.
83: "It's just a fancy handjob."
The physical part between bodies, it turns out, is all just parts rubbing against each other, at base. (If you're doing it right, in my opinion, there's a lot more to it; but that's still the foundation of most of the physical part.) It's all silly. (Not to mention repetitive.) Except, you know, for the way it makes us feel; mostly people don't get bored; if you're doing it right. (It's also largely, though not entirely, in our heads, if you follow me.)
86: "But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right."
If you have a lesbian friend, my guess is she'd agree. (Not going into female ejaculation, which I have no direct experience with.)
Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!
92: "Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs."
If you're doing it right. Important tip, fellas! Make a note!
"Also, nearly 100 comments, and no one (aside from Mr. Anonymous) has yet given a number."
Hard to give a number if one doesn't believe in bothering to make fine distinctions. But mine isn't huge: somewhere between, I dunno, 25 and 35, or so. Probably closer to 30 than 35, but I'm not going to count. Largely before I was thirty, and none in quite a while -- since my last live-in sweetie, circa 1999 (the only really major mistake, that one). And for years before that they were spaced out, after I was about thirty years old.
I'm basically using the "one of us had an orgasm after some stuff got rubbed by some body part of the other's" definition here. There were another dozen or so less than that that, um, came close.
Some of those back in my pre-thirty busy days were, as folks who consistently read me might gather, were simultaneous involvements with mutual consent. For a couple of years I was living with both my main sweeties, but also sleeping regularly with three others. This was, I admit, a bit tiring, and required some scheduling, especially considering that everyone else had multiple lovers, and most of those lovers had lovers, and....
But that was when I was between 21 and 25, and I've not done the multiple involvements thing since, nor gone looking; just stayed friends with others who have been group married for thirty years or so -- you know, the people who don't exist. (Yes, it's a tiny minority, I agree, though much larger than you think, because the overwhelming majority are in the closet to the mainstream world; people in the Fifties though hardly anyone was gay, relatively speaking, as well.)
And as I've mentioned here before, I started at age 15, and my third was the 23-year-old girlfriend I then moved in with, a couple of months before I turned 16. (My first was also age 15, and the second, um, I don't remember for sure, but definitely between 18 and 21.) (I provide the data for the spreadsheet I expect someone's doing.
I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex. Ogged raises the point that sexy acts like titfucking can be sex if they're transgressive (e.g., what the wife did with the mailman today), but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob.
Also, how often does titfucking happen in the absence of other indisputably sex-qualifying acts?
So far, my experience having sex has been as a man. But I can imagine it just as well for a woman—who'd say, "I nailed that guy last night," if it were just a handjob involved?
(And under any circumstances one assumes the fellow reciprocates.)
Obviously, we can draw the distinctions many ways. We're not trying to fix the definitions for all eternity. (But you can try a variant of the "electrician" definition: if your partner did it with someone else, would you consider it cheating?) The question was, if we include the various "minor" sex acts, is there some number that would put you off?
The "electrician" standard is clearly wrong. If your wife was frenching the electrician, you'd be pissed, but it's still not sex. See also the foot massage thing in Pulp Fiction.
Handjobs and other penumbral cases are useful for maintaining double-standards. Dudes who want to boast can pretend it's sex, and chicks who want to seem chaste can pretend it's not.
Those of us destined to be forever victimized by alphabetical order -- all those years last in line for snacktime at school, etc. -- are drawn to the alphabetically blessed, hoping desperately to bask in their aura.
Fair enough, B. I'm trying to put myself into that frame of mind, that age, in which the numbers were a more important determinant of sexual maturity (or deviancy). Maybe I'm discounting handjobs because at that time I wasn't getting very good handjobs.
I dunno. Anne, Anna, Ana, and Anya is a pretty good track-record in the "An-" range. What would be the hypothesis for it suddenly falling off when one gets to the Bs?
"Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!"
Well, those active in the "free love" movement at the turn of the last plus one century might be a bit upset at not being mentioned, but it's true that they, also, were a small minority.
Join mightly in the yays, to be sure, I will and do.
116: "I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex."
Once again: do lesbians not have sex? This is not a trick question.
I've had a few handjobs that were vastly better than several occasions of intercourse (hint: you're not suppose to just lie there like you're dead, while I do everything for us both), and a couple of mediocre blowjobs (that saying about no such thing as a bad blowjob? wrong). So I'm hardly one to agree. (although there's actually only one woman I ever just had a handjob from [while I got her off doing the parallel to her], but she was 16, I was 17, and she was my 4th).
I'd also suggest that what sex "is" is something we get to define for ourselves, not for others, but I suppose I'm being either all liberal or libertarian there.
"...but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob."
Guys, as studies show, are often idiots about sex (many women, too, to be sure).
118: Lesbians. Exist.
120: "I dunno, there are lots of ways to have very fun sex involving one person's genitals and the other person's hands."
Many people lack imaginaton, or experience. We must condescend to them and pity them, not be kind to them. (I considered deleting this, because someone would take me seriously, but then I remembered where I was commenting.)
Also, I mentioned earlier that, as we know, many women don't get off on intercourse, and some actively dislike it. Same applies to every other sex act, including every common one. One lover adored being manually stimulated, only sometimes got off on intercourse without simultaneous stimulation (doncha love the clinical language? such a turn-on, baby!), and was happy to give oral sex, but was repelled at the notion of receiving it. We all have our quirks. Boy, do we. (Girl, too.)
I trust, Ogged, that I've been clear that no number would put me off. But, yes, absolutely, that you had the rotten taste to do Lover X, that takes a bit of talking and dealing with, for me. (Lusting after someone who is a moron or evil, is fairly trivial, though; lust is lust, and wants to be free; action is a whole 'nother matter.)
In the words of Ol' Dirty, "I don't have no trouble with you fuckin' me/ But I have a little problem with you not fuckin' me." Hence, those bitches who won't hit up Saiselgy.
Arguably a good, satisfying handjob = sex, whereas the sort of disappointing "I made out with you for two hours and all I got was this stupid handjob" handjob one might obtain senior year in high school is not.
It was senior year in high school! Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check. One lives, one learns, etc.
You're trying to elide an issue that can't be avoided. The number is much higher if you're counting handjobs.
Dios mio, it's like trying to talk about sex with a bunch of Jesuits. The point was just to get a sense of whether people are bothered by their partner having been too free with his/her affections. If the woman you're about to propose to was holding her tits for some guy who splooged on her face, that fucking counts, people, whether you call it "titfucking," "fooling around," or "sex."
Lesbians engage in both heavy petting and sex, just like every other potential pairing of people, sure.
They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for.
And the women who were just in it get to get laid? I know people of both sexes like that today, you know. I figure it just isn't my business, since I'm not having to deal with the genitals of any of them.
When I was in college I started seeing a girl who'd had more than 4 times as many partners as I'd had (and was not holding to a Clintonian definition). I definitely balked. But I chalked it up to my own insecurity. I knew it was doomed, though, when she told my roommate and me that she thought it was horrible and ridiculous that anyone would play video games when they could be making art.
Indeed. Pseudonymous Kid, doubtless adorable at the moment, will almost certainly transform into a scumbag and then eventually untransform and re-emerge as a fine upstanding young man. Such is the way of the world -- social forces beyond the control of mere parents are in play.
#146: To fail to expect otherwise is to perpetuate the tragedy of low expectations.
#147: Loving a double standard, I'd say that arguably a woman at the turn of the 19th century who was fucking around just to get laid was a feminist by definition.
Also, is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Under the handjob definition, no. Using a straight intercourse definition - I dunno, I'd want to see a scatter plot of the events. Things that happened a decade ago (10 partners in 10 days!) seem sort of irrelevant.
is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Well, I would say it if I believed it, but you know the commenters here are all whipped and single. I can't figure it out. I will say this: when talking to a friend about this general topic, we decided that a woman who had been simultaneously anally and vaginally penetrated was out. I think that would be in the category that Labs calls "too freaky."
"...They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for."
I wasn't clear; you were referring to women, as I understood you, and also meant only "women." I may also have just misunderstood you. After all, women didn't solely invent birth control, so that was my careless reading. I was referring to that generation of feminism, although that term wasn't, that I recall offhand, in use then. Emma Goldman, Edna St. Vincent Millary, Margaret Sanger, Mabel Dodge, Louise Bryant, and so on.
I had a Chasing Amy-style crisis of conscience when I discovered a girlfriend had previously been involved in some four-way action followed by some Chasing Amy-style realization that this was a stupid crisis to be having. Then the new plan became to avoid being freaked out about other people's behavior and that seems to have worked okay so far.
#160, Ok then, I amend my question: is having been involved in a 3-way, by definition, too freaky, or is it simultaneous a/v penetration only that crosses that line? E.g., the holding someone's tits while someone else spooged in the tit-owner's face: too freaky? Simultaneous oral and vaginal penetration by cocks? Fucking while someone else watches?
I'm half-joshing you, but also kind of serious, in a Jesuitical way. It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters.
I think this is a good crisis to have. I was also quite jealous of a partner's past experience until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
"Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check."
Cough.
I'm an outlier, to be sure. Always have been. Although, actually, the overall arc of my life has been pretty much towards "more normal" in almost every area. Frightening thought, innit?
(I forget if I've mentioned on this blog that when I was 13-17, hardly anyone could tell my age unless I told them; I was commonly taken for at least 18-25, due to the way I spoke, which is essentially identical to the way I do now [though my writing had absolutely no control, and little sense of either grammar or punctuation back then; okay, only slight difference now]; this is how the 23-year-old decided to sleep with me; she wanted to jump out a window when she learned my actual age after a few weeks or she had no idea I was a minor.)
152: it's not a double standard if the objects of comparison exist with differing standards of treatment by their environment, or if said objects (people) have differing degrees of class power, or any such significant difference of meaningful context. That's not a double standard, it's what I've always called "false mirror syndome" (personal terminology since age 14 or so).
"...you all need to lower your standards and drink much, much more."
Did my quota last week; I'm off the stuff for A While.
The initial question is badly formed. "Too many" for what? If we're talking about just having sex with someone, without many emotional strings, the more the better. The freakier the better. If the aliens come to take you away to a never seen planet (assuming a return), you have to go, even if you never see your loved ones again. The answer is different for a long term relationship.
think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters
Actually, it was more my friend's line than mine, and I'm not sure what I think--I expect everything would be colored by what I thought of the person who'd done whatever. But, given that I'm basically pretty conservative about these things, and that I'm put off even by casual sex, freaky sex would raise issues for me, quite apart from whether it made me jealous.
until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
See, I just watched Chasing Amy again and came to my senses. Worst of all, I don't even like that movie and yet it's become an important touchstone in my life. Though of course that was three-way, rather than four-way action so maybe it's not even relevant.
It's the only movie (that I know of), that takes a square look at a feeling that just about everyone has at some point. And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning.
Dildos and vibrators are ok, then? Does it matter if one of the guys has a cock ring? Shall we stroll through a list of of other sex toys? (We have to do something to keep Apostropher awake through his bottle. I've damn sure done my part.)
As usual, I do love the way subjective opinions are being phrased as objective, universal, facts. Projection, indeed.
if the # exists for me, it hasn't happened yet. but i'm curious why it would disqualify someone? fear of disease? of infidelity? a sense that you're not special to that person? worried you won't measure up to previous partners? concern they're crazy? sluts are icky?
seems most of the reasons one might be turned off by a high number are more specifically addressed by other questions, such as "how many strains of herpes are you carrying?", or "cheat much?"
#173: I think it really does boil down to what one thinks of the person who'd done whatever, rather than by whatever, honestly. But of course that would render the original question pointless....
It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. But then again, that too depends on why the skeeving, and on who is being skeeved, doesn't it? I mean, if the objection is "people who have casual sex are whores" then that's vile; but if it's "in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about," then it's not only charming, but actually a sobering kind of rebuke to the jocular nature of the way we usually talk about these things, innit?
#189: Okay then, but in that case isn't asking the question "what number of sex partners is too many" kind of inimical to the idea of taking sex seriously? The question implies the kind of scorekeeping ethos that precludes taking sex seriously. It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
"The assorted musings of Hugo Schwyzer: a progressive, consistent-life ethic Anabaptist/Episcopalian Democrat (but with a sense of humor), a community college history and gender studies professor, ENFP Gemini, an avid marathoner, aspiring ultra-runner, die-hard political junkie, and proud father of the most amazing chinchilla on God's green earth."
What troubles me is the conviction that serious relationships are an impediment to (rather than a vehicle for) one's personal growth. (From the link in 190.)
This seems to be a theme in The Ethics of Authenticity.
It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
Well, we can discuss it on the blog, because it is something that's an issue in the culture. As for me, personally, I have no idea what "the number" is for any of my exes.
194: The link wasn't an endorsement. I don't read his blog for pretty much that reason, even though I'm sure I miss some interesting topics. But he lists that as one of his "top posts" so I remember reading it when I was trying to figure out what his blog was about.
197: No, because the number is a proxy for seriousness. Just as asking, "How many times have you been truly in love?" would be a proxy for seriousness about love. If your answer to the "love" question is in the tripple digits, you are not serious about it.
(Actually a really bad example; using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)
162: Kevin Smith's understanding of relationships is under-rated. Chasing Amy is one of my favorite movies. (Also, there was, yes, the lesbian whom I was sweeties with for a year; no details, but there was sex [with complications, granted]; I swear I don't make any of this stuff up.)
175: "You're down here in the libertine trolley with me, you fucking freak."
I did write this only two days ago (it's still Thursday for me for another 50 minutes). Followed the next day with this.
180: "And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning."
It's a lot funnier if you've ever been much of a comics reader, and get all the comics jokes. "You're a fucking tracer!"
But I agree, of course, that the relationship aspects is the main goodness, along with the dialogue and camera work. Lousy special effects, though; the exploding cars were hardly noticeable.
I'm a fan of most things Kevin Smith, although his online daily diary is an example of why I don't wish to go far down that route; I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
I was thinking about writing some remarks on Jersey Girl, his least artistically successful film since Mallrats, but still with some positive aspects (in my view; not that of many critics, but, as we know, I've not been writing much -- except, the last two days, comments, trying to work my way back to it).
"I don't care. It's my fucking arbitrary line."
The point was that several people here keep insisting on what "sex" is, and if they're right, most lesbians don't have it. (see 118 for one example.)
As the saying goes, "what lesbians call sex is often what men call 'petting'" It certainly doesn't have to involve penetration (although it often does, as well, whether via fist, sex toy, or whatever; for for many others, not); ditto, not so much ejaculation.
"Discretion is the better part of valor, Smasher."
And if one does intend to drink on New Tear's Eve, it helps to not be too hungover. Unless one is just drinking straight on through, perhaps.
Indeed. To go back to the original Yglesias post that spawned this discussion, I think the main lesson that can be learned from Fire Door Girl is that only bad things can come from asking that question.
#200: What troubles me is the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships. Likewise, the conviction that doing things just for fun is an impediment to Personal Growth.
What bothers me is that people actually think that they know exactly what someone else should do to achieve something as vaguely and variously defined as personal growth.
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth. Again, people should never expect too much of teenagers. If they manage to stay out of jail and eventually leave home, that's success.
only bad things can come from asking that question.
To a partner, perhaps. Though as I was laughing at an earlier point in this thread, the missus asked what my number was. While I'm now officially of questionable character in her eyes, nothing truly bad resulted. Yet, anyhow.
the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships
212: Without legitimate fucking around, minor fucking around is easily mistaken for Serious Relationships. I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships.
"I have enraged a few folks in my classes and in the blogosphere by suggesting that much (not all) of the modern feminist movement has its roots in a "profound disappointment in men.""
Wherever on earth could that possibly have come from? It must be for no reason whatever. (My read was a hasty skim, to be sure.)
205: "using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)"
#197: No, it isn't. It seems to me that saying it is is kind of like people saying that because I have a boyfriend, I can't be serious about my marriage, for instance. One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy.
Now, re. folks who, like O., aren't really comfortable with casual sex, I can see arguing that asking "how many" could serve as a rough (very rough) barometer for "do you, like me, take sex seriously?" But then the issue isn't the number, it's the attiude; and it still doesn't follow that someone who is comfortable with casual sex would be a bad partner for someone who isn't, or incapable of intimacy or taking sex seriously. So, again, I'll invoke my marriage: Mr. B. was a serious Catholic when I met him, a technical virgin, and disapproved of his sister's having lived with a boyfriend. He didn't, however, disapprove of the fact that *I* wasn't a virgin (and once I pointed out that the double standard for me vs. his sister was flattering to neither of us, he dropped his disapproval of his sister, to his great credit). Given that he thought that casual sex before marriage wasn't okay, fine; we didn't have casual sex. Given that he wasn't a possessive or jealous type (and the relationship was long-distance), I did occasionally sleep with people I wasn't intimate with. It worked out fine.
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth.
What have you got against puberty? Or is it just that you don't like the people who didn't pubesce in middle school or before?
I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
Not having read any of his online journal, I couldn't really say, but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting.
"It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters."
Cop/ophilia and ped/philia are turnoffs. Although there was a 14 yr old hanging around my crew I never touched her. I have known people into violent role-playing, but I don't even get the cheerleader/upstairs maid stuff.
Been with 12 women and 3 guys. There, 1st on the thread. Not exactly in crisis over my identity or preference at 55. Not bi or confused, let's just say in the early 70s I did a lot of things just to prove I could. One guy paid me, again because the ladies of the evening I was living with dared me, and because I wanted to know if I could survive.
Until I figured out that the slashes were replacing letters and not merely separating parts of the words, I thought bob was saying he doesn't like people who are into officers of the peace.
207: "...is that only bad things can come from asking that question."
And yet reality proves that isn't so. Many witnesses! (You probably weren't being literal, and meant something like "often bad things can come," I expect.)
On the other paw "I have a right to know!" is debatable.
208: stop saying the same things as me (okay, just on certain topics). It frightens me. (Okay, you have permission to continue.)
210: Absolutely.
211: "What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth."
If high school isn't about personal growth, you're apt to wind up very fucked up.
Oh, wait.
215: "I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships."
"One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy."
Some people can't, though, observation says. Possibly theoretically the might learn, but we all have different capabilities in such matters.
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me. Not that this is a new story. (You may have missed "polyamory" flashing by again in the prior thread that parented this one.)
219: "...but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting."
no, but every time I've dropped by -- which isn't many, despite my enjoyment of his other work, it's included as part of how he starts his complete break-, er, day. It doesn't repel me, mind, but I'm really quite willing to stipulate that he engages in many normal things that are boring as all shit to those of us not writing them.
Then he gives details of his daily poker games. It's a thrill a minute. Of course, it is called My Boring-Ass Life. I already credited him with much perceptiveness. (Hmm, apparently he's been off being busy for the better part of a couple of months.) And he can be funny in it at times. But, still, this was why "editing" was invented.
Okay, flipping back towards when I last looked, I see a lack of dump news. Congrats; this is typical of a dump-free entry. Last I had read, he wasn't working at the time; maybe filming changes his focus on the priorities of life, or diarying, or something.
Since I'm on the second bottle, employing the bizarrely liberal definition we're apparently obligated to use, I'm somewhere in the high 40s/low 50s. Using a strict intercourse definition, low 30s. I'm 37, fwiw, and went through high school and most of college before AIDS was really a household term, and I don't underestimate the impact that had.
I have many HIV-positive friends and have lost three.
All the same, I am absolutely white bread and middle of the road in my circle of friends, and while I'll accept that we're all weird, we aren't ginormous outliers. I know plenty of those people, too.
205: I think the phrase "in love" suggests meaning where there is none. I totally buy loving someone, I totally buy different types of love that demand different types of promises and future prospects. I don't believe that the phrase "in love" ties well to any subset of all of the above. "In love" seems like a high school stand in for a discussion I lacked the vocabulary to have in high school.
218: I'm not sure I disagree with you, B. I meant only that it was a proxy for ogged and his conception of intimacy. If his definition effectively precludes multiple partners, then it seems reasonable to say that his seriousness and your seriousness are not the same. Not better or worse, just different. And I don't think there's anything wrong with his (purely imputed) sense of seriousness.
Here a dump, there a dump, everywhere a dump. (Not going further back; this is already too weird. No, neither excretion nor pissing do anything positive for me sexually (but YKIOK).
Apparently, after September, he's ceased elimination. Good for him!
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me.
Gary, I'll tell you one of the Secrets of Unfogged, which might make your sojourns here less upsetting: precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
227: Ditto. That's part of what caused the knee in my sexual activity/relationships, although lots of other stuff happened to me in 1984; that's when my first major illness hit, and I was informed, due to several successive complete misdiagnoses, that, according to one (ARC), I might only have a year or less to live, and another biggie was meningitis, which would have potentially been much quicker.
Turned out to be completely wrong, but instead a case of several overlapping things hitting simultaneously, including a kidney infection, a lung infection, an ear infection, and some massively powerful virus that lasts for months; not mono, but more powerful, they said.
But I couldn't work, and I had to return to NYC where friends took me in. Then I was all busy working 18 hours a day as a junior publishing body (the disasterous classic result of a co-worker friend getting drunk out of her mind at the office Christmas Party, and her then throwing me down on the stairs to my apartment and attempting to rape me, which I managed to hold off until we could make it my kitchen, was all I got to for a year or so; then, a couple of serious relationships over a couple of years, and a few other... whatever the right noun is here.
Then my crazy father died the same week my role model/friend/father figure Terry Carr died, and I went to pieces. It's not been an entirely pretty picture since then, although it's had its periods and moments.
I'm likely to sign off for the night, myself -- shortly, of course. (And if anyone read my drunken depressed posts, and comments on my own posts, on my own blog of last week, I'm considerably cheerier again, although within limits therein described, keeping in mind that what I said was written in a pit of depression, and thus simplified in the way depression wil narrow one's focus, and distort it somewhat.)
"Happy December 30, Gary."
It's my fourth blogiversary! Hurray for me! (It took me a week or two to figure out a coherent format; still I think I found good links PDQ, if I do say so mysel; and my style seems fairly set from the get-go, although that's hardly surprising, given my long practice at blogging-before-I-was-blogging; comments welcome!)
Happy December 30 to you to, teofilo and all!
SCMT, I'm no longer awake enough to discuss The Meaning Of True Love; short version: I think it's dreadfully misused, misunderstood, and leads to endless heartbreak in those cases, but that it can also hold all sorts of useful meaning that we bring to it; like most words, it's a container, not a fixed object, in my view. I'm probably not making sense any more, though. Tired. Must fall down. (If the dread insomnia doesn't rear its hyra-head.)
Re my comment at 43: Just now, I discussed this thread with my wife prior to cunnilingus/intercourse. She says her number might be in the high two figures, not three figures as I had asserted. She emphasized that she's been monogamous most of her sexually active life.
Oh yeah, virgins. No way I'd do a virgin.
My now-wife was delighted when I told her, before the first time we had sex, that I was a virgin. Cutting the risk of her getting STD's down to zero was a real plus. Go figure.
B, I'm confused by your comment at 139 in relation to your other comments: those who were in it [the "free love" movement at the turn of the 19th century] just to score some pussy, I have no praise for. Elsewhere, e.g. at 218, you indicate that casual sex is OK, and at 188 you say: It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?
Wow. I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing. As someone who just read the stuff 65-75, I know he was on some ways almost more responsible for a lot of the SF I loved than the guys who wrote it. A good editor is important in a small field. And I still have my copy of "Cirque".
And I feel a strange need to mention that I've manged to never get an STD in my life; the only scare was the one long-time friend (who has now had several novels published, which gives away nothing, since that describes literally a couple of hundred of my past friends) whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then."
We had a long talk in which I patiently explained why she must never do this again. Interesting, I just found out this week from another (male) friend of equally long standing, that she did the exact same thing to him a year later.
Have to say it lowers my opinion of her as she was then a notch or two, but that was far away, and in another century.
228: I appreciate what you say, Ogged, and I'm too tired to explain why I think there's a perfectly easy Right Way to do that, and a Wrong Way, which crops up here, as in most places on Earth an the internets, a lot.
"I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing."
I wouldn't say we were super-duper-close, but we hung out dozens and dozens and dozens of times over the years; I was always, once we got to know each other, invited to his smallish private parties when we were at the same convention, or I was in town (usually fewer than 30 people or so). He sent me his private fanzines that went to about the same number of folks. We had mutual lovers (several, actually; we were all very busy in the Seventies and early Eighties), and innumerable close mutual friends.
We were definitely good friends. We were in the same small circle of friends, gossiping, and sleeping with each other, and hanging out, and having all our own in-jokes and influences.
And he was my role model. He went from being a smart, literate, fanzine fan, to being a respected skiffy editor ("skiffy" being the name us in-group used back in the day to make fun of the people who used "sci-fi" seriously). (And, come to think of it, Terry got himself fired by Don Wollheim from Ace, so he was a role model for me in ways I hadn't considered at the time, not knowing the future.)
My father's death crushed me because of all our unresolved issues, and what he'd done to me by being a deeply crazy (overwhelmingly bipolar) father, and then when Terry, the guy who was a role model to me in all the ways my own father never was, died three or so days later, I completely melted down into paralyzing depression (not bipolar, fortunately; just depression, which I'd already started experiencing crises of by my teen years).
Which after a few months led to my getting fired by Avon Books (there were other complications, such as letting myself get caught in an office politics war between the old Editor-In-Chief, and the recently installed-over-her-head Editorial Director, but if I'd been myself, I could likely have gotten out from under that; they'd all loved me up to then, more than not; at the least, I could have found another job before I got fired -- I was told to -- if I'd not had trouble working up interest in staring into space, instead).
So that's the start of the story as to why I no longer work in publishing, although I did do tons of freelancing for years to come, and apathetically failed to follow up various job offers and many opportunities, that folks wonder about, and I'm not exactly thrilled to tell. (There's more buried in comments I've made on my own posts on me own blog in the past week.)
Terry was a great guy. Somewhat self-destructive, in knowing he had a bad heart and other ailments, but being completely unwilling to give up substantial drinking, dope smoking, and coke use -- this was a subject he freely debated with his friends, and which drove some crazy. But a great guy. And a great editor, and a fine writer. There's no editor I admire more, although there are others in my pantheon ind different ways, from Ed Ferman to John W. Campbell to Gardner Dozois, just to name three. The Ace Specials alone: I trust I need say no more.
And he never gave up being one of the great fans of all time, too (I mean by that, in doing fanzines, and fan writing that created an original style long imitated, and other such activities).
Of the couple or so other bloggers I could name whom you, and many, have heard of, Bob, who were also part of our small circles of friends, you could ask Avedon Carol for Terry stories. Though she still might either cry, or talk about how angry she is with him for choosing not to die when he did (in essence, by choosing to live his life on his terms, rather than what was medically advisable).
precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
Maybe I'm just in a generalized bad mood, but this strikes me as a bit overweening.
231: "So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?"
Not speaking for B, but you can be quite interested in casual sex with people, rather than pussies (or dicks).
235: definitely a fair amount of luck on my side, as well, although I give the major credit to the fact that, in, er, fact, little or none of the sex was particularly "casual." It wasn't with strangers. There were just a lot of us friends doing it with each other, although from time to time a new friend would enter the picture, to be sure, and some occasional exceptions happened with some.
234: "...whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then.""
That she had herpes. Sorry. Why I shouldn't be writing when this tired (and now, yes, having some trouble falling asleep, as per norm).
Similarly, 237: "for choosing not to die when he did"
As for the definitions: when I was a young virginal Mormon, just setting out into the world of sex, I knew damned well that anyone who claimed that getting it on and/or getting naked wasn't really sex was being silly. After a certain point, it's just semantics and logistics to go all the way.
As for Ogged's question: I think it can become a problem in some kinds of relationships. And not always in the ways one would think! I have been in the slightly awkward position of having more sexual experience than a partner I was pretty into, and then realizing, some time into the relationship, that I had made him so much more sexually confident that he wanted to go forth and experiment. And I had done all that (or at least some of it) earlier and no longer really wanted that sort of thing. It was, let's say, disconcerting.
To these vanguard feminists, suffrage, independent careers and birth control were givens. More radical still was the goal of sexual equality, giving women the freedoms of men, including the freedom to love. In theory, the men of the Village agreed. Feminism would free men as well -- or so the story went. However, the lived experience of sexual equality fell short of expectations. Stansell subjects several notable couples to close analysis, skewering their hypocrisies. Reconciling the demands of love and work proved hard, especially for women. Household servants were no longer ubiquitous in the middle class; cooperative housekeeping arrangements worked only sporadically.
And in matters of the heart, free love was rarely free. When practiced by husbands, it often had the look and feel of 19th-century male privilege -- or worse, given the new expectation of honesty. Stansell is biting about one husband's well-meaning confessions: ''It was a complex balancing act turning adultery into a feminist gesture, love triangles into political solidarities.'' Plainly, jealousy and hurt had not been banished to the bourgeois past.
There are sorts of ways, good and bad, to be non-mogamous. (Which is why the modern polyamory crowd is driven mad when they're confused with "swingers," since they're entirely different things.)
in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about
Would it make sense for one to say, not as a universal rule, that one was uncomfortable, perhaps only theoretically, with the idea of casual sex with someone one knew only casually because even if one did not believe that sex should always be part of a serious commitment neither should it have no meaning at all?
#231: Gary already answered this question, but there is a substantive difference between a principled stand accompanied by the courage to act on it, and the pretense of a principled stand affected in order to pursue selfish ends.
SCMT (sorry, have lost track of the comment #s): What I'm saying is that I don't think that O's view and my own differ that much.
BP's insistence that her kid won't be a jerk in HS is ominous. She's depriving him of an essential developmental stage.
And of course, we kindly older gentlemen who want to save the high school girls from the jerks are never thanked. Instead, we're called pervs, sent to jail for several years, and required to talk therapy-talk ffour three hours a week for life, and report to the authorities every time we change address.
I just found out that my Hawaiian ex brother-in-law, back when the Hawaian age of consent was 12, screwed his eighth grade teacher. His entirely family is still very proud of that 35 years later, and no, I'm not making that up.
My other sister's first husband spent a month in jail for screwing a 17-year old, even though he was 2 months younger than the girl. My family should never get married,
Disclaimer: yes, I talk about this stuff a lot, and no, I don't do it at all. If I did that kind of thing I'd join a church, the Moral Majority, and the Republican Party. I'm smart enough to figure that out.
#247: Maybe it's b/c I'm working on almost no sleep, but I have to admit that I do hate it when people try to tell me that they know how my kid will develop better than I do, or that my parenting (praxis or theory) is intrinsically flawed. I didn't go through a lot of the stereotypical adolescent bullshit; I see no reason why my son should.
Having said that, John, I'm up early b/c I'm catching a plane to Minneapolis. Drop me an email with your phone # and let's see if we can't get together. Chopper too, if he's lurking about. I'll be there until the 8th.
Actually, B., if you're going to be in Mpls. today and tomorrow I doubt I can make it. I'm pretty sure my host down there is occupied (he might even be up here). Next time.
It's "titfucking," not "tittyfucking," just for the record.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:46 PM
"The Sexual Pedant" would be a good title for a romance novel.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:49 PM
Or BDSM porn.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:50 PM
Ok, I didn't expect the pedantry to come out for "tittyfucking." You are, technically, correct, but any time one can say "titty," one must say "titty."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:50 PM
Any man who is old enough to get an erection is too old to say "titty."
Since babies get erections, this basically means that the word is verboten.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:52 PM
That wasn't Dave Weman's story. That was a post of Yglesias's from way back when he was on Blogger.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:52 PM
Wait a sec - having slept with 39 guys in 25 years doesn't shock you, but an extra 11 is 15 years trips the trigger wire? Is this on the principle that you should have less sex as you get older?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:55 PM
Thanks, Becks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:55 PM
Timbot, I didn't mean those as rules, but as the actual shocking instances; I changed "shocks" to "shocked" to clear that up.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:56 PM
Also - hand jobs shouldn't be included in "sex".
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 5:59 PM
Tell it to your fourteen-year-old self, Tim.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:01 PM
I don't think I send holiday cards to 40 people.
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:02 PM
Yes, but do you send holiday cards to everyone you've ever had sex with?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:03 PM
send holiday cards
I have internet access and all, but this is one I haven't heard of.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:04 PM
At what point do you say, "You've slept with how many people? I'm outta here."
It isn't how many, but which ones. If I've never met them, the number is irrelevant up until it starts to suggest professional work.
hand jobs shouldn't be included in "sex".
Gotta agree with Tim here. Tittyfucking only barely makes it, and I could be dissuaded on that.
Any man who is old enough to get an erection is too old to say "titty."
Don't go oppressing me with your bourgeois notions of proper mammenclature, B.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:05 PM
Does hush money count as a holiday greeting?
Posted by baa | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:06 PM
I find the self-imposed version of this weirder, like when people I know (invariably women, but in principle it could be anyone) suddenly start struggling with a desire to keep their "count" below some quasi-arbitrary number.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:07 PM
Handjobs count as sex, and titfucking surely does. B/c I am sorry, but any activity where I"m gonna get spunk on me counts as sex.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:07 PM
Just fyi, the last time b complained about the word "titties," it led to a very funny thread.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:09 PM
It isn't how many, but which ones.
That's a good point. I've felt unclean after finding out someone I slept with also slept with someone I didn't much like. Not long for that relationship.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:09 PM
Yglesias's post. Elapsed time to find in Wayback machine: 4 minutes. I have mad skillz.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:09 PM
struggling with a desire to keep their "count" below some quasi-arbitrary number
I've never run into this; these must be people who also read The Rules.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:10 PM
any activity where I'm gonna get spunk on me counts as sex
Well, none of the handjobs I've received resulted in any spunk on you, B, and though you may be able to prove otherwise, I suspect the number of handjobs that have ended with sunk on you constitute a very tiny fraction of the whole. So no. Still not sex.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:13 PM
22 - There was a questionable article on that in the NYT style section a while back. It claimed that some women went back to old flames for flings instead of hooking up with a stranger just because that didn't count towards raising their number.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:14 PM
sunk->spunk
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:14 PM
24 -
Unlike your average questionable Times article this has happened to me. Style Section article + personal anecdotes = truth. I don't complain, per se, but it's odd behavior.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:18 PM
In which "I" is synecdoche, goddamnit.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:19 PM
Last "titty" discussion also led to a brief exchange on the difference between "lay" and "lie," which reminds me that last night Mr. B. asked if our bed was big enough for Ben Wolfson to occupy it along with both of us.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:19 PM
Apo - how is tit-fucking not sex? Esp. if a blowjob is?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:21 PM
I think it's irrelevant to consider whether titfucking counts as sex because I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse, unless you're some sort of titfucking specialist.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:22 PM
30 - I think that's what I mean, but yours is much better.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:23 PM
Are there titfucking specialists?
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:23 PM
One of my girlfriends once dated a guy she referred to as "the fastidious titfucker."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:24 PM
I think the ambiguity over "what counts as sex" is a feature. It allows one to inflate or minimize one's number depending on the audience.
And, definitely, who matters more than how many (at least up to a certain quantity).
17, 24: out of curiosity, was there a generally accepted quasi-arbitrary number?
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:24 PM
26 - It's weird enough for someone to do it, but it's even weirder to think of someone admitting it to their partner. I can just imagine the phone call: "I'm horny and you don't count, so wanna come over?"
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:25 PM
Personally, I think titfucking is the most pointless semi-mainstream sexual activity ever invented, so I hope there are no specialists.
Posted by silvana | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:26 PM
30: This is hilarious, but not necessarily true, as there might be a progression of sex acts in a relationship, where titfucking comes before intercourse, and the relationship might end before that progression is complete.
I'm just sayin'. Not that this is from personal experience or nothin'.
33: Is that even possible? What, did he make her wear one of those lobster bibs?
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:27 PM
34 - The article mostly talked about people trying to keep it under 10 but some in the article had other quasi-arbitrary numbers.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:27 PM
35 -
It's never gone that way. But say I was going out with a girl and we were talking and she mentioned that when she's single she sometimes likes to hook-up with some of her exes because that way she keeps her count down. Then say we break up. Then say a certain amount of random post-breakup sex takes place. Am I crazy to draw conclusions from that? And say this goes down with two different people. That's a trend in my book.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:31 PM
#37: He liked titfucking, and then he would always disappear into the bathroom to get a towel and clean her up afterwards.
Why she was sleeping with him, I have no idea.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:31 PM
39 was me, name vanished for some reason.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:32 PM
#40 - Considerateness is a very attractive quality, B.
Posted by j | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:34 PM
I've never had sex (vaginal, oral, hand, tits) with anyone besides my wife, and she had sex with somewhere in three figures men before she met me. It would be nice to at least be within a frigging order of magnitude . . . .
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:35 PM
I don't blame 43 for hiding behind anonymity.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:36 PM
last night Mr. B. asked if our bed was big enough for Ben Wolfson to occupy it along with both of us.
And?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:41 PM
39 - Ah, I see. That reduces the weirdness of disclosing the motivation behind the hookup. To have worked out an understanding beforehand seems kind of prudent, if keeping one's number down is a concern.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:42 PM
Genghis Khan was definitely type II. Normally he killed the previous partner, so jealousy was somewhat moot. He had about 800 wives, but he was only close to 8 of them. Something like 0.5% of the world's population is his direct descendant, and if I'm not mistaken that's male-line descendants only.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:44 PM
One of the regular commenters here knows who I (43) am, but I'm sure that person isn't so mean as to "out" me.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:44 PM
Folks, that was Bill Clinton posting anonymously. None of the things you've heard are true.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:48 PM
People seriously tittyfuck*? I thought that was a stupid pr0n thing.
*The name has to be stupid because the nature of the activity demands it.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:48 PM
Apo - how is tit-fucking not sex? Esp. if a blowjob is?
Tim - I said it just barely qualified. But to my way of seeing it, it's just a fancy handjob.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:48 PM
...just a stupid..
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:49 PM
But to my way of seeing it, it's just a fancy handjob.
Those are some damn fancy hands you have there, ma'am.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:52 PM
Folks, that was Bill Clinton posting anonymously. None of the things you've heard are true.
I'm not Bill Clinton, John, and it's all true.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:53 PM
damn fancy hands
Must be hell finding mittens for them.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:54 PM
Only Bill Clinton would deny that he was Bill Clinton!
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:54 PM
damn fancy hands
Must be hell finding mittens for them.
More difficult than I would have thought, based on BPhD's opus on bras and the comments thereto a couple of weeks ago -- but not impossible.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:58 PM
Well, the things you've heard about Hillary are true, if you've been listening in the right places. But Bill is an innocent.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 6:59 PM
Only Bill Clinton would deny that he was Bill Clinton!
I'm Bill Clinton, and that pathetic, pussy-starved wretch is no Bill Clinton!
Posted by Bill Clinton | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:02 PM
titfucking is the most pointless semi-mainstream sexual activity ever invented
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:03 PM
At least one of these cartoons is on-topic.
Fokke & Sukke, English-language version
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:08 PM
My second girlfriend not only had had sex with more than fifty before she was twenty, but carried a list (1st names only) on which she ranked them in order of performance. I think she thought it was important that she remember them all.
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice. I thought she taught me something about women, but I was probably wrong.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:11 PM
I take it peeing on somebody doesn't rise to the semi-mainstream level (even in a post-R.Kelly world)? Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that.
"Semi-mainstream"? Is that a pun? To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone. Concededly, I am no authority on this.
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:12 PM
I should have known better than to think this thread might stay on topic. But I confess I don't see why y'all are hating on tittyfucking. Variety is the spice of life, people, and tittyfucking, with the right tits, is some nice variety.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:13 PM
peeing...mainstream...
there's a joke in there somewhere...
Posted by mcmc | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:13 PM
Peeing on someone is past the point of "sex act" and well into "humiliating act."
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:16 PM
I wasn't in the top half, but not at the bottom of the list. It was a little deflating, metaphorically, but she did want to be with me rather than the hotter one-night stands, who were just fucks. And I did manage to move up some with practice.
Ohmigod. "Bob, you were at No. 47 out of 63 after our first time, but after that incredible performance I'm moving you up from 18 to 13!"
Posted by Frederick | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:16 PM
Bob was pre-Access, so his girlfriend had to type out the whole list all over again every time.
Or maybe she used a cardfile.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:18 PM
This is my favorite Stones trivia: Wyman and Jones three figures, Jagger two figures, Richards low single figures, Watts zero. This was on one tour several or many months long.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:20 PM
64: I'm with you. I can see why the tittyfuckee might think it stupid and annoying (although in my case, all of the recipients made the initial proposal) but I don't think it's quite as lame or deviant as it's been made out to be here.
66: I think those two categories overlap for some people.
Posted by Matt #3 | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:42 PM
I'm sure titfucking is great for guys, but as a girl, I gotta agree with Dan Savage's assessment that it's kind of like watching a turtle poke its head in and out between your breasts, and at the end the turtle pukes on your chin.
In other words, HOTT.
Ben, I told Mr. B. that although you are tall, you're kinda skinny, so probably we could fit you in, sure.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:49 PM
The Fokke & Sukke link has a similiar comment on fisting.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:56 PM
You're really going with the puking turtle metaphor?
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:56 PM
Yeah, why not?
I gotta speak in favor of fisting, though.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 7:58 PM
I gotta speak in favor of fisting, though.
Well, speak. We're all ears.
Posted by Urple | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:03 PM
I'm feeling so innocent in this thread.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:03 PM
Dude, if I wanted to go into detail I'd do it on my blog and boost my traffic.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:08 PM
Fisting always struck me as a little mean and possibly damaging. Though I guess a baby is bigger than a fist.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:13 PM
I'm sure my partner wwould be shocked and appalled with the number of partners I had before her.As a matter of fact,so am I.Some of that seems to be a Sam Malone-ish
inability to commit or unwilligness to grow up.A bit of advice:
1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever.
2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner.
Posted by corwin | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:15 PM
Anything's possibly damaging if you don't do it right.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:15 PM
Some men have tiny, impotent fists.
Not me, though.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:21 PM
My fists are virile.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:22 PM
kind of like watching a turtle poke its head in and out between your breasts, and at the end the turtle pukes on your chin.
This is my point exactly. It's just a fancy handjob. Not that there's anything wrong with handjobs, whether fancy or old-school.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:43 PM
But the point is, if it involves fluid, an orgasm, and another person, it's sex.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:50 PM
It can also be instructive to imagine your reaction to hearing your wife say "while you were at work, the electrician was here and tittyfucked me."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:54 PM
But the point is, if it involves fluid, an orgasm, and another person, it's sex.
Rubbing someone through their jeans 'til they come? I have a line that may well exist only my own head that divides heavy petting and sex. and handjobs fall on the heavy petting side. Not that it really matters.
But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:56 PM
It can also be instructive to imagine your reaction to hearing your wife say "while you were at work, the electrician was here and tittyfucked me."
Especially since I've always heard it used with the subject and object in a different order than you just placed them. I would certainly have to pause to try to figure out the mechanics of it all first.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:59 PM
Is there a methodologist in the house? Our theory-construction seems impacted.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 8:59 PM
Without getting more than halfway through, so many thoughts. One is that lesbians actually do have sex. Many, anyway.
Another is ObObvious that many men, both het and not, at least during some periods in their life, would screw anything more attractive than a tree. And a fair number would do the tree. But, of course, women are sluts if they like sex too much.
One woman in my past was too embarrassed to give me a figure, but allowed in a weak moment that it was well over a hundred before she got out of college. She happened to like sex a lot. Which made her like me (except, you know, not in the numbers, or in many other ways; in that). My reaction: kool. Man, was she good at sex. And, not oddly, ready any time.
Anyone who wants to tell me there's something bad there about having a sweetie like that, I will tell them they are nuts.
Also, the whole "what counts as sex" is, again, strange binarism; why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum? Am I the only one who lives in the latter universe?
Although, mind, I do make a distinction between woman I've done sexual things with, beyond talk, and those I have not; I'm not saying there are no binary distinctions to be made in the universe; I thought I'd get that out of the way before someone pointed it out to me.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:01 PM
One thing on the numbers -- they look much larger as a lump sum than spaced out. 40 before 25: Assume the girl was an early bloomer, having sex from 14. That's 11 years at under 4 partners a year. Not so bad. And 50 before 40? Starting from the age of 20 (just to be conservative), that's 2.5 partners a year. That really so shocking?
Posted by Ezra | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:01 PM
"...between woman I've done sexual things with...."
Pre-emptively: women.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:02 PM
#86: Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs.
Also, one decent distinction between coming in your jeans and a handjob is that no one is put at risk of an STD if you keep your dick in your pants. Having said that, though, I'd go along with Gary and say that coming in your pants damn well can count as sex in some circumstances.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:03 PM
That really so shocking?
I personally would be impressed with such consistency.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:04 PM
why is it people seems to always see everything only as one or the other, rather than on a continuum?
You can always divide up a continuum and label that division. Ice->water->steam, ROYGBIV, etc.
As far as binarism, I don't think I've got just two categories on the sexuality spectrum. Hell I can start dicing it all up into more categories than Carter has little liver pills, as could we all. But any one divider on the line necessarily creates two segments.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:05 PM
That's actually quantitative differences becoming qualitative difference, a non-continuum or anti-continuum. But you knew that.
Young people today just sleep through the Engels class.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:09 PM
Also, nearly 100 comments, and no one (aside from Mr. Anonymous) has yet given a number. Interesting.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:10 PM
All my orgasms deriving from my wine fetish make me a promiscuous fellow.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:12 PM
"...I think it is unlikely that there would be people with whom one might engage in titfucking but not intercourse...."
As we all doubtless know, some women don't find that intercourse does anything for them; some actively dislike it. But still are thrilled with other practices. What other people's favored interests might be isn't my business, and I don't care as long as they're not scaring the horses in the street, but I don't think it's all unlikely in the least. "People" is an non-small set.
50: "I thought that was a stupid pr0n thing."
The only things done in pr0n not done by some in real life is engage in the awful acting, the bad camera angles, and pretense that sex is all plateau at orgasm, rather than arousal, plateau, and release (I'm leaving out a stage; I read about this stuff as a child, from my parents' bookshelf, with their permission).
No, wait, I'm sure some do those, as well.
Fond memory: early lover (I was 21, she was 23) who turned to me after we went through about six or eight things, and she came six times, and said "I thought it was only like that in porn films!"
But now I'm bragging. Sometimes the truth is just like that. Pinky-swear, no exaggeration.
Also, Michael, all sex is stupid.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:12 PM
Well, first we have to establish what does and doesn't count as sex.
Plus, honestly, who keeps track? And no, that does not mean that I've slept with dozens of people, thank you very much.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:12 PM
"Because I really, really have trouble seeing any point to that."
It's long been my observation that sexual arousal is, commonly, strongly associationally based, and that this is cumulative. That's sufficient basis to understand that absolutely, literally, anything can be sexual to someone, and doubtless is (the internet also constitutes proof, I would argue).
That it's associated for some with a bodily function is even less surprising, if you think about it. It has more in common with mainstream sexuality than, say, being turned on by large rocks. Which I'm sure someone is.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:15 PM
I hate to be the one that tells you
Well don't worry, others have gotten there before you with the information.
I personally would be impressed with such consistency.
Probably a Capricorn.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:19 PM
96: matt, i was just going to comment the same thing. if we're going to base it on ogged's definition in the original post, i can come up with a number in a few minutes. i gotta use the way-back machine to think about it.
Posted by catherine | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:19 PM
It has more in common with mainstream sexuality than, say, being turned on by large rocks. Which I'm sure someone is.
Really, can you blame them?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:20 PM
Barring failures of memory, 13.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:22 PM
9, i think. though i won't break it down into who did what. also, i'm 25, fwiw, and i've been in a monogamous relationship for the past 5+ years.
Posted by catherine | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:23 PM
Oh wait, 14. Let's just say 15ish, and call it done.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:24 PM
Barring failures of memory, 13.
If I recall, the question was "how many prior partners is too many?"
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:25 PM
Oh, in that case, the answer is I don't give a rat's ass.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:27 PM
That was pretty much mine as well.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:28 PM
Well, I feel rather puritanical now, but I'm at 4. Though I am a number of years younger than all of you.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:29 PM
But really, given that expansive definition, B, you're way below what I would guess for most people our age.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:31 PM
Ah, well, given the actual question, I'd say 3 digits and above is a warning flag. Aside from that, doesn't really matter.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:32 PM
63: "To count as sex, I think ideally (i.e if things go to the satisfaction of the participants) at least one party ought to get an orgasm out of the act, which I assume is not the case with peeing on someone."
There are a variety of what we might loosely call "formal" practices, or traditions, of sex whose point is denial of orgasm. These traditions go back thousands of years. One of them is commonly known as "tantra."
Other folks merely get off on not getting off, but on frustration. Some are into BDSM. Some are not (depending upon definition, which I wouldn't dream of offering).
Really, sexual practice is varied, and more than what lives in our own heads and imagination.
And one common view probably runs something like this: I am enthusiastically open-minded, you are weird, they are horribly disgusting perverts who must die.
Another view is that it's common for many people's sexual development to be a long, slow, process of discarding previous notions of what's disgusting (or, at least, boring). Often for the sake of one's partner, if one is generous. But views, as I say, vary most widely. And plenty of people believe it would be evil to like anything they didn't start with (I think that's a shame, but it's their head and body).
79: "1)do not divulge the number unless you want to be looked at differently forever."
An alternative way to go is that if you wish to have an honest, trusting, mutual relationship, learn to trust each other with that and almost everything else. I can vouch that this can work fine. (With the right person, of course; not those other people.)
"2)Never have sex with anyone you wouldn't want to be seen with as your partner."
I'm fully with you on that one.
83: "It's just a fancy handjob."
The physical part between bodies, it turns out, is all just parts rubbing against each other, at base. (If you're doing it right, in my opinion, there's a lot more to it; but that's still the foundation of most of the physical part.) It's all silly. (Not to mention repetitive.) Except, you know, for the way it makes us feel; mostly people don't get bored; if you're doing it right. (It's also largely, though not entirely, in our heads, if you follow me.)
86: "But it's not sex if the handjob doesn't culminate in ejaculation? That doesn't seem right."
If you have a lesbian friend, my guess is she'd agree. (Not going into female ejaculation, which I have no direct experience with.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:32 PM
#111: I am full of surprises.
Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:48 PM
90: "That really so shocking?"
Ezra. why should any number be "shocking"?
92: "Apostropher, I hate to be the one that tells you that fluid is involved even before ejaculation occurs."
If you're doing it right. Important tip, fellas! Make a note!
"Also, nearly 100 comments, and no one (aside from Mr. Anonymous) has yet given a number."
Hard to give a number if one doesn't believe in bothering to make fine distinctions. But mine isn't huge: somewhere between, I dunno, 25 and 35, or so. Probably closer to 30 than 35, but I'm not going to count. Largely before I was thirty, and none in quite a while -- since my last live-in sweetie, circa 1999 (the only really major mistake, that one). And for years before that they were spaced out, after I was about thirty years old.
I'm basically using the "one of us had an orgasm after some stuff got rubbed by some body part of the other's" definition here. There were another dozen or so less than that that, um, came close.
Some of those back in my pre-thirty busy days were, as folks who consistently read me might gather, were simultaneous involvements with mutual consent. For a couple of years I was living with both my main sweeties, but also sleeping regularly with three others. This was, I admit, a bit tiring, and required some scheduling, especially considering that everyone else had multiple lovers, and most of those lovers had lovers, and....
But that was when I was between 21 and 25, and I've not done the multiple involvements thing since, nor gone looking; just stayed friends with others who have been group married for thirty years or so -- you know, the people who don't exist. (Yes, it's a tiny minority, I agree, though much larger than you think, because the overwhelming majority are in the closet to the mainstream world; people in the Fifties though hardly anyone was gay, relatively speaking, as well.)
And as I've mentioned here before, I started at age 15, and my third was the 23-year-old girlfriend I then moved in with, a couple of months before I turned 16. (My first was also age 15, and the second, um, I don't remember for sure, but definitely between 18 and 21.) (I provide the data for the spreadsheet I expect someone's doing.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:50 PM
I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex. Ogged raises the point that sexy acts like titfucking can be sex if they're transgressive (e.g., what the wife did with the mailman today), but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob.
Also, how often does titfucking happen in the absence of other indisputably sex-qualifying acts?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:54 PM
Ah, Arm, but why does the guy get to define sex? ;)
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 9:56 PM
So far, my experience having sex has been as a man. But I can imagine it just as well for a woman—who'd say, "I nailed that guy last night," if it were just a handjob involved?
(And under any circumstances one assumes the fellow reciprocates.)
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:00 PM
"other, indisputably sex-qualifying, acts"
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:00 PM
I dunno, there are lots of ways to have very fun sex involving one person's genitals and the other person's hands.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:01 PM
Obviously, we can draw the distinctions many ways. We're not trying to fix the definitions for all eternity. (But you can try a variant of the "electrician" definition: if your partner did it with someone else, would you consider it cheating?) The question was, if we include the various "minor" sex acts, is there some number that would put you off?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:01 PM
Thirteen. But more impressively, the group contains an Anne, an Anna, an Ana, and an Anya.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:02 PM
Saiselgy worked his way through the Harvard student directory, listed by first name.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:04 PM
"Started to work his way," you mean. Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:05 PM
The "electrician" standard is clearly wrong. If your wife was frenching the electrician, you'd be pissed, but it's still not sex. See also the foot massage thing in Pulp Fiction.
Handjobs and other penumbral cases are useful for maintaining double-standards. Dudes who want to boast can pretend it's sex, and chicks who want to seem chaste can pretend it's not.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:05 PM
See, I think that the electrician standard is far better than the "is it cheating" standard.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:06 PM
"Started to work his way," you mean. Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
He must just not have had much success, is all.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:07 PM
Those of us destined to be forever victimized by alphabetical order -- all those years last in line for snacktime at school, etc. -- are drawn to the alphabetically blessed, hoping desperately to bask in their aura.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:08 PM
Surely there are more than 13 students at Harvard.
The assumption is that the names Saiselgy posted are merely a representative sample.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:09 PM
Fair enough, B. I'm trying to put myself into that frame of mind, that age, in which the numbers were a more important determinant of sexual maturity (or deviancy). Maybe I'm discounting handjobs because at that time I wasn't getting very good handjobs.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:09 PM
I dunno. Anne, Anna, Ana, and Anya is a pretty good track-record in the "An-" range. What would be the hypothesis for it suddenly falling off when one gets to the Bs?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:09 PM
What would be the hypothesis for it suddenly falling off when one gets to the Bs?
Bitches, those girls.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:12 PM
There's also an "ad-" and an "ar-" on the list.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:14 PM
The question was, if we include the various "minor" sex acts, is there some number that would put you off?
You're trying to elide an issue that can't be avoided. The number is much higher if you're counting handjobs. Otherwise, it's half her/his age + 7.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:19 PM
I'm a bitch, I sleep with people.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:19 PM
"Also, isn't it marvellous that in just one generation we've gotten to the point where a number in the teens for a woman in her 30s doesn't seem particularly remarkable? Yay feminism! Yay birth control!"
Well, those active in the "free love" movement at the turn of the last plus one century might be a bit upset at not being mentioned, but it's true that they, also, were a small minority.
Join mightly in the yays, to be sure, I will and do.
116: "I'm going to agree that titfucking is a fancy handjob, and a handjob just ain't sex."
Once again: do lesbians not have sex? This is not a trick question.
I've had a few handjobs that were vastly better than several occasions of intercourse (hint: you're not suppose to just lie there like you're dead, while I do everything for us both), and a couple of mediocre blowjobs (that saying about no such thing as a bad blowjob? wrong). So I'm hardly one to agree. (although there's actually only one woman I ever just had a handjob from [while I got her off doing the parallel to her], but she was 16, I was 17, and she was my 4th).
I'd also suggest that what sex "is" is something we get to define for ourselves, not for others, but I suppose I'm being either all liberal or libertarian there.
"...but on the other hand, a guy doesn't say "we had sex last night" if he got a handjob."
Guys, as studies show, are often idiots about sex (many women, too, to be sure).
118: Lesbians. Exist.
120: "I dunno, there are lots of ways to have very fun sex involving one person's genitals and the other person's hands."
Many people lack imaginaton, or experience. We must condescend to them and pity them, not be kind to them. (I considered deleting this, because someone would take me seriously, but then I remembered where I was commenting.)
Also, I mentioned earlier that, as we know, many women don't get off on intercourse, and some actively dislike it. Same applies to every other sex act, including every common one. One lover adored being manually stimulated, only sometimes got off on intercourse without simultaneous stimulation (doncha love the clinical language? such a turn-on, baby!), and was happy to give oral sex, but was repelled at the notion of receiving it. We all have our quirks. Boy, do we. (Girl, too.)
I trust, Ogged, that I've been clear that no number would put me off. But, yes, absolutely, that you had the rotten taste to do Lover X, that takes a bit of talking and dealing with, for me. (Lusting after someone who is a moron or evil, is fairly trivial, though; lust is lust, and wants to be free; action is a whole 'nother matter.)
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:22 PM
In the words of Ol' Dirty, "I don't have no trouble with you fuckin' me/ But I have a little problem with you not fuckin' me." Hence, those bitches who won't hit up Saiselgy.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:22 PM
Arguably a good, satisfying handjob = sex, whereas the sort of disappointing "I made out with you for two hours and all I got was this stupid handjob" handjob one might obtain senior year in high school is not.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:25 PM
those active in the "free love" movement at the turn of the last plus one century might be a bit upset at not being mentioned
They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:25 PM
"I made out with you for two hours and all I got was this stupid handjob"
See, that attitude right there is the problem with guys who cop that kind of attitude.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:26 PM
It was senior year in high school! Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check. One lives, one learns, etc.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:28 PM
that attitude right there is the problem with guys who cop that kind of attitude.
You just made my head spin.
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:28 PM
the group contains an Anne, an Anna, an Ana, and an Anya.
I have a DeAnn, a Diane, one variant of DeAnn that's too distinctive for me to list here thanks to Google, a Dawn, and two Danas.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:29 PM
#141: Having dated teenage boys and raising a boy who I hope is a future teenager, I must register my dissent.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:31 PM
You're trying to elide an issue that can't be avoided. The number is much higher if you're counting handjobs.
Dios mio, it's like trying to talk about sex with a bunch of Jesuits. The point was just to get a sense of whether people are bothered by their partner having been too free with his/her affections. If the woman you're about to propose to was holding her tits for some guy who splooged on her face, that fucking counts, people, whether you call it "titfucking," "fooling around," or "sex."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:32 PM
144: Yeah, but to expect otherwise isn't, as saiselgy notes, very realistic.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:33 PM
do lesbians not have sex?
Lesbians engage in both heavy petting and sex, just like every other potential pairing of people, sure.
They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for.
And the women who were just in it get to get laid? I know people of both sexes like that today, you know. I figure it just isn't my business, since I'm not having to deal with the genitals of any of them.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:34 PM
When I was in college I started seeing a girl who'd had more than 4 times as many partners as I'd had (and was not holding to a Clintonian definition). I definitely balked. But I chalked it up to my own insecurity. I knew it was doomed, though, when she told my roommate and me that she thought it was horrible and ridiculous that anyone would play video games when they could be making art.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:35 PM
Does it count if she was holding someone else's tits for some guy who spooged on someone else's face?
Also, is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:36 PM
144, 146:
Indeed. Pseudonymous Kid, doubtless adorable at the moment, will almost certainly transform into a scumbag and then eventually untransform and re-emerge as a fine upstanding young man. Such is the way of the world -- social forces beyond the control of mere parents are in play.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:36 PM
anyone would play video games when they could be making art
Obviously a person to be avoided, due to insufferable cluelessness. Who could eat this stack of pancakes when a child in Eritrea is starving?
Without getting too specific here, you all need to lower your standards and drink much, much more. Jesus, I feel like a fucking libertine in here.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:39 PM
#146: To fail to expect otherwise is to perpetuate the tragedy of low expectations.
#147: Loving a double standard, I'd say that arguably a woman at the turn of the 19th century who was fucking around just to get laid was a feminist by definition.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:39 PM
Also, is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Under the handjob definition, no. Using a straight intercourse definition - I dunno, I'd want to see a scatter plot of the events. Things that happened a decade ago (10 partners in 10 days!) seem sort of irrelevant.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:39 PM
is there anyone here who is honestly going to say, "Yes. Anything above 20 is right out"?
Well, I would say it if I believed it, but you know the commenters here are all whipped and single. I can't figure it out. I will say this: when talking to a friend about this general topic, we decided that a woman who had been simultaneously anally and vaginally penetrated was out. I think that would be in the category that Labs calls "too freaky."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:40 PM
I'd say that arguably...
Again, I'd say that unarguably it isn't any of my business and that assigning social signifiers a century after the fact is pure projection.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:41 PM
"...They're included if they were feminists; those who were in it just to score some pussy, I have no praise for."
I wasn't clear; you were referring to women, as I understood you, and also meant only "women." I may also have just misunderstood you. After all, women didn't solely invent birth control, so that was my careless reading. I was referring to that generation of feminism, although that term wasn't, that I recall offhand, in use then. Emma Goldman, Edna St. Vincent Millary, Margaret Sanger, Mabel Dodge, Louise Bryant, and so on.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:42 PM
I'd want to see a scatter plot
Until someone tops it, SCMTim wins best comment.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:42 PM
#155: Following that logic, we can't call Mary Wollstonecraft a feminist, which is ridiculous.
#154: A woman who'd had sex with a guy who had a finger up her ass would be "too freaky"? Prude.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:43 PM
a woman who had been simultaneously anally and vaginally penetrated was out
Keep lowering your standards; I'll open another bottle.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:45 PM
158: sorry, I meant by cocks.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:45 PM
Does it count if she was holding someone else's tits for some guy who spooged on someone else's face?
Was there a film crew?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:46 PM
I had a Chasing Amy-style crisis of conscience when I discovered a girlfriend had previously been involved in some four-way action followed by some Chasing Amy-style realization that this was a stupid crisis to be having. Then the new plan became to avoid being freaked out about other people's behavior and that seems to have worked okay so far.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:46 PM
Keep drinking, Saiselgy. A blog-worthy crisis will break out eventually.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:48 PM
#160, Ok then, I amend my question: is having been involved in a 3-way, by definition, too freaky, or is it simultaneous a/v penetration only that crosses that line? E.g., the holding someone's tits while someone else spooged in the tit-owner's face: too freaky? Simultaneous oral and vaginal penetration by cocks? Fucking while someone else watches?
I'm half-joshing you, but also kind of serious, in a Jesuitical way. It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:48 PM
Chasing Amy-style crisis
I think this is a good crisis to have. I was also quite jealous of a partner's past experience until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:49 PM
B: the operative line appears to be "that which I have seen in porn but have not personally experienced." To which I answer again, keep drinking.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:50 PM
Pour me a glass, I'll pull up a chair.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:51 PM
"Anyone expecting anything better than utter scumbaggery from teenage boys needs a reality check."
Cough.
I'm an outlier, to be sure. Always have been. Although, actually, the overall arc of my life has been pretty much towards "more normal" in almost every area. Frightening thought, innit?
(I forget if I've mentioned on this blog that when I was 13-17, hardly anyone could tell my age unless I told them; I was commonly taken for at least 18-25, due to the way I spoke, which is essentially identical to the way I do now [though my writing had absolutely no control, and little sense of either grammar or punctuation back then; okay, only slight difference now]; this is how the 23-year-old decided to sleep with me; she wanted to jump out a window when she learned my actual age after a few weeks or she had no idea I was a minor.)
152: it's not a double standard if the objects of comparison exist with differing standards of treatment by their environment, or if said objects (people) have differing degrees of class power, or any such significant difference of meaningful context. That's not a double standard, it's what I've always called "false mirror syndome" (personal terminology since age 14 or so).
"...you all need to lower your standards and drink much, much more."
Did my quota last week; I'm off the stuff for A While.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:52 PM
The initial question is badly formed. "Too many" for what? If we're talking about just having sex with someone, without many emotional strings, the more the better. The freakier the better. If the aliens come to take you away to a never seen planet (assuming a return), you have to go, even if you never see your loved ones again. The answer is different for a long term relationship.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:52 PM
Along these lines, are there acts which would be deemed unacceptable if previously engaged in by a partner, but are still personally appealing?
Posted by Matt F | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:53 PM
"...Lesbians engage in both heavy petting and sex, just like every other potential pairing of people, sure."
And what's your understanding of what most lesbians commonly define as "sex"?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:54 PM
#168 to 152: Of course I agree with you, I was just being flip.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:55 PM
think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters
Actually, it was more my friend's line than mine, and I'm not sure what I think--I expect everything would be colored by what I thought of the person who'd done whatever. But, given that I'm basically pretty conservative about these things, and that I'm put off even by casual sex, freaky sex would raise issues for me, quite apart from whether it made me jealous.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:55 PM
until someone said something to me, which, characteristically, I've completely forgotten, but which made being jealous seem silly.
See, I just watched Chasing Amy again and came to my senses. Worst of all, I don't even like that movie and yet it's become an important touchstone in my life. Though of course that was three-way, rather than four-way action so maybe it's not even relevant.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:55 PM
Did my quota last week; I'm off the stuff for A While.
I wasn't referring to you, Gary. You're down here in the libertine trolley with me, you fucking freak.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:55 PM
"Too many" for what?
For whoever is asking, of course. It's not meant to be a complicated question.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:57 PM
And what's your understanding of what most lesbians commonly define as "sex"?
I don't care. It's my fucking arbitrary line.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:57 PM
I'm somewhat vindicated—thanks, SCMT.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:57 PM
I should probably stop drinking now.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:57 PM
it's become an important touchstone in my life
It's the only movie (that I know of), that takes a square look at a feeling that just about everyone has at some point. And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:58 PM
"for what" vs. "whoever". Where the fuck is Wolfson?
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:58 PM
I should probably stop drinking now.
And here I thought apostropher was the hero.
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 10:59 PM
Discretion is the better part of valor, Smasher.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:00 PM
Hey, where's SB these days?
Posted by Armsmasher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:00 PM
160: "158: sorry, I meant by cocks."
Dildos and vibrators are ok, then? Does it matter if one of the guys has a cock ring? Shall we stroll through a list of of other sex toys? (We have to do something to keep Apostropher awake through his bottle. I've damn sure done my part.)
As usual, I do love the way subjective opinions are being phrased as objective, universal, facts. Projection, indeed.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:01 PM
if the # exists for me, it hasn't happened yet. but i'm curious why it would disqualify someone? fear of disease? of infidelity? a sense that you're not special to that person? worried you won't measure up to previous partners? concern they're crazy? sluts are icky?
seems most of the reasons one might be turned off by a high number are more specifically addressed by other questions, such as "how many strains of herpes are you carrying?", or "cheat much?"
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:04 PM
"for what" vs. "whoever". Where the fuck is Wolfson?
In and out.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:05 PM
#173: I think it really does boil down to what one thinks of the person who'd done whatever, rather than by whatever, honestly. But of course that would render the original question pointless....
It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. But then again, that too depends on why the skeeving, and on who is being skeeved, doesn't it? I mean, if the objection is "people who have casual sex are whores" then that's vile; but if it's "in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about," then it's not only charming, but actually a sobering kind of rebuke to the jocular nature of the way we usually talk about these things, innit?
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:06 PM
I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about
Well, you've pre-complimented it, but yes, that's exactly right.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:08 PM
On topic.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:10 PM
#179: Discretion may be the better part of valor, but failing to keep a woman company after proffering her wine is ungentlemanly in the extreme.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:11 PM
Apostropher didn't say he was drinking wine.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:12 PM
tittyfucking: serious business.
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:13 PM
#190: Okay, I am a bad person maybe, but actually Hugo's way of talking about these things skeeves ME. It seems so fucking patronizing, really.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:13 PM
190 - Ah! That was the article I was thinking of back in 24. I wrongly attributed it to the NYT. No wonder I couldn't find it.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:13 PM
Dude, my lady is soooo asleep that if I tried to keep her company, I might go to work tomorrow with a black eye.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:14 PM
#189: Okay then, but in that case isn't asking the question "what number of sex partners is too many" kind of inimical to the idea of taking sex seriously? The question implies the kind of scorekeeping ethos that precludes taking sex seriously. It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:15 PM
"The assorted musings of Hugo Schwyzer: a progressive, consistent-life ethic Anabaptist/Episcopalian Democrat (but with a sense of humor), a community college history and gender studies professor, ENFP Gemini, an avid marathoner, aspiring ultra-runner, die-hard political junkie, and proud father of the most amazing chinchilla on God's green earth."
b, any room in the "bad person" trolley?
Posted by matty | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:16 PM
192: I'm almost always drinking wine. It's my poison and it's Spanish night.
First bottle: Vinos Sin-Ley 2004 Garnacha G-2. Split this one.
Second bottle: Carro Tinto 2004. I think just the one glass is going to be the extent.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:17 PM
What troubles me is the conviction that serious relationships are an impediment to (rather than a vehicle for) one's personal growth. (From the link in 190.)
This seems to be a theme in The Ethics of Authenticity.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:17 PM
#198: Climb aboard.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:18 PM
198: any college professor who has fathered a chinchilla is definitely in the bad trolley.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:18 PM
It seems to me that the only serious answer (in that sense of the word serious) to such a question is "it doesn't matter, and I wouldn't ask."
Well, we can discuss it on the blog, because it is something that's an issue in the culture. As for me, personally, I have no idea what "the number" is for any of my exes.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:19 PM
194: The link wasn't an endorsement. I don't read his blog for pretty much that reason, even though I'm sure I miss some interesting topics. But he lists that as one of his "top posts" so I remember reading it when I was trying to figure out what his blog was about.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:19 PM
197: No, because the number is a proxy for seriousness. Just as asking, "How many times have you been truly in love?" would be a proxy for seriousness about love. If your answer to the "love" question is in the tripple digits, you are not serious about it.
(Actually a really bad example; using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:19 PM
162: Kevin Smith's understanding of relationships is under-rated. Chasing Amy is one of my favorite movies. (Also, there was, yes, the lesbian whom I was sweeties with for a year; no details, but there was sex [with complications, granted]; I swear I don't make any of this stuff up.)
175: "You're down here in the libertine trolley with me, you fucking freak."
I did write this only two days ago (it's still Thursday for me for another 50 minutes). Followed the next day with this.
180: "And though it's not great, it's good enough to get the wheels turning."
It's a lot funnier if you've ever been much of a comics reader, and get all the comics jokes. "You're a fucking tracer!"
But I agree, of course, that the relationship aspects is the main goodness, along with the dialogue and camera work. Lousy special effects, though; the exploding cars were hardly noticeable.
I'm a fan of most things Kevin Smith, although his online daily diary is an example of why I don't wish to go far down that route; I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
I was thinking about writing some remarks on Jersey Girl, his least artistically successful film since Mallrats, but still with some positive aspects (in my view; not that of many critics, but, as we know, I've not been writing much -- except, the last two days, comments, trying to work my way back to it).
"I don't care. It's my fucking arbitrary line."
The point was that several people here keep insisting on what "sex" is, and if they're right, most lesbians don't have it. (see 118 for one example.)
As the saying goes, "what lesbians call sex is often what men call 'petting'" It certainly doesn't have to involve penetration (although it often does, as well, whether via fist, sex toy, or whatever; for for many others, not); ditto, not so much ejaculation.
"Discretion is the better part of valor, Smasher."
And if one does intend to drink on New Tear's Eve, it helps to not be too hungover. Unless one is just drinking straight on through, perhaps.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:21 PM
Indeed. To go back to the original Yglesias post that spawned this discussion, I think the main lesson that can be learned from Fire Door Girl is that only bad things can come from asking that question.
Posted by Becks | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:21 PM
#200: What troubles me is the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships. Likewise, the conviction that doing things just for fun is an impediment to Personal Growth.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:22 PM
Unless one is just drinking straight on through, perhaps.
I refer to this as my thirties.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:24 PM
What bothers me is that people actually think that they know exactly what someone else should do to achieve something as vaguely and variously defined as personal growth.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:26 PM
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth. Again, people should never expect too much of teenagers. If they manage to stay out of jail and eventually leave home, that's success.
Posted by Wehttam Saiselgy | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:28 PM
only bad things can come from asking that question.
To a partner, perhaps. Though as I was laughing at an earlier point in this thread, the missus asked what my number was. While I'm now officially of questionable character in her eyes, nothing truly bad resulted. Yet, anyhow.
the conviction that fucking around is an impediment to Serious Relationships
This is about 180° off-target.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:28 PM
People with personal growths might want to consider getting them looked at by a doctor.
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:29 PM
94: Ice->water->steam
Late, uninteresting physics pedantry - this isn't a continuum, involving as it does well-defined phase transistions.
As to #s: more than Newton and Emily Dickinson combined, fewer than Byron. Maybe an Elizabeth Bishopish or Richard Wilburish number.
Posted by rilkefan | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:31 PM
212: Without legitimate fucking around, minor fucking around is easily mistaken for Serious Relationships. I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:31 PM
Re #194
Mr. Hugoboy sez:
"I have enraged a few folks in my classes and in the blogosphere by suggesting that much (not all) of the modern feminist movement has its roots in a "profound disappointment in men.""
Wherever on earth could that possibly have come from? It must be for no reason whatever. (My read was a hasty skim, to be sure.)
205: "using the phrase "truly in love" or even "in love" should be an automatic cock-block.)"
[head scratch] Being in love is a turn-off?
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:31 PM
216 confusion: Well, I no longer want to bang SCMTim. QED?
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:33 PM
#197: No, it isn't. It seems to me that saying it is is kind of like people saying that because I have a boyfriend, I can't be serious about my marriage, for instance. One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy.
Now, re. folks who, like O., aren't really comfortable with casual sex, I can see arguing that asking "how many" could serve as a rough (very rough) barometer for "do you, like me, take sex seriously?" But then the issue isn't the number, it's the attiude; and it still doesn't follow that someone who is comfortable with casual sex would be a bad partner for someone who isn't, or incapable of intimacy or taking sex seriously. So, again, I'll invoke my marriage: Mr. B. was a serious Catholic when I met him, a technical virgin, and disapproved of his sister's having lived with a boyfriend. He didn't, however, disapprove of the fact that *I* wasn't a virgin (and once I pointed out that the double standard for me vs. his sister was flattering to neither of us, he dropped his disapproval of his sister, to his great credit). Given that he thought that casual sex before marriage wasn't okay, fine; we didn't have casual sex. Given that he wasn't a possessive or jealous type (and the relationship was long-distance), I did occasionally sleep with people I wasn't intimate with. It worked out fine.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:34 PM
What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth.
What have you got against puberty? Or is it just that you don't like the people who didn't pubesce in middle school or before?
I don't find news of his dumps at all interesting, thank you, Kevin.
Not having read any of his online journal, I couldn't really say, but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:34 PM
"It's kind of interesting to think about what specific acts trip people's freak meters."
Cop/ophilia and ped/philia are turnoffs. Although there was a 14 yr old hanging around my crew I never touched her. I have known people into violent role-playing, but I don't even get the cheerleader/upstairs maid stuff.
Been with 12 women and 3 guys. There, 1st on the thread. Not exactly in crisis over my identity or preference at 55. Not bi or confused, let's just say in the early 70s I did a lot of things just to prove I could. One guy paid me, again because the ladies of the evening I was living with dared me, and because I wanted to know if I could survive.
Oh yeah, virgins. No way I'd do a virgin.
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:40 PM
Until I figured out that the slashes were replacing letters and not merely separating parts of the words, I thought bob was saying he doesn't like people who are into officers of the peace.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:42 PM
207: "...is that only bad things can come from asking that question."
And yet reality proves that isn't so. Many witnesses! (You probably weren't being literal, and meant something like "often bad things can come," I expect.)
On the other paw "I have a right to know!" is debatable.
208: stop saying the same things as me (okay, just on certain topics). It frightens me. (Okay, you have permission to continue.)
210: Absolutely.
211: "What troubles me is the implication that high school students should be engaged in Personal Growth."
If high school isn't about personal growth, you're apt to wind up very fucked up.
Oh, wait.
215: "I spent far too much of my life turning one night stands into four-month relationships."
Still, arguably better than the reverse.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:43 PM
"One can have lots of recreational sex and still know the difference between recreational sex and intimacy."
Some people can't, though, observation says. Possibly theoretically the might learn, but we all have different capabilities in such matters.
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me. Not that this is a new story. (You may have missed "polyamory" flashing by again in the prior thread that parented this one.)
219: "...but if it were devoted just to news of his dumps, described with oenophilic connoisseurship, that could be kinda interesting."
no, but every time I've dropped by -- which isn't many, despite my enjoyment of his other work, it's included as part of how he starts his complete break-, er, day. It doesn't repel me, mind, but I'm really quite willing to stipulate that he engages in many normal things that are boring as all shit to those of us not writing them.
Then he gives details of his daily poker games. It's a thrill a minute. Of course, it is called My Boring-Ass Life. I already credited him with much perceptiveness. (Hmm, apparently he's been off being busy for the better part of a couple of months.) And he can be funny in it at times. But, still, this was why "editing" was invented.
Okay, flipping back towards when I last looked, I see a lack of dump news. Congrats; this is typical of a dump-free entry. Last I had read, he wasn't working at the time; maybe filming changes his focus on the priorities of life, or diarying, or something.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-29-05 11:57 PM
Still, arguably better than the reverse.
It's arguable.
Since I'm on the second bottle, employing the bizarrely liberal definition we're apparently obligated to use, I'm somewhere in the high 40s/low 50s. Using a strict intercourse definition, low 30s. I'm 37, fwiw, and went through high school and most of college before AIDS was really a household term, and I don't underestimate the impact that had.
I have many HIV-positive friends and have lost three.
All the same, I am absolutely white bread and middle of the road in my circle of friends, and while I'll accept that we're all weird, we aren't ginormous outliers. I know plenty of those people, too.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:00 AM
One of the nice things about being home on break is that the Unfogged timestamps reflect the actual time. Happy December 30, Gary.
(Sorry for the lack of relevance in this comment, but since my count approximates Newton's I have nothing on-topic to say.)
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:04 AM
205: I think the phrase "in love" suggests meaning where there is none. I totally buy loving someone, I totally buy different types of love that demand different types of promises and future prospects. I don't believe that the phrase "in love" ties well to any subset of all of the above. "In love" seems like a high school stand in for a discussion I lacked the vocabulary to have in high school.
218: I'm not sure I disagree with you, B. I meant only that it was a proxy for ogged and his conception of intimacy. If his definition effectively precludes multiple partners, then it seems reasonable to say that his seriousness and your seriousness are not the same. Not better or worse, just different. And I don't think there's anything wrong with his (purely imputed) sense of seriousness.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:06 AM
Here a dump, there a dump, everywhere a dump. (Not going further back; this is already too weird. No, neither excretion nor pissing do anything positive for me sexually (but YKIOK).
Apparently, after September, he's ceased elimination. Good for him!
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:06 AM
What bugs me is the insistence by many that Everyone Is Like Me.
Gary, I'll tell you one of the Secrets of Unfogged, which might make your sojourns here less upsetting: precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:07 AM
I totally buy different types of love that demand different types of promises and future prospects.
ATM.
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:10 AM
227: Ditto. That's part of what caused the knee in my sexual activity/relationships, although lots of other stuff happened to me in 1984; that's when my first major illness hit, and I was informed, due to several successive complete misdiagnoses, that, according to one (ARC), I might only have a year or less to live, and another biggie was meningitis, which would have potentially been much quicker.
Turned out to be completely wrong, but instead a case of several overlapping things hitting simultaneously, including a kidney infection, a lung infection, an ear infection, and some massively powerful virus that lasts for months; not mono, but more powerful, they said.
But I couldn't work, and I had to return to NYC where friends took me in. Then I was all busy working 18 hours a day as a junior publishing body (the disasterous classic result of a co-worker friend getting drunk out of her mind at the office Christmas Party, and her then throwing me down on the stairs to my apartment and attempting to rape me, which I managed to hold off until we could make it my kitchen, was all I got to for a year or so; then, a couple of serious relationships over a couple of years, and a few other... whatever the right noun is here.
Then my crazy father died the same week my role model/friend/father figure Terry Carr died, and I went to pieces. It's not been an entirely pretty picture since then, although it's had its periods and moments.
I'm likely to sign off for the night, myself -- shortly, of course. (And if anyone read my drunken depressed posts, and comments on my own posts, on my own blog of last week, I'm considerably cheerier again, although within limits therein described, keeping in mind that what I said was written in a pit of depression, and thus simplified in the way depression wil narrow one's focus, and distort it somewhat.)
"Happy December 30, Gary."
It's my fourth blogiversary! Hurray for me! (It took me a week or two to figure out a coherent format; still I think I found good links PDQ, if I do say so mysel; and my style seems fairly set from the get-go, although that's hardly surprising, given my long practice at blogging-before-I-was-blogging; comments welcome!)
Happy December 30 to you to, teofilo and all!
SCMT, I'm no longer awake enough to discuss The Meaning Of True Love; short version: I think it's dreadfully misused, misunderstood, and leads to endless heartbreak in those cases, but that it can also hold all sorts of useful meaning that we bring to it; like most words, it's a container, not a fixed object, in my view. I'm probably not making sense any more, though. Tired. Must fall down. (If the dread insomnia doesn't rear its hyra-head.)
Night-night.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:26 AM
Re my comment at 43: Just now, I discussed this thread with my wife prior to cunnilingus/intercourse. She says her number might be in the high two figures, not three figures as I had asserted. She emphasized that she's been monogamous most of her sexually active life.
Oh yeah, virgins. No way I'd do a virgin.
My now-wife was delighted when I told her, before the first time we had sex, that I was a virgin. Cutting the risk of her getting STD's down to zero was a real plus. Go figure.
B, I'm confused by your comment at 139 in relation to your other comments: those who were in it [the "free love" movement at the turn of the 19th century] just to score some pussy, I have no praise for. Elsewhere, e.g. at 218, you indicate that casual sex is OK, and at 188 you say: It does surprise me that folks are skeeved, even only theoretically, by casual sex. So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:30 AM
Wow, what were the odds?
Posted by teofilo | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:35 AM
"my role model/friend/father figure Terry Carr"
Wow. I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing. As someone who just read the stuff 65-75, I know he was on some ways almost more responsible for a lot of the SF I loved than the guys who wrote it. A good editor is important in a small field. And I still have my copy of "Cirque".
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:36 AM
"Turned out to be completely wrong"
And I feel a strange need to mention that I've manged to never get an STD in my life; the only scare was the one long-time friend (who has now had several novels published, which gives away nothing, since that describes literally a couple of hundred of my past friends) whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then."
We had a long talk in which I patiently explained why she must never do this again. Interesting, I just found out this week from another (male) friend of equally long standing, that she did the exact same thing to him a year later.
Have to say it lowers my opinion of her as she was then a notch or two, but that was far away, and in another century.
228: I appreciate what you say, Ogged, and I'm too tired to explain why I think there's a perfectly easy Right Way to do that, and a Wrong Way, which crops up here, as in most places on Earth an the internets, a lot.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:38 AM
I've manged to never get an STD in my life
Same here, though that ain't nothing but luck, looking back.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 12:49 AM
"I shouldn't go all fan-boy, but yeah, there is "You knew Terry Carr" kinda thing."
I wouldn't say we were super-duper-close, but we hung out dozens and dozens and dozens of times over the years; I was always, once we got to know each other, invited to his smallish private parties when we were at the same convention, or I was in town (usually fewer than 30 people or so). He sent me his private fanzines that went to about the same number of folks. We had mutual lovers (several, actually; we were all very busy in the Seventies and early Eighties), and innumerable close mutual friends.
We were definitely good friends. We were in the same small circle of friends, gossiping, and sleeping with each other, and hanging out, and having all our own in-jokes and influences.
And he was my role model. He went from being a smart, literate, fanzine fan, to being a respected skiffy editor ("skiffy" being the name us in-group used back in the day to make fun of the people who used "sci-fi" seriously). (And, come to think of it, Terry got himself fired by Don Wollheim from Ace, so he was a role model for me in ways I hadn't considered at the time, not knowing the future.)
My father's death crushed me because of all our unresolved issues, and what he'd done to me by being a deeply crazy (overwhelmingly bipolar) father, and then when Terry, the guy who was a role model to me in all the ways my own father never was, died three or so days later, I completely melted down into paralyzing depression (not bipolar, fortunately; just depression, which I'd already started experiencing crises of by my teen years).
Which after a few months led to my getting fired by Avon Books (there were other complications, such as letting myself get caught in an office politics war between the old Editor-In-Chief, and the recently installed-over-her-head Editorial Director, but if I'd been myself, I could likely have gotten out from under that; they'd all loved me up to then, more than not; at the least, I could have found another job before I got fired -- I was told to -- if I'd not had trouble working up interest in staring into space, instead).
So that's the start of the story as to why I no longer work in publishing, although I did do tons of freelancing for years to come, and apathetically failed to follow up various job offers and many opportunities, that folks wonder about, and I'm not exactly thrilled to tell. (There's more buried in comments I've made on my own posts on me own blog in the past week.)
Terry was a great guy. Somewhat self-destructive, in knowing he had a bad heart and other ailments, but being completely unwilling to give up substantial drinking, dope smoking, and coke use -- this was a subject he freely debated with his friends, and which drove some crazy. But a great guy. And a great editor, and a fine writer. There's no editor I admire more, although there are others in my pantheon ind different ways, from Ed Ferman to John W. Campbell to Gardner Dozois, just to name three. The Ace Specials alone: I trust I need say no more.
And he never gave up being one of the great fans of all time, too (I mean by that, in doing fanzines, and fan writing that created an original style long imitated, and other such activities).
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:04 AM
Of the couple or so other bloggers I could name whom you, and many, have heard of, Bob, who were also part of our small circles of friends, you could ask Avedon Carol for Terry stories. Though she still might either cry, or talk about how angry she is with him for choosing not to die when he did (in essence, by choosing to live his life on his terms, rather than what was medically advisable).
A lot of people still miss Terry.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:07 AM
precisely because we all know that we all know that all our definitive pronouncements on matters of taste and personal conduct should be caveated with "YMMV," we all enjoy never saying "YMMV," and just making definitive pronouncements.
Maybe I'm just in a generalized bad mood, but this strikes me as a bit overweening.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:07 AM
231: "So what's wrong with people who were in the free love movement just to score some pussy?"
Not speaking for B, but you can be quite interested in casual sex with people, rather than pussies (or dicks).
235: definitely a fair amount of luck on my side, as well, although I give the major credit to the fact that, in, er, fact, little or none of the sex was particularly "casual." It wasn't with strangers. There were just a lot of us friends doing it with each other, although from time to time a new friend would enter the picture, to be sure, and some occasional exceptions happened with some.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:15 AM
234: "...whom I had a one-night stand with, and she didn't bother to tell me until the next day "because I was afraid you might not sleep with me then.""
That she had herpes. Sorry. Why I shouldn't be writing when this tired (and now, yes, having some trouble falling asleep, as per norm).
Similarly, 237: "for choosing not to die when he did"
"For choosing to die when he did," of course.
Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:20 AM
this strikes me as a bit overweening
Yeah, guilty as charged; but it was that or club Gary over the head. In hindsight, I don't see why I felt the need to choose.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:21 AM
As for the definitions: when I was a young virginal Mormon, just setting out into the world of sex, I knew damned well that anyone who claimed that getting it on and/or getting naked wasn't really sex was being silly. After a certain point, it's just semantics and logistics to go all the way.
As for Ogged's question: I think it can become a problem in some kinds of relationships. And not always in the ways one would think! I have been in the slightly awkward position of having more sexual experience than a partner I was pretty into, and then realizing, some time into the relationship, that I had made him so much more sexually confident that he wanted to go forth and experiment. And I had done all that (or at least some of it) earlier and no longer really wanted that sort of thing. It was, let's say, disconcerting.
Posted by Jackmormon | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:27 AM
"The Ace Specials alone: I trust I need say no more."
Ace Specials Set 1 Science fiction as freaking literature;trust me, not anything here is not at least interesting if you don't recognize the names.
Ace Specials Set 2 a little weaker, but the Gotschalk is very good and I have always had a soft spot for the pastoralist Thomas Burnett Swann
Ace Specials Set 3 Very strong again, and as in the first set, the encouragement of young talent
Posted by bob mcmanus | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:27 AM
Another response to 231, which seems apposite:
There are sorts of ways, good and bad, to be non-mogamous. (Which is why the modern polyamory crowd is driven mad when they're confused with "swingers," since they're entirely different things.)Posted by Gary Farber | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:32 AM
in all honesty, I take sex seriously and have a hard time with the concept of intimacy with people one isn't pretty serious about
Would it make sense for one to say, not as a universal rule, that one was uncomfortable, perhaps only theoretically, with the idea of casual sex with someone one knew only casually because even if one did not believe that sex should always be part of a serious commitment neither should it have no meaning at all?
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 1:42 AM
#231: Gary already answered this question, but there is a substantive difference between a principled stand accompanied by the courage to act on it, and the pretense of a principled stand affected in order to pursue selfish ends.
SCMT (sorry, have lost track of the comment #s): What I'm saying is that I don't think that O's view and my own differ that much.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:09 AM
BP's insistence that her kid won't be a jerk in HS is ominous. She's depriving him of an essential developmental stage.
And of course, we kindly older gentlemen who want to save the high school girls from the jerks are never thanked. Instead, we're called pervs, sent to jail for several years, and required to talk therapy-talk ffour three hours a week for life, and report to the authorities every time we change address.
I just found out that my Hawaiian ex brother-in-law, back when the Hawaian age of consent was 12, screwed his eighth grade teacher. His entirely family is still very proud of that 35 years later, and no, I'm not making that up.
My other sister's first husband spent a month in jail for screwing a 17-year old, even though he was 2 months younger than the girl. My family should never get married,
Disclaimer: yes, I talk about this stuff a lot, and no, I don't do it at all. If I did that kind of thing I'd join a church, the Moral Majority, and the Republican Party. I'm smart enough to figure that out.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:11 AM
#245: It might be okay if one were to amend "no meaning at all" to "no meaning at all for me." Casual sex engaged in casually isn't meaningless.
Then again, nothing is, really.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:11 AM
#247: Maybe it's b/c I'm working on almost no sleep, but I have to admit that I do hate it when people try to tell me that they know how my kid will develop better than I do, or that my parenting (praxis or theory) is intrinsically flawed. I didn't go through a lot of the stereotypical adolescent bullshit; I see no reason why my son should.
Having said that, John, I'm up early b/c I'm catching a plane to Minneapolis. Drop me an email with your phone # and let's see if we can't get together. Chopper too, if he's lurking about. I'll be there until the 8th.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:14 AM
Come on, B, I was kidding. I don't believe in essential developmental stages.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:17 AM
Actually, B., if you're going to be in Mpls. today and tomorrow I doubt I can make it. I'm pretty sure my host down there is occupied (he might even be up here). Next time.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:33 AM
Well, I did say I'm functioning on not much sleep, so I missed the joke. My bad.
I'll be in Mpls until the 8th. That is, from tonight through *next* Sunday.
Posted by bitchphd | Link to this comment | 12-30-05 6:35 AM
I should be able to figure that one out.
For me, email is almost always better than phone.
Posted by