Puritan Pundits Should Chill Out -- Here Are 5 Reasons I'm Happy I've Had Lots of Casual Sex

By Greta Christina

Things don't have to be permanent to be valuable. A fleeting moment can have as much value as a stone monument.

The phenomenon of women who have sex for its own sake seems to baffle many people. It's widely believed that women have sex for love, commitment, poor self-control, to manipulate men, to please men, to make babies, to sooth their low self-esteem, and just about any reason at all other than their own pleasure. (While men, of course, are rutting horndogs who just want to stick it in the nearest wet hole available.) Sex, according to this trope, is by its nature a commodity that women possess and men are trying to obtain... and the phenomenon of women who are "giving it away," who are defying these assumptions and treating sex as a pleasurable interaction between equals, is making the media piss all over themselves.

Mark Regnerus, Slate: "If women were more fully in charge of how their relationships transpired, we'd be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts, longer relationships, fewer premarital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on."

Rachel Simmons, relationship advice columnist for Teen Vogue: "These letters worry me. They signify a growing trend in girls' sexual lives where they are giving themselves to guys on guys' terms. They hook up first and ask later. "

Bill O'Reilly: "Many women who get pregnant are blasted out of their minds when they have sex."

Susan Walsh, Hooking Up Smart: "They cannot see that as she [self-proclaimed proud-and-happy slut Jaclyn Friedman] proclaims her detachment from sex, she gets emotionally wounded every single time. They take heart from her proclamation that sluthood is a healing thing. Ms. Friedman is a hot mess. Craiglist Casual Encounters was not a miracle, it was a disaster that broke her heart again. I hope she does find Love, the whole enchilada."

Laura Sessions Stepp, author of Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both... oh, just look at the title.

Then there's the piece that got me staying up until four in the morning writing about this in the first place: Christian author Don Miller, who recently asked his female readers (and his male ones, in a separate post) if they've ever had casual sex, and if so, why. Miller doesn't ask this in a neutral way, a way that expresses a genuine desire for an honest answer. He asks in a way that makes it obvious what he thinks the answer will be -- whatever the reason is, it must be bad, bad, bad. In fact, he's asking in a way that totally slants the answers he's likely to get. He's asking "why some girls give up sex easily" (as if sex for women is always a surrender) and "do you use sex for some kind of social power or to make yourself feel good?"

It's like a push-poll -- a political poll designed to elicit a particular response, so you can shape people's opinions and make your position seem more popular than it really is.

And this push-poll tendency is shared by many of those who ask, "Why on earth would women want casual hookups?" They're not asking, "Why do some women have casual sex?" They're asking, "Why on earth would some women have casual sex, when it's so clearly a bad idea that will do them and other women harm and is obviously not in their best interest?" And they're doing this despite research showing that casual sex isn't, in fact psychologically harmful for young adults. They're basing their questions on the common assumption that women's natural state is to keep their legs closed unless they've got their hands on marriage or commitment... and that women who don't are some sort of baffling phenomenon that needs to be explained.

So I thought I'd try to explain it.

I've had a lot of experience with casual sex. It's been a while, and I'm not particularly interested in it anymore. But for many years, pretty much all the sex I had fell somewhere on the "casual" spectrum. Personal ad hookups; occasional sex with friends; sex clubs and sex parties; ongoing sexual friendships... that's what my sex life looked like for a long time.

And needless to say -- but I'm going to say it anyway -- a lot of this casual sex was a good idea. A wonderful idea, in fact. A lot of it was done for excellent, healthy reasons. And the effect it's had on my sex life and my love life has been overwhelmingly positive.

You want to know why I had it? Here's why.

1: Fun. This is first and foremost. In fact, all the other answers I'm about to give ultimately boil down to this one: Sex is fun. Sex feels good. Sex is its own justification. And that was every bit as true when I was single as when I've been coupled. I had sex for the same reason billions of other people have sex: Pleasure. Period.

We evolved to enjoy sex. We are descended from thousands of generations of ancestors who really, really liked to fuck. Asking why people have sex casually is like asking why people eat food casually. Eating feels good. Food is fun. It's often more fun when it's meaningful and done with people we love. But that's not always an option, and it can still be pretty darned fun when it's grabbed on the fly with acquaintances and strangers. We evolved to want to eat food. And we evolved to want to have sex. Like, duh.

2: Experimentation. When I was having casual sex with a lot of different people, I was also having lots of different kinds of sex. There are lots of reasons for that: some obvious, some not so obvious. The most obvious one is that my partners liked different things, so I tried the things they liked, to see if I might like them too. Plus, at the time, I felt more comfortable asking for and trying some of my freakier desires with fuckbuddies and casual hookups than I had with long-term romantic partners. I do wish that hadn't been true -- I wish I'd been less shy about experimenting with my LTR partners in my younger days -- but the whole stupid virgin/whore thing can get pretty deeply embedded, and it took many years of screwing around to get it (mostly) hacked out of my brain.

And that experimenting was awesome. I figured out an immense amount about my sexuality during my casual sex years. I learned a huge amount about which of my fantasies were really things I liked, and which were things I just liked thinking about. I figured out that yes, I really was a dyke, and yes, I really was kinky. And I discovered things about my sexuality that I never would have imagined if I hadn't tried them. My sex life is about a billion times more satisfying now that I know what I do and don't like in bed... and now that I have the courage to ask for it. Like, duh.

I haven't stopped learning and experimenting now that I'm married. And plenty of people do plenty of experimenting with just one partner, and do it entirely happily. But that's not how it played out for me. And when I think about who I was in my twenties, I'm not sure it could have played out that way for me. When I think about who I was in my 20s, I think casual sex with a large-ish number of people was the only way I was going to get those experiments under my belt. As it were.

3: Pleasure without unwanted commitment. As you may have figured out from this piece, I was single for a long time. After my divorce and before I fell in love with Ingrid, I was single for 12 years. And they were good years. Most of them, anyway. Staying single for so long was a conscious decision, and it was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. After my divorce, I was pretty confused, with some seriously messed-up ideas about love and relationships, and I had a strong tendency to be attracted to needy, fucked-up drug addicts. Staying single for 12 years gave me a chance to get my head screwed on straight; to re-train myself to be attracted to people who had their act together; to wait for the right partner instead of jumping into commitment with whoever was available; to learn that I could be happy and fulfilled on my own. In fact, my relationship and marriage with Ingrid wouldn't be nearly as strong if I hadn't been single -- and happily single -- for so long.

But if I'd tried to be celibate during all those years, I would have gone bananas. I never would have stuck it out.

Not everyone wants to be in a relationship. Not everyone should be in a relationship. Some people are better off single: temporarily, or indefinitely. I was one of them, for over a decade. And casual sex let me stay single... while still having the pleasure and confidence and connection and other yummy things that sex provides.

4: Independence and confidence. Catting around made me feel like a million bucks. And not just in the obvious way. It made me feel powerful, self-reliant, curious and playful, free and fun. It taught me the value of adventure. It taught me that awesome surprises can be around any corner if I'm open to them. It taught me that even crummy experiences can make for a really great story. It taught me strength and self-confidence. It taught me that saying "No" didn't make me a selfish jerk. It taught me that being told "No" didn't make me a pathetic loser.

I still feel that way. I haven't forgotten those lessons. And I am deeply grateful for everything in my life that got me there. Including casual sex. Casual sex wasn't the only thing that helped me feel powerful and self-reliant, adventurous and playful, independent and confident... but it was one of the things, one of the most crucial things, and I am profoundly thankful for it.

5: Intimacy and connection. Casual doesn't necessarily mean impersonal. A lot of the casual sex I had was fairly nonchalant. But a lot of it wasn't. A lot of it was very intimate indeed. It came out of a moment of feeling connected with another human being, and wanting to expand that connection. I didn't want romance or marriage with these people. But I cared about them, and I felt close with them, and I wanted to experience that closeness in a sexual way.

Some of those people started out as casual hookups, and became good friends over weeks and months. Some of them started out as friends, and the sex -- whether it happened semi-regularly or was just one many-splendored night -- deepened those friendships, and gave them a little extra sparkle and tingle. But they all have one thing in common... which is that I still feel affection towards them, and still have fond memories of the sex we had, and don't regret it for a minute.

I realize that this is a very atheist/ humanist philosophy of life, and one that a Christian writer like Don Miller is unlikely to respond to. But things don't have to be permanent to be valuable. A fleeting moment can have as much value as a stone monument. And that includes moments of sexual intimacy and connection

It Gets Better

I realize that I'm only one person, telling one person's story. And I realize that the plural of anecdote is not data. My experiences are largely supported by the data, but they aren't universal. I had a lot of things going for me that loaded the "casual sex" dice in my favor -- among other things, I was mostly having all this casual sex with other women, so the gender imbalances and weird sexual/ romantic power dynamics between women and men were a non-issue. And I realize that not everyone shares my experience. Some people go into casual sex for good, healthy reasons, and some people do it for bad, unhealthy reasons, and many people do it for a combination of the two. And some people have good outcomes from it, and some have crummy outcomes, and some have outcomes that are a mixed bag.

You know. Just like people go into marriage and committed relationships for good reasons and bad reasons and combinations of the two... with good, and bad, and mixed results.

And I'm not going to pretend that my casual sex was always perfect and awesome. It wasn't. Some of it was boring and pointless; a little of it was icky and sad. I'm not even going to pretend that my reasons for having it were always entirely healthy. I sometimes had casual sex, in part, to bolster my self-image as a nonconformist, or because that's what everyone else in my social circle was doing (yes, those two things are contradictory -- what's your point?), or as a salve for feeling lonely and unattractive, or because I didn't want to hurt someone's feelings by saying "No." Especially in the earlier days. Like most things in life, I got better at it as I went along.

But you know what? That was true of sex in relationships, too. Especially in my younger days. I didn't always have it for healthy reasons, and it wasn't always that great. But it got better as I went along. Much, much better. Sex at 49 is so much better than sex at 23, I can't even tell you.

And it got better, in large part, because of my years of casual sex. It's better because of the independence and confidence I got from casual sex... independence and confidence that strengthens me to this day. It's better because of the experiments I carried out during casual sex... experiments that helped me map out my sexuality and enjoy it to its fullest. It's better because of the moments of genuine connection I had during casual sex... moments that taught me how to pursue intimacy and make myself open to it. It's better because of all the sheer pleasure I got from casual sex... which helped me to value pleasure, and embrace it, and make it a priority in my marriage. It's better because of the years of being happily single which casual sex made possible... years that enabled me to wait for the right person, and turn myself into the right person, to make our love and our marriage work.

Sex, and marriage, and life, are better because of casual sex. For me, anyway. And no stupid push-poll in the world is going to change that answer.

Read more of Greta Christina at her blog.

Stephanie Smith in MeInMyPlace Photoshoot

As part of an ongoing series, Stephanie Smith shot by MeInMyPlace for Esquire Magazine.

You want to know the secret ingredient? Then it wouldn’t be a secret, would it? Well, fine: Normally you use powdered sugar. But for these, I use granulated sugar. So it’s got a different texture. The icing is more grainy. But in a good way.

 

Usually I wait a couple hours before I put the icing on. It’s a secret family recipe.

 

I would say I feel my sexiest right before we go out on the field. We have our hair and makeup all done, and we’re standing in the tunnel. We can see the crowd, but they can’t see us. And then they announce us and we walk out and the crowd goes crazy. It’s the best. It’s like a drug.

 

They’re real, by the way. God-given. It’s like that Seinfeld episode: They’re real, and they’re spectacular.

 

I do them in my apartment. I’m dancing around, and I’m famous for leaving the blinds open. If anybody saw me, I would look so ridiculous.

 

I always fall for those fitness videos sold on TV. I’ve been doing P90X for a couple of years, and now I’m doing TurboFire. I get so into it. I start talking to the TV. Like they’ll ask me how I’m doing, and I’ll be like, I’m doing great! It’s so corny, but I love it.

 

The cookies don’t melt, but they get soft like cake would. They become the same texture as cake. It’s really good.

 

I put an Oreo inside each one. They’re so good because of it. Some people ground up the Oreo, but I put them in whole. You don’t taste it right away. It’s a surprise.

…but people are usually pretty good. They’ll watch for a few minutes and then move on.

 

We practice at Bally’s. They sponsor us. It’s near the Linc — pretty centrally located. And we practice in a dance room with open windows…

 

The hot-pink outfit comes out from time to time, I’ll say that. Sometimes I just keep it for me. When I want to make myself feel happy.

 

I’ve been baking my whole life. My mother got me started on it. She makes these extravagant cakes and stuff, so I’ve been around it my whole life — it feels natural. I don’t even have to think about it.

 

So when I’m getting ready, sometimes I’ll dance a little, to see how the moves look in the uniform. You want to make sure you’re always looking your best.

 

The only time I wear the uniform around the house is when I’m getting ready for an event. We have a lot of different pieces to the uniform, probably seven or eight — boy shorts, skirt, sweater.

 

After the games you’re tired — you can’t wait to go home and go to bed. I’ve never fallen asleep in my uniform, though. That would be really crazy.

 

It’s a big day, game day. We have to get there four hours before kickoff, so it’s like an eight-hour day at the stadium. We practice for maybe an hour, then we go outside the stadium and meet with fans. And you’re “on” the whole time. It can be exhausting.

 

You thought I’d only have one pair of pom-poms? Girls don’t have one pair of anything. Pom-poms are like shoes.

If the Philadelphia Eagles have a dream team this year, they’ve got the sideline support to match. And we know a thing or two about this stuff — every week on Esquire.com, Monday Morning Cheerleader brings you actually insightful analysis from the only women closer to the action than Bob Costas. So, as a gift to the world of men, and especially to Eagles fans — that was some storm — third-year cheerleader Stephanie Smith invited over our photographer friend to her apartment outside of Philly for a little break from his normally difficult work at MeInMyPlace.com. It was inspirational. —The Editors

In Northeast India, RTI Activists At The Receiving End

By Samudra Gupta Kashyap

Even as Anna Hazare’s fast caused nationwide awareness about corruption, RTI activists in different states of the Northeastern region continue to face harassment and threats.

Seventeen families from Meghalaya filed an FIR against the village council for denying food grains supplied by the government. An RTI application filed by them revealed that while the government had supplied food grains for BPL families in Dongrum in East Khasi Hills district, the families had not received them for 72 months. An inquiry was instituted after the harassed families lodged a complaint.

This is the second incident of villagers being ostracised in Meghalaya for asking questions through RTI. Last year, three women of Jongksha village were ostracized for bringing to light anomalies in implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act through RTI. The State Women’s Commission had to intervene to restore their social rights.

In February, Bobby Basaiawaomoit, a resident of Mairangbah in West Khasi Hills district, had lodged a complaint saying the village council had threatened to impose a fine and ostracize him for ‘creating trouble’ in the village by using RTI.

Sanjit Das and his family were attacked on August 14 for seeking information through RTI about food grain supply under PDS in Sonitpur district. Das was seriously injured and is currently hospitalized. He was also assaulted a few months ago for exposing PDS anomalies, causing arrest of several fair price shop owners.

“Seeking information under the RTI Act has become a risky affair in Assam and other Northeastern states. In most cases, the anomalies are committed by a nexus involving officials and contractors, who engage miscreants to threaten and attack the applicants,” said Saito Basumatary of People’s Rights Forum, a Guwahati-based platform of RTI activists.

In Manipur, people asking questions under the RTI Act formed a platform to put up a united fight against harassment and delays in getting replies from authorities.

“While officials often deny or cause delay in giving information, threats and attacks on applicants have become commonplace,” said W Joykumar, convenor of RTI activist platform Transparency Initiatives, Manipur.

Northeast Law University Enrolls First Batch Of Students

Guwahati, Sep 1 : The first batch of students got enrolled in the first National Law University of the northeast in Guwahati on Tuesday.

The administration and students are hopeful that the new addition to the law universities will open up a new avenue for professional law studies in the northeast and provide scope for students of law to avail a high-quality infrastructure to compete with the best law schools any where on the globe.

Speaking to TOI on Tuesday, vice-chancellor of the National Law University, Assam, Gurjit Singh expressed his willingness to work for taking professionalism in law education to new heights in the northeastern region and especially Assam.

The classes for five-year integrated BA LLB course for the first batch would start on September 1 at the university with 25 per cent seats reserved for students of Assam.

"Undoubtedly, the law university which is the 13{+t} {+h} organization in India, would be able to cater to the needs of law students of the northeast. The Assam government and the University Grants Commission will fund various development projects to be taken up in the coming days. Funds will also be provided from the Annual Central Assistance", Singh added.

He said the world class library and the Centre of excellence is equipped with extensive study on international humanitarian law, comparative law, and consumer protection law, human rights etc.

"We would urge UGC to provide infrastructure to set up an academic staff college for training law faculties. The LLM and PhD programme will also commence from next academic session", he added.

The vice-chancellor said a memorandum of understanding will be signed with foreign universities and government-run national law schools so that students can be sent to other leading law institutes as part of exchange programmes.

Officer on special duty Virendra Mittal said an attempt is being made to shift the National Law University, Assam to permanent campus at Amingaon in North Guwahati. "The total expenditure of the project in North Guwahati is about Rs 350 crores. We have already got 21 acres allotted and more land allotment process of another 26 acres would be completed by November. Order has been made for an online law library at the university," Mittal added.

Dinesh Rajpurohit, who have come all the way from Rajasthan to get enrolled in the law university says the high quality of education in the National Law Universities have brought him to Guwahati.

"To become a successful lawyer is what in my mind today. The National Law Universities are the best", he said.

Chief Justice of Gauhati High Court, Madan B Lokur is the Chancellor of National Law University of Assam.

Little Knowledge On Northeast India Hampers Unity: Mizoram Chief Minister

Aizawl, Aug 30 : Little knowledge about the Northeast India hampered the national integration, said Mizoram Chief Minister Lal Thanhawla today.

''Most of the mainland Indians consider only Assam as the Northeast region, which proves their ignorance about the different tribes living in this region. This (ignorance) has hampered the integration of India as a whole,'' Lal Thanhawla said, while addressing a two-day festival of the Northeast tribes which began here today.

''We, the northeast people also need more exposure so that people in the rest of the country can have better knowledge of us and that will bring about oneness,'' he said.

The chief minister urged the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), who organised the festival, to organise more exposures for the northeast tribes. He thanked the ICCR regional officer, Shillong, Munish Singh for his assurance to include a Mizoram cultural troupe in the next cultural exchange programme with foreign countries.

Fourteen different tribes in the Northeast showcased their cultural dances at the ‘Dance and Music Festival,’ organised by the ICCR, in association with art and culture departments of Mizoram and Meghalaya. The second edition of the festival would be held at Shillong on September 1.

Porn Shutdown Over HIV Case

LOS ANGELES — An adult film performer has tested positive for HIV, causing porn producers to shut down shoots in Southern California as the diagnosis is confirmed through re-testing, according to an industry group.

Free Speech Coalition executive director Diane Duke told The Los Angeles Times () on Monday that her group became aware of the HIV case Saturday. http://lat.ms/mX0vin

A series of tests were being conducted on the performer to confirm the case before anyone the performer might have spread the illness to will be notified to get tested, Duke told The Associated Press.

She didn't know how long that would take.

Duke declined to release the performer's name, age or gender, citing the person's federal right to medical privacy. She also declined to say how her group learned of the case.

The case was found in an out-of-state clinic that doesn't report to California health officials, said Duke.

If the initial case is confirmed, the group will ask two generations of the person's sexual partners to get tested, meaning those who had sex with the performer and the sexual partners of those who had sex with the performer.

The voluntary industry shutdown affects porn producers in the San Fernando Valley, the heart of the multi-billion dollar American porn industry, and includes Hustler and Evil Angel's productions.

The porn industry was shut down similarly in late 2010, after porn actor Derrick Burts was diagnosed HIV positive.

Burts has since gone on to advocate for the mandatory use of condoms in porn with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

The health advocacy group and state workplace safety officials say state law mandates porn performers to use condoms to protect themselves under the same set of rules that require nurses to wear gloves in hospitals when dealing with bodily fluids.

Cal/OSHA is working to clarify the regulation to make it more specific to porn.

Earlier this month, the health advocacy group announced that it will gather 41,138 petition signatures to get the issue of condoms in porn on the June 2012 ballot.

The ballot measure would ask Los Angeles residents whether porn producers must require performers to use condoms on shoots as a condition of getting a filming permit.

"The question remains how many performers must become infected with HIV and other serous STDs before the industry will clean up its act and government will do the right thing?" said Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

The group has unsuccessfully pushed California and Los Angeles County officials to tighten enforcement of condom use on porn sets through legislative attempts, lawsuits and regulatory complaints.

How To Convert Mobile Into A Universal Remote

Your smartphone can do more than you think. With some additional hardware or apps, it can remotely start your car, control various appliances in your home, control A/V equipment like TVs & home theatre systems and even your PC.

Read on to find about the various free apps and systems available today that allow your smartphone to work as a universal remote control.

Remotely control your home

Crestron is one of the leading brands for home automation. Although each installation usually comes with its own universal remote control, Crestron also provides apps for iOS and Android devices.
These apps connect to the Crestron system using Wi-Fi (for seamless access anywhere ) and allow you to remotely control any home appliances or gizmos that are wired into the system. Plus, you need not be at home to control your air conditioning or lighting for instance - you could do it from anywhere you have a data connection . The Android and iPhone/iPod Touch apps are free, but the iPad app costs a hefty $99.

Remotely start your car

Viper SmartStart for your Car enables you to lock, unlock or start your car using an iOS, Android or BlackBerry smartphone. For this to work, you need a Viper security system and smartphone module installed in your car.
The app also remembers where your car was parked and shows directions on your phone using augmented reality. Currently , SmartStart only works with US-based GSM providers, though the company is working on making the app work anywhere. For more information check out www.viper.com

Remote apps for PC/ Mac

Mobile operating systems offer a number of applications to control various aspects of your PC/MAC. You can choose to control just the mouse pointer and input text or you could control various applications such as the audio player, video player, presentations and so on.
Each app requires a small server application installed on your PC/MAC, which is also available for free.

Android

Gmote is a free application that lets you control your PC, MAC or Linux music and video player over Wi-Fi . It shows various controls on screen with the album art in the background and can even be used to browse and select files for playback.
Another free (ad-supported ) app called WIN-Remote offers connections to your Windows PC over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It provides control over almost everything - browser, task manager, video/audio players, image viewers and even presentations.
If you want to control specific media players, the Android Market and Apple App Store have free apps for common ones like VLC, Windows Media Player, Media Player classic, XBMC, iTunes & Foobar.

iPhone/iPod Touch

One of the best free remote apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch is Logitech Touch Mouse. It connects to your machine over Wi-Fi and converts the 3.5-inch display into an input device. You get full control over the mouse pointer with multi-touch gestures thrown in too.
An onscreen keyboard can be used to enter text input when required. Apple's own free app called 'Remote' is perfect when you just want to control iTunes.
Similarly, there are apps like i-Clickr to control presentations , VLC remote for VLC player, PowerDVD remote and a Remote X app that lets you control a variety of media players with a single interface.

BlackBerry

Vectir's Bluetooth/Wi-Fi Remote allows you to launch and control VLC Media Player, iTunes, Windows Media Player and even PowerPoint presentations . It even has a remote desktop feature to view and control the desktop from your BlackBerry or Android device. Like Logitech's offering, mouse and keyboard input can be done using your phone.
The app can be used for free for the first 30 days, after which you will need to purchase a license for the desktop server app (a one-time purchase of $10) from www.vectir.com. Unlike the others, Vectir also supports Java ph

Hotel Romp is Match Of The Day

Into touch ... couple

Footie fans cheer as couple score

A ROMPING couple were seen by thousands of footie fans as they scored in their hotel room overlooking the stadium.

The crowd at the top-flight clash cheered as they watched the off-pitch performance through the window.

The woman was later identified as glamour model Alicia Tenderness, 26. She said: "We thought it was tinted glass and that we could see outside, but not vice-versa.

"When we checked out the next morning the lady on the front desk was very cold, but we did not understand why.

"We only realised on Monday when we read it in the newspaper."

Footie officials blasted the couple. Philippe Bormans of Belgian team Sint-Truiden – who were playing at home to rivals Lokeren – said: "There are children in the crowd. We do not want this repeated."

Hotel boss Luc Withofs vowed to get stewards to monitor the windows.

But Alicia hit back: "He should put tinted glass in the rooms."

Alicia Tenderness