In Defense of the One-Night Stand

I want these for Christmas.

Due to a recent medical issue, I've had to reconsider an important sexual boundary, and I've caught myself worrying a lot lately about how I'll communicate this to future partners in bed.

As the fake scenarios play out in my head, I imagine my partner being frustrated, confused, patronizing, callous. "Why is that my problem?," I can picture them saying, or, "so what?", with an annoyed look. "What does that have to do with me?"

But our boundaries and needs in bed DO have something to do with our partners. Sex is important, and special, and intimate, and we deserve more from our partners than treating our bedroom activities like a transactional game of "you scratch my back, I scratch yours" (and our partners deserve more than that too). This is not the same thing as saying we should only sleep with people we trust. In fact, I'm asking the opposite: should our cynicism and fear of other people stop us from having good sex?

It's a common rhetoric in popular culture that sex is like a battlefield, especially for women: you have to prioritize your own orgasm because your partner won't, take your pleasure where you must, even "use" someone's body for your own enjoyment. The sex is broken down into the question of "did you come?", and the people themselves are broken down to to their components (size, shape, length). Though the orgasm gap between genders is a real and serious issue, and it IS important that you advocate for your own pleasure, we've turned our sexual partners into our enemies on this battlefield rather than facing our real opponent: the patriarchy.

The solution to the systematic devaluing of (particularly female) pleasure is not to objectify our partners like we are objectified, but to instead work towards a new culture where casual sex is not synonmous with a lack of boundaries and where we can still be viewed as human beings. I would not be asking too much of my partner for them to treat me with respect and compassion by making room for my needs, and I would want any partner of mine to feel safe asking the same of me.

Here is about where I feel the need to add the requisite, "no, guys, this doesn't mean you have to save it for marriage, I promise! I'm cool and hip and I get laid!", but even that is patriarchal bullshit. In our polarized culture, the topic of casual sex is basically impossible to address, so if you want to tell someone to take a chill pill it's basically like telling them they're a no-good harlot. It's an old message: if you're not a slut, you're a prude; if you're not a Madonna, you're a whore; if you're not having mixed-gender orgies with total strangers four nights a week, you're basically a nun, etc, etc... But like so many other false dichotomies peddled by our warped society, this rhetoric falls apart under even the slightest examination. We can set boundaries during sex without being uptight and virginal. We can have sex with strangers without opening ourselves up to a warzone.

Society argues that it is the one-night stand itself that causes this dichotomy. If you're unhappy with casual sex, then abstain and you'll be fine: obviously, you couldn't handle it, so leave it to the professionals, sweetheart! This is also patriarchal bullshit. You are not defective because you didn't enjoy something that you weren't meant to enjoy. None of us were made to enjoy casual sex, and in fact I'd argue that "casual sex" doesn't even exist!

When, in this day and age, are any of us casual about anything? As societal standards push us further and further into a landscape of performative nonchalance, we ironically become more and more invested. Though our sexual encounters may not be taking place within the bounds of a committed relationship, we still devote large amounts of time and energy to these encounters. Was I "good"? Did he think I was leading him on? What did she think of my body?

Though our culture tells us unconcerned, noncomittal, who-gives-a-fuck nonchalance in bed is what's natural, I don't know a single person who actually operates this way. We as a species are not meant to be nonchalant. We are supposed to give a fuck. This applies to both men and women, the sexually experienced and sexually inexperienced, the conventionally attractive and unattractive. There is no way out of caring, no matter what society says.

So what about one-night stands? The problem with one-night stands, I think, arises when we assume that we have to be best friends with someone to recognize their common humanity and treat them with dignity and respect. Society says a one-night stand is innately unhealthy because it isn't intimate. To this I'd argue: saying a one night stand can't be intimate presupposes that it's impossible to be intimate with a stranger, when in fact we are intimate with strangers all the time.

We do not need to know someone's past, their likes and dislikes, or even their name to feel an intimate connection with them, and devaluing someone as a drunk mistake instead of a human being isn't fair regardless of whether you met yesterday or four years ago. Even if society has told us over and over that you should get out of the kitchen if you can't handle the heat, all people deserve to be treated well in bed. Regardless of commitment. Regardless of how long you've known each other. Regardless of everything. Fuck the kitchen and fuck the heat. I'm tired of nonchalance.

So if (when) I have to set these boundaries with a new partner, I'm not going to be nonchalant about it. I don't want my pleasure to be a game of checks-and-balances, trading sexual acts like Pokemon cards to satisfy someone who clearly doesn't care enough about a stranger to give up their seat on the bus. Fuck that. And if it doesn't work out, there's always another stranger around the corner.