One Night Stands & Labels

In the straight world if you're a guy and you sleep around a lot the labels you gain tend to be more positive like "legend" or "stud". It seems like girls who sleep around a lot get negative labels like "slut" or "whore". Not that I agree with any of this, but this seems to be the way it ends up being.

My question is, how does it work in the gay world? Do the labels tend to be more postitive or negative?

[joeyconnick]

I think it totally depends on the context, i.e. the group of people you hang out with. In a lot of the glbtq youth-related groups I've been a part of (including EC), people have really swallowed the stereotype that all gay guys are promiscuous so the environments have tended to be really sex-negative, so people who indicate they sleep with a lot of people would get labelled "slut" or "whore" in a very negative way because people feel the need to prove that people are not stereotypical (and to seem less subcultural and to indicate that they "belong" to the mainstream, which is also very [on the surface and in terms of lip service] anti-sex).

Often (and I'm not talking about EC in this case because I have no idea about members' actual sexual activities) it's been my experience that many of the people who most stringently police other people's sexual histories are the same people who tend to have a lot of sex with a lot of people themselves--the biggest difference between them and the people they put down for being sluts being that the people they attack are open and honest about their sexual activities and desires, whereas the people doing the scapegoating are nasty, manipulative hypocrites.

So yes, this is kinda personal for me: in the period shortly after I was out, I had people talking behind my back about what a slut I was, people who I knew for sure were actually being as "slutty" if not moreso than I was. But instead of pretending I was all "pure and innocent," I was actually honest about the number of people I was sleeping with and the amount of sex I was having.

So my experience has been that gay guys who sleep around (from the mid-90s forward) tend to get hit with the negative lables quite a bit. I don't know about the situation for queer women. I would guess (but this is only a guess) it's really hard to escape the overall "women who enjoy sex and have a lot of it are dirty sluts" mode of thinking is really hard to escape, though.

Frankly, and I know this was more a common way of thinking in the 70s, I don't really understand the point of being gay and coming out if you're not going to take some of the sexual liberation benefits of that whole movement--I mean, gay people have to put up with a TON of shit, usually, so to me the least people could do is use the situation to dump some of the Victorian-era "morality" about sex and actually treat it as a positive, fun thing. Obviously sexual liberation can be totally overdone but I'm sorry--if I like a guy and he likes me back and we're both not otherwise involved with people, what the heck is the harm?

Anyway, so apparently the number of people I've had sex with is quite high by some standards. Of course, I happen to know it's super-low by other standards. Things like this are always very relative.

My very favourite definition of "slut," though, is "someone who has more sex than you" because honestly, that says it all right there.

[Lexington]

>>>My very favourite definition of "slut," though, is "someone who has more sex than you" because honestly, that says it all right there.

True dat. But I've found that, conversely, "prude" is "someone who has less sex than you".

Lex

[Corny]

As long as you only sleep with guys that the other guys consider "hot" - they most likely will look at you with envy instead of giving you labels.
That being said .. don't take this "advice" to serious

[RaeofLite]

I have a female friend who knows I'm gay, and for some reason thinks that if I'm single and I sleep with several girls, I'm not a whore. Yet she thinks that if a gay guy friend of ours does with several dudes he's some sort of slut/player. So... I don't know.

Are we talking player as in "Shane" from the Lword? Mmm Shane...

..jk.

[L|L]

I consider myself a whore, though I don't get paid (most of the time.)

[shimmersky]

My friends tend to high-five me when I have sex with women. lol.

[BrownBoi89]

My friends and I are weird. We call everyone in our group who sleeps around a slut regardless of gender and we mean it in a positive way, similar to stud :S

[Austin]

I'd say they are a slut which is negative imo.

[littledinosaurs]

It can really go either way and usually depends on if you like the person in the first place.

Also society is kind of fucked; we give negative labels to people who freely engage in sex and to people who abstain from it.

Slut, I feel, (especially in WeHo) has two meanings! There is the "stud" meaning of slut where everyone knows that a certain person sleeps with a lot of people but everyone wants to sleep with that person so it's OK? Then there is "slut" where everyone knows that that person sleeps with a ton of people and it's actually a bit gross, b/c the person isn't safe, they have had multiple STIs and maybe even be HIV+. It doesn't make sense, b/c the "stud" could have STIs and be HIV+ as well....gay people are petty and I think labels ALL around are stupid...

I agree that people should be able to fuck who the hell they want and no one else has the right to judge them. It is when people are reckless and not playing safe that it becomes a problem for everyone else! I find that in most gay communities, people recycle through people and you may hook up with someone who has already hooked up with 20 other people you know in that same community!