graphic by kayleigh woltal
Everything I knew about sex — before having it myself — I either learned from my best friend’s older sister or the secret Tumblr I actively used until junior year of high school. I considered myself a half-virgin when I started college, which just means that once when I was seventeen, the girl I never actually dated tried to hook up with me in her twin bed while a sitcom played in the background — I made her stop when I couldn’t stomach the laugh tracks any longer.
For the next four years, I almost exclusively hooked up with people who would not care if I lived or died. When I turned 22, I told myself that I would only have sex with someone if she knew my last name, but broke that promise almost instantly. Worse, it was to a girl that not only did not know my full name, but who was also in an open relationship with her girlfriend of five years, which she conveniently forgot to mention. And the best part? I found out about said high school sweetheart while I was literally in her bed. Fuck you, Alexis.
I am telling you all of this to say that I don’t think that I am built for hookup culture, but realized it too late. Despite committing myself each year to a Hot Girl Summer™, I feel guilty talking to more than one person at a time. I redownload Tinder just to delete it three days later, overwhelmed and anxious and a little repulsed by the forwardness I’ve allowed internet strangers to approach me with, the girls who detail what they’d like their boyfriend to do to my body, the unsolicited photos, the plunge straight to sex. I posted a thirst trap for the very first time a few weeks ago and had a panic attack when I scrolled through who had seen it — all the random men I hadn’t heard from in years who had liked it.
I think that most of what I did in the name of sexual liberation was in fact just objectification, co-opted as feminism. It was just something to do to prove that I am not the same, prudish girl I was in high school. I felt that since I had spent the first 16 years of my life in the closet, I had to make up for lost time — for the lack of experience I had in comparison to my straight friends. Living in a small town, in a family that didn’t fully “get” (their words) queerness, made it so that I was solely focused on getting out after graduation. Then, when I finally did, I wanted to catch up, and quickly, without much regard for my emotional well-being. I was so enthralled by being myself and being around other queer people that I didn’t take into account how these new experiences affected me on a deeper level.
Throughout college, I conflated #empowerment with objectifying myself because I didn’t know the difference. I still don’t really know. I’m afraid that this will come across as slut-shaming (if it does, please know that I absolutely don’t mean it to, and I apologize). I guess I thought that I was impervious to the way that hookup culture has distorted my sense of intimacy because I am a lesbian, because all of the women that I’ve had sex with are good people. Maybe I should have realized I was wrong when I could only hook up with someone when drunk. Or maybe when I froze up the first time I ever had sex with someone who genuinely cared about me, right before kicking her out of my apartment. Looking back, I’m not ashamed of having the experiences that I’ve had, but rather just wish that I hadn’t indoctrinated myself with the warped etiquette of casual sex and understood that what I was stepping into wasn’t one-size-fits-all. In the end, I drank the Kool-Aid, wrongfully believing that it was the cure for all of my insecurities, all of my attachment issues; all of the ways that I’ve been wronged by misogyny in the past.
Meaningless sex is not the one-size-fits-all feminist solution for navigating the patriarchy that it’s made out to be, and queer women and gender noncomforming people are not immune to the imperceptible damage it can have on a person’s sense of self and intimacy if they’re not 100% down for casual hookups. I can’t say what I’ve learned from hookup culture except that it isn’t for everyone or isn’t the one right answer to purity culture. Like all things in sex and relationships, it’s more nuanced than that, and until I learn that for myself, I think I’ll have to retire my hoe era. City girls, painfully, not up.