Suzanne Portnoy

‘Why don’t you just stop shagging and make yourself a nice cup of soup, or take up knitting or embroidery?’ Why? Because sex is free and it’s fun, it makes me feel good and desirable. That’s why. Is it just me or does it seem as if there’s a growing movement of middle-class, middle-aged sexless women keen to patronise middle-class, middle age women like myself who enjoy sex. If anything is going to prevent women from achieving sexual freedom, it’s other women themselves.

Today Vanessa Feltz, a woman who doesn’t seem to be averse to sleeping with all types of men (her recent boyfriends have included a personal trainer and a musician no one has heard of) berated me for enjoying casual sex. She implied that any sexual encounter that didn’t lead to a permanent relationship wasn’t worth the effort and that enjoying the company of men with larger than average penises was vulgar. I can only assume she was being combative for the sake of it because otherwise the words ‘pot,’ ‘kettle’ and ‘black’ spring to mind.

It makes me angry when women my own age give me a hard time about the choices that I’ve made, especially when they can clearly see I’m neither deranged nor unhappy. There’s an assumption that because I’ve opted out of monogamy that I must either be lying to myself or have a screw loose. ‘Don’t you want to settle down with one person?’ is a phrase I hear all too often when what they really mean is, ‘Why can’t you just settle?’

Far too many women equate sexual relationships with real relationships when one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other. The best lovers I have are with men that I have seen perhaps once or twice a month… for years. For too long, women have imbued sex with all sorts of special powers. Sex is sex. The best fuck ever (BFE) is not necessarily the person with whom you want to spend the rest of your life. He’s simply the BFE.

How many times have I heard younger girlfriends wax lyrical about the BFE, a guy they met the night before after a few too many drinks in the pub, and then without skipping a beat proclaim that they think he may be ‘the one.’ Three months later (or less) the relationship is over and then it’s on to the next one and the next and the next. A year later they’ve had the same number of partners as I’ve had in the same period of time. The only difference is that mine run concurrently.

It seems to me that no matter what age, most women still want to believe in the Cinderella fantasy and the power of love, sexual fidelity and the happy ever after, even when all the statistics prove otherwise. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that in most cases monogamy doesn’t work and that sexual fidelity is a myth. If the number of sexless, patronising women I’ve met over the past few weeks is indicative of a wider social trend, there are a lot of husbands out there not getting any.

Isn’t it time that women stood up for each other’s personal freedom and personal choices without feeling threatened by them? Isn’t it time that they stopped living according to out of date patriarchal role models and created their own sexual rulebook? Finally, isn’t it time we stopped knitting and started having fun? How many sweaters does one girl need anyway??