the escapade with Bob, I asked Lucy what motivates her to offer herself no-strings, when inevitably she’ll want strings. ‘Feelings are NOT ALLOWED,’ she told me over sushi. ‘Even though we wish they were. But since they’re not allowed, we don’t go with them. But we have them. And so we’re confused. And fragmented.’
Of Bob, she explained: ‘That was casual sex but it was fine because I didn’t have any expectations. The worst is when you take a guy home and have expectations. With this guy I didn’t cry. So that was a win. So I say empowered, but what I mean is that it just wasn’t a disaster.’
The rise of the NSA creed has its roots in a culture that has turned sex into an anecdotal accessory, a must-have store of experience, and a branded display of power, as determined by the status of the person you’ve shagged or the quantity of ‘shagees’. Sex is the social currency (it’s what people talk about most), sexualisation is the social and entertainment aesthetic (advertising, magazines, posters, cereal boxes, newspapers are a jamboree of limbs and post-baby, pre-summer, post-break-up bikini bodies), porn is the private backdrop (‘A Billion Wicked Thoughts’, as per the name of the recent massive study of internet porn by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam), and choice of prospective sexual partners is almost infinite, thanks to the internet. As usual, women’s bodies, preferably naked or near enough, are at the centre of this highly visual culture of hypersexuality.
Women and the rise of the one-night stand
Modern female one-night-standers are riding the wave started by the feminists of the 1970s, who wanted us to have sexual freedom and a chance to explore our sexual natures beyond the strictures and servitude of mid-century wifehood. But those feminists split into warring factions: crudely divided into the ‘sex-positive’ (those in favour of porn as a slice of the sexual freedom cake) and the ‘sex-negative’ (those who saw porn as degrading to women). For various reasons, such as having the extremely rich Hugh Hefner on side, the sex-positive, pro-porn group won out, and their influence evolved into what many girls and women today call feminism – i.e., stripping, shagging, ‘choosing’ to use their own bodies for public or pornographic enjoyment. This is a deeply simplistic account, but I think it’s essential to note that the NSA norm originated – however perversely or ironically – from the brains and hearts of some of the 20th century’s noblest feminists.
Unsurprisingly, one-night stands have risen sharply. According to the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, in 1990, 53 per cent of men and 79 per cent of women considered one-night stands to be wrong. Ten years later only a third of men and half of women held that view.
Teenagers – tomorrow’s adults – are leading the charge. Teen specialist Raychelle Lohmann notes in Psychology Today that high school relationships are being replaced by a hook-up culture, where no-strings pulling rules. They are to become the women for whom Natasha Walter says, ‘having many sexual partners without much emotional commitment is often seen as the most authentic way to behave’.
It’s not that this kind of sex has been digested wholly by society – Hollywood, for one, is not comfortable with it. That doesn’t mean it’s not obsessed with it. Consider three recent films whose protagonists begin with a seeming paradise of strings-free sex but end up choosing monogamy: No Strings Attached has Natalie Portman’s character coming round from a booty call mentality to a relationship; Hall Pass has Owen Wilson’s totty-ogling husband given free rein by his wife to go off with other women for a week, and Friends with Benefits stars Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake using each other for sex.
All these films want to show us that no-strings sex is not a good idea – unless it’s leading to love. It’s a nice sentiment, but by showing repeatedly that shagging for shagging’s sake is one way into a happy, romantic ending (after all, who wouldn’t want to steal the heart of Ashton Kutcher?), Hollywood is, as it’s always done, giving us a fairy tale that has very, very little to do with reality. (Unless, of course, you look like Mila Kunis or Natalie Portman.)
NSA sex: the reality
Inevitably, raunch culture has taken a toll on the way women see themselves in relation to sex. We are voracious seekers of answers to the question ‘Am I hot?’, and tend to seek validation externally rather than internally. I know that when I go out hunting down a man, or hoping to be hunted, I’m looking for the thrill of a compliment – not of my brains, but of my beauty, or more specifically, my sexual allure, as much as for intimacy.
So for many women (although certainly not all), that quaint old duo of sex and love has been decoupled, leaving us performing sex for sex’s sake in a mechanical vacuum with our inner sexual impressions, feelings and needs somewhere tucked under the carpet, away from the public and the male eye. Putting the two back on the same track, if not the same train, feels much better when your self-esteem has been worn down by a single spell. It also helps with raising the quality (i.e., human element), rather than the quantity of sexual contact.
The sense of numbness and dissatisfaction that women experience in casual encounters is palpable and ruinous. Lillian, 28, told me she actually weeps during casual sex, such is her feeling of disconnect.
‘The amount of times I’ve had sex and cried and the person hasn’t noticed … I’m so detached it’s bananas. I’ll cry, waiting for him to notice. The callousness and detachment you feel is astounding. Sometimes I feel that I have no other option to express myself.’
What NSA sex does is just that: clamps down on your options to express yourself. Things got so bad that Lillian had started on a sort of Man Diet of her own. When I had a coffee with her a few weeks after the crying confession, she said she was now asking herself, ‘Why should I sleep with someone?’ rather than ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ I shared the Man Diet’s ‘say no to NSA sex’ rule, suggesting that she should not be embarrassed to send NSA wannabes packing. And that if she chose only to have sex with men that were offering her what she clearly needed emotionally (i.e., some degree of familiarity and affection), she’d feel infinitely better overall. Nor would she be missing out on anything apart from the odd bout of cystitis. Whereas previously she’d been having sad sex to prove something – that she is desirable – she found that not having sex (for the moment) was the thing that actually made her feel desirable. After giving the Man Diet a go (she did ‘Refuse to Have NSA Sex alongside ‘Do Something Lofty’ and ‘Dwell on Your Sense of Self’), I’m proud to report that her days of sobbing mid-sex are over. She still hooks up with men she’s not attached to and vice-versa, but having recognised that for her there is something uniquely alienating in intercourse, she stops at your trusty old foreplay. She now seems so much more relaxed and happy. Go Man Diet!
Just as Lillian did, many women feel numb or detached during non-intimate sex. But luckily, her story shows that you can work on it and improve your emotional experience of sexual contact pretty quickly.
Like Lillian, Lisa, 31, is in dire need of the Man Diet. I include her story because it so perfectly – and woefully – captures that detachment the modern sexual woman needs to combat. Lisa told me that she has sex with her eyes closed because not being face to face with an actual person helps her remain thoroughly detached and tough throughout. The one time she did open her eyes – with a boyfriend – she saw him looking everywhere but at her, and promptly closed them again.
Wham bam
Lisa’s a lovely girl, very warm, clearly sensitive, and open. And yet, she says defiantly, as though having subconsciously taken on the male preference for ‘wham bam’ sex: ‘I’m not a big cuddler – especially if I don’t like the guy.’ Also she says she ‘loves’ rough sex. ‘Doggy style is my favourite position,’ she says, obedient again to male preferences. Why does she close her eyes, why doesn’t she like to cuddle? ‘Because it’s all about me. It’s my moment.’ If that was the case, you’d think she’d at least be getting some serious ‘me-time’ pleasure out of it, but Lisa has never orgasmed with a man. ‘The truth is, we’re playing the men’s game,’ she says. ‘They’ve got all the rules set up to suit them. We can fight it or match it – so I match it. I’m a postmodern feminist – I don’t think we need to be like men, we’re good as we are etc etc, but … with sex it’s different.’