Slut shaming?

I used to be so, so slut-shamey when I was young. I don’t know where it came from – I mean obviously the society I grew up in is mononormative and slut-shamey, so some of that was bound to rub off on me, but I think I went above and beyond. I was more judgy than most people around me. I thought that if someone was totally single and had a crush on more than one person at a time, they were a slutty terrible person. When my mom told me she had a big crush on actor Richard Chamberlain I was aghast that she was cheating on my father. When she wore a blouse with the top two buttons undone (no cleavage showing, still quite prim-looking, really) I was horrified that she was a slut. Maybe I was overcompensating for being poly (I was in denial about being poly, and I didn’t start living polyamorously for another couple of decades, but the desire was definitely there since at least adolescence).

At some point I saw that my thought processes were pretty misogynistic and I started working to unpack them. And later, when I finally consciously realized I wanted to live my life in a polyamorous fashion, I worked even harder at the unpacking, because obviously the idea that sex is only special when I’m the only one someone’s giving it to – or that someone’s naked body is only special if I’m the only one who gets to see it – is antithetical to polyamory. The sense of specialness needs to come from someplace other than exclusivity.

And I really thought that I had done a good job of undoing all those shitty thoughts. But now I don’t know.

When TA started going to sex clubs for random hookups, I did find myself feeling slightly threatened and soothing myself by thinking “well, sex with me is different and special because with us there’s also emotional intimacy. The random dudes aren’t getting that; they’re just putting their P in a V.” Then it became clear that she wouldn’t be having sex with me ever again because sex with randos was more interesting to her and it really threw me for a loop. I mean it’s pretty understandable to feel jealous and unwanted because my partner isn’t giving me a thing I need but gives that same thing freely to just about anyone else who asks, right? But I don’t like that I was trying to use exclusivity (in this case, that I was one of very few people who ever fucked TA with feelings involved) as a means of determining specialness. Some experienced poly people whom I really look up to have said that it’s bad to base a feeling of specialness on your relationship on an activity – “this is our restaurant and neither of us can bring anyone else here, that’s how we know that our relationship is special” type thing. And it feels like I was kinda doing this with TA.

Then again, the idea behind “don’t pin the specialness of your relationship on the activities you do together” is that what you should pin it on is the unique connection that the two of you have. Which is kinda what I was trying to do by rationalizing that she and I had emotionally connected sex so it didn’t matter what she got up to casually with other people. I think.

Another anecdote: when TA and I were first dating, she was averse to having her picture taken. Especially the idea of a sexy picture. This was trans-related; she had worries about how well she was performing her gender or whatever, and some dysphoria about her appearance. She was worried about trying to take a “sexy” pic and the recipient not finding it sexy, which would feel like a pretty profound rejection. This is all quite understandable, I think.

A while before our relationship totally tanked, TA and I had pooled our money to order some kinky shit from an Etsy store. Which means that the stuff came to her place so we only had to pay the one shipping fee, and she would give me my item later. The thing I ordered was a heretic’s fork: basically a double-ended pointy piece of metal strung on a nylon collar. You strap the collar onto the person and the pointy “fork” gets wedged between their chest and the underside of their chin, so that they can’t look down without it hurting.

When TA received the order, she messaged me a photo of herself wearing this fork-collar so I could see what it looked like. She didn’t include her face in the photo, but to my surprise and delight, she did include her naked tits. And I felt absolutely honoured that she’d decided to entrust me with that image. It’s understandable that she left her face out of the pic; I never send nudes with identifying features in them, either, just in case. Even if I trust the recipient not to leak them, someone might be passing by behind them while the pic is up on their phone or something; it’s just not worth the risk, to me. But anyway it seemed like TA was taking little fledgling steps toward thinking of herself as sexy-looking, and trusted me to find her sexy-looking, too, and so she did this unprecedented thing and shared a naked photo with me.

Buttttttt…she made a Discord server a while back for coordinating sex club outings with her friends (and, later, for planning the play party that ultimately dealt a death blow to our relationship). She invited me on there when she first made the server, and since there are also channels on it for chatting and sharing memes and stuff, I go on there sometimes for that. And I saw that around the same time she sent me that topless picture (a day or two before or a day or two after, I forget), she posted a pic on the Discord of her covered in jizz from the bukkake night she’d just attended at a club – topless and with her face fully in the frame.

And I thought, “…Oh. She didn’t send me a photo of her tits because I’m special and she trusted me. She did it because she’s increasingly obsessed with exhibitionism and I’m just one of many outlets for it.” And the photo she’d sent me lost all specialness. And I’m not sure that’s fair.

Setting aside whether I’m being slut-shamey or not, it seems very risky indeed for TA to be posting nudes on a Discord server full of random sex club acquaintances (and some people who are friends and whom she presumably finds trustworthy. But definitely also random sex club acquaintances). She works in academia and surely if such a photo were leaked it might risk her job? Even just going to sex clubs all the time to fuck in public seems kinda risky, in that one of her students might be there at some point. Maybe she would even unknowingly fuck a student at some point; her classes have hundreds of people and I doubt she knows every single face in the crowd.

I don’t think it’s residual slut-shaming tendencies talking when I say that TA’s behaviour seems increasingly compulsive and reckless to me and it’s worriesome. If you think I’m wrong, let me know.