Nice girls don't

I haven't been online much the last couple of weeks, due firstly to the start of term and thus a several-foot-long reading list; and secondly to riding 375 miles (in one go) on a bike (now, that's masochism).

I've been thinking lately about the indoctrination that women, in particular, get (from family, school, society) about sex. The "nice girls don't" idea.

There's plenty of evidence that the double standard is still alive and well - see Essin' Em's recent post about sex on the first date. And I think a fair amount of what Bitchy rails about in femdom is to do with the idea that women aren't supposed to like or enjoy sex. That to have an active sex life (rather than just doing the ice-queen thing and pushing male subs around) is somehow wrong, or unworthy, or unfeminine.

This sucks. In case you were wondering. But just because something sucks doesn't mean that it doesn't affect us - however much we may try to resist or get past it (and the very fact that so many people have to put that effort in sucks).

As a teenager I was pretty clear that sexual activity was a very complicated tightrope, both in terms of my peer group (a little was OK, even admirable; a lot and you were a slut. And not in the Ethical Slut reclaiming way.) and my family (my mother's attitude was pretty explicitly "nice girls don't" and "if you sleep around no one will want a relationship with you"^*.

That's just, y'know, vanilla sex. What about SM? If nice girls don't even have regular sex, or not much of it, or not with many people, what about the kinky stuff?

I've sometimes wondered if in fact this is part of why I get off on sub/bottom stuff - the classic "I have to do this, I'm being made to do this" idea. Taking control of one's sexuality can be scary at the best of times; that much more so when you're also flying in the face of a significant amount of conditioning.

For me, sadism is almost easier to handle than the sexual side of things. Maybe because that is so far outside the norm, and the connection (for me) between sadism and sex is complicated enough, that it's also outside that early social conditioning.

Of course, sure, I'm not a teenager any more; and I don't think there's anything wrong with sex, or the amount of sex I've had (certainly enough that plenty of people would label me promiscuous, and mean it perjoratively). I don't care about being a "nice girl" in that sense. Or in most other senses.

But the social conditioning we get fed at that age isn't always easy to get past; especially when it is, still, backed up by the wider social world we exist in right now (even if not by my own close social groups). There are times when it hits you; usually when you're down already (or the morning-after, when you head to work in yesterday's clothes and you start to doubt yourself and your part in the interaction, and to feel embarrassed at being open to someone...^**).

And in some ways I do care about being a nice girl. Not in the sexual sense, or in most of the "traditional female role" senses (sod that). But nice is something that I do think of myself as - in the sense of being good to people, being kind and considerate and so on. (Which is not incompatible with beating the shit out of someone when that seems to be the thing to do, I hasten to add.)

The mental water is muddy.

So, I carry on struggling to disentangle those groups of things, and to be confident about my sexuality. I'm not all the way there yet, all the time. But hey, I'm also not even 30 yet. I've a ways to go.


* She would probably have said "marry you", but since I've been saying since I was about 11 that I have no intention of getting married, that wouldn't have worked well.
** And some of this isn't so much nice-girls-don't, as the fear of vulnerability again. But that's another post.