“It makes me wonder — if I were a woman blogger who wrote about her past in the same way as I do here, would the reactions be the same? No one calls me a “slut”, after all. The worst I get called is “self-congratulatory”, which is hardly at the same level of insult!”

I don’t know. I know I use the word “slut” differently than many other people. Jokingly, when a friend refers to someone as a slut, I remark that they “say that like it’s a bad thing.” I’m trying to be clever, but only succeed in being trying…

To me, “self-congratulatory” implies pride, vanity… “slut” implies lust. On the scale of cardinal sins, pride and vanity are much worse, as I understand the system.

No, you’ve been called *much worse than “slut,” at least in my idiosyncratic use of the term.

One other thing that this post has made me realize is that I *don’t* know much about the perspectives of women who have been in these situations, and I’m finding that I’m really curious to know what their thoughts might be. Because so many men do adhere to a double standard of ‘my past was fine, yours was slutty,’ what happens when women with a colorful past don’t want to lie about it, but have a double-standarded partner? What are those conversations like? My knowledge is limited to a pool of women who won’t put up with the double standard, but I know that that’s not a position that everyone takes.

I’m also intrigued by the mental videotapes idea - the conecpt of allowing sexual memories to fade over time, and choosing to not revisit or revel in them makes sense, but a more conscious erasure is hard for me to envision.

Hugo, even if he didn’t want a long-term relationship with you, in our society the implication that she’s the sort of woman who’s “unsuitable” for a long-term relationship is still perceived as an insult.

Whoa. This seems weird and unnecessary and unlikely to succeed to me, but it could be that my understanding of monogamy isn’t “radical” in your sense. Or, it could be that since being monogamous is by far the easiest thing about relationships for me, I don’t feel the need for the extra steps. At any rate, I look forward to your future explanatory post with no small amount of curiousity.

It’s true that many "oats-sowers" do have a "madonna-whore" complex.  As I’ve posted before, I’ve always believed both men and women are entitled to equally colorful pasts.  I wrote then:

A true lover can say, “Before there was an ‘us’, there was a ‘you’ and a ‘me’, and I will never use what you did in the past against you. I honor your right to have lived the life you chose to live before we were together, and I ask that you honor my right to my past as well.” It never mattered to me, still doesn’t matter, whether I’m #1 or #101 on a woman’s "list."  To paraphrase the old song, when it comes to marriage, I don’t care whose name is before mine on that list, I just want to make sure I’m the last, just as my wife’s will always be last on mine.  The number of entries is completely irrelevant.

I’ve had several relationships that began as more casual encounters, including my relationship with my husband. With several of these, at the time when the casual part started, I didn’t expect it to go further prior to the actual sexual encounter, but sometimes I found myself changing my mind about the person, viewing them as a potential long-term partner, even if I hadn’t known them very long before.

I find it fairly likely — granted, you may know better, since you knew her better — that she may have had a similar reaction, and was hoping a one-night romance might have turned into something more. She could easily have perceived it as a slight to her suitability as a long-term mate. I know I might have taken it precisely that way: not “I can’t keep having one-night sexual encounters,” but rather “I can’t keep having sexual encounters with women like you, who are unsuitable for wives.”

Many women have encountered the dichotomy between the perceived mistresses and wives of the world. If you’ve heard it stated explicitly at least once (and many wild-oats-sowers have), it is hard not to hear it implicitly in dismissals like yours.