4 Reasons why women might not want casual sex that have nothing to do with 'biology'

Simone, the CEO of Happytoys, is talking to Carolien:

"When I first started college, I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was living on my own for the first time, constantly invited to parties, and suddenly an object of desire after being dismissed as a nerd in high school. The culture around sexuality was also different. While I had heard women called 'sluts' in high school for having casual sex, most people at my university had a liberal attitude towards sexual expression and understood the harmful consequences of sex-shaming. So, essentially, the 'hookup culture' that supposedly oppresses female students was a breath of fresh air for me.

During the first semester of my freshman year, I often had casual sex. But by the spring of that academic year, I had stopped.

I'm still trying to figure out why.

The best way to describe it is that I wanted something deeper. I found more satisfaction in evenings filled with philosophical discussions, deep conversations with friends, and art projects. While fleeting sexual encounters were physically pleasurable, they didn't give me the same sense of well-being that those other things did. I wanted a relationship that would fulfill me emotionally, intellectually, and physically – and purely physical relationships were fun, but started to feel incomplete.

However, when I tried to explain this, people didn't understand. They said that sex and love were very intertwined for women, making it difficult for us to enjoy sex without an emotional connection. But I did enjoy fleeting sexual encounters without emotions. I just enjoyed them like I enjoyed binge-watching TV series, instead of like I enjoyed writing poetry – and I didn't like that.

People told me that women bond after sex due to hormones, so it was no wonder I wanted more. But that wasn't it either. I didn't feel attached to anyone I had slept with. In fact, I felt quite detached. I didn't even know them. That was precisely part of what I didn't like about it.

Moreover, I found the theory that women bond a bit insulting to women's judgment. As a cognitive neuroscience student, I happened to know that sex can release bonding hormones in people of all genders. And while I sometimes recognized this reaction in myself, I could separate it from the feeling that I truly knew someone well or that they would be a good friend.

Because others didn't take my explanations literally, I felt like I was talking nonsense. I ignored my own reasons and explained my decision in others' language. "I longed for an emotional connection," I would say, thereby disappointing myself by confirming the stereotypes about women that I so detested. But I have spent the past few years thinking, reading, and talking about this topic, and I have come across several theories that make much more sense to me than "women bond with others."

So here are a few explanations why I (and other women, as well as many people of other genders) choose not to have fleeting sexual encounters – which have nothing to do with biological gender differences.

1. Gender minorities, such as women, face more safety risks

One possibility I first encountered in the book 'The Ethical Slut' is that women are less likely to have fleeting sexual encounters because they find themselves in an intimate situation with someone they might not be able to trust.

While most people are sexually abused by someone they know and trust, it is still common to be wary of strangers, especially since we have been taught to be. And it is hard to get in the mood if you are wondering if someone is going to sexually assault you. The possibility of being abused certainly haunted my thoughts when I sought sexual encounters. My girlfriends and I would text each other to check if everything was okay when we went home with someone after a party. We never left our drinks unattended.

We shouldn't have to take these precautions, but we live in a culture that teaches women to be constantly on guard. Given that one in three women and two in five transgender and gender non-conforming individuals experience sexual assault during their college years, we knew it would likely happen to at least one of us – probably more. And it did.

During my freshman year of college, my cousin and I met a group of guys at a party. I found one of them very handsome. We stood outside for a while and talked. Afterward, I enthusiastically went to his apartment. After some kissing, he asked me to perform oral sex on him. I said no. He begged. I said no again. He pushed my head down. I told him not to force me. He said he had never forced me. He insisted again.

At that moment, I really felt like a huge nuisance. I found it easier to just do it than to keep arguing. So I did it. And I told myself I enjoyed it. Afterward, while we were talking to his roommate, he stood behind me and made a thrusting motion to show off. "That's masculinity."

"That thing," he told me. The following weekend I tried to call him, and he told me he now had a girlfriend.

For a long time, I believed this encounter had been consensual. I thought being pressured into sex was something women just had to learn to live with. But it made me more distrustful of future one-night stands. After all, that man seemed so sweet and innocent. Who else might unexpectedly pressure me, embarrass me, and treat me like a conquest? My experience is very relatable. Even if women are not sexually abused, they often deal with partners who treat them as objects.

Going home with someone at the end of an evening is a gamble for everyone, especially for women and other gender minorities, who are more likely to be sexually assaulted and constantly told to protect themselves from assault. The decision is about much more than just whether we will have a good time. Our safety is at stake.

2. Hookup culture devalues women's pleasure

Let me be clear: my experience with casual sex, especially in college, takes place within a specific cultural norm that applies particularly to cisgender men and women having sex with each other. While casual sex can certainly occur in queer relationships, the same gender-related expectations and power dynamics do not necessarily apply, although they are sometimes mimicked and reinforced.

Within the sex culture I experienced, men, in particular, are expected to be in control. They are supposed to initiate, they are supposed to decide what happens, and they are supposed to get the most out of it. Remember that man who insisted I give him oral sex? He refused it – which, of course, he was allowed to do, but the inequality in his expectations was telling. And many women I knew had experienced the same thing.

In fact, a recent study of Canadian university students found that 63% of men had received oral sex during their last sexual encounter – but only 44% of women had. The gap in oral sex could partly explain the orgasm gap between heterosexual men and women, which is larger in casual sex than in relationships. In casual sex, men have three orgasms for every one a woman has. In relationships, the ratio is only 1.25:1. This is because the dominant, cis-heteronormative casual sex culture prioritizes men's pleasure over women's.

So, when a woman has a casual sex date, a possible scenario is that she is assaulted, and if she escapes that, she is treated as an afterthought. There aren't many good options. If you're not sure your partner even cares about your pleasure, the risk of being treated disrespectfully and objectified doesn't really seem worth it.

3. Women are taught not to have too many sexual partners

Sexual shaming is a real problem. And it has drastic consequences for women's lives. A study, which unfortunately adhered to a binary gender classification, found that teenage girls lost friends if they had sex, while boys gained friends. Another study showed that women are just as eager to have a fleeting sexual relationship as men – if they know the sex will be good and they won't be judged.

Indeed: when women are freed from these senseless societal norms, they behave "like men" – which makes it all the less credible that men are naturally more interested in fleeting sexual relationships. That belief stigmatizes normal human behavior for one gender. Funnily enough, the explanation that sex is taboo initially didn't appeal to me. I've certainly heard people criticize women, including myself, about their fleeting sexual relationships, but I didn't think it influenced my own behavior. I thought I had shaken it off. After all, I write about sex and relationships. I don't even tidy up my sex toys when friends come over.

Now, at 35, I'm finally beginning to realize how much sex-shaming has affected me. Because even during my 'most promiscuous' phase, I imposed a limitation on myself: I would not have penetrative sex unless I was in love and in a committed relationship. This form of shame is based on a heteronormative definition of sex, where everything else 'doesn't count'. Manual sex was okay. Oral sex was okay. But a penis would change me. I was proud of adhering to this rule, and I shouldn't have been. The number of sexual partners you have says nothing about you.

To this day, I have nightmares where I'm making out with someone and the penis accidentally slips inside, and I panic as I recalculate my 'number' of partners. Throughout my adult life, I have strived to keep this number low to feel self-disciplined and in control. If it were to get high, I would feel like a failed woman. As someone who has overcome anorexia, I can say there are many similarities between how I thought about my number of sexual partners and how I thought about my weight.

There's no one I would talk about sex with who would judge me based on my number. But it does strongly affect how I think about myself. And I grew up in a secular, liberal environment. This is not the worst – just standard, society-wide sex-shaming.

I'm still trying to untangle my genuine lack of interest in casual sex from my irrational feeling that every new penis introduced into my body will somehow change it. I maintain that more played a role in my decision to abstain from casual sex than just sex-shaming, but the more I think about it, the more I realize how much the sexual double standard played a part.

4. That's just not the kind of relationship they want

Ultimately, it doesn't really matter why a woman doesn't want casual sex. She should be able to decide she's not interested, without her decision being used to prove a point about gender differences. This hit home for me when I started talking to men who also weren't interested in casual sex. These conversations confirmed that even if my reasons aligned with a gender stereotype, they weren't necessarily attributable to my gender. I could want an emotional connection with sexual partners without reducing that desire to female hormones.

And my story didn't have to be comparable to anyone else's. This could just be who I was, as an individual. It's hard to do something 'feminine' as a woman without feeling responsible for confirming people's prejudices about women. And it's hard to do anything at all as a woman without it being labeled as 'feminine'.

For me, abstaining from fleeting sexual encounters is not an expression of femininity, nor is it a result of biological instincts. My reasons run much deeper. I prefer relationships that are intellectually stimulating, emotionally intimate, trusting, safe, and communicative. And while some people might find these qualities in fleeting sexual encounters, hookup culture doesn't promote them, and the risk of being assaulted or treated disrespectfully doesn't seem worth seeking out.

Others' reasons may be different. Asexual spectrum women, for example, might not be attracted to people at all – or not to people they don't have a close bond with. To say they're not interested in casual sex simply because they're women ignores their identity. Whatever a woman's reasons, she has the right to have them treated as her reasons, and not be forced into a narrative about why women reject casual sex.

I am still figuring out what types of relationships suit me best and exploring why I have made the choices I have. It will be an ongoing process. But I deserve the chance to go through that process and get to know myself, and not a flattened stereotype of female behavior."