A Feminist watches Love Island: episode 14 & 15 - Maura's 'number'

Why do people care how many people Maura has slept with?

Everyone in the Love Island villa was surprised and weirdly impressed when she told everyone yesterday: 

"Well, I've only slept with five people. I swear on my life."

After Tommy asked her: "On a scale of one to ten how much do you love sex?"

Weird question Tommy but I guess it is better than straight out asking her “how many people have you slept with?”

We need to just stop asking that question, just stop.

That number doesn’t mean anything.

After all what’s the ‘correct’ number?

If someone has slept with “too few” people, we see them as some kind of chaste nun (as the Sun has since called Maura); but if they have slept with a number we deem “too many,” we feel entitled to judge and shame them.

The ‘number’ idea is a trap, made to shame and guilt people with different sexual experiences and beliefs around sex than you into feeling as though they have done something wrong.

That fact that Maura felt the need to come out with her ‘number’ shows she felt she had to prove something, she had to prove that even though she likes talking about sex, she was still a ‘good girl’. She was still ‘worthy’ and ‘respectable’.

Your sexual history does not increase or decrease your worth or respectability.

Later, Maura says the empowering statement “Women enjoy it as much as men”.

Good for her!

However it would have been more empowering if she had said “it doesn’t matter how many people I slept with” and refused to put a number on it.

Molly-Mae was the most surprised by Maura’s ‘number’ saying:

"What? Come off it. You are messing."

Maura replied: "Hello - I was in a nine-year relationship and a two-year relationship. How would I have slept with any more?" (Translation: I am acceptable because I have had long term relationships.)

Molly-Mae answered: "I thought you'd be in the f**king numbers. The numbers.

"You're so, you know, sensual. You love it. I thought the number would be higher than five. But kudos to you. Proud of ya. Keep those numbers low."

Molly-Mae is giving Maura respect and is proud of her for not having sex with too many people.

Seriously?!

Because a woman’s value is linked to how many people she has slept with, because for some reason it is an achievement for a woman to have sex with less people?

How do you think this conversion would have gone if Maura was a man?

Another problematic part of the ‘number,’ what do we ‘count’ as a sexual encounter?

This is demonstrated by Maura later adding: "Oh wait, I can say six. I was with a girl."

Tommy interjected: "I'm sorry - what?"

She replied: "I was with a girl after a night out. She was straight but we slept together.”

The camera, of course, focused on Tommy’s reaction to this because the man’s reaction to a woman having a lesbian experience is what really matters here.

Women having sex with women is portrayed over and over again in our culture as being solely for the male gaze.

Maura identifies herself and her partner in this as ‘straight,’ perpetuating the idea that such sex is purely for the enjoyment of men. Bisexual and lesbian women are constantly hypersexualised and objectified within porn, media and wider society. It is as if sex can only exist if it is for the consummation of cisgender men.

Maura is certainly sex positive but she is existing within the same society as the rest of us, she knew the reaction that revealing her female sexual encounter would have. She is using it gain sexual ‘points’ with the men in the villa without thinking about the damage she might be causing by continuing the idea that women who have sex with women are ‘straight’.

It is up her how she identifies her sexuality, but I can imagine this conversion would anger every lesbian woman who has had a man try and ‘turn’ them.

Women who have sex with women deserve better.