Everybody's favorite loudmouthed Korean actress/author/fashion designer/comedienne/LGBT activist, Margaret Cho concisely and charmingly defended her pan-sexual sluttiness on the The Wendy Williams Show. Ms. Williams ever-so-tactfully led with a question that actually sounds pretty fun to answer (at least for me), "So, let's talk about your sexuality…" Her response was predictably priceless and fierce: "I don't like to say I'm gay or I'm straight. I'm just slutty." Considering the recent hubbub over women's reproductive health, the Rush Limbaugh v. Sandra Fluke maelstrom, international SlutWalks, and the endlessly-discussed place of women's sexuality in society, it is oddly refreshing to hear a forty-plus-year-old woman talking about her sexuality as though it were something really… fun. And healthy. And grown up.
See, Cho is married to a straight man, but has a boyfriend, and her husband has a girlfriend, but she and her husband don't sleep together, even though they are still married. Got that? She claims that monogamy is pretty much impossible for her: she'd prefer "to just hit it wherever I am and (with) whoever is in front of me." The thing is, her relationship style, while unconventional, is not as rare or "out there" as it might seem. Negotiating the parameters of any relationship can be (and usually is) a difficult dance that requires communication, compromise, a healthy dose of GGG, and a lot of trust, but navigating an open relationship requires all that, but with multiple partners.
Juggling all those boundaries, sexualities, and relationship structures can be taxing and confusing. Tristan Taormino, sex educator, porn director and author of, Opening Up: A Guide for Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships, encourages a practical approach to polyamory at openingup.net, and there are approximately one million places on the internet to find communities of the polyamorous. With celebrities such as Tilda Swinton famously functioning in stable open relationships, it's a wonder we don't see more of this: Cho's quip, "I can't stop, so I'd rather just be honest," likely resonates with a ton of people. Frankly, though, if mature relationship structures and a healthy expression of sexuality is what's meant by "sluttiness" then being slutty seems completely worth defending, if not celebrating.
