While most of us would probably rather not confront our earliest sexual experiences, those awkward first encounters where technique and mutual satisfaction take a backseat to hasty friction, a young British woman has found a rather surprising way of chronicling her sex life – by asking for feedback.
Emily Reynolds told Sean Moncrieff about how she’d already taken to collating spreadsheet data for all the partners she’s entertained in her bed sheets anyway, before asking for the men to offer a performance review. What started as an in-joke between her and a friend has now exploded into qualitative analysis of all the seduction, foreplay, and intercourse she’s ever engaged in, and as she says, it doesn’t always make for pleasant reading:Reaching out to the male lovers she’s accrued over her 23 years, the Vice writer described the project as narcissism descending into masochism, emailing and sending Facebook messages to every sexual partner for whom she still had contact details, adding in the subject line that this was all in aid of sexuality journalism.
The results varied from cold-shouldered ignoring or unfriending to polite declines, before a eight former lovers did agree to take a survey issuing their reactions to how Reynolds rates in the following rubrics: kissing, how hot she is, foreplay, oral sex, sex, fetishes, and whether or not they’d be keen for a repeat reunion. And the comments could be quite enlightening into the sexual habits of a modern British woman:
A sample of Reynolds' survey [Vice]
Of course, it’s one thing to ask for feedback, it’s a whole other kettle of fish to publish those responses for the whole world to see. Or worse still, your friends and family. On that note, Reynolds says the reaction of her parents was the one she was most concerned about:Since publishing her article, Reynolds says the feedback from the public has come from all over the world, and revealed that keeping a sex-partner spreadsheet might not be that uncommon after all:Tune in to Moncrieff every weekday from 1.30pm to 4.30pm, or listen back to previous shows here.
