Morality Bites

This morning I had a conversation with my mother, wherein she made her views on what she sees as 'sleeping around' abundantly clear. She's right, of course, to assert that a girl should value herself and her body more highly than that of a common prostitute, and should choose wisely with whom she wishes to share it, but in this day and age we have moved far beyond the 'no sex before marriage' argument of previous generations. These days, it's all about sisters doing it for themselves, independent women sleeping with guys not because they are subordinates, but because they are free to do as they please. Why shouldn't women use men for sex, when the reverse has been going on since time immemorial? Why not indeed?

But there is something in this - my - argument, that has since begun to gnaw away at me. DO I feel empowered when I sleep with a man early on in the dating game, only to find out down the line (or not so far down the line) that he's been sleeping with other girls all along? DOES it make me feel good to put out on a first date, then clutch at the straws of disappointment as they slip out of my grasp when he never calls again?

Granted, sex is sex, and I absolutely believe it is possible to dissassociate sex from love. Sometimes - and you must excuse me for my crudeness - a girl just wants a shag, pure and simple, and in those circumstances there is no reason on God's green earth why she shouldn't have one. We are all, in the end, animals, and as such we have animal instincts, it's only society that has decreed the females of the species are meant to act with poise and decorum, where the men are free to follow their carnal desires and procreate as they see fit.

I might well go out on a Saturday night, find a guy and sleep with him, then wake up happy in the knowledge that I neither know nor care whether said guy is single, coupled up, married or even gay because the fact is I have no desire to see him again. Fine. But what if I do like him? Even just a little bit? How will I feel if because of my readiness to sleep with him he assumes I'm a slag and never contacts me again? Would it have made a difference if I had held back? Would he have liked me more? Respected me more? I guess I'll never know.

The issue, for me, is deeper than the one night stand dilemma; the 'should I or shouldn't I make him wait' question that regularly resonates in my head for at least five minutes before being quashed and ignored. The issue is one of trust, and of morality. And as the day has worn on it's got me thinking about dating within the world of social networking. As a self-confessed Twitter addict and Psychology graduate, I'm intrigued by the different types of people and relationships there are on Twitter. It's a veritable microcosm of the world; full of randomness, quirkiness, and its fair share of grumpiness. It is also, I have recently begun to realise, a hotbed of sexual innuendos, flirting and even real life encounters. On the whole, I love it, in spite of the fact it starves my hobbies of the time they need to flourish; it gives me an outlet for my shameless need for attention, it broadens my mind to folk I might not normally encounter in my everyday life. Hell, I've even made some 'friends' on there who I now meet over in the 'real' world.

My issue with Twitter is the dating. Or rather, how easy it is for people to leave their morals and values at the virtual door and dive right in, with barely a backward glance to their wives, children, other halves etc. Sure, on Facebook and MySpace people can lie, but on Twitter? You can be anyone you want to be. Your bio only needs to be 20 words long, your avatar can be a cartoon and then you're away. Once you've established a group of followers and started to engage with people the world is your oyster. You can private message anyone that takes your fancy, maybe several at the same time (after all, who's ever going to know?) But that's just the thing: People COULD know. Because what I've come to realise is there comes a point when your follower number stabilises and you have a core group of, say, 20 people with whom you regularly converse. These are your 'TBFs,' you tell them things you wouldn't tell the rest of Twitter because you trust them. As you get to know them better you might drop in the odd flirt, just to test the water. It hasn't happened to me, but I can easily imagine how one thing might lead to another, and before you know it you've embarked upon a fully fledged sexual relationship with someone who was once little more than a funny avatar in a sea of funny avatars.

How do you know, though, that your new partner, this Twitter 'love,' isn't simultaneously messaging other girls - indeed meeting up with them for real - in the same way he is you? How do you know for certain he's not married? And what if - God forbid - you found out one of your TBFs had slept with the guy you were sure was The One, because she DMd you in her excitement to tell you so?

I don't know where I'm going with this, really, other than to say it's a dangerous game. Dating in the real world's hard enough, but with the advent of social networking it seems our desire to find sexual excitement and gratification has increased tenfold, and damn the consequences.

My personal experience of cheating has, I regret to say, left me feeling embittered and cynical about men. I know I shouldn't tar everyone with the same brush, but I do believe we make it too easy for them to get away with bad behaviour, whether it be flirting or something more sinister. I'm immensely proud of my sense of right and wrong; I abhor cheating in all its forms, not because I think its wrong per se to want to sample something that you can't have, but because I think it's absolutely wrong to act on an instinct when you know it will have devastating emotional consequences for someone else ie the person who believes you are being faithful to them.

There are shades of grey, granted, and I'm not so sanctimonious or naive to assume there aren't situations whereby legitimate reasons can be given for certain outcomes, but on the whole if people respected one another more, I truly believe the world would be a better place.

But hey, this coming from the girl who 'sleeps around' seems rather like the pot calling the kettle black.

Perhaps it's me, and not my mother, who is outdated in their thinking. Or perhaps the notion of true love is itself outdated in this modern age, when we can have our cake and eat it, and where relationships are so transient and emotions so fleeting? Maybe social networking is eroding our belief in monogamy, or maybe that belief was on such rocky foundations to begin with that it took little more than the shaking of the tree of Eden to dislodge it and make it fall to the ground?