With more and more frequency, people have been telling me that I am without a doubt "easy." Now, when people call me a slut this is fine, lovely, and I encourage its use. Unfortunately, some vocal people, and it's always people I've never sexually interacted with, can't seem to understand this difference, and why I don't embrace both.
Yes, there is an important difference between the terms "slut" and "easy." Yes, I would love to explain why to you*. There are two important points here that make up for my word choice.
First, I am fairly discerning with whom I have sex. You may not realize that, so I'll walk you through the mental process here. Whenever I meet a person, I know off the bat whether I would ever be sexually interested in them or not. Romantic interest takes time and conversations and such, so we'll ignore that slight possibility. If I'm not interested in them, nothing is going to change my mind. There are people I don't want to have sex with, and if I can help it, I don't have sex with them.
We'll assume for this conversation that I'm single or in an open relationship or some such thing so I'm allowed to do whatever I wish, and we'll assume the same of the other person. Now, if I want to have sex, then I'll most likely proposition this new person if I'm attracted to them. Then depending on how they respond, either we'll get to know each other way better rather quickly, which will make future sexy times more or less likely, or they'll reject me and we'll go our separate ways.
Second, I do in fact reject people. In fact, I reject most people who approach me. This is because when I am interested, given that I act on it rather than not, people who may have approached me that I would say yes to don't as they don't get the opportunity. Instead the usual person who approaches me is someone I'm just not interested in. Thus it's rather rare that someone will proposition me who I am interested in, or agree to go on a date with or whatever. So I take issue with the word easy.
The word easy also seems to rob me of my actions. This is what I specifically rebelled from, and what really annoys me in being called easy. To be easy implies that someone else has done all the work, or rather someone doesn't have to put in much work to get a person into their bed. It tends to be applied to women, because it goes well with the image of women sitting pretty and waiting for their desires to be magically fulfilled. It also goes fairly well with objectifying women, and only seeing their worth as sexual objects. You could make the argument that people I've pursued who have gone for my signature line of, "Do you want to have sex?" are easy. But that's also just one example from their sexual history. You could probably say that I am more likely to pursue sex directly than the average American female.
Perhaps though, you're using easy to denote my willingness to have recreational sex with people I'm attracted to and who are also willing and clean. To that point, I say that I'm a slut. With easy I just really don't like the underlying assumption that anyone can approach me, and my default response would be, 'Yeah! Let's totally have consensual sex random person I don't know, I'm so down.' Or perhaps you heard I slept with so-and-so and in your mental hierarchy they are a loser, so clearly I'll sleep with anyone. Nice try, but I only care about who I'm attracted to, not who you deem to be more or less worthy of sexual attention.
Thus, I'm not easy- I'm a slut who actively pursues people I'm attracted to. I could get into how I like to intellectually challenge my partners inside and out of the bedroom, but I think I've proven my point enough.
*Throughout this piece I referred to the reader as "you" in a fairly argumentative tone, and is to refer to the multiple people who have decided for me that I am easy.