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I think we tend to judge women who sleep with guys for any reason other than "love" - if she said she loved him or he loved her, we'd be more forgiving.
I also think we mistake a lot of things for love - codependency, financial security (again, it's okay if we inject love into the equation even if a woman stays in a relationship just for financial stability), etc.
We tend to view things through multiple cultural filters. What we forget is that those filters also involve our attitudes about power and class.
Certain facts are worth looking at. If a woman always makes less money than a man she dates/marries, is she always at risk of being viewed as having ulterior motives for the relationship? After all, our definitions of love are pretty subjective. If we asked people here to define love, I suspect many of us would fumble the question and maybe even laspse into confusion.
Why is it only women who are harshly judged if they engage in sex for reasons other than love? Why do we not harshly judge men who engage in sex without love or the expectation of love?
In this nation, at the lower levels of earning, the poorer working class, almost every working woman makes less than any man she may date if both make an effort at full time employment. In fact, many jobs held by the working poor (especially women) are not even available full time so that employers do not fall under laws that would make them offer certain benefits to full time employees. Women (mostly) who work the check out line at Wal-Mart will always make less than the men (mostly) who drive Wal-Mart trucks.
In fact, until we have pay equity that achieves equal pay for work of comparable value, don't we have a nation of female whores as some men here would define it?
Definitely not liberals, those fellas. Exploiters, I would say. Shouldn't we be cheering a triumph of class warfare when a woman at the lower rungs of society manages to snag her some guy with a six figure income?
