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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
It's called being a man's "courtesan". It is a 2 cuts above being a street hooker as long as she only has a caretaker. If male is supported by female, your called a "giggolo" or "toy boy!" Sex in the City?
Really? No idea huh? OK one more time for all the people who haven't heard it before, apologies to those who have. OK, READY, HERE IT IS: ANY NORMAL WOMAN WHO WANTS TO CAN MAKE HERSELF SOCIALLY AVAILABLE AND THERE WILL BE MEN WHO ARE WILLING TO TAKE AN INTEREST BUT MEN HAVE TO DO SO SO SO MUCH MORE (AND IN MANY CASES THE IMPOSSIBLE) TO BE IN AN EQUIVALENT POSITION. Do you think you can remember it this time?
I just speak the truth.
If it sounds different than what some other men might say, that is because they KNOW they cannot be honest AND liked by women or else they just don't think things through or care enough to utter truth or they've become convinced that falsitudes are truths.
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?
Are those the same as falsehoods or falsities?
Your neologism is almost as good as Rambling Rose 22's "outrighteous" from another thread today. Jeez, what is it, "Coin a stupid, unnecessary new word day" at Salon?
One reason there is no "good" answer is that nothing will ever change so long as attractive -- and younger -- women have something to offer in the boudoir and men have money and power.
But a younger and attractive woman has virtually nothing to offer in the boudoir that an older and ugly one does not. What men are actually paying for is packaging.
They are as silly as women who could buy the exact same mascara from Maybelline but prefer to purchase for Chanel instead because the store in more prestigious and the packaging more elegant.
In fact, the fact that men prefer to "purchase" younger and more attractive women should forever be a sort of counterpoint for every woman who prefers designer clothing.
Why do people buy a Jag that essentially has a Ford engine? Packaging!
A woman (or man) can sell their bodies if they want, but time goes fast and why pass up any chance of a real loving relationship and family? For designer shoes? Not worth it.
Well to you it might not be worth it, and to me it might not be worth it, but we cannot overlook the fact that to many people in our commodified culture it is most definitely worth it. There are plenty of women who would rather have Louboutin shoes and boots than true love and childen.
Also, people -- an women in particular -- have long been commodified. Open any fashion magazine. Open any "girlie" magazine.
the checker flagged the word "falsitudes" with a red line, and I thought it was such a groovy term I deliberately defied the red line.
Seriously, anyone else think the bandwidth in this lettercol needs serious disinfectants? Much too much information about some people.
"Maybe we want to see him as Richard Gere's Pretty Woman character, with some emotional wound that she is somehow salving with her body."
I remember reading once that the original ending to "Pretty Woman" went like this:
Julia Roberts' and Richard Gere's characters don't have a beautiful relationship. Instead, they have an argument. He throws the money at her, and she, sobbing, collects it as the wind blows it all around the street. He takes off in his car, never to see her again. She then takes some of her cash and buys cocaine from the loser dealer mentioned in the earlier scenes, and we are left to assume she will become another "specific case of crack heads" that her friend discussed with such scorn.
Which is probably a helluva lot closer to how most of these relationships end than the final version of the film showed. But test audiences *hated* the downer ending.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
