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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
This has been bothering me for a while, and I finally figured out what it is.
Sluts always complain that men supposedly call them sluts while not calling men the same thing.
This is false.
There are always moral and immoral people. A moral guy will call a girl who in his estimation sleeps around too much a slut.
A moral girl who meets a guy who sleeps around too much will likewise be bothered by his behavior and judge him a man slut or something similarly derogatory.
Alternately, both male and female sluts can find lots of compadres, both male and female, who will back slap them for their slutty behavior.
Feminists, when they upbraid men for carrying a moral stance, imply that in essence men are not entitled to carry a moral stance at all, which is ludicrous.
I just read Mencken's book, 'In Defense of Women', which clarified this issue quite a bit for me. I paraphrase, but he said that women, not men, are some of the biggest upholders of female 'morality' (calling other women sluts), but not for any actual moral reasons. By calling other women sluts, women are being hypocrites because they are doing this to try to discourage other women from selling their sex out too easily by lowering themselves to enjoying a carnal desire with a MERE MALE rather than by keeping up female solidarity and making men pay out maximum $$$ for the privilege of having sex with a woman.
This explanation FINALLY helped me understand my high-school-long relationship with a girl who loved me essentially unconditionally but who other girls called a slut (for some at-the-time bizarre reason). All Jenny was doing was going with her honest feelings for me, which implied she was not upholding the female solidarity of making me pay for her affection.
I am finally beginning to really understand at the core why so many men are so pissed all the time at women- women are mercenaries who refuse to lower themselves to truly love something as deficient as a guy.
Wow 326.
Is that a record?
women on the other hand will tend to judge a man at least somewhat negatively if other women say he is a chauvanistic asshole. The way this plays out is that in a social setting men believe, correctly I think, that if they say the wrong thing it will reduce their chances of social/sexual success/opportunities with the female "community" in question. Women, correctly I think, believe that their appeal depends on attractiveness and sexual charisma and won't be much affected one way or the other by what they say or don't say.
the socially problematic view that I refer to is that men and women are really different, (one of the key relevant differences is that they have hard wired different feelings about sex) and both have to compromise to make things work. In order to do this is is essential to be able to suspend at least for some purposes the compulsion to assert and act on the belief that only you are right. Of course everyone claims, in the abstact, to believe in compromise but when you start getting into a lot of specifics that involve peoples emotions and deeply held views it is in fact very difficult for people to do it unless failure to do so is going to cost them a price they REALLY don't want to pay. I take your point that on an individual level people do this. What is corrupt is the public discussion. It's kind of like victorian attitudes towards sex, it didn't stop people it just made them talk stupid. Admmittedly it is a judgement call though, because consciously dealing with something that you can't fix or mitigate just makes the unpleasntness more conscious and, since nothing can be done about it, permanent.
The argument that women call each other sluts because they think those women are lowering themselves by dating men is absurd. As a woman who has, regretfully, called women "sluts" in the past, it was never out of disgust with the men they were sleeping with; more typically, it was about idiotic jealousy on my own part because they were sleeping with someone that I wanted and couldn't get. I tried to obtain moral superiority by saying to myself that this girl could only get this guy because of sex and that if she were more dignified (read: more like me), I would have a fair chance of getting him on our respective merits. This is sad and stupid, and it was entirely my own issue, but I'm willing to bet based on every female friend that I've ever had that this is the general consensus on why we pick on other women - we want to make ourselves feel better. And we want the guy - believe it or not, we don't want to live without you guys anymore than you want to live without us.
And biology, biology - would you shut up about biology?!?! The biologists can't even agree on what we're all "hard-wired" to do and think, and it's a moot point anyway. The traditional view of this argument is that men want to sleep around and women want long-term relationships; even under that scenario women have as much to lose as men by treating their partners badly. Men lose sex, but women lose the chance for long-term relationships, which we supposedly must have to fulfill our "biological" urges. If men give up certain things in order to get sex, then it only stands to reason that women give up certain things in order to have long-term relationships. Once again, let me reiterate that I do not agree with these ridiculous biological theories, but if you must use them, then at least be logical - isn't that, after all, another trait that is supposedly associated with men?
Nobody has made the argument that men aren't allowed to have moral beliefs. The difficulty is that, just like with women, it's difficult to tell when a man has a universal moral belief or when he has a belief that only applies to the opposite gender. If someone has a problem with threesomes - male or female - he or she is entirely entitled to that belief - but it had damn well better go both ways or it is sexist. The men and women that feminists have a problem with (and yes, we find many women as sexist as men) are the ones that think it's ok for guys to sleep with whoever they want but think that girls should remain "pure." No reasoning, biological or otherwise, justifies that belief - you're entitled to have it, but don't be surprised when women argue with you about it since we are on the receiving end of your ignorance.
For the record, I do not have a problem with threesomes (though I've never had one), but my boyfriend thinks this is vile. We disagree on this point, but I do not run around calling him sexist for having it because, as a rational man, he applies this belief to everyone, including himself. I had slept with more people than he had when we started dating and though he doesn't want to know the details, he's fine with it. On the other hand, I once dated a guy who put me into the "whore" category because I had slept with three people before him even though he had slept with 15 before me - needless to say, that relationship didn't last long because he WAS sexist. Those are the type of guy that all of us crazy feminists have a problem with.
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