In our reading the other day in Women’s Lives Multicultural
Perspective in Chapter 4 it states, “Men’s sexual activity is assumed and accepted;
after all, ‘Boys will be boys’. Girls may easily get a ‘bad reputation’ and be
condemned as a ‘slut’” (177). In my
personal opinion I don’t find that this is fair due to the fact that both
parties are conducting the same the same action. Both male and female are
choosing to live their lives how they choose, whether we agree with their
actions or not. However when looking for articles to blog about I stumbled upon
a very interesting article, “Why Women Are Called Sluts When They Sleep Around,
But Men Aren’t”, in this article it give explanations as to why these labels
exist. The four main reasons that are written follow:
1.
First, sleeping around is easier for women; this
saying that men have to work for sexual activity while women are the ultimate
decision makers.
2.
Second, women have potential to do more harm by
sleeping around than men do, such as pregnancy.
3.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be
programmed to sleep around more.
4.
Promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men
I’m not saying that I agree with these statement, I am
interested into hearing what you all think about these statement, especially in
a female dominate class?
http://therawness.com/why-its-worse-for-women-to-sleep-around/
It's obvious that not everybody agree about women's sexuality and it's sad that this is the mentality that are among women today. This doesn't surprise me and I feel like people in our class believes this so there is no need to know my perspective. I find this as another way to demean the mentality and emotions of women.
ReplyDeleteI know LaQwen has already commented, but I can't help but add a response to each of those four "arguments:"
ReplyDelete1. "First, sleeping around is easier for women; this saying that men have to work for sexual activity while women are the ultimate decision makers."
-This notion is so backwards in so many ways. First, on a semantic level, it establishes men as predators and women as prey in the way the reading also discussed. Women are rewards pursued by hungry men, and our status as submitters is somehow supposed to be an advantage? Secondly, and more importantly, this is just flat-out not true. Multiple studies have found that women and men experience similar levels of sexual drive/desire, so the stereotype of women being the ultimate decision makers only makes sense if you acknowledge that any greater restraint exercised by women is the product of fear of consequences, not lack of desire. Those consequences are partially physical or biological (pregnancy, STIs, etc.) but also heavily social. It is much more likely that women supposedly set stricter boundaries because they fear ostracization and loss of status from their peers, coworkers, and family members. Also, this whole point relies on stale and restrictive constructs of gender performance and gender roles, but that's a whole other thing.
2. "Second, women have potential to do more harm by sleeping around than men do, such as pregnancy."
-Excuse me, what? A woman does not go out and "get herself pregnant." Males and females share equal culpability in this one, and women typically bear the brunt of responsibility when it comes to childcare, not to mention deciding between abortion and carrying a child to term. Also, pregnancy is not an illness; it is not, in my opinion, the worst-possible-scenario of unsafe sex. STIs, however, can range from temporarily and curable to debilitating and ultimately fatal. Because men tend to exhibit fewer symptoms than women do when it comes to STIs, they are less likely to be aware of the fact that they are spreading a dangerous disease. So, really, who has the potential to "do more harm" here? And yet, men seem to bear much less responsibility in this realm. Being as safe and informed as possible is the equal responsibility of all involved partners.
3. "Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around more."
ReplyDelete-I'm not even sure where to begin. The development of human society is in many ways little more than a record of the ways humanity has deliberately altered or even contradicted our prior evolutionary impulses— a process which has been a major driving force in the advancement and maturation of human society. This is an example of an argument that can be technically true, but is so incomplete and out-of-context that it's still essentially useless.
4. "Promiscuity poses more risk to women than to men."
-This somehow implies that when a man pursues a woman, it doesn't count as her having sex. Like men just go and ambiguously "have sex," not with another human being but more in the same way they might go and get dinner. But for some reason, if a woman takes a more active role in choosing who she sleeps with, somehow that's when the sex tally actually counts.
No, that article is so many kinds of wrong that I'm having a hard time articulating the magnitude of its falsehood. I would propose a different argument, one that is a significant but not solitary contributor to the stigmas surrounding promiscuity and celibacy: women have often been regarded as property, peace offerings, or prizes. Weddings for love are a bit of a novelty for humanity; the idea before was that we were bargaining chips in deals between men. Property is worth more when it has had no prior owners and is unused, so "virginity" in women was essential to determining their value. Meanwhile, a man's ownership of multiple properties was a symbol of high status and dominance. It's easy to ensure the longevity of a social order if you incorporate its priorities into the morality of a society, so that's what happened. And here we are.