Hello everyone! This blog has been a desolate wasteland of activity recently, so I thought it was time for some guest post action! Um, yeah, so I was in my politics tutorial today and we were discussing "sexuality and modernity". One of things that came up was why there existed a double standard in the labelling of men and women who had a number of sexual partners. I.e. a woman who has a lot of partners is labelled a "slut" or a "whore" or "loose" and yet no such negative terms for men exist (to the best of my knowledge), only positive labels like "player". I thought it was an interesting question (you may have thought about it before), and wanted to pose it to y'all.
My thoughts were that it has to do with the gender roles we have constructed for men and women - it is traditionally a man's role in society to initiate things, and a woman's to waylay his advances. It's a woman's place to say no. If a woman is not conforming to that role of protecting her body from advances, and instead has sex with abandon, society labels her a deviant and the men she sleeps with popular people or something. But yeah, I didn't get very far. Why do you think such a discrepancy in labels exists?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Harry I'm sorry I haven't commented yet but the truth is I'm still trying to figure out the answer to your very pertinent question!
Man-whore, Man-Slut, i use those derogatory terms too. But netherless, of course, it's taken from the feminine. I'm tempted to blame sexist interpretations of the New Testament throughout history. I'd like to discover why too...
I think man-whore is an absolutely ridiculous term. I use slut as a blanket term for men and women, when I use it at all.
I could ramble on at length here, but it'd take ages and cbf. I was reminded of something from 1984 though, about why the Party bans sex.
"What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship."
If women are having great sex, chances are they're going to be more relaxed, happier, and feel better about themselves. I suppose the 'hysteria' in this case would be transformed into women's desperately seeking satistfaction in buying things or cosmetic surgery or not eating or w/e. If you're not feeling good about yourself or in control of your sex life however are you meant to rise up in political protest.
I think man-whore is an absolutely ridiculous term. I use slut as a blanket term for men and women, when I use it at all.
I could ramble on at length here, but it'd take ages and cbf. I was reminded of something from 1984 though, about why the Party bans sex.
"What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war fever and leader worship."
If women are having great sex, chances are they're going to be more relaxed, happier, and feel better about themselves. I suppose the 'hysteria' in this case would be transformed into women's desperately seeking satistfaction in buying things or cosmetic surgery or not eating or w/e. If you're not feeling good about yourself or in control of your sex life however are you meant to rise up in political protest.
This is Anne by the way. I should really change my username but I like it a lot :)
Post a Comment