I also find it odd that women who have sex, especially frequently, are "sluts" and "loose," yet a guy is "studly" and "virile." Seems to me, they are the same thing. Of course, I sleep with men, so I don't care! I like slutty men!

...and that boys will always try to take their cookie if they don't guard it.

Kind of creepy I think.

Once you have the concept of property, it naturally extends itself to people and things people do, and people themselves become property, and symbols of property, and things one has a right to exploit. Personal servants, especially sexual servants, are the ultimate status symbol. Take a look at the TV.

I'm not saying it's right, by any means, but if you are into property, capitalism, and the profit motive, how can you object to people selling such a great product as sex? How many times have you been told "You have to get out there and market yourself?"

But your other point, that we are socialized to see women as marketing themselves as a product for men to consume, that is gender stereotyping, but that too goes back to primogeniture and property and class distinctions.

In other words, gender stereotypes serve economic class distinctions, just as other class stereotypes do.

Perhaps it is because sex is power from a woman's perspective and societal perspective for women?

As we know, NO means no, and that decision is mainly a woman's prerogative.

the rape laws even in the US are very very new. the issue of the repression of women's sexuality is very very old.

parents would guard it vigorously because marrying up was her only hope of transcending the class into which she was born.

People "repressed women's sexuality" not just for moral/theological reasons, but also economic and practical ones, and they still do.

Rape has been a crime in western tradition since 3rd century Rome.

The agenda should be freedom for people of both genders to run their own lives and make up their own damn minds about shit. Sadly there are way too many puritans operating all across the spectrum.

... "slut-shaming," I've personally noticed that intolerance goes both ways. Teenagers are expected to become sexually active, and those who have no desire to do so (for whatever reason) are ridiculed. A boy is said to become a man whenever he has sex for the first time. On the basis of what? He becomes a man by using someone?

Please forgive me for citing a personal experience of my own. I want to illustrate the point I'm trying to make. When I was a high-school senior in the fall of 1968, I was seeing an egregiously incompetent clinical psychologist to whom my parents had sent me. After I had seen him with no one else present during each session for several years previously, he assigned me to a therapy group with other teenage boys. In the first session (as I recall), he raised the subject of premarital sex, as he called it. As a sensitive guy, all I did was express some reservation about becoming sexually active because I respected girls and didn't care to use them sexually and then just discard them like empty beer cans. (I should say that those weren't quite the words I used.) For making this mild objection (which wasn't even based upon any religious conviction), I was laughed out of that jerk's office. He was, in fact, being intolerant himself, not to mention the fact that he was reacting in a totally inappropriate manner that was not becoming of a professional.

Speaking as the father of two daughters (now in their twenties), I know that a lot of social pressure is put on teenagers to become sexually active. At the risk of angering some of you, I dare say that the social ridicule of teenagers who want to abstain until they get married or simply have a problem with the exploitative nature of casual sex is actually more prevalent today than is "slut-shaming." At least that is my humble opinion. I would say that the choice some teenagers make to not become sexually active is no one's business but their own.

Needless to say, I've been sickened and disgusted by the double standard for decades.

Casual sex, assuming it is mutual and consensual, is not "exploitative". That is your moral judgement, not something that should be laid upon others for their own choices.

And, sorry, given the proliferation of megachurches and the well-nigh inescapable nature of right-wing Godbaggery in this country, I find it a little difficult to believe that too many kids are finding no support whatsoever for their decisions, should they make them, NOT to become sexually active, say, in High School. I'm sure, in addition to the federally funded abstinence programs we've been paying for for the past decade, I'm sure there are plenty of cultural resources, from timtebow.com on down, for kids who DON'T want to screw.

And the bottom line is, people should make up their own minds and live their own lives. That's been my line from the get-go.

Beyond that, though- honestly, now.. if you're talking about saying that (honestly, remember) people should remain virgins UNTIL MARRIAGE... Well, I agree that this alleged clinical psychologist in your story was professionally and utterly out of line, if the 44 year old tale is accurate. However, again, if you're really interested in advancing- as these "abstinence only" programs are- the proposition that people as a general should avoid sex until marriage, I gotta say.. in my humble opinion?

REAL fucking bad idea.

Because people have sex. And insisting or advocating or somehow implying that it's "better" for people to wait until they're married to fuck, leads to one of two things, if not both: 1) people getting married too young, often to the wrong person- and people marrying the first person they screw, often again, the wrong person.

Or, it leads to them saying "fuck it" at the last minute and doing it without getting married, but ALSO without using birth control.

I think people should live their lives, and I'm not interested in "judging" the choices other consenting adults make, assuming everyone is a consenting adult. That said, I think "abstinence until marriage" is an extremely unrealistic and yes, bad idea.

You don't need to be rude and insulting about it.

I am not a liar, as you have clearly insinuated.

I took away from what YOU wrote, that you think there should be more emphasis -cultural, educational, etc- on advocating that people remain virgins until marriage.

Was *I* wrong?

I didn't read anything in the post that advocated abstinence should be the focus of sex education, merely that those who wish to remain abstinent should be respected for their choice, rather than face ridicule for it. If anything, your reply seemed to imply that there is something wrong with someone who chooses to remain abstinent, and that they are likely to fuck up their lives by doing so. Not all people who choose to remain virgins beyond the average age do it for religious reasons....

I think there is a problem with groups looking down on one another for their choices. The Christian groups you mention definitely look down on those engaging in sex, and there are groups of, you might say, "the cool kids" who like to pick on those who either voluntarily or not do not have sex. (I can't help but think of the movie "Easy A" as I type this.) Fortunately there is a majority middle ground of kids who don't care or support others for their choices.

HOWEVER, I will say that one thing you can't deny is that making the choice to have sexual activity at a young age is more likely to lead to problems, as opposed to the person who TRULY remains abstinent. By that I mean, not the boy or girl who wants to abstain until marriage, then "falls in love" and rushes into something like you suggested. If you remain truly abstinent, you aren't going to get pregnant or get someone else pregnant, for example. I get what the poster says about the nature of casual sex amongst certain teenagers, more so nowadays. They fuck, then run around bragging (sure that happened in the old days) post on their Facebook, then Twitter war about it. Then one hooks up with someone's friend, or ex to get revenge, yadda yadda....these are things that are NOT talked about in sex education, and should be....a healthy respect for one another once the deed is done. It's not the sex act itself that is dirty....sometimes it's all that surrounds it that is.

Hard as that may be - for me, at least- to believe.

Im gonna take a look at what you wrote, though:

One, absolutely people should be respected for WHATEVER choices they make, and not face ridicule. My reply had more to do with promoting abstinence until marriage as an ideal, as opposed to giving someone grief if that is what they choose to do. A subtle difference, perhaps, but a difference nonetheless. I do, absolutely, think that 'people should remain abstinent until marriage' is an unrealistic goal, and i think when many people attempt to live it, usually because that is what they have been told they *should* do, it leads to problems. I dont know the details of your personal situation, but i do know that if i had married the first person i had sex with, neither of us would have ended up very happy about it. That does not mean the sex itself was bad, or a bad idea.



Maybe, I dont know. When I was in High School, Reagan was still President. While i have no doubt (and this applies to the facebook, etc comments too) that "things have changed", I cast a jaundiced eye towards hyerbole from us oldsters bout how "these kids today" yadda yadda yadda. "These kids today" have ALWAYS been like that.

I never saw the movie you mentioned, or heard of it.



Here, i disagree with you. First, define "young age". The average age for loss of virginity in the US is about 16 for boys, 15 for girls. Which is just about the EXACT same as it was in my day, when I lost my virginity at age 16. Now that we are grown into parents, of course, we dont want to deal with the fact that reality is still the same as it ever was, ie teenagers do have sex. The problems you list, pregnancy, STDs, while related to the sex act of course, are mostly avoidable through sensible contraception and safe sex. At least, Highly statistically mitigated. This is not to say I would "encourage" teens to have sex. Unless teens have changed drastically from my day, they dont need the encouragement, to begin with, theyll do it anyway. I would tell young people that sex is serious, with heavy emotional as well as physical implications, and it is an important act that shoud be done with someone you care bout in a context of mutual respect.

That is NOT, of course, the same as saying "its better to wait until you are married". And it is simply absurd to even try to suggest that, as a general rule, it is better for people TO wait until they are married, which in the 21st century, is simply not realistic for most people. It wouldn't have been better for me, no way! I lost my virginity at 16. I was more than twice that old when I finally got married. On what planet would it have been "better if I had waited"?

...and was my wife a virgin when we married, or when we first got together? Hell, no. And that is a good thing, because we both had experience not just sexually, but in relationships- so we knew the drill, we knew some of the pitfalls, we knew what to expect.



*excuse the mispellings; on ipad

.....but "Easy A" is pretty funny, and it stars the yummy Emma Stone.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1282140/

Last edited Sat Sep 8, 2012, 08:00 PM - Edit history (1)

I should have waited for the following day when my mind would hopefully be clearer.

I assure you my "alleged" former psychologist from my teenager years is quite real. He's 80 years old today. His incompetence and arrogance were truly amazing. Sadly, I was too stupid as a teenager to be able to realize that. He hurt me and my parents deeply. The group therapy incident was only one of many, and certainly wasn't the worst. I could have mentioned him by name, but I didn't care to possibly open myself up to a lawsuit.

All I was saying is that the popular culture is not friendly toward sensitive teenagers who have misgivings, if not outright convictions, about becoming sexually active. (I meant with other persons, of course. Not including masturbation.) I had no intention of defending abstinence-based sex education.

I would also observe that the local community makes a great difference in that regard. In many ways this country is quite diverse. There's a world of difference between, say, Berkeley, California, and Philadelphia, Mississippi (ugh!). They're like two different countries. But the popular culture is still national in scope.

When I referred to the exploitative quality of casual sex, I was referring only to the fact that insecure teenage girls are frequently targeted by conscienceless teenage boys who want to trick them into having sex with them. I frequently heard guys like that boast about their sexual conquests all the time as I was growing up. I got sick and tired of it. The women in my family (namely, my sister and our mother) weren't sex objects. They were both bright, intellectual women whose interests were not stereotypically "feminine." They both took principled stands against the racial discrimination of the day. My mother defied her racist, bigoted mother; and my sister was blacklisted by the John Birch Society for supporting civil rights. So, I grew up respecting women. As a college freshman in the fall of 1969, I heard a guy exclaiming how inhumane the war in Vietnam was. Then practically in the same breath, he started bragging about how he had seduced a young gal by claiming he loved her -- which, as he acknowledged in his boasting, was a complete lie. I found the clash of his professed concern over what was happening in Vietnam with the way he himself treated others to be rather galling and hypocritical, in my estimation. That is what I was referencing, and I do realize the majority of sexual encounters outside of marriage are not of a predatory nature of the kind I just described.

I think that sex should be mutual, respectful, enjoyable and thoughtful for both (all?) parties involved. When I was having sex as a younger person, HS & College, thats how we saw it.

I do not, however, buy into the oft-promoted narrative that sex is inherently exploitative, degrading, oppressive or in any way at cross purposes to the advancement of, say, Equal or civil rights.

I think that is a tired meme promoted by stealth religious right advocates and their enablers, and i would like to see it retired.

I apologize if you felt i was questioning the veracity of your story. That was not my intent. My point was more that it was a long time ago, but i phrased it badly. Sorry.

I've misunderstood other posters before. Board messaging isn't the best way to communicate.

You should be allowed your own choices.

I take issue with this paragraph;

IMHO, you are projecting your ethical values onto all women.

First, you don't know what boasting took place the next day in the girls locker room, so you don't know who, or the degree to which, anyone was exploited. Second, being bright, respectable, principled and intellectual are not incompatible with being sexual.

"... so you don't know who, or the degree to which, anyone was exploited."

Well, you do have a point. I hadn't thought about that. There were social climbing girls at my high school who were pretty on the outside but ugly on the inside. I couldn't stand them. They were vain, stupid, and cruel. I never had any desire to have anything to do with them. I wouldn't have touched them with the proverbial 10-foot pole. To me, having sex with one of them would have been like having sex with Ilsie Koch or Eva Braun. I guess you could say they were the female equivalent of the predatory teenage guys. No doubt they deserved each other.

"Second, being bright, respectable, principled and intellectual are not incompatible with being sexual."

You may have misunderstood me, or I may not have made myself clear -- which is easy to do in a forum on the Internet. But, first of all, let me thank for you complimenting my mother (now deceased ) and my sister. They have meant a lot to me. They were the polar opposite of the social climbing jerks I mentioned above. (Incidentally, when she was in high school, my sister did not observe cliquish social boundaries, but had friends in all of the groups. When a Jewish friend was snubbed by anti-Semitic classmates, my sister protested by wearing a Star of David around her neck at school! )

Of course, they were sexual beings. My sister lost her virginity at the college she attended.

I think I may have made too big a deal out of this. I was simply saying that I respected them because they were principled and intellectual, and I guess their example may have caused me to have a less sexual view of young women my age. (The gal I eventually met and married certainly was/is intellectual, as well as quite principled. I fell in love with her not only because she was pretty, but because she was so smart. ) Don't know if that makes any sense. No, I don't think I was influenced by the feminist movement when I was that young.

I probably have come across as some kind of an oddball. Oh, well, that's because I happen to be one.

FWIW, I don't really disagree with your basic point; that slut-shaming has a fraternal twin in external pressure to have sex prematurely. (I mean before you are ready).

... but I don't think this pressure is unique to either gender, nor do I think that promiscuous guys are immune from criticism.

using women then discarding them like empty beer cans says a lot about how you view sex.

Is it necessarily something that you are taking from women and leaving them with less (like emptying the contents of a beer can) and then after the act you are obligated to put her up on a mantel rather than move on?

It can't just be a mutually agreed upon consensual and pleasant experience you both understand to be temporary?

Both the radical left and the radical right try to make sex in to some weird restricted event. The right wants it all to be banned with a few exceptions (the devil forces us to desire sex) and the left wants it all to be considered rape (and the delusional fantasies of an indoctrinated patriarchal culture at that).

Can't it just be sex for a while?

I had plenty of casual sex, back in my misspent youth, that was mutually enjoyable and neither person was exploiting or felt exploited.

Sometimes, people just want to fuck.

If you were to take religion/social stigma out of it I'd say pretty much all the time (for both genders, especially with BC).

Shakespeare, or Good Psychedelic Music.

Casual sex or "just want to fuck" is part of it, one level, but I also think that people in a deep emotional relationship can experience it on additional mental or psychic* or what-have-you (perhaps communication is a relevant word, here) levels.

That's not to say one is "good" or "bad", "right" or "wrong", of course.


*by psychic I mean as in the having to do with the psyche sense, not in the Uri Geller bending spoons sense.

If women are viewed as being "used" or "exploited" by having sex, is it any wonder that we have the problems we have.

Vaginas become precious little golden treasure boxes and penises become dirty, invading "members".

And so, men learn that they need to "go out and get" and women learn they need to protect their goodies from the potential rapists.

And the two attitudes feed into each other and result in a lot of bad nonsense.

You've chosen exactly the right examples of language which reflects our actual beliefs about sex.

Sex is currency. Men are willing to work for sex. Women want $ecurity.

I suspect it has roots in biology, since sex is an activity which tends towards broader, long-term consequences for the female. It is in the male's evolutionary interest to mate frequently, with multiple partners, it is in the female's interest to be more selective with partners and to choose a partner with long-term support potential.

That is NOT to say, for instance, that there haven't been other evolutionary pressures towards pair-bonding, for instance, or for males to stick around and nurture their offspring. As well, there are evolutionary pressures for women to bond with the stable provider and mate with the good-looking mailman. These have borne themselves out and manifested through history in a variety of ways and I am similarly NOT saying that they are justification for these backwards attitudes.

Sort of like how just because primates have a tendency to throw shit at each other, doesn't mean it's an appropriate behavior today.

I find the whole propreitary attitude towards womens' sexuality, as well as the shaming aspect of women who enjoy sex as much as men are 'supposed' to, nauseating and backwards. It's like the "purity ball" mentality, like I said.

But it's also interesting to note that women seem, more often than not, to be the gatekeepers of social sexual rule-enforcement. You'll note that it's more often than not, for instance, teenage girls who engage in the most vicious forms of 'slut-shaming' of other girls. Getting back to your notion of sex as currency, I've stated before that I think there is something hard-wired in some women pertaining to maintaining, lowering or limiting the general sexual availability in the group. The idea being to keep the men horny and the "value" of sex high.

Of course, these hard-wired primate behaviors evolved in small hunter-gatherer groups, and become absurd in a modern, free technological society where the possibility of women to control other women is drastically reduced. But we see its expression in the moral panic Dworkinite freak-outs some small groups of women have over porn. One would ask, honestly, why they care so much, why they're threatened by consenting adults getting off to pictures of other consenting adults having consenting adult sex. The answer is, they're hard-wired to try to control the sexual behavior of women and the sexual outlets of men, and confronted with a modern, media-rich environment, their shit goes completely fucking haywire.

It explains alot.

I doubt there has ever been another culture as attuned to monetizing everything, even when we're pretending we're really not.

Okay, here's a controversial opinion; the way "teenage girls... engage in the most vicious forms of 'slut-shaming' of other girls" is not unlike the way that union workers hate scabs. In the same way strike-breakers devalue the union workers economic worth, promiscuous girls devalue "virtuous" girls economic worth.

Nevertheless, these sorts of attitudes towards female sexuality exist all over the place, and as such I have to believe it predates as opposed to being an outgrowth of western capitalism.

I can think of, and speaking as a woman, it's LOUSY.

comes from the biological fact that sex produces babies. And it is the female who bears the child and up until 100 years ago 1 in 100 women died in childbirth.

And the women cared for all of the children and did all the household work- which was not the easy stuff of today with washing machines and running water- hot water no less. All water had to be collected and carried and clothes washed by hand and ironed with irons fed by fire- that wood to heat water and the iron and cook with also had to be collected. And all this with small babies and children and toddlers in tow. And most women sewed the clothes for the family and knit all the sweaters (many still do) and so becoming an adult woman and taking all this on was not the stuff of the casual encounter. The risk of having sex with someone who was not going to be there to help with this "whole catastrophe" as Zorba the Greek called it creates the narrative of making sure that at least the girl was not going to be so easily seduced......

So, the disconnection between sex and "the whole catastrophe" is new for us humans. Only a few generations have gone by and in much of the world there still is no viable birth control. So, in many parts of the world sex still does equal becoming a mother for the women. And becoming a mother is one huge life changing event. And in our current capitalistic society it is equivalent to committing financial suicide.

While our current western capitalist society encourages men and women to think of sex as a sport, I have found that for me sex has been an outrageously big emotional deal (for all involved) and all this superficializing of it serves no one but the marketing and sales departments of various industries.

Trivializing it into a sport has not served the real people that I know who have emotions and hopes and dreams.

"Who's your daddy" was not a game men want to play if they

were going to be supporting a child.

As far as "our current western capitalist society" encouraging men and women to think of sex

as "sport", that has pretty much been the case wherever and forever with men.

I agree that this is a lousy message for both sexes, but I'll believe that men are serious about it

I no longer hear men called "studs" and women called "sluts" for the same activity.

a man can start a baby in her and make her risk her life, future and financially. That is what I will teach my daughters if I had one. Protect it and only give access to the one you know loves you and going to stick around if get pregnant. No baby mama drama for them

one heat up, and one cool down
leave nothin' for the tailor.

Just like Jack and Jill, Papa told the Jailer
one go up, and one go down
do yourself a favor.

lot of pain and confusion.

When you're young, especially, it's like, you don't what to do,

how to "act"....Should you "give in" (even to your own feelings)

or will he think I'm a "slut", or some other pejorative HE will

not be subjected to.

I've thought a lot about the "double standard", over the years,

and though it sometimes seems on the wane, it is STILL with us,

as those ugly words "slut" and "whore" all remind us.

Thomas Paine commented on the double standard way back when he said:

"Pity the tender sex, for they have to deal with men, who are, at once,
their judges and their seducers".

Slut shaming is by no means a behavior - and a reprehenible one it is - limited to men. Often, the WORST offenders in slut shaming activities, whether they be driven by jealousy or misguided religious/political dogma, are other women.

Ive said repeatedly, i think there may be something hard wired in primate brains which causes some people - often females - to feel a need - or an entitlement, if you will - to try to control the general level of sexual availability in the group.

Of course, this impulse goes all bugfuck nuts when confronted with a diverse, 21t century, media rich global environment, but I do suspect this drives many forms of censorious would-be neo puritanism that we see in some quarters.

so called "sluts" are a threat. Giving away sex reduces the material value of it. In purely supply and demand terms of course.

The women that are most incentivized to slut-shame are those who would prefer to trade sex for some personal benefit (rather than sex being the benefit).

I think the commoditization, real or imagined, is an outgrowth of something more fundamental in the hunter-gatherer primate brain, that was already there. The overpowering need, to basically the exclusion of all other apparent concerns, of some women to censor, for instance, pictures of sexy women from magazines, movies or the internet... I think it's almost like a reflex, similar in many ways to (indeed, overlapping with) the reflexive impulses which seem to drive cult-like fundamentalist religious fervor.

I don't believe it's something that has to be taught. Men learn that sex is a reward for "good behavior". Women learn that sex may be traded for power or other things. For whatever reason I was always extremely adverse to this. I always figured it essentially turned me into a john and the woman into a prostitute. I went through more than one relationship because I refused to allow sex to be used in this fashion. If a woman withheld consent for reasons that had nothing to do with sex or offered sex in exchange for something else, I was out. Fortunately I met my first and only wife who has never done this and never will.

No, seriously. It is.