It’s kind of embarrassing, but I guess I never really had thought about the double standard regarding sex that is applied to women. Well, I guess maybe not embarrassing, because I’m a white guy, I don’t have any daughters, so why would I give it much thought?
I just never really realized how bad the stigma is for women who are single yet have healthy sex lives. Last night I jokingly tweeted that “In 2012, women who like sex are called sluts. Men who like sex are called… men,” and it seems I was more right than I realized.
So there are single women who like to have sex. So what? You know who else likes to have sex? Practically everyone who has ever tried it. Unless you are doing it wrong, it feels really good and can be a lot of fun. You know who else has had premarital sex? Practically everyone in the country:
Of those interviewed in 2002, 95% reported they had had premarital sex; 93% said they did so by age 30. Among women born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 did. At the same time, people are waiting longer to marry; 2005 data show median age at first marriage is just over 25 for women and 27 for men.
95 per cent. Those so-called “sluts” weren’t banging themselves. And for the life of me, I have no idea why so many men call women sluts. I’ve looked around at a lot of you people out there, and I am here to say you’d better thank your lucky stars that there are sluts, because otherwise you’d probably never get laid. You know who you are.
Hell, I’d be having a lot more pre-marital sex if I weren’t a middle aged fat guy with lousy options, and I’m betting the same goes for a lot of you people out there. If I was a somewhat attractive 40-something single woman, you can bet your ass I would be a “slut.” I’d be giving it away. So let me just say this, ladies. If you like to have sex, you aren’t a slut.
You’re human.
SST
Preach!
/ college student
/ seriously, though, you are right
Baud
Can’t tell if John is making a serious point…
…or just trying to get laid.
seanindc
Even then it’s still pretty good – sort of like pizza.
Stevie314
Actually, as the joke goes, a slut is someone who sleeps with everyone but you.
Carnacki
I guess you’ll never be able to run for office as a Republican in South Carolina, John.
SteveM
Well, they weren’t just banging themselves….
(Though even banging yourself is evil according to Rick Santorum’s church, i.e., my old one.)
matryoshka
Sluts all over the country are putting John Cole in their “do” queue right now.
BGinCHI
Anyone remember my snarky comment the other day about women winning the battle of the sexes when Bobby Riggs lost to Billie Jean King?
This just landed in my inbox from BJK herself:
“Some people called my tennis match against Bobby Riggs, “The Battle of the Sexes.”
But the real battle is playing out in the halls of Congress right now, because Republicans are waging an epic battle against women’s health care choices.
I signed the DCCC’s petition telling Republicans to end their War on Women and ensure women’s voices are heard in discussions about women’s health care. If we can get 134,691 more signatures, we’ll have one million strong standing against the Republicans’ assault on women’s rights.
Will you sign the “Stop the Republican War on Women” petition today?
You may know me from my tennis career, but some of my biggest victories came off the court–for fairness, equality and progress for women. That’s why I’m so appalled by what we’re seeing in Congress right now.
First, House Republicans held a hearing on women’s access to birth control coverage that included a panel with five men and no women. Then they changed their own rules and refused to televise testimony from women’s rights advocate Sandra Fluke.
Republicans want to silence women but I refuse to sit on the sidelines. Help us send Republicans a clear, unmistakable, and powerful message.
Join me and immediately sign the DCCC’s petition calling on Speaker Boehner, Leader Eric Cantor and House Republicans to end their War on Women and ensure women’s voices are heard in discussions about women’s health care.
Thanks for reading,
Billie Jean King”
jibeaux
She’s out there, John, and she’s not lousy. Get outside a bit. Hell, you live in West Va. What is there to do there except get outside and get some exercise? You got something against female river rafting guides and rock climbers?
cathyx
Thanks John, what a complement.
David Koch
Catholic priests.
What, too soon?
redshirt
It’s about POWER. It’s always about power.
Carnacki
People say slut like it’s a bad thing.
PTirebiter
slut= a woman who’ll have sex with anyone.
bitch= a woman who’ll have sex with anyone but you.
Schlemizel
HEY! If it weren’t for sluts some of us socially inept losers would never gotten laid! 8-{D
Spiffy McBang
I was running around in WoW one night with a guy I knew and his friend who I was slightly acquainted with, and they started talking about girls. The latter was talking shit about how girls who fuck on the first date have no class, and how sad it is there are so many of them out there. I questioned this; he said he’d slept with nine girls in the past three weeks, all on first dates.
Once I gathered my jaw out of my lap at the brass of this little fucker- I know, story on the internet, but suffice to say it’s actually possible that this happened with these guys- I pointed out that the common thread of sluttiness between all these girls was him. So wasn’t he just nine times the slut they were?
His response: “Who turns down sex?”
/boggle
I knew there were guys like this around, but rarely, if ever, had I faced down such a mind-numbing lack of self-awareness. Simply incredible when you see it in full bloom, and much more so when you realize women who get “slut” accusations thrown at them have to put up with it a hundred times more frequently.
Linda Featheringill
Ah-Hah! I’ve said many times that I was the last virgin bride in America and it looks like I wasn’t wrong.
But seriously, folks, I really, really wouldn’t recommend saving it for marriage. Talk about buying a pig in a poke! Jesus Christ shopping for a prom dress!
slim's tuna provider
who is a slut and who isn’t is kind of like the difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist. it depends on who gets to write the story.
rob!
This post seems like opening salvo to another Balloon Juice meet-up.
Corner Stone
I could be mistaken Cole, but I’m not sure your post really hit all the high points you may have been shooting for.
Ana Gama
@Carnacki: They are prolly gonna have a hard time getting a full slate of candidates.
FridayNext
Here’s a question for the group. If you never get married, are you really having “pre-marital” sex?
schrodinger's cat
Word. Preach it brother John. Also too, good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere.
Linda Featheringill
@matryoshka:
:-)
Dave
Uhhhhhhhhhhh, this is…
…touching.
(?!)
Soonergrunt
@Stevie314: You got there first.
@John Cole, top–you should add a male “I’m a slut” t-shirt to the BJ store. I would so totally buy three.
Dave
LADIES: CONGRATULATIONS, JOHN COLE APPROVES
Corner Stone
@Spiffy McBang:
[coughs gently]
And, uh, so where was this degenerate living again? Just for record keeping purposes you understand.
Dr. Loveless
If you were gay, you could walk into any bear bar and have everyone’s phone number within five minutes. I’m just saying.
scav
@FridayNext: Now there’s a tidy loophole one could drive a snappy t-shirt through.
schrodinger's cat
Why are the comments messed up? Yesterday I could not even post, I kept getting some weird error, asking me to email someone called jgriffincole. WTH is going on?
Villago Delenda Est
Sonya: “Boris, sex without love is an empty experience.”
Boris: “Well, as empty experiences go, it’s one of the best.”
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Spiffy McBang:
Welcome to the wonderful world of being female. At 51, and with many years of marriage behind me now, I can nonetheless recall dozens of such charming specimens, and quite a few of them used stories like this as part of their attempts to get me to, uh, drop the aspirin.
kdaug
I’m far more creeped out by the people who haven’t had “sex before marriage”.
Purity troll, indeed.
Emphasis on the troll.
Villago Delenda Est
@slim’s tuna provider:
This.
Obviously, some hot babe who turns down Andrew Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh is a slut.
schrodinger's cat
@kdaug: May be they got married when they were young.
ETA: And they are using Bill Clinton’s definition.
Some Guy
Its called sexism. Long history. Not rational or just.
th
Ever since I was 12 or so, walking down a street to the candy store has led to boys screaming “slut” at me from their cars and racing off. Guys love this sh!t. Losers.
pragmatism
the pejorative term slut is far less effective with the younger generation. many of these young ladies own it. this issue is one segment of the ongoing death rattle of the “wounded generation” who lost their ability to control teh wimmens/gheys/blahs/messicans/hippies. good riddance.
Short Bus Bully
The silver lining of “slut gate”? We’re talking about it now. Out loud. The Republican Id is coming out to party and it’s dripping with horrible shit that people are finally seeing.
They just can’t help themselves and ultimately it’ll be good for the country. Kind of like taking a really huge greasy burny shit. Not pleasant, but needed.
Spiffy McBang
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice: Yeah, I’m sorry I didn’t realize any of this earlier in life. Would’ve done wonders for… well, lots of things.
Also, “drop the aspirin” is going in my phrase book.
aimai
@Stevie314:
No, the joke is “A slut is a woman who sleeps with everyone. A bitch is a woman who sleeps with everyone but you.”
Men have been having sex with women and also calling them sluts for fucking (sic) ever. Its a huge pitfall for girls in highschool because as soon as you have sex with one boy you are assumed to become common property sexually.
aimai
Pathman
Holy shit this is one funny thread. I haven’t laughed out loud like that in a long time. Thank you!
Soonergrunt
@Dave: Something is getting touched.
Cue the Divinyls…
different-church-lady
…and then that last paragraph happened…
Bulworth
Because shut up that’s why.
Schlemizel
@Spiffy McBang:
Its sad that even as we have opened up to human sexuality more this lag still exists. Boys are supposed to want sex & enjoy sex and demand sex. Girls are supposed to fear sex and resist sex and dislike sex. Men who have ‘a lot’ of sex are players & studs, women who have ‘a lot’ of sex are sluts.
Whats worse is that a lot of the moms & dads that were enjoying the carnal pleasures with different partners & without marriage are still pushing this poison onto their sons and daughters.
flukebucket
@seanindc:
Just like the poet once said, “Ever since the first I had the worst I had was good.”
Rosalita
@FridayNext:
nope, just living in sin!
cathyx
I am startled at that 95% have had premarital sex statistic. That is practically everyone. And with bias for error, it could be everyone.
Martin
Yeah, it catches you off guard when you become a dad. I have a boy and a girl. The boy is older. When he was little, I never really worried about his future sex life. I’m a guy, he’s a guy, I have a pretty good sense of how that movie is likely to play out. Even if he’s gay, I have a pretty good sense of it.
When my daughter was born a few years later that more than anything hit me like a truck. Suddenly I was looking at the situation from the other side. As powerful as those protective instincts still are over a decade later, I still have to consciously break myself out of the double standard. My wife was wondering why I so suddenly started investing way more time in this whole birth control/slut debate than I would have previously. I’d watch Maddow now and then, but I watch shows that are focusing on this issue religiously now. And I had to tell her that instinctively I still just don’t get it, that I’m hoping if I immerse myself in it a bit more, that it’ll sink in a little deeper and become a bit more automatic.
But yeah, when the girl becomes a teenager, I’m screwed. I’m going to die of a heart attack for certain. Or I’m going to kill her first boyfriend and go to prison for life. Either way, my days on this blog are numbered.
eric
The people that throw around slut are the same ones worried that gay men are eye fucking them in the shower. they only think in sex-power terms.
Villago Delenda Est
@kdaug:
The strange thing is, people who don’t engage in pre-marital sex are just as much on the outs as those who do, depending upon the phase of the moon, the presence of an r in the day of the week, or whatever.
It’s strange how NOT being sexually active can be as much of a stigma as being sexually active.
Just goes to show how conflicted Americans, in particular, are about these things.
BTW, men who have lots of sex are “studs.” Women who have lots of sex are “sluts”. Go figure. “Stud” is not a pejorative, never has been, even though it implies promiscuity.
scav
@Martin: Well, if you raised her right, she’ll tell you exactly where to get off. And thus a critical moment in teenage- and parent-hood will have been accomplished.
Brachiator
Are you sure you used to be a Republican?
Another compassionate, nuanced post.
A man can be short and dumpy and getting bald but if he has fire, women will like him.
Mae West
Martin
@cathyx: I’m not. Keep in mind that the age at which people in this country marry now has been climbing. And how many marriages now are 2nd, 3rds. The days of everyone getting hitched at 20 (the median age a century ago) and never divorcing are long, long, long gone. Now the median age is somewhere around 28.
If you assume the earliest reasonable age of sexual activity is maybe 16 (certainly there are big exceptions) then you stretched out that ‘waiting’ period from 4 years to 12. That’s a hell of a change.
Corner Stone
@different-church-lady:
Actually, I was enthralled by the:
Kind of a certain jenny say kwah feeling of hope and light to it.
JPL
@Soonergrunt: I sent him an email the other day suggesting a picture of lily or rosie with that sentiment. Actually I’d rephrase it to say Does Rush think I’m a slut also, too
schrodinger's cat
@Martin: This is you in the in the future.
Note: Change mother-in-law to father-in-law
Linda Featheringill
@pragmatism:
I’m glad to hear that.
eric
@Martin: my daughter is seven. i remember talking with a colleague one time and suggested that i would not be the least bit unhappy if my daughter played for the other team. He looked at me like i had two heads and i thought so she could avoid dickheads like you.
Carnacki
@Soonergrunt: Which reminds me, I’ve got that Planned Parenthood appointment Friday morning. Thank goodness for ALL the health services and TESTING they provide.
Marked Hoosier
We are all sluts now…
cathyx
So taking out Kirk Cameron and my own mother from the equation, everyone has had premarital sex.
JCT
@Soonergrunt: Good one — except now it’s going through my head and I have a meeting to go to…
Linda Featheringill
@Martin:
Now Martin. It can’t be that bad. Today’s young people aren’t that much different from what you were when you were 17 years old.
[hee-hee! Serves you right!]
David Koch
Sluts of the world unite!
jibeaux
@pragmatism: An older retired lady I know had put on her FB something like “in point of fact, sluts rule”, which was cute.
rb
@scav: This.
trollhattan
Roy Edroso reads them so we don’t have to. This one rates 11 on the 10-point say wha? scale.
Frau Doktor Herr Ole Perfesser:
http://alicublog.blogspot.com/2012_03_01_archive.html#2093051483774999691
A wee bit desperate, are we?
Legalize
Women are “sluts” if they won’t sleep with you. It has always been. Thus, to the dork-wads who make up the howler monkey brigade, i.e. winger bloggers, women who have / enjoy sex are ALL sluts. Why, because look at these guys – can anyone imagine any woman WANTING to have sexytime with any of them? Not trying to be a lookist, but sheesh ….
muddy
@Linda Featheringill: It was said to me about my son, “He’s just like you and it serves you right!”
I took it as a compliment, may not have been intended.
jl
Legislators around the country, especially women, have been doing good work in pointing out the double standards.
Ohio Senate Bill Offers Male Lawmakers A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
‘ …Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) will introduce a bill aimed at cracking down on prescription drugs like Viagra that treat erectile dysfunction. Turner’s legislation would make men jump through certain hoops, such as psychological screenings, before they could obtain the meds. The bill follows FDA recommendations to determine the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction… require physicians to inform patients in writing of the risks involved in taking erectile dysfunction drugs and requires men to sign a document acknowledging the risks, just like the anti-abortion bill does.
“I care about the health of men as well, and I thought it only fair that we illustrate that and make sure that a man is fully informed of the risks involved in taking these drugs and also the alternatives such as natural remedies or also celibacy,” Turner said. ‘
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/ohio-senator-introduces-bill-to-regulate-mens-sexual-health-and-prove-a-point.php
Bravo, Sen. Turner! Hope they keep up with these bills, some fools need their noses, and maybe other things that (one presumes) stick out into others’ business, rubbed in it.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan:
Not only desperate, but incoherent. And furthermore, slanderous.
These stupid motherfuckers are going to find themselves in a world of hurt if they don’t shut the fuck up.
HyperIon
A. S. Neill (author of Sumerhill: A radiacal approach to child-rearing) wrote:
Hate sex and you hate life.
I sort of believe that but have a very broad idea of what “sex” is.
dedc79
And why the @$#%@ do men want to make it harder for women to get access to birth control?! Birth control is one of the best things to happen to men in the history of the world
Cassidy
Heh…I have 3 daughters. I keep telling my wife that I’m not concerned because they won’t bring anyone home who was worse than their Dad at that age and I can smell my own.
New Yorker
It certainly goes for Rush and most of his listeners. I said it in a thread yesterday that I’m sure much of the venom directed at Fluke is because these old men with limp dicks don’t have the normal sex life that they think Fluke has (FWIW, I have no idea what Fluke’s sex life is like, nor do I care) and it drives them insane.
Bill Maher said a long time ago that Islamic radicals just need to get laid. Christopher Hitchens said that all you need for a fascist movement is to give a bunch of dateless young men guns and tell them that they’re special. This is what we’re seeing with the outrage over Fluke’s testimony: angry, sexually demented men.
Loneoak
I have non-marital sex with my wife all the time. It’s much hotter that way.
supa
I wonder if Not Republican Cole has ever really ‘thought’ about anything what with his uncanny ablility to always be WRONG!
jl
Note: reposted due to moderation because of overlooked B0N3_r p1LLzz word.
Legislators around the country, especially women, have been doing good work in pointing out the double standards.
Ohio Senate Bill Offers Male Lawmakers A Taste Of Their Own Medicine
‘ …Ohio State Sen. Nina Turner (D-Cleveland) will introduce a bill aimed at cracking down on prescription drugs like [V * * g r *] that treat erectile dysfunction. Turner’s legislation would make men jump through certain hoops, such as psychological screenings, before they could obtain the meds. The bill follows FDA recommendations to determine the underlying causes of erectile dysfunction… require physicians to inform patients in writing of the risks involved in taking erectile dysfunction drugs and requires men to sign a document acknowledging the risks, just like the anti-abortion bill does.
“I care about the health of men as well, and I thought it only fair that we illustrate that and make sure that a man is fully informed of the risks involved in taking these drugs and also the alternatives such as natural remedies or also celibacy,” Turner said. ‘
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/03/ohio-senator-introduces-bill-to-regulate-mens-sexual-health-and-prove-a-point.php
Bravo, Sen. Turner! Hope they keep up with these bills, some fools need their noses, and maybe other things that (one presumes) stick out into others’ business, rubbed in their dorky old retro male fear, panicked, and hate filled double standard.
pragmatism
@jibeaux: it’s funny ’cause it’s true. good for her for imparting her wisdom.
Brachiator
@Martin:
The die is cast long before that. If you are lucky and have a great relationship with your daughter, you may become the type of person that she later looks for in a mate.
Worse case scenario: she seeks out your exact opposite. Or deliberately seeks out someone that you would object to.
Or any combination of the above. Or none of the above.
Good luck.
Nutella
And if your bed wasn’t already overcrowded by Lily, Rosie, and Tunch. :)
Kay shawn
John, your earnestness in this post is right on the money, but it does illustrate that even well-meaning folks who aren’t members of an oppressed group just have no idea what it’s like. The old white farts in congress, in the catholic church,etc, refuse to be schooled because their power is threatened by the liberation of others. Once a person really gets inside the skin of a person dealing with discrimination and oppression, the mind opens and a light comes on. But this is only possible with humility and a willingness to learn and share. Not gonna happen with congress, the bishops, rush, etc.
Loneoak
Only slightly OT: these two articles came out on the same day, conclusively settling the question of whether there is more truth to be found in satire than in reasoned argument.
The Onion: Voters Slowly Realizing Santorum Believes Every Deranged Word That Comes Out Of His Mouth
Stanley Fish: Rick Santorum Isn’t Crazy
Fish’s article is pretty outrageous for comparing Santorum’s Taliban-esque fervor for a religious state to a couple lefty law professors who think religious arguments ought to be excluded from public policy as a matter of course (not with the force of law).
rb
@Cassidy: LOL. True that.
dexwood
@HyperIon:
Fifty percent of sex is ninety percent mental… or something like that.
Carnacki
@trollhattan: And always obsessed with things getting “rammed down” their throats…could they just come out and liberate themselves and accept who they are they might not be so angry and worried about what other people are doing
Comrade Colette Collaboratrice
@Brachiator:Shorter Brachiator: “Yer doomed!”
Southern Beale
And a South Carolina county Republican Party wants its members to sign purity pledges stating among other things that they’ve never had premarital sex, will never cheat on their spouses, and will uphold gun laws.
Serious crazy here. Republicans officially the anti-sex party. But at least they like their guns.
Fanshawe
My wife is pregnant and I always tell people I hope she has a girl because the world already has enough white guys. This usually confuses them. Of course, in reality I will continue to love my sexless foetal cell clump as it turns into a human no matter what type of plumbing it develops along the way.
muddy
@dedc79:
And it’s probably the MRA idiots who are wanking along to Limbaugh the most. It’s a money trap!
jl
@Martin:
” But yeah, when the girl becomes a teenager, I’m screwed. I’m going to die of a heart attack for certain. Or I’m going to kill her first boyfriend and go to prison for life. Either way, my days on this blog are numbered. ”
I’m sure all Balloon Juicers will join in a BJ Free Martin crusade, which might help.
But, it being BJ, it well might make things worse, in which case, we will make you pay us to shut up. But, all in all, looks like we can handle it. So, don’t worry.
schrodinger's cat
@Loneoak: I never read Fish, he seems even worse than Bobo and reading Bobo always spikes my blood pressure. Why is NYT giving these people, who swathe the tired bigotry of the GOP leaders in robes of academic respectability, a forum.
Soonergrunt
@JCT: I’m here to serve.
Soonergrunt
@Carnacki: It’s the shirt idea, right?
JPL
@Fanshawe: Does your wife understand that as a member of the bj community you are to share pictures of the baby?
JoyceH
@dedc79:
Ain’t that the truth! You know, for all of human history until the past few years, the only person who wound up with the burden of an unexpected pregnancy was the woman. The man involved could just say, ‘not my baby’, and nine times out of ten, get off scott free. Guys, we’ve got DNA testing now! If that little bundle of joy is yours, we can prove it, and you can be paying for it for at least eighteen years. You’d better hope that the women in your life have easy, affordable, non-judgmental access to birth control!
Chris
Huh. I knew it was very high, but didn’t know it was that near-unanimous.
OT, but you’re reminding me of a wedding of an uber-religious couple that I went to in which, the story goes, neither of them had ever had sex and neither of them had ever so much as kissed anyone (either each other or anyone else) before the wedding. (I didn’t go looking for this information, mind you, it was proclaimed loudly by the priest as part of the ceremony for all to hear).
I don’t know them that well, but given the stats, I’d say the odds are astronomically high that at least one of them was lying, if not about the sex, certainly about the other part.
jibeaux
I hate to get off the topic of sluts, but I also dearly love this flow chart for tonight.
Jrod
@16
Oh really? I suppose this guy was also a millionaire firefighting astronaut who collects Nobel prizes in his spare time. You know, when not playing WoW.
Loneoak
@Fanshawe:
I was constantly surprised at how much energy total strangers went into policing my unborn, unsexed (we didn’t learn until he came out) baby’s heteronormativity. People were sometimes angry with us because we didn’t know the sex because then they couldn’t give us any presents—the operating theory being that if they gave us a present that was too girly he would be totally gay by the time he was 12. This was true of even well meaning, politically-liberal friends. I found myself puzzled by how exhausting it must be to go through life with such strict social roles predefined for yourself and everyone else, struggling to cram everything you encounter into a pathetic, miserable little box. I loved all my queer and trans friends all that much more for making the world a little wider for him.
Chris
@Southern Beale:
And I thought the Kansas Republican Purity Pledge was fucked up.
wenchacha
We really worked to let our son and daughter know they could always talk with us. And I watched “Real World” with my girl when she was a tween.
The lesson was, essentially, “don’t behave like these immature camera fuckers, and you’ll be much happier in life.”
trollhattan
@jl:
If I tell my daughter, “You may not date a Republican!” will she date a Republican to be rebellious? Reverse psychology? “You must only date Republicans!”
So complicated, this child-rearing thang.
not signing this one
As a young, single, wealthy, attractive man, I currently have plans to sleep with three to five different women this week — this is a pretty busy week, I admit.
If I were a woman I’d be considered the whore of Bablylon. As a man, well … plenty of people still wouldn’t approve, but given that all of these women know and there’s no dishonesty going on, I hear more jealousy at my “sowing my oats” than outright shame and hatred. What invokes jealousy and high-fives for men might permanently ruin my career and leave a permanent stain on my reputation if I were a woman, even in 2012.
Carnacki
@Soonergrunt: I need to behave
redshirt
@Southern Beale: Hate sex, facts, love guns and war.
Yep. Sounds like a Death Cult.
Fanshawe
@JPL:
She is uninitiated, but I’ll see what I can do. In the meantime, do an image search for “Winston Churchill,” he’s a pretty accurate approximation of most babies.
schrodinger's cat
@Jrod: I was going to say the same thing, sounds like a totally made up story.
Elias
@Spiffy McBang:
I’ve talked with some CDC folks about this… they said there is no way a guy playing WoW has slept with 9 girls in his life, let alone the past three weeks. Let’s be realistic here.
Neldob
Puts me to mind of the old joke about the little boy and little girl. He says ” I have something you don’t have!”. She says “Yeah, but my mom says with what I have I can get all of those I want”. heh.
eric
@schrodinger’s cat: not so, all of the girls live in canada
kindness
The paradox, the hypocrisy…it burns! Rush started all this Slut & prostitute calling and yet he gets busted for having a vial of v1agra that wasn’t prescribed to him after returning from a holiday in the Dominican Republic which is home to the western hemisphere’s largest underage prostitution offerings.
It’d be funny but in this case, it’s sadly pathetic.
The Ancient Randonneur
The greatest plea for a mercy fvck in the history of … EVER!
(But, yeah, you are correct, John.)
burnspbesq
@Martin:
“But yeah, when the girl becomes a teenager, I’m screwed.”
If anything, it’s worse when you know your kid is gay. He goes off to college in the fall, I lose the last vestiges of control over his social life, and you never forget that his choosing the wrong partner could literally be a death sentence.
EriktheRed
That does it, John!
WE’RE GETTING YOU LAID!
David Koch
Speaking of sluts.
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/5738/bristolpalin.jpg
I mean seriously, don’t thump your bible when your Queen and Princess trade on sexuality.
Cassidy
@Loneoak: Reminds me of the time my boy spent his Christmas money from his Grandparents. He couldn’t decide between Spiderman and My Little Pony. When he finally settled on the ponies we went to check out and he was very proud of his choices, carrying them himself and wanted to hand the money to the lady. As this was going on, a couple of people and couples would look at him and then me. They all must have been having an incredibly smart day as the look on my face made it very clear that bad things would happen if they said something to my boy.
bemused
Most people have pre-marital sex. People are having sex all the time, period, thanks to birth control. Yet, rightwing morons are bitching that they have to pay for other people’s birth control even though they don’t. They don’t seem to be complaining about getting their own or their partners’ contraceptives covered by health insurance, just everyone else’s. The mind boggles.
The slut name callers must not be getting any, bitter little fools.
wrb
Man on man Jealousy.
Those are the men who ain’t getting any.
Or who are trying to be faithful to their wife and can’t stand it.
EriktheRed
@Stevie314:
No, a slut will sleep with everyone, but it’s a BITCH who will sleep with everyone but you.
Loneoak
@schrodinger’s cat:
Oh, he’s nowhere near as bad as Bobo, IMO. He can actually follow an argument and produce evidence that is weightier than some stupid metaphor about cardboard cutouts that only approximate human life.
He does have a point: Santorum’s position is widespread in certain corners of the conservative legal establishment. But if the definition of not-crazy only extends to believing something that other people also believe, then almost everything is excluded from crazy.
Anya
I think this whole madness is energizing young women. My brother-in-law, a sophomore at Duke – who’s like any other over privileged idiot is a Ron Paul supporter (“because of war and stuff”) was told by his girlfriend that since he doesn’t care about her rights and the rights of millions of American women, then she’s not going to waste her time with him. Of course he relented and now they’re both very active with OFA. I think the Republican stupidity is energizing a lot of youth who were apathetic.
Fanshawe
@Loneoak:
Yeah the sex is one of the first questions we’re asked which is always strange to me. We’re telling people that we’re keeping the sex secret but its early enough that we wouldn’t know anyway. I’m sure once we’re futher along and it’s clear that we’re actually for-real-super-serious-no-backsies not telling people the sex we’ll get more push back. I’m enough of a dick to outright tell people that a big part of the reason is because we don’t want people to be exclusively complimenting him on how brave and strong he is or her on how pretty she is while (s)he’s still on the placenta diet, but I’m sure I’ll still get tired of it pretty quickly.
flukebucket
@Martin:
I remember when I first found out that the wife and I were going to have a daughter an old friend of mine told me, “son when you have a boy you have one dick to worry about but when you have a little girl you have to worry about every dick in the neighborhood”
I am so glad both of my daughters are grown and married now. Their teen years were the most horrifying years I have ever lived.
Loneoak
@Cassidy:
How did the grandparents feel about it? Or do you have a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy about ponies?
And good on you and your adorable little boy. My kid is still too young (3 months) to actually want one toy over another, but I imagine this will be happening to us too.
Jacquie
I’m pretty impressed with this thoughtful examination of your male privilege, John. I will add another aspect that frustrates me, which is the concept of women as sexual gatekeepers, that women don’t like sex, and are therefore responsible for saying no when men badger them for sex. No one ever tells the menfolk to hold an aspirin between their legs, ya dig?
Fwiffo
It’s also another case of conservatives being bad at math. They seem to be OK with men having sexy-times, but not with each-other. Wouldn’t that require just as much sexy-time having by women, by the transitive law of humping?
hilzoy
“I guess I never really had thought about the double standard regarding sex that is applied to women.”
blinks
Srsly?
Though I’d be more surprised if I hadn’t talked to a friend of mine who was trans (male body, male upbringing, male everything except female gender identity), and had her realize that she had truly never thought about what it would be like to have to take into account the possibility of assault fairly regularly. She was mortified and appalled that she only really got it when it became personal for her. I had always thought that that was something that everyone knew.
schrodinger's cat
@wrb: Or they are attracted to other men, and hence don’t have to worry about birth control.
@Jacquie: In more traditional societies it is the women who have to dress modestly, wear hijab, etc. Rules for thee but none for me.
slightly-peeved
@78: I think part of the reason Rush’s audience like it, and everyone else recoils in horror, is that Rush is essentially sexually harassing Fluke like the worst, sleaziest possible boss. By which I mean Clarence Thomas. By calling her a dirty slut and asking her to put videos of herself online, Rush was probably replicating the Saturday night chat-up routine of a lot of his viewers. (I apologise for this image, and to compensate, I will end this comment by mentioning baby ferrets).
kdaug
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, I suppose it’s the reason they haven’t had sex.
In my experience, it’s an authoritarian/fundamentalist/damaged/repressed point of view.
Which is fine – nothing wrong with it if you keep it to yourself.
Just stay away from me.
rb
@Cassidy: Heh, good on you.
When I go clothes shopping with my daughter, we often find ourselves picking out things on the “boys” side of the store, because she likes trains and dinosaurs as much as the next kid.
No one bats an eye (so far at least), but I’m sure if she was a boy who loved pink, the busybodies would be ready with a comment or three.
Tonal Crow
@Fwiffo:
“Shut up you traitorous hippy libtard,” the conservative helpfully explained.
danimal
@jibeaux: That flow chart was a thing of beauty. Go on, people, click the link.
kdaug
@Corner Stone:
I asked, and Jenny swears she never said “kwah”.
YoohooCthulhu
You know John, it’s even WEIRDER than that. If you look at the Bristol Palin thing and the other norms among conservative types, sluts are women who have premarital sex with birth control. Even the conservatives are fine with women who have premarital sex, it’s the birth control specifically that makes you a “slut”.
Cassidy
@Loneoak: They don’t care. My Dad would have beat my ass for not letting him pick what he wanted and that would’ve been preferable to what my Step-mother would’ve done. lol
It’s also funny, I have 3 girls and a boy. The boy is the youngest. So people, especially in the midwest and south, are always saying things like “finally got your boy, huh” and other such stupid shit. Drove me crazy. I finally started telling people “yeah, when we found out the 2nd and 3rd ones were girls, I tried to put them back/get an abortion/etc., but it was too late”. The look on everyone’s face was priceless.
erlking
You know who didn’t like premarital sex? Ross Douthat. Always worth remembering.
Jeffro
@Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
I sense a t-shirt meme to end all t-shirt memes…
Loneoak
@rb:
Yeah, it is shocking how so much of the gender policing falls predominately on boys. We tend to publicly worry a lot about affirming girl’s rights to do whatever they want, Limbaugh and friends aside. But the actual space for gender expression for boys and men is much, much narrower than it is for girls and women. This is why I’ve always taught my students that in the end feminist theory is as much for men’s liberation as it is for women’s—the patriarchy cuts both ways.
Fanshawe
@Cassidy:
I was born in 1982 and even back then my parents were pretty good about not gendering me too strongly. I wore a lot of red. When I was a little boy I had a bunch of my little ponies and carebears and spiderman toys and transformers. Somehow, despite this scandalous upbringing, I still ended up liking girls.
muddy
@hilzoy:
Yes, thank you. John’s last paragraph was a little problematic for me, I have had the experience of walking into a bar alone and it’s like they rolled the dessert trolley through from the response, and this in a respectable place. All I want to do is go in the bathroom and wash my hands about 50 times, it’s really not nice and flattering like you might think.
Jeff Fecke
@dedc79: Exactly. I didn’t want to have kids every time I had sex. I ended up fathering one kid that I really wanted and treasure. This is bad because why?
Martin — I’ve found reading feminist bloggers has helped me immensely. I think I’ve reached a point where I feel about my (currently 9-year-old) daughter having sex someday the way I feel about my parents having sex — I don’t really want to know about it in any detail. I want her to enjoy it when it happens, I want it to happen when she’s ready and not before, and most of all, I want her to have access to all the contraception in the world until the day she decides she wants to have a child, if that day ever comes.
It’s that last part that I’m most sure of. Having sex “too early” is a lot better than getting pregnant too early. And damn the Republicans for putting that in jeopardy.
WJS
The actual split is probably 80% who have had premarital sex, 20% who have not had it, and that’s due to the fact that 15% wants to hide the fact that they can’t get laid. The left over 5% is truly proud of their accomplishment.
This sums up the basis for the culture war in which we find ourselves. About twenty percent of the people in this country can’t get laid to save their lives, and they are going to make everyone else suffer for it.
Tonal Crow
@WJS:
Don’t the supermajority of those people who are conservative “Christians” know that envy is a deadly sin?
Citizen_X
If this whole controversy results in less Republican politicians getting elected, that would be great.
If it also results in less Republican men getting laid, that would be purest awesomesauce.
Brachiator
From Skepchic.org: Are you a slut?
Very droll stuff. And also serious as a heart attack.
muddy
@Jeff Fecke: I’m a woman who wanted 6 children, but who had one because that was what I could afford. Without birth control I suppose I could have bred it up and gone on welfare, but they don’t like that either.
This is why we can’t have a nice country.
Julie
@Villago Delenda Est: There is that tipping point, though, in a social group where “stud” becomes “manwhore” — and all the women in the group know he’s “dirty” and to avoid him, and most of the men roll their eyes at his increasingly low standards. Now, that doesn’t usually happen until people start to transition into some maturity their late 20s and early 30s, but it does happen. The ‘consquences’ and mean words still aren’t anywhere near what women have to endure, to the point where it’s not even a valid comparison, but there is a point where “stud” isn’t a good thing anymore.
Totally agreed on your point about people who don’t engage in premarital sex — or, indeed, any sex. Those people are a small minority, but they’re out there and our society looks askance at them in the same way they do people who have (so-called) “too much” sex.
Aaron Baker
It’s interesting how having a daughter can sensitize a man to all sorts of inequities, double standards, AND male obnoxiousness.
I’m much more pro-choice since Laura came into my life–and I think the two facts are related.
Also: a number of months ago, I went out for drinks with two other men, post-middle-aged like me, and we stopped at a Tilted Kilt across the street from where I work. A waitress came out in one of those absurd outfits they have to wear. She couldn’t have been more than a year or two older than Laura–and, thinking about my daughter, and thinking that this young woman might regard me as a lecherous creep, I felt about as embarrassed to be male as I ever have. I believe it’s safe to say that in my 20s, I wouldn’t have been perturbed in the least.
gaz
A good piece. Need MOAR of it.
I’ve had the dubious fortune of being at odds with a normative sex drive. In a word, I’m asexual – and it makes it makes things complicated. On the other hand, I’ve been granted a sort of outsider status on the sex thing, and sometimes it’s enlightening. For starters, I have a better handle than most (maybe?) on how ridiculously important it is to people. (not to mention the ridiculous act is itself – unless I’ve missed something, if there is a creator, they have a great sense of humor!).
I *am* married, but getting there was tough. Companionship being a basic human need I think (for most people at least), butts heads with not wanting to trap a perspective partner in a celibate relationship.
Ironically, when I was younger, I was a total slut. I didn’t like sex, but I was bound (heh) and determined to figure out why. Leading to my current situation of failing every purity test ever devised.
I’m not ungrateful. Apparently this runs in my family – and I am helping some of my younger siblings come to terms with something that took me many years myself.
All this is leading up to this:
What the hell does it matter if people enjoy sex or not? Put it another way – I’ve been a raging slut, and *didn’t* enjoy sex at all. So WTF are these people thinking. Usually I can follow a tortured moralistic argument through all of the demented twists, but I’ve never really understood “slut shaming”. Can anyone explain the machinations of how this is supposed to work? I just don’t see the big deal? what’s so bad about being a slut?
hilzoy
“I have had the experience of walking into a bar alone …”
Heh. I once wrote a travel guide to some of the more unfortunate parts of Mexico, and since writing a travel guide pretty much requires that you visit a lot of restaurants, clubs, etc. alone, I had to deal with some pretty serious harassment. The final straw came one day when I was walking down the street, someone grabbed my breast, and when I pulled away started screaming “F*cking b*tch! F*cking American wh*re!”
My first thought was: can I get a nun’s habit? But I didn’t know how to get one, and besides, it was July in Mexico. My second thought was to cut all my hair off, on the theory that if I did, any people who might bother me would spend the crucial second in which I walked past them thinking: wtf is that?, and I would be safe.
So I actually did get a serious buzz cut. My hair was around 1/4″ long; when I leaned back against the seat of a bus, it scrunched like velvet instead of lying flat, which was sort of cool. Also, I had always wondered, in what I had thought was an idle way, what I’d look like with a shaved head, and now I got to find out. Most important, though, it actually worked: I could write the “nightlife” sections of my travel guide without incident.
Corner Stone
@muddy:
Are you saying that when I give you the bedroom eyes from across the salad bar, that’s not flattering enough for you?
Maybe I’ll throw in a little restrained hooting or catcalling to let you know I’m sincere.
Corner Stone
@Julie:
In my completely non-scientific estimation, the women who deem him “dirty” are the married ones. Any single friends they have don’t seem to have any issue spending time with him.
And the men that roll their eyes first look to make sure their wife is watching them.
R-Jud
@hilzoy:
I did the same thing about 6 months into living alone in Chicago. My mother cried, a co-worker asked if I was having a nervous breakdown, but it was finally possible for me to walk from my apartment to the El station on a sunny day without getting harassed more than once.
WJS
@Tonal Crow: Isn’t the basis of Republican political thought based on making certain that they are the envied, and not the envious? And haven’t they eaten a decade of FAIL chasing that dream?
gaz
@R-Jud: Apparently you two run in different circles than I. A plurality of my hetero guy friends find shaved heads on women to be really attractive.
Just sayin’ =)
muddy
@hilzoy: I had a buzzcut for a while, just clippered my head like my son does. It was very freeing, but in the end I had had long hair for decades and it just wasn’t right. The freedom part was about the care and appearance, tho.
Because then lesbians were hitting on me. I can’t say that any of them ever made me feel unsafe though, but as to whether that was due to the way they went about it or socialization on my part, I don’t know.
muddy
@Corner Stone:
You can go stand with the idiots in the supermarket who think striking up conversations whilst fondling produce and meat is going to work out well.
gnomedad
Hitler?
gaz
@schrodinger’s cat: There’s a book about business management, and fostering a healthy atmosphere at a company. It’s called Fish. (it’s written by a guy that runs/ran the fish market in pike place on the seattle waterfront, IIRC) I did a double take when you said Fish. I thought you were talking about that book, which is actually quite good.
I just googled stanley fish… meh. I’d have rather not known.
Ecks
Well it’s the old madonna/whore dichotomy, isn’t it. If as a girl you don’t have sex then you’re frigid and repressed and nobody would want to date you (what’s the point if you don’t put out). If you DO have sex then you’re a whore. It’s a classic lose/lose, and it’s imposed on women without their having much say in the matter.
Satanicpanic
@Loneoak: My son is in elementary school and gets teased for his long hair. I couldn’t be more proud that it doesn’t bother him. Trying to prove/maintain masculinity is like competetive drinking- no one really wins.
Julie
@Corner Stone: I’d quibble with that a little bit, but you’re right — the attitude change does tend to come when people partner off into long-term relationships. And it doesn’t always happen, but when it does happen it’s usually in social groups where people have been friends for a long time and know each other’s issues. If the guy is consistently scoring total hotties there’s probably less eye-roll, but let’s be honest that that’s not usually the case when we’re talking quantity. ;)
And, yes, the married ladies are probably warning the single ones — some of whom do stay away, and some don’t.
Seebach
If there was no longer a social stigma about being a slut, I can’t help but imagine how much more sex everyone would be having.
It’s just a bad idea for the double standard to exist.
sweaver
You had me until this, JC. And while I can sort of appreciate the spirit in which you said it, I want to say on behalf of the be-ovaried… seriously? We had this figured out. So did our moms, so did our grandmas, our aunts and our sisters. Fucking is pretty fun.
Someguy
@gaz:
That’s right. Nothing wrong with promiscuity. Nothing at all. Just don’t ask me to marry that woman at work who banged the mailroom staff after the Holiday Party.
kdaug
@muddy:
Reason #6 why I don’t have kids.
Jeff Fecke
@gaz:
It goes back into the old-school patriarchy, where women were the property of their fathers, paternity tests didn’t exist, and neither did effective birth control. It was important that women be kept virginal, because as the property of their father, and then their husband, if they weren’t, they could have some other guy’s kid than the guy their father wanted, and that would totally wreck their resale value.
Of course, today women are no longer viewed as property, birth control works very well, paternity tests are almost infallible, and dowries don’t exist in the west. But the old stigma hangs on, because…well…just because, okay?
(It should be noted that even back then, it was assumed guys would go off and sow wild oats, but hopefully it would be with lower-class girls or prostitutes who, thanks to the non-existence of paternity tests, couldn’t really cause much trouble for them.)
Corner Stone
@muddy:
What?! You’re saying that carefully selecting a cucumber and muttering, “Close…pretty close…” isn’t enticing either?
I don’t know how much more I’ve got left in the repertoire, to be honest with you.
Ecks
@Corner Stone: I’ve spotted your problem. You have to waggle the cucumber down by your fly while making suggestive eyebrow movements. 60% of the time it works all the time.
Keith G
@Dr. Loveless:
Are you gay? I am.
I am actually unable to find a context for this bull shit. Maybe it was some double bank shot attempt at humor. It failed. Maybe it was voicing a notion that all gay guys immediately become hypnotized by dick. Nope.
Truth be told, middle aged gay men can have a bit of a challenge when looking for any form of intimate companionship. So I find you comment unfortunate.
ItAintEazy
@YoohooCthulhu:
There was a joke back in the 2008 election. When it was revealed that Bristol Palin had a child out of wedlock, convervatards hailed that as a blessing and a miracle. Imagine if Malia or Sasha Obama had a kid out of wedlock (with a kid who’s *ahem* urban in the same strain as Levi Johnston is “a proud redneck”) those republicans would be changing their tune to irresponsible black teenage mothers and overall black cultural deficiency so fast, it will give you motion sickness.
GeneJockey
@YoohooCthulhu:
For some people, nothing has changed since the days thre decades ago when a friend of mine told me her mother, upon finding condoms in her daughter’s room, told her the bad thing wasn’t that she’d had sex. It was that it was PLANNED!!!
Keith G
BTW: I don’t mean to dump on Cole, but it took you this fucking long to figure this shit out? My god!
I thought those bridges had been crossed in the mid 1970s – you know Betty Ford, et al. Or does time move a bit slower in the Mountaineer State? Gosh.
Well, congratulations on figuring this stuff out.
Quarks
I’d be sending you my personal information, if only
This bit weren’t so applicable to me :)
cynickal
@EriktheRed:
Wait… if he’s got kin-folk in West Virginia, how hard can it be to get laid?
muddy
@kdaug: He was 3 when I heard it, so I’m not sure what it says about me! I was young, we kind of came up together. It worked out fine.
Elly
@Schlemizel:
Not this mom (and dad). My kids (now 22 and 19) know the story of how their dad and I met: we hooked up at the housewarming party of mutual friends; went skinny dipping in the hot tub of an apartment complex at 3:00 a.m.; then spent the rest of the night (morning) together.
It’s a funny story, since – when we parted in the afternoon, he forgot what my name was, and had to ask.
We’ve never made a big deal about either sex or marriage with our kids – we’ve always been matter-of-fact about our experiences.
Ruckus
@BGinCHI:
…ensure women’s voices are heard in discussions about women’s health care
Women’s voices should not just be heard, they should be front and center, way ahead of any male voice. What the hell does a 60+ old guy like me know about women’s health? Not a whole hell of a lot, but far more than some supposed celibate dick in a robe, at least I’ve actually lived with women and can say the word vagina without having a heart attack.
And that’s pretty cool of BJK to send that.
muddy
@Corner Stone: I’m sorry that your imagination is limited.
muddy
@Ecks: You probably think this is absurd, but it’s not far off the mark sometimes!
shep
…and call me at 555 – …
asiangrrlMN
@FridayNext: Nope. I’ve taken to calling it non-marital sex.
Preach it, Cole. If I want to get my roll on every night, whose business is it but mine and my lucky partner(s)?
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
i am still and always will be, objectively pro-slut.
i think slut shamming comes from people who think the world in general, even if only objectified by a few people in it, owes them more sex, weirder sex, more sex with fewer compromises, or whatever the particular person feels they want more of.
that is different than being denied, because people are greedy more often than they are truly unfuckable.
i think slut shame is weirder. the best i can understand it, as someone who is straight but has been “accused” by “straight” people of being gay is;(h/t slc punk)
of course that is probably only one aspect of it.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
no need to say it twice.
dead existentialist
Along the lines of the slut/stud conundrum, I offer my favorite restroom graffiti:
If a goat is a ram and a mule an ass, why is a ram in the ass a goose?
(Sorry, this just seemed like the thread for this.)
Ecks
@muddy: absurd? Heck I was giggling like a 7 year old who’s found a dirty-sounding word.
Actually what’s kind of funny is when hetero guys get hit on – and I don’t mean asked out, or gently flirted with, but I mean HIT ON – we’re deer in headlights. We don’t have any culturally available scripts for how to cope with it, or really much relevant experience at all. It’s kind of an awkward situation even if you do know what you’re doing, but when you don’t, my goodness is it awkward.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I am one of those guys who referred to himself as a “slut” back in my single days and my friends agreed. I had no problem with that because it was true to a degree. I chased tail like the world was ending tomorrow but I never thought of the ladies I was with as sluts since I actually had some standards and didn’t drink myself blind by midnight (and never dated someone I met in a bar). I went for the ladies that were a tough nut to crack (so to say). My friends hated my guts because I ended up with the chicks that they lusted after. In the end I married virgin… OK, she was one when we met but that quickly changed…
See, sluts can have standards and still proudly be sluts! :p
Great post John, you should get laid just for writing it. :)
badpoetry
My friend has two young daughters, and he’s quite enlightened about their future sex lives. When the time comes, he plans to tell them that, as smart, young, attractive women, they will have a lot of opportunities to have lots of sex, and they should enjoy that. Be responsible with yourself and other people, of course, but above all… enjoy it.
Much more refreshing than “you’re not allowed to date until you’re 30” kind of mentality.
Brachiator
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I can see Cole now, having invited some babe over for dinner, leaving his PC on and this thread showing. In plain sight.
The date reads it, and goes, “oooh. You’re so sensitive.”
Hopefully, the doggies will leave some room in the bed.
muddy
@Ecks: Yes I know, it’s kind of sweet.
As far as the supermarket goes I just have to think they don’t really want to meet someone or they would try normal conversation. Maybe they just want to find out the yes or no part, and not waste time. Well, thass okay – they have weeded themselves out and not wasted my time I guess.
Ecks
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: Honestly, no, I think it’s a deeply culturally engrained view of women as pure and men as alloyed, that sees sex as about possession (you “have” someone). When a man “has” a woman she consents to him gratifying his self using her precious tender forbidden parts (which must never be seen in public – you go to jail for that!) and is dirtied by it.
Think about it, why does it matter if your wife or daughter or mother has sex with someone they aren’t married to? It’s like you (the male in this situation) have lost something, or been sullied in some symbolic but important way.
Sex is more meaningful and intimate than shaking hands or kissing our friends on the cheek. Even fairly sex positive people tend to have to do a fair amount of emotional work to manage the expectations of everyone involved, and cope with situations where one person starts getting more emotionally attached than the other… Not that it happens every time, but with sex involved there’s far more of a chance of it than with other kinds of physical contact.
Mix that all together with a comforting blanket of gender roles that say how you’re supposed to dress and look and wear your hair, who it’s acceptable to use how much violence upon (don’t hit girls! cat fights happen!), and what you’re supposed to do with your life (get married, settle down, have kids, tell everyone what gender THEY are)… It’s a potent mix that speaks to our identities – who we are, and what our place is in the world. And once you start mixing THAT into your politics, things can get self-righteous and ugly in a hurry.
muddy
@Brachiator: Hopefully he will not have to make such a distressing choice!
EriktheRed
@badpoetry:
I have a daughter who started taking birth control just a few years ago when she was still in HS (unbknownst to me, but knownst to her mom; I forgive her). I’m ok with her “doing it”, but if she knows what’s good for her, she won’t make me grandpa til I’m at least 50.
gex
Yup. Privilege. Something that straight white men of Christian tradition struggle to recognize sometimes. Life truly is different if everyone agrees that you are the entire problem with society.
Ultimately given the fact that they demand that men spread their seed, their policies have three logical outcomes: more man on man sex, more babies, more rape. In other words, the red state stats that circulate every election year.
Ecks
@badpoetry: Actually if I cast myself back to my teenage years, I don’t want my parents telling me to enjoy having sex. ICK!
By that age most people already have fairly firm ideas that it’s supposed to be enjoyable, and I don’t see that parental endorsement would change that a whole lot. If anything it could be a ploy to UNDERMINE the desire to have sex.
They could tell me that it’s my choice, that’s fine, and that I should be responsible about it and what have you (though the sex ed I got in school in Canada was plenty good enough to cover that without my parents having to go through any of that – which is, believe me, the right way round to have it)… but telling me to go and enjoy sex? EEEW.
debg
Check out MoJo’s handy flowchart–WITH KITTENS!!
http://motherjones.com/mojo/2012/03/flow-chart-are-you-slut
gex
@cathyx: A friend of mine defended my girlfriend in an argument in the comedy community about rape jokes. He criticized the jerks but in a subtle way. Offline, he told my GF that he wanted to take them on more directly but he’s “too much of a p****y.”
So very close to getting it.
muddy
@Ecks: I had a really interesting conversation with a young man recently, he said that he went to a strip club for the first time. I expressed some surprise, as he was a social guy, lots of friends, and near 30. He said he hadn’t avoided it, but the way things fell out he never had. Said he thought he should go, as a cultural experience he should have by the time he was 30, so he checks it out with one of his roommates. I said, yeah, I went to a Tupperware party in the 80’s for that reason.
So this guy doesn’t drink, and he is sounding puzzled, Maybe it’s better when you’re drinking? he offers. He said he didn’t get it. Yeah, she was good looking, she was bare, but so? He’s straight but he says, you can’t touch, you can’t talk, he says, What’s it for?
I said to him that the problem was that he did not objectify women and so missed the point. To him she was a girl working a job (he is a chef so he gets the hospitality thing), and not just Other.
No Othering. Amazing, evolved, he just didn’t have the prejudice. I know this guy a long time, he wasn’t shitting me. Anyway it was refreshing.
Ecks
@Brachiator: I suspect that would actually be a pretty big douche move. Making a nice and understanding gesture is a fine thing, but trying to blatantly SHOW OFF about it starts to look pretty darn contrived, and slightly manipulative.
muddy
@Ecks: Thank the gods my mother never spoke about this to me is all I can say.
Elias
I love the phrase “War on Women”. It’s nice that we can sometimes play hardball better than the pukes can.
I also like to get into how Rush Limbaugh called Sandra Fluke a slut because she takes the BCP. And he then got into fantasizing about how much sex she must be having and demanded that she post videos online.
Rush is a creepy old pervert. People need to say that. It’s true.
greennotGreen
@Keith G: Maybe Dr. Loveless was just trying to give a compliment, to say that John is a catch.
RossinDetroit
“John, you ignorant slut!”
/Aykroyd
Someone had to.
Ecks
@muddy: I don’t think it’s even that sophisticated. Hooking up with a pretty yet anonymous stranger without much pretext is a pretty common male fantasy (see porn, most of). The woman in this situation isn’t particularly their own person, just a wriggling body with the right parts. That’s fine as far as pure fantasy goes, but I suspect the supermarket thing is an attempt to act out the fantasy, minus any real expectation that it will work, plus the minor visceral thrill of flaunting social conventions by acting things out in public.
Maybe there’s also a comforting power dynamic too (the hunter and the prey), but that’s getting a bit psycho-analytic about the whole thing.
gaz
@Jeff Fecke: Funny. I guess I just assumed the Puritans were all burning in hell by now.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Brachiator: “Hopefully, the doggies will leave some room in the bed.”
One of the many problems with being a pet owner and a stud… ;)
Ecks
@muddy: Y’know it’s complicated. I had much the same relationship with strip clubs as the guy you described – it’s just a weird socially awkward physically distanced not-very-erotic experience with people you don’t know, and who you don’t talk to in any meaningful way. It’s just kind of boring. But at the same time it’s hard being a north-american guy at a topless beach, because it’s so hard not to stare. There are parts of your hindbrain that are so busy shouting “BOOBS! FORBIDDEN! BOOBS! SEX! BOOBS” that it’s really hard to ignore that. I don’t know how I can square those two experiences.
Omnes Omnibus
@gaz: The Puritans weren’t actually opposed to sexytime. The Quakers, on the other hand, had some definite hang-ups.
gaz
Funnest “job” I’ve ever had involved hanging out in the dressing room of a seattle strip joint where my (now ex) g/f worked and doing all of the girls’ makeup.
It didn’t pay well, but you meet some of the coolest, weirdest people ever (and I’m not talking about the tricks)
muddy
@Ecks: It usually ends with me giving The Look (no, Mom, not the look! not the deadeye!) and the naughty (apparent) schoolboys retire quickly.
On the other side of the equation, I have a few times offered a suggestion to a man who is puzzling way too hard over the choices and they rear back as tho they were goosed, scuttling away like virgins. Damn man, I just wanted to recommend a healthy peanut butter.
Heh, she said nut. Also butter.
gaz
@Omnes Omnibus: I have such a hard time keeping the god-botherers straight (edit: heh). Apologies.
And the Quakers should stick to making granola bars =)
Arclite
John fucking Cole! Yeah!
Hits another one out of the park. You’ve been ON FIRE with this shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ecks: I never had the beach problem; although I once saw an enormously fat, completely shaved (I mean, completely) naked man who was brick-red with sunburn.
I used the typical American “Boobies!” reaction to identify and avoid some of my fellow countrymen.
muddy
@Ecks: I did point out to him that he always has a lot of girls interested in him so boobs are no novelty. heh
I would be looking at boobs if they were out in front of me too, and I’m not into that. Probably a different internal dialog tho.
Ecks
@muddy: Nice :D
@gaz: Leave the Quakers alone. They may not be exciting but they’re pretty good peeps. If for some very strange reason I was absolutely HAD to become a theist, Quaker would be near the top of my list (also on the short list some brands of Buddhism, and possibly the Jesuits).
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oh my, according to Erickkk, Son of Erickkk, his latest post at Redstate is subtitled: “Women Can’t Handle The Truth! “. It seems that Murkowski went home after voting for the Blunt Amendment and some women voters were upset with her for doing so. Now she is saying that if she had to do it all over again that she would have voted against it. EE wants to show how important women are to the Republican party by pushing the War on Women. Erickkk, while you just don’t get now it I am sure you will this fall.
Just not the way you wanted.
Ecks
@muddy: Boobs aren’t really a mystery to anyone with an internet connection… But years of social conditioning give them an endlessly fascinating power. I guess once something gets wired into your head as roughly synonymous with sex then they get fuelled by THAT fascination.
Apparently for the victorians it was a ladies ankles – absolutely SCANDALOUS to see them.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@Ecks:
i think its more about power and jealousy and stirring the more visceral emotions, at least as it pertains to the reason we are talking about it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Oops, it wasn’t EE, it was Lori Ziganto, Redstate’s FP Female Warrior.
Sorry for the confusion, she’s starting to sound like EE…lol!
gaz
@Ecks: Sheesh, that was nothing more than a friendly ribbing about the Quakers.
The Puritans – well I actually ripped on them a bit.
Enjoy a small serving of perspective, on me.
muddy
@Ecks: I actually have a several gay male friends who are obsessed with boobs too. I think it’s really funny.
Ankles! Yes, the piano had “limbs” and a tablecloth over it. My grandmother got into trouble driving a carriage too fast through the streets With No Hat On. She said, Of Course I had my gloves.
Ecks
@muddy: As the old saw goes: straight men like boobs, gay women like boobs, gay men think they’re kind of neat. The only people who aren’t so taken with them are straight women, which is a pity really as they’re the ones who spend most of the time with them.
@gaz: mmm, nummy.
Interestingly I had distant relative who studied the puritans. She used to say that the popular conception of puritanism is “the fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun”, but that it actually runs a bit deeper. Their theology said that within a community sin was contagious. Once someone opened up the door and let the devil in, he had an inroads to get everyone else. So if you were off masturbating quietly in your own room you weren’t just letting yourself down, you were letting EVERYONE down, and putting them all at risk – which is why it was very much in their interest to make sure you were behaving yourself properly. Still a pretty miserable way to live, but it does actually start to make some sense when you think about it like that.
Sad Iron
However, this is again a perfect example of how the left loses. The right frames every discussion, no matter how ridiculous. They’re more than happy to simply have us calling them stupid than to be talking seriously about energy and climate change. It’s the same thing over and over: wingnuts say stupid shit, the left/sane population rightly dismisses, mocks, and laughs at them, at length, yet we’re still playing on their field. We’re talking about a planet that might be uninhabitable in less than a century, and we’re spending day after day talking about what appropriate fucking is. In terms of actually framing discussion, we lose and lose and lose. Help.
Ecks
@Sad Iron: Actually on this one we’re getting a LOT of resonance in making them look bad. That’s a net win.
Trying to fix the climate requires a congress that’ll actually pass stuff.
Sad Iron
@Ecks: I’m with you, and it’s important (I don’t want to make it seem like I’m cheapening the issue.)
marybdvm
Bravo John! Bravo!
Frankensteinbeck
I’m probably too late to this topic, but you can sum up our society’s view of sex with the story of Little Red Riding Hood, because that’s the purpose of the story – a metaphor (not very metaphoric in the earliest versions) of sex. I would like to think that the damage caused by viewing sex as a predator/prey relationship is on the way out, but there have been no shortage of times in the past when it became accepted that women could choose to have sex. The Little Red Riding Hood story always took over again. The 50s made it seem like 1920-1940 never happened.
Corner Stone
@muddy:
Listen. I gave you the “staring you down and undressing you with my eyes”, the “catcalling how smokin’ hot you are”, and the “don’t you want some of my big pickle?”.
I’m just not sure what else it’s gonna take.
redski
when i was about 10, i picked up the word “slut” from my friend’s sister, who was unhappy with somebody on “Santa Barbara.” took it home and tried it out on my big sister, who had made the mistake of standing there. tough irish lass that she is–and 4 years oler–she ran me down, pinned my shoulders with her knees and was alternating open/closed-hand mass-age on my face when our mom burst in the room.
“What in god’s name is going on in here?!”
“Mom, he called me a SLUT!”
“Ohh…” my mom said, and shut the door.
i guess some folks never learned, properly, that it’s not nice to call names. me, i haven’t gone near that one since. don’t find it very useful anyhow.
AxelFoley
Sluts of the world unite!
Phoebe
@flukebucket: How come you guys are worried about your daughters having sex but not your sons? Is it because you’re worried she’ll get pregnant? Is that it? It seems like there’s more. You keep saying how horrifying it is, but you don’t say why. Why? Am I stupid? This is not rhetorical, I really don’t know. I grew up like everyone else knowing there was a double standard, but I did not and do not understand it. It’s like I landed on this planet and do not understand your ways.
Ruckus
@Ecks:
It’s easy. Say thanks but no thanks.
If persistence rears it’s ugly head, I just ask when they had their gaydar calibrated. Works every time but you have to do it with a little grace, not like a sarcastic ass. First time I got hit on by a guy was a bit of a surprise but the attempt was done well so it really was no big deal.
Frankensteinbeck
@Phoebe:
Like I said, our society views sex as a predator/prey relationship between men and women. You can walk away from that, but you’re still walking away from it – it’s your base point, the idea lurking in the back of everyone’s head. If your daughter has sex, she’s being preyed upon. Some people sprinkle hate on top of that, but you don’t have to – right there, it explains most of the sexual double standards in America.
cay
Any guy being reflective on the condition of my gender in society is a rarity, so it’s a start.
Original Lee
@Julie: Totally agree. IMO, in our current society, there’s an acceptable “window” for losing your virginity, and if you miss that window, you’re either a slut (for losing it too early) or weird (for losing it too late or not at all). There are perfectly normal people out there who don’t have sex in the “correct/normal” timeframe. Certainly I would probably have had sex sooner and more often if I had met a non-jerk who was approximately as interested in me as a person as he was in using my body for an orgasm.
Aussiesmurf
I’m a little late to this thread, but here are my comments :
(1) As a white, straight, guy, in my five years of University in the 90s (college for you Yanks) I slept with around 30 women, and got nothing but kudos from other men. Of course, I was called a ‘slut’ in a joking-but-really-admiring way.
(2) I have always loved a song called Slut by an obscure European duo called Daniella’s Daze
I always loved that teeth-clenched rejection right before the solo.
(3) My parents were great about not insisting on ridiculous gender roles. My younger brother loved, in order, Baby-Sitter club books, Care Bears, Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake. He’s now in a happy straight marriage with a daughter.
Aussiesmurf
My link wasn’t included – try again
flukebucket
@Phoebe:
I always felt that my little girls needed to be protected. I never had a son so I can’t speak to that.
Geeno
@Corner Stone: I think it has more to do with, past a certain age, it’s regarded as somewhat immature like partying all night every night. See the term “Mid-life crisis” – I’ve heard that used in a non-perjoritive fashion.