Micalas said:
JoJoDeathunter said:
Nope, I don't see why it should be socially acceptable for men to sleep around, yet if a women does they're a "slut" or a "slag".
Well when it comes down to it, women really do hold all of the cards when it comes to sex. We can go tit for tat but a woman is much more likely to turn down a man's advances than vice-verse. Another thing to consider is how much more work it takes to be a "man-whore" than to be a "slut."
To be a "man-whore" you need to look somewhat decent, be interesting enough to catch someone's eye, and money most of the time.
What do you need to be a "slut?" A vagina and the word yes somewhere in your vocabulary.
This brings to mind a lesson I recently had in my linguistics class. It was all about the uselessness of the word "no" and the power dynamics inherent in it. It gave three examples as follows:
1) A woman being propositioned by a man.
In this case, in most Western cultural settings, the only "appropriate" response for a woman is "no," even if she would indeed like to have sex with this man. If she says yes, then she is a slut, and there are many negative connotations with that. If she says no, and means no, then she will spend the rest of the encounter, if not the rest of her time around this male, repeating herself, because there are a number of "virtuous" women who say no, but mean yes.
2) A man being propositioned
The main example brought up was that of "gay terror," that a man whose place was to proposition, when put in the position of answerer (by a homosexual propositioning him) would be so confused, and so out of place, that subsequent violent rage (potentially resulting in the murder of the gay man) is seen as unavoidable, and therefore appropriates a reduction in sentence for connected crimes committed.
Apparently during the "free love" years, when women were again trying to redefine notions of sexuality and power, groups of women would stand on streets and catcall men (as one sees men do occasionally nowadays) with a result that men would generally become extremely agitated.
3) BDSM
The lecture went on to talk about in a BDSM relationship, where all relationships of power and social norms are mutable, "no" is a useless safeword. Especially when roleplaying domination and submission, the submissive is supposed to cry "no" a number of times, and this signifies that the dominant is performing correctly.
