The Double Standard

[Stella_Omega]

I don't feel picked upon Stella.

My point about discretion is this. It's not about the discretion itself. It's about knowing what the person is doing. You wouldn't call someone a slut if you didn't know that they were fucking everything that moves. I'm sure there are sweet little demure ladies (and men ) all over the place who are sluts in private. I think that's the difference.

Maybe we're talking about two different things. Being a slut and being called a slut. Is there a difference? What was my point anyway?

Well sure, and if you didn't know she rode bikes in marathons you wouldn't call her an athlete.

But, I'm talking about the word "slut" and all that it implies in the first place. And the way it implies a specifically feminine sin, and the way it trumps every other aspect of a woman's character.

And what brought this up for me, is a widely spoken opinion within the POTC fandom that Elizabeth is a slut, a "two-timing pirate whore". a "dick hopping slut"

This is a girl who has flirted with three men and gone to her wedding a virgin.

My daddy told me; "If you're going to screw around, don't screw any two guys from the same group, because they'll call you a slut." (my folks were... wild)

 

[Guest]

I believe you have to be on your knees for this.

You start, Sarah will catch, I'll take notes

Pictures would be good as well.

I like the way this is going.

Lemme get my knee pads. Someone set up the tripod.

 

[rgraham666]

I like the way this is going.

Lemme get my knee pads. Someone set up the tripod.

(Hands over knee pads) Tripod's already set up.

'Be prepared' is not just the Boy Scout motto.

 

[Stella_Omega]

(Hands over knee pads) Tripod's already set up.

'Be prepared' is not just the Boy Scout motto.

Places, everyone, focus...


marker, and... Action!

 

[Guest]

(Hands over knee pads) Tripod's already set up.

'Be prepared' is not just the Boy Scout motto.

Do we need to huddle up first?

Or are the balls, er the ball, already in play?

 

[rgraham666]

Places, everyone, focus...


marker, and... Action!

(Gets the ping-pong paddle working)

Won't be posting for a bit. My hands are busy.

 

[Stella_Omega]

(Gets the ping-pong paddle working)

Won't be posting for a bit. My hands are busy.

The ping-pong paddle? I thought that was for the sequel!

oh, wait a minute, we're filming both episodes simultaneous, i remember.

 

[rgraham666]

The ping-pong paddle? I thought that was for the sequel!

oh, wait a minute, we're filming both episodes simultaneous, i remember.

We have a script?

I thought we were winging it.

Anyway, dinner time. We'll leave sarahh here to stew in her own juices.

 

[Stella_Omega]

We have a script?

I thought we were winging it.

Anyway, dinner time. We'll leave sarahh here to stew in her own juices.

sounds delicious...

 

[CharleyH]

I'll show my Marxist roots here, but I think it's economic. Throughout most of history, men held the money and women handled the production of heirs. A man who had sex with whomever he liked wasn't really a financial threat; until it became possible to test the DNA of a child, the path of denial generally worked. Women who had sex outside of marriage (in the sense of a social/financial institution) were a threat because they could divert resources to inappropriate targets. The man could end up investing money and resources in raising someone else's children. Depending on the society, even worse could be in store; in England, for instance, as late as the 1800's, an entailed estate could legally be withheld from a man's son and end up with a distant relative if substantial doubt were raised as to his wife's constancy (and hence the parentage of the heir).

The chief way to prevent that from happening, of course, was to prevent the woman from having sex with anyone else, and that led to a host of charming institutions the world over, which it be physical confinement, genital mutilation, covering women with sacks, or simply labelling any woman who displayed sexual desire for any man as a slut. If you go back just a few hundred years, any sexual desire, even for the woman's lawful spouse, is rather suspect. I think it's Swift who calls a woman who runs off with (and marries) a man she feels a passion for "half wife, half whore," and certainly Gulliver is repulsed by the thought of man and wife having sex while the wife is pregnant. After all, they've already achieved the only decent goal.

Shanglan

First to Doc: Having just come off of reading Edward Shorter's Written in the Flesh: A History of Desire, I will, tongue in cheek, suggest that it was Mary Wollenscraft who started that rumour about the whore.

However, I know this not to be true (not that she didn't help the concept of the "nastiness" of female desire along). For some time, I have always referred to Robert Graves "White Goddess". Mythologically (I suppose by tradition), woman is constructed as either a wife (the good), witch (the dyke or older woman) or the whore (the bad). Even religiously, the myths of Lilith and Eve would seem to me to embody these concepts. Lilith did not want to lie down with Adam, hence she becomes the wife witch. Eve follows her own desire and becomes the wife whore. Albeit, Christianity divides the wife from the whore in the myth of the Virgin Mary and over time Lilith evolves into the simple witch, bitch or hag, but never wife.

In which case to Shang: I agree with the economic aspect, but would also add the religious dimension. In his book, Shorter does go on to suggest that:

European aristocracy played by "different" rules than the common people or even lesser nobility. To quote, "'A vast luxury bordello' was one description of court life in France around 1600. It was common for courtiers in Paris to boast that they could achieve six orgasms a night, and when one failed to fulfil his promise, the lady responded, 'You can't get it up anymore? Then get out of my bed. I haven't loaned it to you like some kind of hotel where you can take it easy and relax." So deleriously did the upper orders revel in pleasure that they believed it was reserved for them alone.

FYI: He goes on to say that even within the aristocracy, women were vulnerable to pregnancy (hence economic repercussions of their desire) and small pox (disfiguring repercussions of their desire).

 

[Stella_Omega]

ha ha ha, I love where this thread has gone! here's Shang and Charley talking theory, me being the activist, Mab wondering if the problem is really all that bad, and SSS and R.Richard taking their clothes off in the middle of it all... Classic AH.

 

[Guest]

Are you saying I'm a slut?

 

[Stella_Omega]

Are you saying I'm a slut?

Sexually aggressive, and...

Appetising.

 

[Guest]

Sexually aggressive, and...

Appetising.

Yum.

Let's go explore the concepts of feminine desire.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Yum.

Let's go explore the concepts of feminine desire.

I'm not so conceptual as all that you know...

 

[Guest]

I'm not so conceptual as all that you know...

Good.

You bring the strap-on, I've got the lube.

 

[CharleyH]

Are you saying I'm a slut?

I'd have originally thought a whore, but alas the difference between the two is monetary. You are certainly a slut.

 

[Guest]

I'd have originally thought a whore, but alas the difference between the two is monetary. You are certainly a slut.

Thank you.

I think.

 

[CharleyH]

Thank you.

I think.

I love your hesitation. I say slut with a certain empowering aspect. A slut isn't so much a "traditional slut" in my eyes, as she is an empowered woman taking her own desire into her own hands and men hate it. She is a slut (still a dirty word in patriarchy) because she loves sex and desires it in a still largely patriarchal world vision. It is up to women to change that meaning.

I believe "Whore" continues to be a dirty word to both men and women because a whore is paid. She acknowledges herself as a commodity and in Western culture? Well, I will leave the definition of "whore" up for debate.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I love your hesitation. I say slut with a certain empowering aspect. A slut isn't so much a "traditional slut" in my eyes, as she is an empowered woman taking her own desire into her own hands and men hate it. She is a slut (still a dirty word in patriarchy) because she loves sex and desires it in a still largely patriarchal world vision. It is up to women to change that meaning.

I believe "Whore" continues to be a dirty word to both men and women because a whore is paid. She acknowledges herself as a commodity and in Western culture? Well, I will leave the definition of "whore" up for debate.

I don't mind re-defining the word, but, Charlie, "Slut" is a dirty word amongst women far more than men. I'll be more than happy to link you with five ongoing conversations (between women and only women) on the topic.

 

[CharleyH]

I don't mind re-defining the word, but, Charlie, "Slut" is a dirty word amongst women far more than men. I'll be more than happy to link you with five ongoing conversations (between women and only women) on the topic.

In my eyes as a woman, a slut is not a dirty word, Stell. I see your point, I just don't think the word "slut" (semiotically, of course) is valid amongst enlightened women. I have not known unenlightened women in my experience, though.

 

[Stella_Omega]

In my eyes as a woman, a slut is not a dirty word, Stell. I see your point, I just don't think the word "slut" (semiotically, of course) is valid amongst enlightened women. I have not known unenlightened women in my experience, though.

I've always used the word in the way you do-- I suppose that I've suddenly come into contact with more unenlightened women than I ever have before. With them, and as I am seeing, much of the rest of the world as well-- I am changing my vocabulary.

I invite you to go one page back, and about one-quarters of the way down the page for the beginnings of my harangue, beginning at post #83-- responses from then on are, I think fairly interesting (even if I began to spray spittle all around in my fervor by that point)

 

[gauchecritic]

I believe "Whore" continues to be a dirty word to both men and women because a whore is paid. She acknowledges herself as a commodity and in Western culture? Well, I will leave the definition of "whore" up for debate.

Just a side note, not sure of the relevance from a Beautiful south song:

She gave him everything she could give
Twenty years of kindness made her sad
But kindness doesn't make enough to live
so she sold the very last thing that she had.

And a Bob Monkhouse observation:

Whoreing is a fantastic economic concept. You have something of value. You sell it. And you've still got it to sell again.

 

[CharleyH]

O.A; I'm coming into this thread late, but had an observation I wanted to share.
First of all, straight up, I don't like Elizabeth...she has always struck me as one of those shallow type females who flits from male to male and thinks nothing of using them to gain her own ends...
**
S.O; But O.A, your condemnation of her... once again... sexual behavior goes right back to the original subject which is about how women tend to condemn women in the plural for their sexuality, vis, "one of those shallow type females".

You could say; "One of those shallow people" which would subtly change the gender focus, eh?
**
O.A.;Shallow female is exactly what I meant...and it has nothing to do with condemning female sexual behaviour.
Elizabeth has no sexual behaviour to either condemn or admire. In DMC she is (presumably) still a virgin.
What makes her actions shallow and gender based (as well as stereotypically objectionable) is her willingness to feign feelings and use seduction and the lure of sex as a bartering tool.

Now, certainly both sexes have the capacity for being shallow and neither sex is above feigning feelings; but typically, a man will pretend feelings to attain sex, whereas a woman will pretend feelings to gain a situational advantage.

It's not her sexuality (or in this case, lack of sexuality) that is objectionable, it is the emotional deceit she perpetrates.

***

S.O; but typically, a man will pretend feelings to attain sex, whereas a woman will pretend feelings to gain a situational advantage. I agree with G.M. She isn't "pretending" anything, by my reading; she does like Jack, she is attracted to him, she's exploring and dealing with new feelings during some extraordinarily trying times.

Shallow female is exactly what I meant...and it has nothing to do with condemning female sexual behaviour. yes, you are specifically condemning her for "female" behavior, when you say she use(s) seduction and the lure of sex as a bartering tool.

I gotta say, this is exactly what I find horrible and laughable about this little controversy; there are women who condemn her for dick hopping, and then there are women who condemn her for only pretending to dick hop. Each camp is reading their own gender stereotypes into her behaviour. Women are damned if they do. They are damned if they stray anywhere near the strict boundaries of sexual acceptability, and damned by other women more than anything else. A woman who transgresses has one label for ever more. She might be kind, talented, good with horses, a fabulous mother to her children-- maybe be a halfway decent musician or soccer player--but you know-- she's a sluuuuut...

What I have still not heard anyone say yet-- is what exactly would have been a better alternative for her in any of those moments. What should she have done, in your opinion? I am really getting curious about that. Thus far I've spoken to maybe five women who complain about her flirting to get what she wants. To each one of them I've put the question, and-- whaddaya know, I've not gotten an answer from any one of them!

Since I don't live in Victorian London or even decadent France prior to 1789, or the US at any point in time I can't and I am not sure many could, answer you. (BTW? I LOVE this post, Stell.) I can guess (from my 21st century perspective) what she could say and it might even be something like "Let them eat cake" lol

Alas, I live in this modern world where the word slut applied to women continues to mean dirty and diseased, but applied to a man it continues to mean stud. There are other words that do the same, but slut? It still remains a distinctly female debasement, yet a notch on the stick of male desire. Therefore I would and do, empower myself with the word because the meaning of desire needs to be modernized and so to the language must change with it. "I am feminist whore, I am a slut, hear me fucking ROAR!"

 

[shereads]

My daddy told me; "If you're going to screw around, don't screw any two guys from the same group, because they'll call you a slut." (my folks were... wild)

A wise man, your daddy.