Posted on 02/08/2010 10:07:18 PM PST by libh8er
You often hear women, especially feminists and sluts, complaining about how it’s such an unfair double standard that men are called studs when they sleep around, yet women are called sluts. It’s really not a double standard though, because both scenarios are pretty different in terms of circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least three crucial differences.
First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. It requires a certain amount of social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women to rack up a lot of partners, however, it pretty much only requires a vagina and a pulse. So a man whoring it up and a woman whoring it up are hardly the same thing because for a woman to get a lot of partners is absolutely no challenge, hence no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline when women indulge in lots of sex partners because they can get new ones whenever they want. When men get lots of sex partners, it’s respected more because getting lots of sex partners, for men, is a challenge. This is just human nature: people gain respect for those who accomplish challenging feats while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained vices as weak or flawed.
Second, women do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He is definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around with these multiple partners. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread venereal diseases. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage. If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If one woman sleeps around with five men and gets pregnant, it could be anybody’s baby. And if a man is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he is basically investing his time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that is not carrying on his DNA into the next generations, which is a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint. Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or simply raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me. Considering that the DNA test and the birth control pill had not existed for most of human history, meaning that there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage, society for many centuries had a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women and society accomplished this by creating the slut stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, longstanding traditions and customs are not easy for society to break.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women slept with many men, in a nine month period, she would still only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women, you can get many pregnancies. The more women he sleeps with, the more pregnancies. So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men sleeping around with multiple partners rather than women.
These three reasons are probably why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Of course all this is gradually changing, but we’re up against centuries of tradition here, so don’t expect any dramatic reversals or anything.
Now a lot of people are going to read all this and dismissively think Oh this guy is just being a typical man and trying to justify every man’s dream: cheating and polygamy. But believe it or not, I don’t really think male polygamy is all it’s cracked up to be. Despite what most people assume, polygamy actually may benefit women more than men. Most dudes think a society of widespread polygamy (specifically polygyny, where one man can have several women) would just be a utopia of every guy sleeping with every woman under the sun. Some economists think otherwise though. The basic argument is that in a world where po
lygamy was acceptable, most of the women would be hoarded by the most successful men. As explained in this Psychology Today article:
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage…..Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the “winners” and the “losers” in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.” Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
When there is resource inequality among men?the case in every human society?most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
So basically, women complain about how men are allowed to sleep around and they aren’t. Meanwhile men wish polygamy had widespread acceptance. And the truth may actually be that male polygamy benefits the average women more than the average man. Who’da thunk?
Well the men have to be sleeping with someone. And I guess it’s not the discrete women?
Is there a small pool of non discreet woman that this large number of men wade into?
How sad that they look down their noses at women who sleep around as much as they do.
And many want a “virtuous” woman in the end.
Probably so there won’t be too many comparisons.
The power of "choice" belongs to both consenting adults and the moment of choice is when they decide to have sex. If you don't want a child and you are fertile, don't have unprotected sex with a fertile member of the opposite sex, DUH. If you don't want the women to abort a child you father, do not conceive a child with a woman who would abort a child, DUH. Again the power of choice belongs to both consenting parties and the moment of choice is when the sex occurs.
Once you make the choice, the resulting consequences relative to child support fall under the purview of the courts. Under current law, the decision relative to an abortion belongs to the female. In both cases, it is your choice to begin with, DUH. You are doing a poor job of defending the choices fertile adults choose. No one is forcing anyone to have unprotected sex when there are two consenting adults. And should an adult choose to have unprotected sex, be a MAN or WOMAN and accept responsibility for your actions. A loser blames the other party. Scum punishes the child.
I don't care to hold your hand anymore, and I find it reprehensible that you are not advocating personal responsibility but instead choose to promote the notion that a fertile person has no choice but to conceive a child.
The way that boy was conceived resulted in him never having a father, never knowing who his father was, and I’m sure that played a factor in his becoming a hoodlum. No child should be conceived as he was, and the man is just as guilty as the woman.
It takes TWO to tango, DUH, or do women pro-CREATE by themselves (In a normal fashion)? The results become a double standard against the male when “fruit” is produced.
This is not about choices (Since the choice has been already executed by BOTH parties), it is about the law and the hypocrisy associated with the abortion/child support fallacy.
Simply put, biology.
Call it sexist all you want but its true, men produce on average 85 million sperm per day per testicle.
Women will on average only produce 400 eggs in their entire lives if they are lucky.
Supply and demand, like it or not, eggs are an insanely limited supply biologically relative to sperm.
Try to spin it, complain about it, do whatever you want about it, but I didn’t invent the double standard, you don’t like it, take it up with God.
You know exactly what I am referring to. Don’t play stupid.
If you do not get the fact that the men who have unprotected sex when they don't want a child are contribution to the number of abortions that occur, you are no friend of unborn children.
Hypocrisy exists because pro-life people advocate stopping women from aborting children, but they do not advocate stopping men from conceiving children when they don't want them.
Maybe not the dumbest, but definitely in the running.
And, I think it’s appropriate to call them both sluts.
I am not playing stupid.
Don’t make excuses for the decisions you make.
Amen ! The point is the *woman* gets the final say in the matter — have the baby or not have the baby, not the man. And THAT is the real double standard, not the name calling.
A lot of cases the female becomes the aggressor.Pathetic!! Are you really trying to say that a women forces herself on a male and forces him to have unprotected sex and there is nothing he can do about it because she is "aggressive". BS. Why can't men take responsibility for their part in conceiving a child? No women forces a man to have sex and if that man chooses to have unprotected sex HE IS EXERCISING HIS OWN FREE WILL. If a man is married to a woman who would abort his child, and he does not want that, I'd say he married the wrong woman. For the sake of argument was she "aggressive" and therefore he had no choice but to marry her? The subject of having or not having children should be fully discussed prior to getting married. If it is not and you and your partner have differing opinions, then you have made a poor choice. But what the heck, no need to take responsibility for the person you chose to marry, you can just blame it on the other person.
Pretty depressing thread overall.
One thing I’ve picked up after 17 years of being married is that while sex is still an important thing, it drops way down the list compared to virtues like trustworthiness, pragmatism, optimism, and the ever important sense of humor.
I can’t imagine not being married, and am damn glad I’m done sleeping around, or dating, which ever it is known by now.
After having put cart before horse, I now believe that NOT HAVING INTERCOURSE until your married pays massive dividends to both parties. I’m recommending the same to my kids, not on moral grounds, which are legitimate, but because it gives you the opportunity to get to know somebody well enough to PROPERLY ADJUST YOUR EXPECTATIONS OF THEM.
It is so much easier to end a relationship where there hasn’t been any intercourse. Sometimes it takes ending the relationship to see if it was worth having in the first place. This is especially true of college age kids, where paths are just getting started for everyone, and these kids ‘fall in like’, have sex, and now there’s a ton of baggage, even in situations where supposedly ‘it’s no big thing’.
It is a big thing if you get a disease, or pregnant, or emotionally injured, or if you end up dating a rabbit-boiler, or a stalker.
Avoiding intercourse in a relationship is its own reward in most cases. The tension can be quite motivating.
They are deciding to have sex, not get the woman pregnant.
Are you then saying that every woman who acidentally gets pregnant because she doesn’t take precautions made the decision to get pregnant?
Sex education 101 - two fertile people decide to have sex and it could result in a pregnancy.
Are you then saying that every woman who accidentally gets pregnant because she doesn’t take precautions made the decision to get pregnant?
Good grief! No that is not what I am saying, nor would I say that every guy that has unprotected sex is trying to conceive a child. I am saying it is your choice to make and should things happen, accept responsibility for the decision YOU made.
And one last thing: because she doesn’t take precautions... Correction they don't take precautions. Obviously you still don't get it!
Gee, females have never initiated sex in the history of mankind, are you that dense? Usually the man will be all for it, gee, consent, but you cannot get past that one, always the man's fault/responsibility especially if offspring is involved.
Plus a man creates said child with the woman (Hard to carry a being to term without input from the sperm) which is why there are child support laws (In case the female decides to kill her offspring, but no that is not hypocritical at all).
And if that guy marries the “wrong girl” you just totally ignore the double standard. Give me an idiotic, way to obfuscate, pro-abort, break.
“No women forces a man to have sex and if that man chooses to have unprotected sex HE IS EXERCISING HIS OWN FREE WILL.”
So is the female until they procreate which hence, begins a separate human life and the double standard of abortion/child support laws begin.
Also, becomes even worse if the wife said yes to children but suddenly changes her mind,hmmm. Women never EVER do this correct? But of course, always the man's fault, never the woman cause she can legally murder her "mistake", even when the father desires the offspring, correct? Convoluted and hypocritical that abortion on demand is.
whatever...you’re right we all suck
ROTFLMAO, is that your perception? Failed to comprehend and your emotions got in the way that was your problem. Pro-abortion as well? Just asking, because the double standard continues to be ignored. The law/abortion on demand itself are hypocritical, that is the problem.
By the way, they are both responsible for their offspring, EQUALLY, in case you are still having comprehension problems. Difference is, women can murder their offspring without input from the man (Even when he wants to be responsible and have the baby). The man does not have that same perverted “right”/input and must provide support hence double standard.
You are implying that woman should have that “right”, kill what they should carry to term, and still blame the man after the fact.
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