Posted on 03/19/2002 7:13:02 AM PST by TLBSHOW
If you were to visit a women’s studies department at an elite university, you would encounter a wide variety of courses on the sexual liberation of women. The main thrust of these courses is that for too long, various social institutions have prevented women from exploring their sexual desires. Now, thanks to the heroism of such women as Gloria Steinem, Margaret Sanger, and Bella Abzug, women have been partially freed from the oppressive forces of male patriarchy. In other words, young women are encouraged to be whores.
The chant of Gen. Y college babes might as well be “We’re here, we’re whores, get used to it!” No, most girls are not actually uttering those words, but the slutty sentiments are implicit in the standard female college behavior – wearing tight shirts and pants, getting publicly drunk, hanging on every guy around, and engaging in random sex.
The concept of “behaving like a lady” is an anachronism. If a college girl acts like a lady, she is considered boring, prudish, and old-fashioned. Why is this happening? Five important explanations come to mind.
(1) Feminist thought has taught young women that equality is achieved by acting like promiscuous sluts.
In Who Stole Feminism? Christina Hoff Summers writes extensively about how the women’s rights movement was hijacked by gender feminists, who supplanted equity feminists. While equity feminists were concerned with such mainstream issues as equal pay for equal work, gender feminists were obsessed with proving that (a) there are no biological differences between men and women and (b) men are evil. When the gender feminists seized control of the movement, they encouraged women to behave just as immorally as many men. This was seen as a step toward gender equity.
But why is it liberating for a college-age woman to jump into bed with a man that is not her husband? Why is it freeing to become intoxicated and to hook-up with anonymous frat guys? Why is it an expression of equal rights to give into men’s animalistic instincts?
Presumably, women could exercise their true power to tame men by using celibacy (and other ladylike behavior) to induce men into monogamous stable relationships and eventually into marriage. Along the way to healthy relationships, women could also gain some self-respect.
(2) Young women have turned away from God.
As women have strayed from the church, they have replaced what is holy with what is temporally pleasing. For Catholics, the model woman is Mary, the virgin Mother of God. She is beloved by the faithful for her unflappable devotion to and trust in God, her nurturing of the Son of Man, and her deep love for all humanity.
Today’s college girl looks to Ally McBeal, the trollops of Sex in the City, and the floozies on Friends to set their moral compasses.
The sad truth is that college girls are so desperate to find love that they are willing to degrade themselves to get it. But true love can only be understood in the context of the Word of God. Any other notion of “love” is secular and, by definition, limited and finite.
(3) The costs of sex have rapidly declined.
The explosion in availability of the birth control pill fueled the so-called sexual revolution of the ‘60s, the consequences of which we still see today. With the ability to partially regulate the probability of pregnancy, women can choose to have sex more liberally. Expanded abortion-on-demand services have also permitted young women to engage in more sex because of the greater ease with which a major consequence of sex can be disposed. Abortion providers have recognized the prevalence of sex by college girls in their choice to locate close to our nation’s colleges and universities.
Perhaps just as important as the reduction in the economic costs of sex is the decline in the psychic costs of sex – specifically, the social stigma associated with nonmarital sex. In an earlier era, young women who chose to engage in sex were socially ostracized and their behavior denounced. Today, if a young woman engages in a one-night-stand (“random hook-up”) she is a liberated studette.
(4) Marriage has been devalued by young women and replaced not only by cohabitation but also by new, bizarre social arrangements such as “friends with benefits.”
Young women have traditionally looked to men for marriage and family formation. This is no longer true. College girls look at men not as marriage material, but as sex partners and roommates. Many college women live and sleep with their boyfriends. This is the norm.
Additionally, other sex-based relationships have become commonplace. In recent years, a new and disturbing arrangement known as “friends with benefits” has emerged. In this arrangement, men are not even forced to perform the normal duties of boyfriends, i.e. flowers, Valentine’s Day cards, rides to the abortion clinic, etc. Instead, girls consider these guys “just friends” whom they happen to screw every now and again. No strings, no attachments, no dinners. Just sex when they feel like it.
This type of arrangement is the next logical step in the direction that young women have drifted in the last few decades. These women have become unpaid whores. At least prostitutes made a buck off of their trade. These women just give it away.
The truth is that women actually lose power by becoming tramps. When they give away one of their main sources of bargaining power in a relationship – sex – men gain total power by achieving everything they want…free sex with no obligation.
(5) “You know exactly who’s to blame…the mother and the father.” – The Oompa Loompas in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
College girls are clearly responsible for their own behavior, but their parents have shaped their values. The verdict is in -- their parents have failed. Too many parents, particularly mothers, have eschewed their moral obligations to raise their daughters to be respectable ladies.
Instead, many moms want to be their daughters’ friends, talking late at night about boyfriends, parties, who’s hot, etc. Young women do not need more friends, they need mothers who will provide moral guidance. Unfortunately, these self-absorbed moms cannot deal with the fact that they are old and will never again see their early 20s. Thus, they attempt to live their sorority days all over again through their slutty daughters.
“Now Sabia,” you say, “you’ve been very hard on young women. But don’t young men deserve some blame? Aren’t you just a bitter, cranky, rapidly-aging misogynist?”
The answer to both questions is ‘yes.’
Young men are awful and they have gotten worse over the years. And let me be clear – young men are responsible for their own behavior.
But women have historically been the civilizing forces for men. That is biological. Moreover, several verses in the Scriptures refer to the important role that women have in the moral uplift of men.
It should surprise no one that sexual activity has historically been more frequent among gay men than among heterosexuals. This is because there is no civilizing female force in the gay community. Whenever men want to have sex, they just go ahead and do it. Neither of the partners has much of an incentive to refrain from sex since monogamous relationships and traditional familes are generally not the final goals of these partnerships. Recently, the behavior of young heterosexuals has begun to resemble that of gay men because young women are imitating men in their sexual promiscuity.
The result of young women’s abdication of responsibility has been significant moral decay on America’s college campuses. Can the moral high ground ever be reclaimed? Perhaps…one church pew at a time.
Slutty behavior cheapens everyone involved including the horndogs. Why a woman would want to so willingly give away one of her primary sources of power to strangers in a drunken stupor is beside me.
If you think that the problems in the black community at large are strictly due to racism or slavery, you are quite wrong. Before the Great Society programs which coincided with the sexual revolution black families were only slightly less likely to be a 2 parent household than whites. Look now. Do you really think that the same type of collapse of sexual mores in the college community will not have the same type of destructive results...relatively speaking. The only difference is that the fall for blacks has been one of shorter distance to the bottom. Increased promiscuousness by middle class college girls will not have positive implications for all of us as whole....of that you may be sure.
Instead of applauding this as harmless or how is it irresponsible? your words previously, we should be working to discourage it and promote discretion.
I sense a theme of questioning the place of personal responsibility in your threads. I understand from your username you must like guns (hence Conservative by default on that issue) but are you basically opposed to societal morality in general?
Everyone loves a small town Midwesterner....
only for some. How many women before recent years opted for "family life" because it was the only way to gain economic security? i'm guessing a lot.
women never have any problem with opportunities for sex, the only thing that keeps men from having sex constantly. the only thing that kept women from pursuing as much sex as they wanted was that they had to make themselves more appealing to men so that they woudl be economically supported. men naturally decided on a social order in which they could select a partner with less 'history". why wouldn't they?
that's all changed. morality never dictates behavior in any meaningful way, economics does. women have nothing to lose by having as much sex as they want now with as many partners as they choose.
how much does a message like "if you have a lot of sex i won't marry/support you" affect modern women's thinking when she can have the sex and support herself? probably not much.
That is really incredible that the illegitimate rate for black was only 2% above whites back then.
Although I'm sure some of the black colleges have the same troubles with the girls today since all of the N.O.W. stuff has been polluting their minds too.
I think women should use utmost discretion in whom they sleep with and when they do it should be for love. I understand your well known preference for love as well as material security and i would not fault that exactly but I would caution that the former is paramount much more so than the latter.
The essential complete breakdown of sexual responsibility in the black community outside the black middle and upper middle class is in my opinion devastating....incredibly so in fact. Nearly 8 of 10 black children have no daddies. Both the mommies and even more so perhaps the daddies are to blame...it has become self perpetuating and is now in it's 4 generation in some cases. I would almost wager that black legitimacy was actually higher during Reconstruction than now...just a thought. When racism was quite real and serious to one's health I might add.
Blacks are only a glaring example but all one need do is look at the history of the world and see what happens when sexual mores reach rock bottom. When middle class college girls are aping Jerry Springer shows...it's not a good sign.
I don't think it is who you sleep with but why that matters dear.
That is LBJ's legacy 80% of black kids with no daddies.
But painting all college girls who have promiscuous sex as "sluts" (as this article did) is wrong. The article wasn't making a social point about the damage promiscuity does to society, it was just written by a guy who wanted to vent his anger for women.
Not all girls who are promiscuous are irresponsible with birth control, and there are better methods of birth control than the pill. You can be against promiscuity without demonizing these girls as whores and sluts.
And there are plenty of responsible people in society who are also promiscuous. The two are not mutually exclusive.
As an aside, I have lived in black countries the world over and serial illegitimacy and even polygamy is quite pervasive. I think that before the 60s, that the black community is the US may have been the most nuclear family oriented black community on the planet.
Men who utilize such willing drunken girls are no better.
A political leader or general of some sort I recall.
That issue is rather complicated.
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