Summer coasting edition
Here is a nice light topic. Jessica Wakeman who writes over at The Frisky has analyzed sluthood for us. She tells us that there are five kinds of slut, or, perhaps more accurately, five different kinds of reasons to be promiscuous, and gives us a bit of analysis for each one. Let's coast on through these and see if there is any fun or knowledge to be harvested here.
Reason #1: Because she genuinely loves sex
Now the interesting thing here is that Wakeman thinks that "genuinely loves sex" necessarily means "promiscuity". As I have discussed before, I have known women who have taken possession of the word "slut" because they want to assert their right to really, really like sex. But does really, really liking sex necessarily mean promiscuity?
Here are a couple of statements:
I could go on and point out that there is solid research showing that happily married women get more sex and more satisfactory sex than promiscuous single women but that would be just the icing on the cake. The important issue is already established. If you treat sex the way Wakeman does you're really in it not for the sex but for what you think the sex proves about yourself which brings me to:
Reason #2: To find self esteem
Or is it the other way around? Meaning these women already have constructed a self-defining scenario in which they are desirable and sleeping around is just a way of proving it? In other words, are they really narcissists?
Obviously those are rhetorical questions. Here is why I think so. These women aren't stupid and you don't have to be a particularly deep observer of human life to have noticed that a lot of promiscuous women are unhappy. Note that I didn't say they all are. But a lot are and it would take a very stupid person to fail to see that promiscuity is not a sure ticket to happiness.
So why would someone do this?
Because she has already decided that she is different and special and she is looking to that special validating event to prove it. She is like the challenger who goes into the ring against the undefeated champion of the world. The challenger already knows that the fifty-two boxers before him have been knocked out but, as he sees it, that only proves something about them.
Evidence of other people's failure is only evidence of other people's failure. She is different and better than all those unhappy women.
Reason #3: To rebel against a repressed childhood and adolescence
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one. Wakeman is uncertain as to whether this is a good thing but commends these women for "thinking for yourselves". Because spending our adulthood deliberately running with scissors to teach authority figures from our childhood years a lesson is the sort of thing that people who think for themselves do.
Reason #4: Because she has just figured out how to enjoy sex
This one actually sounds credible to me. A woman spends her life feeling insecure and unsure of herself because sex just isn't working out, or perhaps isn't happening at all, and suddenly she figures out how to make things work so she turns around and has an affair with her old high school boyfriend, a guy who just happened to be passing through, a guy she has always been curious about, an old friend who has always been interested but she always turned down before, or some combination of the above. I've seen this happen fairly often.
I guess the only thing is that I wouldn't consider any of that as being promiscuous. It strikes me as well with within the norms of typical good-girl behaviour or to put it more bluntly: there is nothing slutty about this.
Reason #5: To get ahead
For a long time I thought only people in books and celebrities did this. Then a woman I knew surprised me by doing it. She was a journalist whose employers gave her a posting in a new area she had never reported about before. She had an affair with a journalist from another publication who was already well established in the field and he told her everything she needed to know to hit the ground running. I never confronted her about it because I was just too shocked to say a word about it. I just stopped being friends with her without ever explaining.
I still can't think of anything to say except that I'd probably respond exactly the same way if it happened again. Although I am being deliberately vague about this because it would be pretty easy for some people to figure out who I mean if I let certain details slip and I guess that means I'd end the friendship but still protect her privacy if it happened again.
So there we have it. I think we can safely conclude that reasons #1 and #2 are just the same reason described once to make it sound good and once to make it sound bad. Reason #3 isn't really slutty so much as immaturity. Reason #4 isn't slutty at all. Reason #5 is really about informal prostitution more than being sluttish.
Most importantly I'd note that, except for #4, none of the reasons/types really have much to do with the profound enjoyment of sex.
Here is a nice light topic. Jessica Wakeman who writes over at The Frisky has analyzed sluthood for us. She tells us that there are five kinds of slut, or, perhaps more accurately, five different kinds of reasons to be promiscuous, and gives us a bit of analysis for each one. Let's coast on through these and see if there is any fun or knowledge to be harvested here.
Reason #1: Because she genuinely loves sex
Now the interesting thing here is that Wakeman thinks that "genuinely loves sex" necessarily means "promiscuity". As I have discussed before, I have known women who have taken possession of the word "slut" because they want to assert their right to really, really like sex. But does really, really liking sex necessarily mean promiscuity?
Here are a couple of statements:
- I really love chess and the proof of it is that I have played ten thousand matches against more than nine thousand opponents in my lifetime.
- Friendship means a lot to me and the proof of it is that I have had the same best friend for the last twenty years.
I could go on and point out that there is solid research showing that happily married women get more sex and more satisfactory sex than promiscuous single women but that would be just the icing on the cake. The important issue is already established. If you treat sex the way Wakeman does you're really in it not for the sex but for what you think the sex proves about yourself which brings me to:
Reason #2: To find self esteem
Or is it the other way around? Meaning these women already have constructed a self-defining scenario in which they are desirable and sleeping around is just a way of proving it? In other words, are they really narcissists?
Obviously those are rhetorical questions. Here is why I think so. These women aren't stupid and you don't have to be a particularly deep observer of human life to have noticed that a lot of promiscuous women are unhappy. Note that I didn't say they all are. But a lot are and it would take a very stupid person to fail to see that promiscuity is not a sure ticket to happiness.
So why would someone do this?
Because she has already decided that she is different and special and she is looking to that special validating event to prove it. She is like the challenger who goes into the ring against the undefeated champion of the world. The challenger already knows that the fifty-two boxers before him have been knocked out but, as he sees it, that only proves something about them.
Evidence of other people's failure is only evidence of other people's failure. She is different and better than all those unhappy women.
Reason #3: To rebel against a repressed childhood and adolescence
I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one. Wakeman is uncertain as to whether this is a good thing but commends these women for "thinking for yourselves". Because spending our adulthood deliberately running with scissors to teach authority figures from our childhood years a lesson is the sort of thing that people who think for themselves do.
Reason #4: Because she has just figured out how to enjoy sex
This one actually sounds credible to me. A woman spends her life feeling insecure and unsure of herself because sex just isn't working out, or perhaps isn't happening at all, and suddenly she figures out how to make things work so she turns around and has an affair with her old high school boyfriend, a guy who just happened to be passing through, a guy she has always been curious about, an old friend who has always been interested but she always turned down before, or some combination of the above. I've seen this happen fairly often.
I guess the only thing is that I wouldn't consider any of that as being promiscuous. It strikes me as well with within the norms of typical good-girl behaviour or to put it more bluntly: there is nothing slutty about this.
Reason #5: To get ahead
For a long time I thought only people in books and celebrities did this. Then a woman I knew surprised me by doing it. She was a journalist whose employers gave her a posting in a new area she had never reported about before. She had an affair with a journalist from another publication who was already well established in the field and he told her everything she needed to know to hit the ground running. I never confronted her about it because I was just too shocked to say a word about it. I just stopped being friends with her without ever explaining.
I still can't think of anything to say except that I'd probably respond exactly the same way if it happened again. Although I am being deliberately vague about this because it would be pretty easy for some people to figure out who I mean if I let certain details slip and I guess that means I'd end the friendship but still protect her privacy if it happened again.
So there we have it. I think we can safely conclude that reasons #1 and #2 are just the same reason described once to make it sound good and once to make it sound bad. Reason #3 isn't really slutty so much as immaturity. Reason #4 isn't slutty at all. Reason #5 is really about informal prostitution more than being sluttish.
Most importantly I'd note that, except for #4, none of the reasons/types really have much to do with the profound enjoyment of sex.
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