A question of sluttiness

[Connonym]

Is sluttiness an exact number? How many partners do you have to sleep with to be a slut? Is the number different for women than men? Ok, I know the answer to that but how big is that difference? Can one recover from sluttitude?

[reyd reid reed]

1. Okay...

1. Sluttiness isn't a number at all...it's an attitude and a lack of discretion.

2. Sluttiness can be recovered from, but it takes time and, well, lots of cold showers.

3. Why fight it? EMBRACE your sluttiness -- enjoy it. Remember, it's the quality, not the quantity.

[SPKrazy]

2. Why?

sluttiness is a virtue

:woohoo:

seriously of course there should be no double standard, but there is.

but as Reidipie LiLi Lisaster said it's an attitude

I agree, embrace your sluttiness

we all should

the world would be a better place if we were all a little sluttier

:shrug:

[NewWaveChick1981]

43. Well put, SPK...

:hi: :evilgrin: ;)

[SPKrazy]

46. Yeahhh Baby!

:evilgrin:

Maybe we should start a movement: the embrace your inner sluttiness movement

[unpossibles]

45. even better than embracing your sluttiness is to let me emb...

oops. there I go again. I tried to embrace my own sluttiness, but it always just gets me excited...


:D

[some guy]

3. yes, there is an exact number

the number is one.

The guy with green teeths, hasn't had a shower in a month, and gets irritated 'cause you won't sleep with him...

He's the guy that determines who's a slut and who's not. And if you won't sleep with him, well... it's 'cause you're a slut.

:shrug:

sorry, them's the rules... (or at least that's how it seems to be, eh?)

:hi:

[Connonym]

4. The thought of green teeths has cured me!

I shall go forth and slut no more. Not really but green teeths? ewwwww

[Arger68]

24. No, that's what's known as a "bitch".

A slut sleeps with everybody, a bitch sleeps with everybody but you.;)

On edit: Oops, I see Oeditpus Rex beat me to that one already.

[uppityperson]

5. it depends on if you are the caller or the callee

[Oeditpus Rex]

6. You know the old saying

A slut is a woman who'll sleep with anybody. A bitch is a woman who'll sleep with anybody but you.









I don't know if this is even remotely connected to the answer you seek, but it's all I got right now. :shrug:

[idgiehkt]

7. so many thoughts are in my head.

from a human behavior standpoint I think the slut concept is something women use against other women as a way of keeping men under control...they cast aspersions on other women to make them doubt the paternity of any potential offspring (not to mention that the men might be in danger of catching a disease). That had to have come about *after* the advent of patrilineal cultures and its control of sexuality, though, I doubt the concept even existed before then...so I think it's a ghost concept, there is no weight in it. In some middle eastern cultures it may be a woman who shows an ankle or a wrist. In western cultures it may be a woman who sleeps with two men in one day, or one week, or one hour. It just shows that we really don't honor the concept of adult female sexuality and a woman's right to determine her own sexual activity that we still place these valuations. And women are just as guilty of it as men are, if not more...I saw plenty of evidence of that in the threads on the Britney/vagina episode. Some women do it out of pure jealousy, rather than competitiveness too, especially in the case of older women vs. younger women. I pray that when I get old enough to feel the loss of my beauty/outward sexuality (because right now I'm hanging in there pretty good), that I won't direct the pain of this loss (and it is a significant emotional/physical loss) toward younger women by casting aspersions on their morality.

[Hissyspit]

9. Everyone needs to read:

"Slut! - Growing Up Female with a Bad Reputation" Leora Tanenbaum



Also:

"Fast Girls - Teenage Tribes and the Myth of the Slut" Emily White



There's also:

"The Ethical Slut - A Guide To Infinite Sexual Possibilities" by Dossie Easton

[La Lioness Priyanka]

19. i think men use it to control womens sexuality ...

and women have internalized this oppressions and use it on other women.

i thinks a sexually free woman has always been seen as a threat to society.

society in general will make a woman feel bad for feeling good as often as it can, whether it be food or sex or anyother pleasure.

sigh!

[raccoon]

21. Great post!

"women have internalized this oppressions and use it on other women."

I think there are 2 reasons women who consider themselves non-sluts look down on women they consider sluts.

One, they are jealous she is having more sex than they are.

Two, they're afraid she'll sleep with their man.

" a sexually free woman has always been seen as a threat to society."

She's a threat to a PATRIARCHAL society. Same as gays are.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

22. thanks. sexually free women represent a woman who gives a fuck about society's rules

(literally and metaphorically)..this is a big threat to patriarchy.

[idgiehkt]

39. not always

if you do any reading about ancient religious history you will find that pre-patrilineal history was quite different. There are still matrilineal tribes and societies in existence today, that practice polyandry, and matriarchy. A well-known one is Lugu Lake in China. Probably the biggest lie ever foisted on us by society is that women used to be dragged around by our hair by our cavemen husbands and things then got slowly better. All evidence points to the contrary...that things started out very differently and got progressively worse, and in the West we are just inching out, very slowly, of a horrible dark period several millenia long, for women.

Before the concept of paternity, there was no need for any of the labeling and sexual segregation of women into whores/wives, etc. There's a lot of variation in the timelines for the different types of cultures, for instance I've read that in Cherokee culture the mother's brother was the person who filled what could be considered to be a 'father'-type role, rather than the biological father since that might not even be known. I'm sure there were other native cultures that were male-dominated. I'd love for someone to figure out what factors result in one culture becoming male-dominated and one becoming more equal. But there has been an incredible amount of variation throughout human history from matriline to patriline and all things in between.

[SPKrazy]

47. That's Interesting idgiehkt!

Matrilineal tribes I imagine were less warlike?

I often think that if women were in charge of governments, then we'd have peace more likely.

:hi:

[Connonym]

34. lots of truth

but it seems from my point of view (at 40) that the societal level of sexual guilt has actually increased since I was in my 20s. At the same time there's been such a huge pornification of mainstream society that it seems counter-intuitive that we have become more repressed.

[idgiehkt]

38. we are about the same age

I don't remember much about my early twenties since I was drunk but I know that HIV kind of put the kibbosh on a lot of sexual expression.

I'm hesitant about using terms like 'pornification' because the literal translation of pornography is 'pictures of whores' so there's already a puritanical value judgement in that term. If you judge a sexually liberated society by puritan/Victorian standards you are bound to come up with a negative slant. I think this culture is evolving toward sexual freedom, but we are in waters that haven't been charted for millenia, not in most of our cultual ancestries, anyway. I feel much less repressed than I was in my twenties but that's because I was raised in a religious household. I think DNA testing is gonna move us forward a lot, at least on a subconscious level since so much of that labeling/segregating of women has to do with ensuring paternity

[Connonym]

40. When I say pornification

I mean in a literal sense where there's almost a expectation that women will look/behave like a sexbot -- the mainstream embracing of Brazilian waxes, hyperpneumonic fake breasts, collagen lips, fake tans, pole dancing aerobics, etc. There seems to be a much more narrowly defined artificial sense of sexuality. I suppose on some level it makes sense that a repressed society will attempt to stereotype sexuality to the point that it becomes a cartoon of itself. It makes it easier to assign the virgin/whore labels and throw people into categories. It all seems so artificial though. I love the notion of women accepting our sexual identities on the surface this hypersexualization may seem like embracing sexuality but I think it's really just objectifying us further. Is it freedom to expose your girl bits in public or is it pandering to this whole pimp and ho aesthetic that makes women into sexual objects?

I feel more accepting of my own sexuality but I also feel that I'm being judged more negatively by society for being a sexually active woman. I think in a lot of ways we're regressing sexually. You have Jessica Simpson being sexually objectified (by her own father, ugh) but at the same time her (former) virginity being such a point of pride. Britney Spears is free about showing her vulva in public but she's so sexually uneducated that she doesn't realize that breast feeding isn't effective birth control? I guess I don't see that as progression in female sexuality. I see it as women dumbing down and acting like objects for male sexual gratification rather than accepting our own sexual nature in a positive way.

I'm not sure what the answers are here and my slut question was only half in jest. I'm really not sure that we've come very far. I wish I shared your optimism but as a sexually active single person and as the mother of daughters I really worry that we're slipping back into scarlet A territory.

[idgiehkt]

42. we can't really know, can we?

I agree there has been some regression in mental attitudes but I also feel that the 2nd wave of feminism was somewhat anti-sex and there was bound to be a backlash to that. Breeding is all about sexual signalling and competition, in just about every sentient species, anyway. I don't think it's realistic to expect that to disappear, and with technology advancing at the rate that it is those developements are going to be applied into the realm of sexual competition because it is one of our strongest drives. I recently watched a Joan Rivers standup routine where she does a hilarious bit about women marrying for love and how stupid she thinks that is...she goes on to say that men like women stupid and with big breasts. It's definitely not a pc statement to make, but I do feel that in some sense men are hard-wired genetically to look for certain things in a mate and intelligence doesn't seem to be one of them, or at least not the top, anyway...looks are #1 and the booming cosmetic surgery industry proves that, and those young pop stars you mentioned seem to know about the dumb thing and are using it in a predatory fashion to make a whole lot of money. I know that feminists, (a label I claim) want it to be different, but I just don't know that it is or ever will be. As far as the changes in grooming I think that what we are seeing is maybe just a natural progression of a more sexually liberated society, the more skin we show, the more attention we pay to each part. Men are using alot of hair product and hair removal product to.

I don't think it's necessary to look at all these changes and think that they are bad. It's also very important to acknowledge that these pop stars are only important because we make them important. They are our 'may queens' or whatever...that tradition of worshipping the most beautiful young girls in a culture goes back to pagan times and I think it's just a glitch of human psychology, but those girls really are not that relevant except for what they can teach us about our own attitudes toward sexuallity. And stupidity; like Pink said on GMA before she performed her song, the business of stupidity is very lucrative.

As an aside, I think that we are on 'coast' right now, mentally, because of what happened on 9/11. I think that was a huge psychic shock to our culture, as well as the war that followed, and some people don't want to think anymore, even five years later. It will run it's course, but the kids in this generation seem to be taking solace in the celebutante/consumer culture kind of as an avoidance technique.

[Maddy McCall]

8. 120.

In my case, anyway.

I'm at 119.

:eyes:

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. Oh, wait — I know!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6s0BIIIVVM

:headbang:

[Ariana Celeste]

11. I don't know, but, "sluttitude" is now my word of the month

:rofl:

[donheld]

12. A slut is anyone who has more sex that I do

:D

[eyepaddle]

36. And a prude is someonw who has less!

;)

[xchrom]

13. i enjoy sex with people i don't know and whose phone numbers i throw away.

does that make me a slut?

:9

[La Lioness Priyanka]

15. yes. and so what? i think there is something to be said for reclaiming the word slut

:loveya:

[xchrom]

32. i sometimes think of it as a sport -- or hunting.

complete with a cammy ball cap.

[xmas74]

41. We should all reclaim the word slut!

When I was in high school I was called a slut long before I engaged in any kind of sexual activity. (And I do mean any-I was afraid to even kiss because I was convinced that "good girls didn't allow that ".) Hearing about what a slut I was on a daily basis, even though I was innocent (not just virginity intact, but never even willingly kissed innocent) made me want to supposedly be a slut.

Being a slut is a catch-22. In my case, I was one even when there was no way I could have been one. After hearing about it for nearly two years I gave up and remedied the situation.

[swimboy]

17. It is good of you to ask for the phone numbers

the niceties must be observed. :P

[La Lioness Priyanka]

20. when i ask for a number, do i have to pretend to program it into my phone?

[xchrom]

31. lol -- oh. god. yes.

where would the satisfaction of throwing the phone number way be -- if i didn't ask for them?

[Bassic]

14. To me the question is moot because,

I think a grown adult can have sex as often and with as many people as they damn well fell like.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

16. all i know is i only have slutty friends...and ones who dont make excuses for their sluttiness

go sluts!

[MissMillie]

18. what is this "sleep with" stuff of which you speak?

:shrug:

[cwydro]

23. ...

:rofl:

[MissMillie]

26. what can I say?

It's been a slow year... well.... years..... ok, I know... TMI....

[cwydro]

30. Yeah, me too

taking a breather

[BarenakedLady]

33. Yeah....

WTH is that? :shrug:

[mainegreen]

25. IMHO its attitude, not quantity. A 'slut' is someone who consistently sleeps with those one shouldnt

like family/friends partners and or parents. It tends not to be about the sex, but more about some weird quest for acceptance, which is silly because that's not the way to be accepted.

Sleeping with a lot of partners alone does not make one a slut, it just makes one experienced and popular! :P

[rug]

27. Do you mean how many at one time?

[La Lioness Priyanka]

28. i say more than 5 at one time..is a bit much...

:rofl:

[izzybeans]

29. Brazilians and Brazilians I suppose

Some though would claim it only takes 1 Brazilian. That is a lot of people. :silly: But slut is just a word used to stigmatize those we secretly wish we were more like.

[Sequoia]

35. Yes, you can recover but then you're stuck with guiltitude

Oh, I'm a low-down sinner on the road to hell.

[walldude]

37. It's not a number it's an age...

If you are 18 and sleep with 5 different people in a week you are a slut. If you are 40 and do the same thing you are lucky ;)

[La Lioness Priyanka]

48. lol!

[bridgit]

44. "sluttiness" is a state of mind...

:)

[hippiechick]

49. Personally,

I think it's a lack of self-esteem because if you own your sexuality, then it doesn't matter what anyone labels you: their need to classify people is their problem. But if someone labels you and it starts to mess with your mind, then ... being called a slut can be a problem.

I've been there. I have a list a prove it. :)

'How many' doesn't matter, I guess - again its others' perception that determines what makes one a slut. For example, I ran with a smallish crowd in high school and made the mistake of sleeping with cousins, about 2 months apart. OF COURSE THEY COMPARED NOTES and I was designated a 'slut' (never mind that one of them got me shitfaced drunk and pretty much date-raped me ... I was still the slut).

Can one recover? I guess it depends again on one's self esteem, and also changing the crowd one hangs with - if you're only known as a slut in one group, try to cultivate non-sexual friendships elsewhere. Or, have a very long stretch of abstinence like I did when I had HippieKid (5 years) ... I pretty much dropped off everyone's radar, most of that crowd osmosed elsewhere, and after that, my rep was clean (I think?)

:hi: