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njlauren -> RE: Double Standards for Women (8/18/2013 8:47:32 AM)
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With men there have been various terms (I have heard players used for both men and women), pussy hound, horn dog, etc, but with men it generally to this day doesn't denote real condemnation, it is kind of like a sigh and 'he is a pussy hound', half in shaking your head, half in admiration, whereas slut for a woman is not a positive appellation in any context where it is normally used. It is the same way that to this day, and attractive woman who earns her way up the ladder often is subjected to back door chatter that she somehow 'slept her way to the top', I have heard comments made about the woman who now heads Yahoo, that she got there because she is a good looking woman (I don't like her for a lot of reasons, but that just gets me pissed off).
What is amazing is how long the attitudes about sex, and especially female sexuality, have hung around and poison things. Read any study about success in the male world of business, and what you find out is often success is based upon factors that often have not that much to do with ability and everything to do with certain bona fides. Friend of mine, who went to one of the elite liberal arts colleges, spoke with bitterness how at recruitment time the top end financial firms would be lining up the jocks to talk about jobs, even though there were brilliant students who outshone the jocks 6 ways to one; someone who is 6' 2, blond haired and blue eyed, to this day often will get the jobs and the opportunities, we used to laugh that being a trader or banker was like going on an amusement park ride, under 74" tall or a BMI above 20, look elsewhere, yet no one denigrates those who got those opportunities because of it. Business is full of people who were part of what we used to call someone's "mafia", they were buddies/social buddies/golf buddies with someone and get pulled up the ranks if one of them ascends the ladder, yet you rarely hear someone looking at someone who achieves a high position that you suspect is nepotism, and denigrate it, the way they do if an attractive woman makes it.
I suspect there is still a lot of insecurity in men, that they are scared of female sexuality. It reminds me a lot of the antebellum south, where a lot of the ways society was run was predicated upon the fear that the black slaves were going to revolt and slaughter all the whites, they are scared shitless of that happening and lived a lot of their lives in fear of that. With the white slave owners, they knew deep down if someone did to them what was happening to the slaves, they would resent and hate it; with male attitudes towards female sexuality, I kind of wonder if deep down those attitudes come from knowing women's sexuality in ways is more powerful than a man's (ie that they can have sex more often, they don't have the recycle time, etc) and are afraid that it would give woman a big advantage in being able to wield that (basically, saying, if I looked like she did, had that kind of sexual power, that is what I would do), so they do everything they can to denigrate a woman's sexuality and also use sex as an excuse to say why a woman climbed the ladder (and they didn't). Keep in mind this is based on male perception of what woman's sexuality is like (for example, ignoring the sad fact that a lot of women have trouble achieving orgasm or end up with men who don't give a crap about their half of things), and denigration is a way to keep that 'in check' so to speak.
It is one of the reasons when I hear men whining about how women are being given an unfair advantage, that men are being ridiculed and bashed while women are being given the golden ticket, it makes me angry, because despite all these claims, in reality it is still a man's world in many ways, and what this represents is men complaining that they actually have to compete now, or that women won't take their shit, either (and before I come off sounding like I am denigrating all men, I am not, a lot of men these days don't share these kinds of attitudes, and quite frankly, it has gotten a lot better then it was in my generation and older generations; I am talking the ones who make all these claims like 'men are being thrown aside' and such..all one has to do is look at Congress or the heads of companies to see the reality of that claim).
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