Link to original post: [drupal=5131]Stop Shooting Ourselves in the Nuts, or, A Reasoned Discussion of Male Responses to Female Sexuality[/drupal]
I wrote this last October, so it's a little out of date.
The discussion at work centered around a particular anecdote from the book, where Harvey councils women who give it up on the first date, essentially telling them that no man will take them seriously if they have sex with them right off the bat. It sparked an interesting and humorous debate, but I was actually shocked at how readily so many people in our debate took Harvey's statement as axiomatic: a woman who has sex on the first date is not worth your respect. When we asked why this was true, none of the people who agreed with the claim had any substantive reason for feeling that way. They just did, because it was something that they'd been taught, and it had been confirmed over and over again throughout their lives.
I feel that this is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is that we define the woman's worth by her (un)willingness to engage in consensual sexual activity on the first date, but we don't do the same for men. After all, don't both parties want it? Yet only one party suffers any stigma from the act, and it's always the woman who does. The above section in quotes is a tongue-in-cheek way to draw attention to this discrepancy, but after the conversation I had today, I felt a more direct approach is necessary. Female sexuality is still stigmatized as bad, and women who have sex are characterized as dirty, immoral or worse. You can see it at play in Harvey's book; you can see it at play in Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sarah Fluke and the wider birth control debate that's been going on in the U.S. at large; you can see it at play in any number of interactions between men and women. And when you take this kind of attitude to its extreme, you get craziness like this. Everyone should be selective of who they choose to share their bodies with, because health concerns are not male or female. Yet for some reason we continue to assign all shame and guilt to women when it comes to sex, and that's wrong.
I wrote this last October, so it's a little out of date.
I come back to this because of a discussion I had at work today. I was discussing the movie Think Like a Man with a coworker, and the reasons why I wouldn't be seeing it. The movie is based on the book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey. I haven't read the book, but I've heard enough about it to know that it's something that I'm not interested in reading (aside from the fact that it's not targeted at me in the first place).
The discussion at work centered around a particular anecdote from the book, where Harvey councils women who give it up on the first date, essentially telling them that no man will take them seriously if they have sex with them right off the bat. It sparked an interesting and humorous debate, but I was actually shocked at how readily so many people in our debate took Harvey's statement as axiomatic: a woman who has sex on the first date is not worth your respect. When we asked why this was true, none of the people who agreed with the claim had any substantive reason for feeling that way. They just did, because it was something that they'd been taught, and it had been confirmed over and over again throughout their lives.
I feel that this is problematic for several reasons, not the least of which is that we define the woman's worth by her (un)willingness to engage in consensual sexual activity on the first date, but we don't do the same for men. After all, don't both parties want it? Yet only one party suffers any stigma from the act, and it's always the woman who does. The above section in quotes is a tongue-in-cheek way to draw attention to this discrepancy, but after the conversation I had today, I felt a more direct approach is necessary. Female sexuality is still stigmatized as bad, and women who have sex are characterized as dirty, immoral or worse. You can see it at play in Harvey's book; you can see it at play in Rush Limbaugh's attack on Sarah Fluke and the wider birth control debate that's been going on in the U.S. at large; you can see it at play in any number of interactions between men and women. And when you take this kind of attitude to its extreme, you get craziness like this. Everyone should be selective of who they choose to share their bodies with, because health concerns are not male or female. Yet for some reason we continue to assign all shame and guilt to women when it comes to sex, and that's wrong.
