And another person had a bottle of cheap, tasteless wine product. If we were to spend the night sharing our wine equally, who made out from the deal the most? In my opinion, when one person offers something considered to be higher worth than the other, it turns the exchange into a zero-sum game. One person gains, while the other loses.
This is how I see casual sex. Women, as a whole, seem to value their sexuality more than men. Women who give men time often expect compensation for this "service". Women don’t have to approach men, because there will always be men wanting to approach them. On dates, men usually pay for dinners, are expected to provide most of the entertainment and generally foot any bill that may come up. Why? Because men pay women for their time. Women are much more (monetarily) successful in the stripping, porn and prostitution industries than men. Female sexuality sells because female sexuality has value, and with value comes power. The power to decide who you’ll be sleeping with from the bar that night, while men would consider themselves lucky to land any average woman for a one night stand. When drunk people have sex, we are far more likely to accept that the woman was a victim of rape than the man. Why? Because we want to protect her sexuality more than his.
When women complain about being called "whores" for sleeping around, I think that they are overlooking the fact that this "double standard" exists in a direct balance with another "double standard". Male sexuality is not considered nearly is valuable as female sexuality. Most men would kill for the sexual privileges that women have. As a man, I could not imagine what it might be like to walk into a bar and have all sorts of women vying for my attention, buying me drinks so that they can hopefully take me home for the night. I couldn’t imagine what it might be like to have enough options to be picky, and decide between three or four women that I could take home, all of which I just met. They type of men who have choices like these are extremely rare and extremely attractive (often times, famous as well). Double standards naturally go hand in hand, they counter-balance one another. The only thing that will change this is absolutely equality, and I don’t forsee any women considering themselves "lucky" than an average Joe wants to sleep with them in the near future.
And as for men who are "looked up to" for sleeping around, I contend that they aren’t usually respected for being studs. They are respected for being good at swindling others of something valuable. Their sexual value increases only because it allows them more exposure to female sexuality, not because it is (or ever was) valuable in itself.
Thoughts?
Sam: Well, we’d all like for the wine to be considered equal. What I am trying to describe here is that, regardless how how a man "uses" his sexuality, it is never considered as valuable as a woman’s from a grand perspective. Women do not value it as a whole, as much as men value what women offer. That is the main argument of this post.
Eliz:I don’t assume that women do want want a lot of sex. What I am postulating is that women can afford to be far more selective with the men that they have sex with, as they are given many options due to the elevated status of female sexuality.
I don’t believe that I ever stated anything about women being naturally monogamous or chaste.
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