Men are sluts
 

well, maybe not really (made you look!). But they sleep around with more partners than women. duh.

Here's a news story about a new survey on U.S. sexual habits:

US Survey Tracks Sex Behavior

(scratches head) The numbers don't match up--If that's the case, who are these men sleeping with? Some women are getting really lucky!

I read this survey last night. I'm below average...just 6. April is right on average...4.

From my college knowledge, I heard the average person has sexual relations with 17 people but falls in love only 9 times.

These stats seem way off!

Men exaggerate and women lie.

The men are having sex with foreign sluts.
Hmmm, must PM Elspode about that invite...

The article suggests that previous studies prove you right on this. Supposedly this one used a new methodology to compensate for this tendency.

I wonder what the figures are for Australia. Those figures don't match anyone I know at all.

Must be the weather. lol

From the article; If you could log on a website anonymously, I'd buy it... maybe.
But what they are describing is a situation where you are in their control, you answer on a touch screen, so you know they can match the answers with you. The only thing they've eliminated is having to say it out loud to a live person.

I think the women are under-reporting their sexual partners due to our culture's bias towards viewing women with a high number of sexual partners as sluts.

I'm personally not surprised about the results.

Men usually want to admit to having a high number of sexual partners.

Women usually don't want to admit to having a high number of sexual partners.

There is also a double standard in there. If a man sleeps with many women he is a pimp, ladies man, player, etc. And women are either sluts or whores.

One meaning is positive (or at least taken as positive) and one is taken as negative.


Now I can see why a girl would lie about the number of partners but if a guy lies (assuming he goes up...hehe), then that is pretty sad.

If everyone would just tell the truth we wouldn't have these stupid expectations about things that aren't even true.

Really, if it's just sex for the sake of sex, who gives a rats arse how many you've been with?

Thats coz we are all wanton sluts who like sex though :D

Religious people, duh. Best ignored if they get up in your face about it, or laughed-at.

I don't agree that it's the religious people. Definitely not here anyway. There's plenty of people in Oz who still look down their noses at chicks with high tallies.

It's got to do with society as a whole which includes many factors including religion.

Ducksy, you're right. We're just wantin' it all the time. ;)

You really don't think that mind-set is rooted in/came from religion?

Not from where I'm sitting. Very few people actually go to church here you know. It's very different to the US.

We were a colony founded on scoundrels and prostitutes, although most of the scoundrels were just trying to feed their families, and most of the prostitutes were only doing the same.

Ok, got it. They all just popped-up out of the ground atheists who dislike women who like sex. Clear as a bell.

No rkz, that's not even close to what I said.

I, personally, at one time in my life, became . . . dissatisfied that the number of men I'd been with had been in single digits (i.e., under 10).

So I set out to correct that insufficiency. I was happy when I reached 10! But I kept going . . . :)

Rkz, it's not religion, it's greed. People--both men and women--like to think they have something that no one else has had. The more people who have shared it, the less impressive it is that you have it.

Religion in general does nothing but codify existing human norms. The greed came first.

vice versa...
 

I've asked before whether it is realistic to expect cultural "norms" to have developed in a vacuum, completely isolated from the influence of religion. Is religion incapable of having any effect on society? That would be amazing to me, considering that religion has intimately involved in every aspect of millions of people's lives for all these many years. After all that, it has no effect at all. Incredible.

Religion: the thing that only has good qualities, and no bad ones. Ever.

You're missing the point, Flint. People made religion. Religion has an effect on society, but it is first a symptom of society. Anything in any religion is by definition somebody's desired norm because it had to come from somewhere.

It's not that religion has no bad qualities. It's that people have bad qualities, with or without religion.

No, I'm not missing that point. I titled my last post "vice versa" to indicate that it goes both ways, not just one.

Yes, people can have bad qualities, and codify them as bad aspects of otherwise decent religions. Thereupon, they are deemed the desire of an omnipotent deity, the opinion of which one can only disagree with upon pain of eternal hellfire. People that are roped into whatever the idea is, from that point, aren't getting it from a "human" source. Their understanding is that their "human" desire to disagree with the idea is invalidated.

That's assuming that people are more influenced by their god than their church community, which is arguable.
For example, I know people who tithe to 2 churches; the one they go to, and the one they stopped going to becuase they don't like the new priest or something. They don't want to appear to have stopped tithing to their old church community, they don't want those people talking shit about them behind their backs - even if god knows the truth.

Religion is the tool not the agenda.

I'm not arguing whether religion is a human institution, that's obvious. I'm saying that it has a special leverage to influence people; that it's human origins become obscured by the very nature of what it claims to be: a "voice from above" that directs human endeavor. Whether this is actually the case has no bearing on the perceptions of many people, namely those who adhere to the idea that religion is what it claims it is.

I'm not religious at all, and I am not interested in having sex without love and commitment. I don't want to risk being taken advantage of or treated with disrespect, or doing the same to someone else.

That's not to say that I object to other people having sex with multiple partners. It's just not for me.

It's the "objecting to other people" that rkzenrage was attributing to religion.

Right, but (wow, it's a struggle to phrase this coherently) to say that any objection to other people having promiscuous sex must derive from religion, implies that the only arguments against promiscuous sex are those derived from religion. I was pointing out that there are non-religious reasons to object to promiscuous sex, and that the choice to make that a matter of personal behavior or one of public judgement is more based on personality than anything else.

As to the fact that women are more looked down on for having multiple partners, religion is obviously a factor in that, but I don't believe that it is the only factor.

Who, exactly, is looking down on these women?
Of course we've all heard that, so it must be true... but I gotta say, I'm not seeing it actually happening.

the scene in The Witches of Eastwick where the Red Head is in the grocery store........

Well c'mon! That whore wasn't wearing a bra for fuck sake!

not to mention consorting with the debbil

cause and effect?

I dont see it either.

I dont have any religious people in my life at life, so I cant comment on whether thats a contributing factor.

I had one boyfriend wig out at the number of partners I'd had, and he himself had had a pretty debauched youth. But at the time, we both knew we were really close to the end of the relationship anyway, so I just sort of blew the whole thing off.

My husband couldn't really care that I've had more partners than he has, but he thinks it's freaking hysterical that I've actually kissed more girls than he has.

Then you are not who we are discussing. We are talking about people who get their noses out of joint about women with a healthy sex-drive.
You just helped make my case.

The average has to be around 20 for girls...

I wish Dagney could see the title of this thread.

.


well....i don't think it's hysterical. I think it's hawt.

It all comes back to the "baby daddy" question -- biologically & culturally, men don't want to be investing in raising a child that isn't theirs.

Back in "the good old days", the one way to insure that the baby was yours is to make it damn expensive (in terms of cultural capital) for the woman to play around. Doesn't matter if he plays around; any result is not his problem.

Today, we claim to be high-minded and egalitarian, but the veneer is awful thin. We do (overtly) look down on women who have children by a large number of men. We look askance at women who only sleep with them, and don't procreate.

Religion only served as a codification of the views imposed by biology.

I think there's a big difference between women who have a high number of sexual partners, and women who have several children to different men.

The two are not connected in any way.

You only need to have sex once to get pregnant, so it is possible that a woman could have three children by three different men and have only had sex three times, yet society still calls her a slut (or whatever).

Alternately, a woman could have sex with 50 men but children to only one and that's ok, or at least, more ok because there's no evidence of sluttish behaviour unless she says what she's done.

The fact that the 50 partner woman should feel the need to hide that figure is a shame and says a lot about how the average person thinks.

I hear it on a regular basis. Especially from young men.
Whether it's overheard conversations, read online (we had this out with bmwcaw a while back, remember?) or in editorials, it's definitely an attitude that's still out there.

Ali, you raise a very interesting point.
I would never judge a woman on the amount of sexual partners she has had - it matters as little to me as how many pairs of shoes she has owned. But I would have an opinion (however unfair it is of me) on a woman with children by multiple partners. My opinion of a man with children by multiple partners would be the same.

It's nothing to do with morals - just with the practical issue that a father who does not live with his children cannot possibly have the same parental impact on a child's life as a father who does. I accept that long term relationships break up, and it is incredibly hard for both parents, trying to sort out responsible visitation. I am not writing about these situations.

I mean people who start a relationship with a baby. It's over by the time the baby is born. Well, as long as the baby is loved... But then to go out and start the next relationship with a baby... and the next.

It seems remarkably common in Celebville - I know they have the money to support multiple children/ partners, but what about the time? I read recently that Keith Allen (British comedian/ actor, father of Lily) has 8 children by 6 women. I guess they don't all get to spend Christmas with Daddy, then. Or Fathers Day.

I know this isn't the only reason but I think the bad reputation the first women will get is because society not only calls her sexually promiscuous but stupid as well. If you got pregnant three times to three different men it is very likely that contraceptives were not used and the man was not wearing a condom, so society will call her irresponsible and stupid since it is common knowledge that contraceptives and condoms will dramatically reduce the risk of pregnancy.

This can also assume that she may have sexually transmitted diseases. If a women who has sex once get an STD, she will instantly be labeled sluttier than a women who has sex 50 times but has never got an STD.

Even though it is unfair to those women that have gotten unwanted pregnancies and STDs, especially because of a broken condom or failed contraceptive, it is good, at least in my opinion, that we put more emphasis on safe sex than abstinence.

you know what? Pretty much everything you just said is exactly the kind of bullshit women like me have to put up with constantly.

I don't agree that a woman needs to be promiscuous to get an std. IN fact, women often get them from the fuckers they are faithful to.

As to pregnancy, who in the fuck said it's the woman who should be labled? Why the fuck don't men get labled for this shit? Is it that men don't get to live with the kids? Or how bout, they just ignore the fact they have kids?

Men in my opinion, are the ones who perpetuate these societal views of women because they don't take responsibility for their part in it.

That ol' double standard. Tho I'm not sure PiercedHawkeye actually subscribes to it, just describing it.

Maybe not, but he posted it, so he's obviously been thinking about it.

I hope he gives it a lot more thought in future.

Aliantha, I am just telling you what I have seen society react to situations. I did not, at least mean too, add any personal opinion on the matter.

I truly do not believe that women has to promiscuous to have an STD or become pregnant but I have seen society act differently and if you reread my post again with that in mind, hopefully you can see that I tried to write it as unbiasly as possible.

I would only look down on women who had multipul partners babies because they were stupid enough not to use some kind of birthcontrol, not because they had numerous partners.

That is the problem. The man is actually the slut or the woman who had sex one time would never have gotten an STD. I don't beleive people in todays time think that a woman who has gotten an STD is a slut.

I have seen differently but it could be where we were raised and the age difference.

Statistically, 1 in 8 adults have herpes.

Anyone want to put their hand up and own up?

If not, why do you think that is?

I thought I've read that someone can have herpes, but not show symptoms--for how long, I don't know. Years, maybe?

That's true blue. It's also totally controllable even if you do have symptoms, and yet it's a virus with a huge stigma.

It has none of the glamour that aids and hiv do and yet it's something you're stuck with for life.

Why are std's viewed with such distaste? Why do they seem so dirty?

I could be. I think the differences are more related to an individuals upbringing and how they are taught to view sex, premarital sex, among other things.