Why Women Are Called Sluts When They Sleep Around, But Men Aren’t
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to The Rawness RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
You often hear women, especially feminists and sluts, complaining about how it’s such an unfair double standard that men are called studs when they sleep around, yet women are called sluts. It’s really not a double standard though, because both scenarios are pretty different in terms of circumstances and consequences. I can think of at least three crucial differences.
First, sleeping around is easier for women. Regardless of how you feel about promiscuity, we can all agree that a guy who manages to rack up a lot of sexual partners has to have some skills. It’s challenging for men to rack up partners, even for men with low standards. It requires a certain amount of social intelligence, interpersonal skills, persistence, thick skin, and plain old dumb luck. For women to rack up a lot of partners, however, it pretty much only requires a vagina and a pulse. So a man whoring it up and a woman whoring it up are hardly the same thing because for a woman to get a lot of partners is absolutely no challenge, hence no one respects it. It’s just viewed as a lack of self-discipline when women indulge in lots of sex partners because they can get new ones whenever they want. When men get lots of sex partners, it’s respected more because getting lots of sex partners, for men, is a challenge. This is just human nature: people gain respect for those who accomplish challenging feats while they consider those who overindulge in easily obtained vices as weak or flawed.
Second, women do more harm by sleeping around than men do. Say a man sleeps around with a bunch of different women. He is definitely doing harm to these women if he pretends to be monogamous while sleeping around with these multiple partners. He may cause them emotional pain by his promiscuity. He may cause unwanted pregnancy. He may spread venereal diseases. When women sleep around, however, they can cause not only these same ill effects but one additional crucial ill effect: the risk of unknown parentage. If one guy sleeps around with five women, each of whom is monogamous to him, and they all get pregnant, it’s a safe bet as to who the father is. If one woman sleeps around with five men and gets pregnant, it could be anybody’s baby. And if a man is tricked into raising a baby that isn’t his, he is basically investing his time, money, estate and property to provide for a child that is not carrying on his DNA into the next generations, which is a costly mistake from an evolutionary standpoint. Our two basic primal drives are to survive and to reproduce, and promiscuous women traditionally make it hard for a man to know for sure whether he is truly reproducing or simply raising another man’s child. Men stand a lot more to lose from promiscuous women than the other way around. And it’s no picnic for the child to not know who his real father is either. And it’s a mess for the women carrying on the deception as well. Or just look at any random episode of the Maury show if you don’t believe me. Considering that the DNA test and the birth control pill had not existed for most of human history, meaning that there were no reliable ways to prevent pregnancy or prove parentage, society for many centuries had a vested interest in preventing promiscuity among women and society accomplished this by creating the slut stigma. And even though the creation of birth control and DNA tests have made this less of a risk than the past, longstanding traditions and customs are not easy for society to break.
Third, men have evolutionary reasons to be programmed to sleep around. A lot of women roll their eyes when they hear that men are “hard-wired” to sleep around. But from an evolutionary standpoint, it makes total sense. If the two primal drives of humans are to survive and to reproduce, nothing leads to maximum reproduction like one man sleeping with multiple women. If one women slept with many men, in a nine month period, she would still only get pregnant just once. Nine months of rampant promiscuity would give the same result as nine months of highly sexed monogamy: one pregnancy. Now if one man sleeps with many women, you can get many pregnancies. The more women he sleeps with, the more pregnancies. So from an evolutionary standpoint, there are concrete advantages to men sleeping around with multiple partners rather than women.
These three reasons are probably why the longstanding tradition came about of men being rewarded for multiple partners while women get socially punished for similar promiscuity. Of course all this is gradually changing, but we’re up against centuries of tradition here, so don’t expect any dramatic reversals or anything.
Now a lot of people are going to read all this and dismissively think Oh this guy is just being a typical man and trying to justify every man’s dream: cheating and polygamy. But believe it or not, I don’t really think male polygamy is all it’s cracked up to be. Despite what most people assume, polygamy actually may benefit women more than men. Most dudes think a society of widespread polygamy (specifically polygyny, where one man can have several women) would just be a utopia of every guy sleeping with every woman under the sun. Some economists think otherwise though. The basic argument is that in a world where po
lygamy was acceptable, most of the women would be hoarded by the most successful men. As explained in this Psychology Today article:
The history of western civilization aside, humans are naturally polygamous. Polyandry (a marriage of one woman to many men) is very rare, but polygyny (the marriage of one man to many women) is widely practiced in human societies, even though Judeo-Christian traditions hold that monogamy is the only natural form of marriage…..Relative to monogamy, polygyny creates greater fitness variance (the distance between the “winners” and the “losers” in the reproductive game) among males than among females because it allows a few males to monopolize all the females in the group. The greater fitness variance among males creates greater pressure for men to compete with each other for mates. Only big and tall males can win mating opportunities. Among pair-bonding species like humans, in which males and females stay together to raise their children, females also prefer to mate with big and tall males because they can provide better physical protection against predators and other males.
In societies where rich men are much richer than poor men, women (and their children) are better off sharing the few wealthy men; one-half, one-quarter, or even one-tenth of a wealthy man is still better than an entire poor man. As George Bernard Shaw puts it, “The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first-rate man to the exclusive possession of a third-rate one.” Despite the fact that humans are naturally polygynous, most industrial societies are monogamous because men tend to be more or less equal in their resources compared with their ancestors in medieval times. (Inequality tends to increase as society advances in complexity from hunter-gatherer to advanced agrarian societies. Industrialization tends to decrease the level of inequality.)
When there is resource inequality among men—the case in every human society—most women benefit from polygyny: women can share a wealthy man. Under monogamy, they are stuck with marrying a poorer man.
The only exceptions are extremely desirable women. Under monogamy, they can monopolize the wealthiest men; under polygyny, they must share the men with other, less desirable women. However, the situation is exactly opposite for men. Monogamy guarantees that every man can find a wife. True, less desirable men can marry only less desirable women, but that’s much better than not marrying anyone at all.
Men in monogamous societies imagine they would be better off under polygyny. What they don’t realize is that, for most men who are not extremely desirable, polygyny means no wife at all, or, if they are lucky, a wife who is much less desirable than one they could get under monogamy.
So basically, women complain about how men are allowed to sleep around and they aren’t. Meanwhile men wish polygamy had widespread acceptance. And the truth may actually be that male polygamy benefits the average women more than the average man. Who’da thunk?
(6 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)
Loading ...
I love the way you sidestep away from Polyandry with the obvious lack of benefit to men - having to share one very desirable woman. Can’t tell who the biological parent is? Yeah, I know why that’s important to the guy, but to mankind overall, which man impregnated her is less so. If they are both highly desirable mates, then the 1 woman getting pregnant by either is a good thing, and she has 2 big strong men to take care of her and her offspring. Expand this to a truly polyamorous group and you’ve got a bunch of highly desirable people all together, protecting each other and having kids together. Sounds great to me.
That is the theory, at least. Experience has proven the viability of this to be rare. Humans are simply too insecure to trust and maintain this type of relationship. Heinlein’s utopia is a fantasy… but a helluva good one!
J R M’s last blog post..Blowing his mind
I thought I had lost you forever Mr.T! And of course, as I catch up on blogs and stumble onto yours, deciding “choices” seems a bit to appropriate in terms of where to start reading, I find the arch nemesis of blogging which I know and love!
I have to disagree with you on several points here, especially the “instinctual” concept. I take it you do not know many single women in their thirties. I will give you credit for the earlier years. However, in my situation and now knowing a great number of similar females, hearing that ticking clock, the yearning of my uterus to start mass production, even being in a long distance relationship, I find that I have an urge to take the seed of 65-75% of the population, all in the name of instinct. Now, do I act upon it? No. But that drive as we enter the final repo-friendly years, don’t knock it. Instinct to spread our seed is not merely a male role. It merely seems that way as you are an ingredient, we are the oven.
As for the paternal drama, though seemingly sound, it puts us at the level of the male lion, thinking your spawn must be matched to you. I can stick to the argument of step-parents being a norm, I can go on about the South American tribe who believes the child is a product of all of the seeds a woman collects and all of those males are thus active in raising it, but in actuality, the role of who the daddy is? Well, not too important in the overall scheme of things. It only counts if ya need a check, but it is entertaining TV.
And I cannot remember the last time I saw a male friend of mine, like alot of my career bartender boys, and told him he was a stud. He is a slut. It just takes time for society to wither away at the isms sometimes. Sexism included.
Hey Jen, it’s been a while!! Glad you came by! Drop me a line! (email’s t@therawness.com)
That polyandry might benefit a society in general in the form of “two strong men caring for one child” is largely irrelevant for this argument. The point being that it doesn’t benefit the ignorant males who, driven by the drive to propagate their seed, are possibly wasting their effort. Imagine a scenario where a promiscuous woman gets impregnated by an equally promiscuous man. Man-X loves her and leaves her, bounding off into the sunrise to knock up more chicks. Meanwhile, Girl-X convinces a coupla chumps that the bastard-child could be any of theirs. Now they foolishly all decide to pull a “3 Men & A Baby”, forgoing their opportunity to spend the next 7 years spreading their seeds. Sure Girl-X gets what she wants, but that’s about it.
Now imagine this happens over and over again in an early society. What personality type ends up getting passed on? Certainly not the easily duped “Chump-Gene”. Those fools are busy nursing the baby who bears the genes of Man-X who is simultaneously spreading EVEN MORE of his seed!
You’re 100% right, T. We’re all hard-wired to act how we act.
smash, you actually gave me a good idea for a post…
Look at it this way. You can have Roseanne Barr all to yourself, or share a centerfold model with another man. While sharing a wife isn’t ideal, it better to have a highly desirable mate than a lousy one.
For women, something similar is at work.They would rather have an insanely rich guy all to themselves, but given a choice between marrying a nice guy employed at Taco Bell or sharing a Tiger Woods, most women would rather share the multi-millionaire.
Polyandry is relatively rare. Usually it’s a group of men who cannot afford a bride, so they pool their resources and share one wife.
Something like male polygamy happens now, in that the wealthiest men, e.g. Donald Trump, marry the hottest women, e.g. Ivana Trump, monopolize them during their most fertile/attractive years, then kick them out the door. They then repeat the process. The end result is like male polygamy in which high status men monopolize the most desirable women. Although they aren’t married for life to the hottest women, the high status men use them up and spit them out, and beta males wind up settling for discards. The net result is a relative shortage of women.
Sgt Ray’s last blog post..The 30 Day Sex Challenge
Smash,
Research shows that a woman who leads two men to think that they could be the father gains more resources from the possible fathers.
If she sleeps around with more men than that, she creates the impression that she is a whore. When men feel like the chance of them being the child’s father is small, the odds of them investing in the child are extremely low.
Sgt Ray’s last blog post..The 30 Day Sex Challenge
I agree with the first point and some of the second, but not the third. Unless you are a hugely built cute smooth talking stud it is extremely difficult to pull a bunch of partners. Now for women they just need to have a vagina and look decent. On the second point about the diseases it is bad for both to risk each other getting an STD. When it comes to a girl lying about the father of the child I would probably kick her teeth in, because it is not mine and I paid for it, because she had to go and screw everything. It does matter who the father is to me and I do not like being lied to either. On the third point men and women both have an evolutionary reason to screw everything. That does not mean we should do it. I only want one good women and thats it. The reason I feel that we look down upon women who do it is because of the first point and also that women do it in the most screwed up way and at the most screwed up time. It is not all women that do it of course it is the few or majority that give women bad names. Women do cheat more than men it has been proven. It does not help the fact that when two people get divorced the women gets the child, gets most of the property, child support, and on top of that spousal support. While the man is told to be strong and starts over with nothing or less than nothing. Look at Utah most women there are on welfare and collecting child and spousal support from at least two men. I look at them as lazy waste of space breeders.
Look at Utah most women there are on welfare and collecting child and spousal support from at least two men. I look at them as lazy waste of space breeders.
What about the LDS polygamists collect welfare from their multiple “wives” and don’t even have to work?
http://www.rickross.com/reference/polygamy/polygamy4.html
I know some guys that do not marry their girlfriends, knock them up, still live with them and do not work, just sponging off of her and welfare. One of those guys has three kids. It’s sickening.
Some men are sluts.
The biggest: Jordanians named Abood.
People tend to forget that succesful reproduction is not about getting many children, but many grandchildren. It doesn`t help a mans reproductive fittness to spread his seed, if his offspring don`t grow up and manage to do the same. Human evolution was presumably driven by competition between women to capture the ressources of men for the benefit of their costly offspring. The result is a state of socalled “near monogamy”.
Polygamy is allowed in many cultures, but it is usually only about 2% of the men who have more than one wife. Polyandry is extremely rare and consists usually of two brothers who share a wife. Since the brothers share half their genes, the paternity problem is not as serious as one would have thought. In the few matrilineal cultures that exists, it is the woman`s brother who is responsible for the children. He would on average share 25% of his genes with them. Matriarchial societies are not known to exist ( but are sometimes confused with matrilineal societies). Presumably it is because they would find it difficult to capture mens ressources in a reliable way.