STYLETHREAD -- LET'S TALK SHOP!

pollyjean23 · Marc Jacobs

Gender & Sex

blink · Coach

ITA with all your thoughts. It is bothersome how expectations and gender roles are different, but not everyone thinks this way.

As far as femininity, you might pick up an old copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD.

The book doesn't necessarily cover the topic of the double standard of sex, but it provides some great insight about what ancient femininity is and what it is not, as much as magazines and modern culture try to define it based on product marketing.

Farrah · Marc Jacobs

It all has to do with quintessential gender roles: the woman is either the madonna or the whore. As much as we would like to think that society is evolving it just is not and I don't think it ever will. I will admit that I was one of those no-strings attached girls in college. In fact, when Sex In the City premiered my girlfriends insisted that the writers based Samantha on me, HA! I am not ashamed of my past or who I was back then because I lived my life on my terms and no one else's. I didn't care what anyone thought of me.

When I met my current BF at the age of 24 I was finally ready to settle into a relationship with one guy and 7 1/2 years later we are still going strong. I never wonder what it would be like to be with someone else (because I have been with every type, HA!). I was totally honest with him about my past and he is totally accepting of it. He actually thinks it is great because he was a total player in college so he knew I wouldn't judge him either

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Kelly · Hermes

I've always just assumed/accepted that these inequalities are biologically based. I mean, evolutionarily speaking, it makes a lot of sense for men to want to have sex with as many women as possible and pass on his genes, while it's more beneficial for a woman to be in a monogamous relationship so she can count on the man to help raise her children and take care of them.

I don't think people can escape those biological tendencies, as much as we want to think that we make all of our decisions on our own and in our own head. Of course that doesn't mean that a woman can't be a player and a guy can't wait until marriage. It doesn't mean I want to get married immediately and it doesn't mean I'll be okay with someone cheating on me. But I still think it's a component of ourselves that we can't fully escape, and I think it affects the way men and women are portrayed by and to themselves.

ETA: if there was no available birth control, I would definitely not have sex until marriage because it'd be too risky. But obviously, because there is reliable birth control readily available, I don't have to worry about that. Which is why I am comfortable being sexually active before marriage. But I don't think pure reason can completely overpower centuries of biology. Which is why I still think these gender roles are in place today.

-- Edited by ttara123 at 13:06, 2008-07-02

Elle · Hermes

I think about this too. I think in part it's an issue here more than it is in other countries that are more open about sexuality in general, and I think our particular culture is unhealthily obsessed with being able to fit others into a specific 'box', especially when it comes to gender roles. Some of them have biological roots; dressing girls only in pink and boys only in 'boy' colors, girls playing with dolls and boys playing with trucks, that kind of stuff isn't biological. It's something society pressures parents to do so their kids not only fit inside their 'box' but can be identified as such from afar. Hopefully as our generation has kids and raises them, we can put a few more cracks in those boxes because damn they're annoying!

Nothing makes me prouder than seeing kids that could be either boy or girl - who cares which they are anyway? Does it matter? The less pressure we can put on either sex to be a certain way the better I think.

Aside from that, I think alot of the societal pressure is leftover from a bygone era. It used to be that women married in their teens and started popping out the babies, usually with an older husband. Sex was a commodity, though in a different way than it is now - women used it as a way to secure their futures by withholding it until marriage, when they'd get back financial support for themselves and any children in return. And while women still bear most of the long-term burdens that come from sex, you could have a child out of wedlock now without being stoned to death or thrown out on your ass to starve. In some places at least. And we think the stakes are high now!

It's really the taboo and secrecy that lead to those unequal expectations, and that's the sort of stuff that seems to take the longest to change.

Suasoria · Chanel

blink wrote:

As far as femininity, you might pick up an old copy of Women Who Run With The Wolves, by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD.

Great book! Holla! I don't think I've ever met anyone else who's read it.

I find it interesting that a lot of what we regard as biology is actually economics, such as the archetypal idea that women want security in their child-raising years. Likewise, men want to increase the size of their tribe because they want to be the most powerful, prosperous and enduring tribe in the neighborhood. These desires aren't encoded in our genes, they are practical considerations based on socioeconomics, finite resources, etc.

What is probably biological is our waxing and waning interest in sex throughout our life. Hormones, in other words.

Presenting sex as natural and healthy (as in the men's mags) strikes me as proper. On the other hand, I think our culture at large has an unhealthy fixation and prohibition regarding sex, and it starts in the young teens. We don't want teenagers having sex. We tell them it's dangerous and bad and that it's a "head trip," if you will.

But our culture loves to be titillated - think of the ratings sweeps periods with the bikini-clad women and documentaries about prostitution, reality TV vixens and studs, six-foot tall abs of steel on a billboard, and so on. We're thinking about sex two or three times a minute, but we're not supposed to actually have any.

No wonder we're so messed up.

If I had a teenager in a long-term monogamous relationship, it's really hard for me to imagine "forbidding" him or her to have healthy, loving, sexual experiences within this relationship if they feel right about it. I believe in intimacy, and sex is a great way to have it.

The women I've known over the last, oh, 20 years or so who have "issues" about sex and relationships are the ones who delayed sexual experience, invested them with too much baggage, or generally have immature or juvenile concepts of sex and physical intimacy. One of my college roommates hasn't had a real relationship in almost 20 years because her "first" - she was 21 - dumped her and she can no longer trust men. (Eyeroll.)

I don't know if these thoughts make sense to anyone but me!