chimerically

Women's ability to produce children is the greatest resource the human race has. Its one that can't be taken from a woman, so women don't need to fight with other women for this resource. But men...well, men have to compete with other men for access to this resource, and that competition would be horrifically destructive if allowed to rage.

In order not to be destroyed by competition, societies must impose essentially artificial limits on the use of that resource--in particular, a man may only make use of the reproductive capacity of his wife. Essentially, the men are agreeing to split the loot in a particular way to prevent fighting. Loot-splitting in this sense may have been around long enough to work its way into human nature and not just culture.

To prevent the male-male competition from being a problem, it has to be ensured that no man may make use of the reproductive capacity of woman that he has not lawfully received. The demand will always be there, so the way to do this is to impose social rules that control the supply. Any woman who puts out for any but her husband is messing with the assigned division-of-loot via marriage, and that sort of thing must be stopped.

(Now, some amount of prostitution/extra-marital sex is okay, so long as the extra-marital women and the marrying kind are in clearly different sets.)

Does this all make sense in the modern world of birth control and paternity tests? Well, maybe not, but some of this has been embedded into human nature. And too much male-male competion over women is still bad for everyone.

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... some of this has been embedded into human nature ...

If by "human nature" you mean societal norms, then I'd generally agree.

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If by "human nature" you mean societal norms, then I'd generally agree.

No, by "human nature" I was referring to the piece that isn't cultural. In particular, without external pressure, just about any culture will value most women's chastity. (Not that this is a good thing.) There is, of course, a lot of difference between killing the women who aren't virgins on their wedding night and a culture where the word "slut" has negative connotations.

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Wow... while I agree it does make sense the way you put it, I don't understand one thing...

How is it the guys are always yelled at for treating women like objects?

If I think of women.. as.. well.... .. women... I don't agree with your post all that much since it just puts them as either baby making machines or pleasure machines. (I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but with such inanimate descriptions, it's just the message I gleamed from it.)

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zestyping.livejournal.com

How is it the guys are always yelled at for treating women like objects?

Unfortunately, many guys frequently do.

I don't agree with your post all that much

I'm confused... the post doesn't express much of an opinion; it just points to other things. What sentiment do you disagree with?

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The "Guys treat women like objects" was said tongue-in-cheek.

As for the part I don't agree with...
To prevent the male-male competition from being a problem, it has to be ensured that no man may make use of the reproductive capacity of woman that he has not lawfully received. The demand will always be there, so the way to do this is to impose social rules that control the supply.
I don't really think the whole point of restricting sex to a spouse only is to keep competition down. I think it's religion gone out of control.

Looking back at my post, I didn't really think it out before writing that. (I've been awake for a while...) I hope this explains my viewpoint a little better. And don't get me wrong, I think her post is very well written and is has a lot of truth to it... I just have a different opinion on that aspect.

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Perhaps I'm of the belief that religion is largely a social construction, outlining a moral code based on solid social and economic principles. Sanctifying virginity and monogamy, and even the institution of marriage, is a strategic way to introduce stability in intimate relationships - especially those which could possibly lead to developing families.

From a non-religious standpoint, I'm slightly put at ease when I know that somebody I'm interested in dating has had fewer-than-expected sexual partners for the reason of not worrying about how I measure up to the (wo)men in her past. Over time, I've managed to quell this insecurity, but there might be something rather instinctual behind it.

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I agree with you there. The morale code of religion is usually very well defined and is pretty constructive in serving as a guideline for young children. It also provides a reason to follow it other than to just be a good person. (I guess damnation and purgatory would be a pretty bad 'time out' to look forward to.)

I also agree with your fewer-than-expected sexual partner statement. Being with someone 'overly' experienced would be uncomfortable I'm sure. There would also be the risk of STD's that I wouldn't find very appealing as well.

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Wow, I completely disagree with the fewer-than-expected sexual partners thing. I would much rather be with someone who was very experienced than with someone inexperienced; I don't want to have to teach! Experienced people are way more fun.

As for the risk of STDs, there are tests for that, and boundary observations prior to testing. A high number (and what's a high number, anyway? 5? 10? 20? More?) doesn't necessarily mean there's more risk.

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I honestly think it's a male/female difference there. Males perfer having someone with little experience, while females want the opposite. And your reason explains it all. Males need to be trained how to please a women. And women can please a man just by looking at them funny.

But as lbchewie said, guys don't like wondering if they're not up to par with their parnters prior sexual partners.

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I say that, but the woman to whom I lost my virginity was SIGNIFICANTLY more experienced than I (or probably anyone I may ever meet again). Personally, I love to be taught, but I can see why a number of men like to believe they're the ones in control.

I see one's sexual abilities just like any other skill. It's all taught. Some are more talented than others, but in the end, it's better to keep and open mind and realise that we're all students.

The way I see it: Teach people to be a better lovers, and everyone wins. There are no losers. It's only when people let their egos take the best of them when there's a conflict... and lots of unenjoyable sex ;)

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I love learning (And in this case, I love practicing too ;)

However, while it has never happened to me, I'm sure it would be a MAJOR blow to be told, "My last boyfriend was better." (Althought I would assume most women have better tact than that.)

Either way, I'm content to practice all night long.

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Wow, I completely disagree with the fewer-than-expected sexual partners thing. I would much rather be with someone who was very experienced than with someone inexperienced; I don't want to have to teach! Experienced people are way more fun.

Well, this approach to sexuality is beginning to prevail again in many circles. However, it goes against most "traditional" conservative values that tend to dominate certain religious and societial practices throughout the generations. It merely goes to show that one's approach to sexuality is a preference. More naturalistic, or "spiritual" interpretations of religion, especially those that believe that one's connection with God/Nature/Life is a highly personal relationship, can allow for one to embrace coitus as yet another beautiful human experience.

I've been tempted to write an entry about how the concept of "whiteness" mixed in with Christianity, sets a society up to be non-sexual as an ideal, but as an unnatural and harmful construct. I took a Theatre of American Cultures course which explored the idea through a number of essays, but never bothered to commit my thoughts to e-Paper. Meh. Conservatives! *digusted*

As for the risk of STDs, there are tests for that, and boundary observations prior to testing. A high number (and what's a high number, anyway? 5? 10? 20? More?) doesn't necessarily mean there's more risk.

Just so long as those practices are observed. While it's certainly possible to be open, honest, and proactive in disclosing one's sexual history, I'm afraid there are a number of those who use sexuality as for vengeance: those who have contracted a fatal STD, or rape victims, or due to other severe self-esteem crises. They simply may not be honest - and it comes down to simply one's ability to trust another.

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I don't agree with your post all that much since it just puts them as either baby making machines or pleasure machines. (I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but with such inanimate descriptions, it's just the message I gleamed from it.)

It was intentional, actually. I used such inanimate terminology because I wanted to make sure that no one took me the wrong way. I believe women are people. I certainly haven't lived my life in an effort to make babies asap or to provide pleasure for as many men as possible.

In discussing an issue like this, there's two questions that get conflated. First, how people actually feel, and second, why do people feel that way. I was trying to answer the second question.

Let me explain. If you asked one of the Purity Ball dads if their daughters were just baby-making machines or pleasure machines, they'll say "No, they are people." They'd probably add something about how precious they are, how they are gifts from god, blah blah blah. They wouldn't want to toss them in the ditch if they turned out to be infertile.

But then you have to ask the question of how can a person's virginity be so important? The answer that the purity Dads would give you is nothing like my explanation. They'd talk about purity and morality and blah blah blah. But what is convenient of about those definitions of purity and morality? It what sense does it help human survival to emphasize virginity? That was the question I was trying to answer.

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I understand. I guess I haven't been around too many posts that have such an academic feel to them on livejournal. If you look at it in that light, you're post is brilliantly written. One thing I do like is it tends to bring out ideas on WHY it happens instead of the flame war of how stupid x groups is for doing y.

Another reason I was caught up in emotion versus pure concept is the writer in the article does everything he can (from slander to jest) to show the individuals behind the statistics. Your post brings it back to a statistic and makes us wonder where the littler girl went. I guess you do need both sides to stay well informed though.

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The main benefit to having sex with a virgin is that you can be absolutely sure that any resulting offspring will be yours. That's why virginity has been valued and women's sexuality has been controlled for so long; so that the men can make sure that the children are theirs and no one else's.

On a tangent, in some societies (the Celts, for example, as evidenced by the stories in the Tain), it was accepted for the chieftain or king to have the right to have sex with every bride on her wedding night - before the husband. In this way, it affirmed the symbolic role of the king as the father of his people, by literally making it possible that every firstborn child was in fact his offspring.

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The main benefit to having sex with a virgin is that you can be absolutely sure that any resulting offspring will be yours.

But there is also a benefit to making sure that the neighbor's girls are virgins on their wedding night even if you don't marry them.

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tokyorose329.livejournal.com

"Women's ability to produce children is the greatest resource the human race has."

What makes you say this? Every organism on the planet has the ability to reproduce itself. I don't see it as the most important resource of human society beyond the most basic need for continuing the species.
In fact, the most important resource the human species has at its disposal is the capacity for reason and conscious thought, the ability to subvert "animal" urges: hunger, discomfort, lust, anger, selfishness--what were codified as "deadly sins" by everyone's favorite tightasses, the Catholics--in favor of "higher" reasoning. After a certain age, you don't beat up your brother just because he got the last cookie because you know your mother's going to go to the store and buy more and you'll get one. You don't start pawing the first attractive woman you see at a party because you've learned to enjoy the courtship process that helps you determine your the suitability of your intended mate (and remember folks, even lizards have courtship!).
Society has placed a lot of checks and balances against succumbing to these potentially destructive forces. Most of them are skewed towards "protecting", which ultimately turns into "repressing" female sexuality. I'd like to believe that it's out of a sense of respect for the obviously enormous power of said sexuality, but I don't think any of these purity-ball dads retain any of that anymore.
This is why matrilineal societies make more sense, in those pre-DNA-test days. It is very easy to muddy the waters about who someone's father is. It is much, much harder to obfuscate who came out of whose womb.
As for being with people who have had lots of partners, women have been dealing with this for years. Be glad s/he's with *you* now, learn a few original tricks to blow those other memories out of the water, and for god's sake keep quiet about it. Very few people get dumped solely on the basis of their sexual performance.

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I said: "Women's ability to produce children is the greatest resource the human race has."
You said:
What makes you say this? Every organism on the planet has the ability to reproduce itself. I don't see it as the most important resource of human society beyond the most basic need for continuing the species.

Your second sentence says it all. I didn't mean anything beyond that, but I find that pretty significant. If we don't reproduce, we die out, and any other resources we may or may not have are pretty damn useless. Now, obviously, we need both male and female to do this reproducing thing. However, the female half is clearly the limiting factor, since it takes 9 months in her body, and then an additional 2-4 years of infertility is associated with each child. (In modern society, with formula and an abudance of food, fertility returns much quicker.)

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tokyorose329.livejournal.com

Yeah, but any idiot can--and will--make babies. It's hardwired in, and it's such a given that we're going to do it that it doesn't set us apart from any other species. That was my point.

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Ah, I see. I never meant to imply that reproducing made us any different than animals. I don't think we are much other than animals, as it happens.

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rubrick.livejournal.com

This subthread further cements my respect for folks like Dawkins who are willing to take on the thankless task of trying to communicate this stuff to folks who aren't in their field. Seems like it's always 10% making points, 90% explaining why you didn't mean what you're being accused of.

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Also, I don't think the worries about virginity have much at all to do with fear that your partner had other better partners in the past. People talk about that, of course, but it's not a truly logical response. It's just words to justify a gut feeling. The question is, why do people tend to have that gut feeling?

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The question is, why do people tend to have that gut feeling?

Those people are fundamentally insecure, and it's just another axis over which to develop an inferiority complex. If it's not sexual performance, it's something else.

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Those people are fundamentally insecure, and it's just another axis over which to develop an inferiority complex. If it's not sexual performance, it's something else.

I'm not so sure. If I imagine a conversation that includes a reference to sexual performance, replacing the sexual performance by monetary performance doesn't work as well. Certainly, people can feel inadequate in terms of their wages, but the sexual thing seems weightier. And I can much more readily imagine a guy worried about being good enough in bed than a man worried he's not sensitive enough.

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Btw, I don't believe this is a good thing, and I believe we should do everything reasonable in society to fight this. We shouldn't encourage "Purity Balls", we should make laws & conventions about infidelity apply equally to men and women, should discourage the double-standard, and so on on so forth. I just think it's a very slight uphill battle against human nature.

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zestyping.livejournal.com

One reason people value virginity is that they are afraid sex won't be as important or special to their partner as it is to them.

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To a degree I agree, but in theory, I believe this is a flawed idea...

If sex weren't treated as a sin, but rather as just an intimate act, there might be less sex crimes, depression, divorce, etc. While I have no numbers or data to back this up, It's how I feel.

I was raised in a household where sex before marriage was a sin. You begin to feel it was a bad thing.

And it's hard writing a post like this without too much information... heh.

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I wanted to add... Due to the other post, I re-read this...

I took out a few lines that I wrote to try avoiding revealing too much personal info, but I think my post sounds too harsh without it, so I'll include it anyway...

I mentioned that I was raised in a pretty strict mormon household. While I was always the rebellious one of the familiy, some things stuck with me, and this happened to be one. I didn't first have sex until I was around 22. I wasn't married, and it was really awkward due to that. It ruins a lot when you've been told your entire life that something is wrong and you do it anyway. Even if you KNOW it's not wrong, you can't get rid of the feeling.

As for your post... and the point I originally meant to address (and perhaps the whole basis to my disagreement) is that I've always been overly sensetive to prior relationships of my partner. I feel my wife feels the same as me since she's in the same situation.

So, while I feel sex SHOULD be treated as important and special, I think the guilt would be lessened...

I hope this makes sense... sorry for posting so much... I'm just having a really bad time trying to get my point across...

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darcydodo

I figure it came from needing unicorns. :P

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surpheon.livejournal.com

Mmmmm, unicorns - the only meat that comes with its own kabob skewer.

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Unicorns... happily pleasing their mates since fairy tales began...

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The "girls in movies" thing is interesting, but I'm curious to see how it's changed with time. I wonder if it follows the gender roles of women from the early 50s to now in any manner at all.

As for the "purity balls," that is pretty disturbing. I know in mormon families it's drilled into their youth enough... isn't that taking it a step too far. And really, do you think it would help in a few years? They'll either be so scared of it they'll never be able to function normally as a sexual partner, or they'll ignore it and become rebellious.

Again, just my thoughts as I have never specifically researched child to adult sexuality.

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You might be interested in this too.

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... but they're more likely to take medications to get high (especially prescription), and more likely to have oral sex (and not count it as "sex") ...

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The whole gender imbalance in cartoons was especially noticeable when I was a character - the fact that it was such a treat when I actually got to play a GIRL says something.

In fact, out of about 20 characters I've played, only 3 have been girls - Suzy Mouse (from Cinderella), Terk (from Tarzan), and Jojo (from Jojo's Circus). That's pretty sad.

Purity balls squick me right the fuck out.

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Wow, only three - and none of them are main characters! I guess Disney has had a few lately - Belle, Pocahontas, Mulan ... it'd be interesting to see information on the success of female-lead movies versus male-lead (versus dual-lead). As much as I love Pixar, they're 0 for 7 now (0 for 9 if you count the two films in production, and 0 for over 23 if you count their short films and commercials).

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Apparently, Disney for a while quite deliberately alternated "girl" movies with "boy" movies. Check it out:

Little Mermaid - girl
Beauty and the Beast - girl
Aladdin - boy
Lion King - boy
Pocahontas - girl
Hunchback of Notre Dame - both
Hercules - boy
Mulan - girl
Tarzan - boy
After those it stops mapping quite so nicely, but I believe it was a deliberate marketing decision by Disney to alternate.

Disney has gotten better with female leads (Pocahontas is much more self-determined than Cinderella), but they haven't been doing so well recently. Still, the non-human characters default to male, even when gender is totally unimportant. Meeko and Flik (Pocahontas' companions), for example, are both clearly male. Esmerelda's goat Djali is male.

Jojo, incidentally, is a lead; she's the star of her own show, Jojo's Circus. She's a little clown girl. The only non-human female lead I can think of off the top of my head is (ugh) the cow from Home on the Range, which nobody saw and was a terrible movie.

You're right, Pixar has been abysmal. They need to work on that. It makes me wonder what the gender balance of the creative teams at Disney and Pixar is.

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Also, now I have the Jojo's Circus songs that played at my set location stuck in my head. AAARRRGH.

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I was just thinking more about it, remembering more and more female leads, and wondering if that was a strategy ...

I should ask Pixar friends about the gender balance. I imagine it's the usual male dominance in the engineering division. Wikipedia tells me that Ratatoille's screenwriters are female, but it looks like all the top positions are held by men.

I also wonder at the audience demographics of "girl" vs. "boy" Disney movies, and what effect the fairly strong gender stereotyping in most Disney films has ...

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Er, Ratatouille. I knew that didn't quite look right. ;~)

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Hmm, I wonder about villains, too ... there's Cruella and Ursula on one side, Scar and Gaston on the other ... I don't know about the more recent Disney films.

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Ooo, I hadn't thought about villains! In the classic Disney movies, the villains were often female, but that seems to be a remnant of the tropes of fairy tales (ie, the wicked stepmother). Let's look at the recent ones:

Little Mermaid - girl movie with female villain (Ursula)
Beauty and the Beast - girl movie with male villain (Gaston)
Aladdin - boy movie with male villain (Jafar)
Lion King - boy movie with male villain (Scar)
Pocahontas - girl movie with male villain (Ratcliffe)
Hunchback - I'm arguing that this is a dual movie, because the lead is male but Esmeralda is prominently featured, and the marketing had a lot to do with girls - male villain (Frollo)
Hercules - boy movie with male villain (Hades)
Mulan - girl movie with male villain (Shan-Yu)
Tarzan - boy movie with male villain
Fantasia and Fantasia 2000 - the Firebird and Chernovog are the only villains. The Firebird's gender is indeterminate, but Chernovog is male.
Emperor's New Groove - boy movie with female villain (Yzma)
Atlantis - boy movie, male villain
Treasure Planet - boy movie with male villain
Lilo and Stitch - I'd argue this was another dual movie; it seems to be equally popular with boys and girls. Male villain (Stitch's creator)
Brother Bear - boy movie with almost no female characters, except the mother bear who (of course) dies at the beginning. No villain as such.
Home on the Range - female lead, male villain.
Chicken Little - male lead. I haven't seen it so I don't know if there is a villain.

So, yeah. With only two exceptions (Ursula and Yzma), all the villains of the Disney movies from the past two decades have been male. What do you make of that?

Adam and I were just talking about this, and the Muppets came up. They are terrible when it comes to female Muppets! The only ones we could think of were Miss Piggy and Janis; all the rest are male. Apparently Sesame Street has added female characters in recent years, but I'm not up on that.

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First muppet video: One male, two females. Male can't sing... can't even talk. Greatest video ever.

The muppets - Manamana on google video

That song is the official theme song for my shift at work. :)

Great thread btw... very interesting.

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rubrick.livejournal.com

In the case of Muppets, a factor might well be that the two lead creators and pupeteers (Henson and Oz) were both male, and Muppeteers do their own voices. Miss Piggy is voiced by men.

Of course, this leaves open the question of why Henson didn't hire more female Mupeteers.

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