In my “Beauty and the Body” class yesterday, I revisited the topic of homosociality and male anxiety. Homosociality is the notion that winning validation from other males is the primary concern for young American men. Contrary to popular wisdom, “getting laid” matters less than the social cachet of being seen by other guys as someone who “gets laid” regularly and easily. (Michael Kimmel introduced the concept of homosociality in his magisterial Manhood in America; A Cultural History). I wrote this in an earlier post on the subject:
To use one cheap and easy example, homosociality explains the function of catcalls and wolfwhistles. I’ve often been asked by female students why men whistle and hoot at them from construction sites and passing cars. “Why do they do it? Do they think this actually ‘works’ to pick up women?” I usually inquire whether the whistling was done by a single man or a group; the answer is almost invariably that it was the latter. The answer, seen through the lens of homosociality, is obvious — men whistle and yell to connect with other men. Women are, alas, mere devices for creating non-sexual, same-gender bonds. This doesn’t explain all catcalling behavior, but it goes a hell of a long way towards doing so.
In yesterday’s class, we connected homosociality to male “performance” anxiety. We were talking about Susan Bordo’s wonderful, albeit dated, The Male Body, and her discussion of men’s anxieties about penises and performance. (I’ve written about this topic before as well, here and in this archive. I offered the not very original suggestion that the longing for homosocial approval is inevitably wrapped up in competition. Men gain status in other men’s eyes by competing with and bettering other men; the whole culture of sport, of course, is rooted in this. This relentless pursuit of dominance and validation is exhausting, painful, and anxiety-producing for everyone involved, not least the women who are turned into mere yardsticks with which male competitors can measure their success.
The ancient male obsession with female virginity is, I think, inextricably bound up with men’s fear of competition with other men. The classic anthropological explanation for why women’s virginity mattered more in traditional cultures than men’s revolves around pregnancy. Parents worried that an unmarried pregnant daughter would become a social outcast, unable to hide the evidence in a way that her male “impregnator” easily could in a pre-DNA testing world. Pregnancy was often lethal for women, and since pregnancy almost always comes subsequent to the loss of virginity, the desire of parents and community members to delay intercourse for young women was perhaps about keeping a loved young girl alive. But the biggest reason why men in particular were so concerned with women’s pre-marital chastity and post-marital fidelity had to do with the need to know that their heirs are in fact their own biological children. No woman ever asks “who is the mother of my baby?” But plenty of men, with or without justification, have worried obsessively that the child to whom their wife has given birth might not be their own. The desire to control women’s sexuality so rigidly is thus rooted in this desperate need to inoculate a man against the horror of raising a “bastard” child. (Parenthetically, this is why Joseph, the husband of Mary, ends up being a Catholic saint: he’s willing to raise a kid who isn’t his. To the traditional mind, focused as it is on heirs and offspring, that’s more impressive than remaining in a marriage that will never be consummated.)
But I think that there’s another reason — far more pertinent to today’s youth — that leads to the continued “slut-shaming” of women who are sexually active before marriage. The culture of homosocial competition is all-encompassing in its ruthlessness for many young men, from the posturing on the playground to the hyper-competitiveness on the football field (or in a multi-player video game) to the desperate anxiety about making money that still drives and animates so many. In a culture where male-male friendship is so often tinged with an undercurrent of competitiveness and other barriers to intimacy, many men are only able to be emotionally intimate with the woman with whom they sexually involved. Call it the “my wife is my only friend” phenomenon, or as I used to put it when I was younger, the “guys who can only get naked (vulnerable) after they’ve gotten naked (had sex)” thing.
But of course, with intimacy comes vulnerability, and with vulnerability, the potential for anxiety and resentment. For a man raised in a culture of homosocial competition, the idea that the woman to whom he is opening his heart (or with whom he is planning to build a life) might have other men to whom to compare him is almost intolerable. If she’s a virgin, he’s guaranteed to be the “best she’s ever had.” (He’s also guaranteed to be the worst, but that’s not usually how lads think.) If she’s both sexually and romantically inexperienced, he can trust that she’s not comparing him to her past boyfriends on everything from the girth of his penis to the sweetness of his kisses to the fragility of his ego.
At this point, many young men in my classes tend to deny that this is so — and the women leap to point out how often their boyfriends ask obsessively about their pasts. The demand for “details” about past lovers, the obsession with “the number” is found in both sexes, but anecdotally, that obsession is not evenly distributed. It is primarily a male phenomenon. It’s not that women are always uncompetitive, but that women aren’t given permission to expect chastity from their beaux — women don’t generally “slut-shame” men. Women are also less likely to put all of their “emotional eggs in one basket”; they are socialized to be less emotionally dependent on their male partners than their male partners are on them. The combination of men’s hyper-competitiveness with other men and men’s frequent inability to form close friendships with their “brothers” creates emotional dependency on women. And that dependency manifests itself all too often in obsessive and detailed questioning about a girlfriend’s sexual past with other men.
I wish that I could say that contemporary young people were unconcerned with heterosexual virginity, and that the “slut/stud” dichotomy had died out. But for my students in particular, many of whom are the first in their families to go to college and at least half are the children of immigrants, the sexual double standard is alive and well in the second decade of the 21st century. My female students still tell me of the many guys they know who insist on wanting to marry a virgin — while enjoying their own extended period of pre-marital sexual freedom: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. What many of these young people don’t realize is that this double standard is not rooted in religion or mere tradition; it isn’t rooted in anxiety about pregnancy.
It’s rooted in men’s competition with other men, and the terrible fear of building a life with a woman who might know that compared to other guys, you just don’t measure up.
My hubby asked me about my past, and he was competitive in a way that he was disappointed I had more partners than him…I tried to tell him most of the time I wasn’t really a willing participant and just went through the motions…although I wouldn’t call it rape on an individual sense as much as I’d call it society raping me (it was still my decision to have sex), but he still refused to believe that he really was the best I had, in every sense of the word, because I was enthusiastic about relations with him…it was like he just couldn’t get it…it’s almost as if he couldn’t possibly accept it as pleasing because I was able to make a choice, almost as if it couldn’t possibly be pleasurable unless someone is coerced in some way… or it could just be self-hate, but if you can’t love yourself who can you love?
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I’ve literally never heard a man under 30 say that virginity was a big deal, so… whatever, man.
To an extent, yes. However, that begs the question why men need such status. The answer is that women have no interest in low-status men. So the men you are talking about compete with other men in order to make themselves more appealing to women. It really has very little to do with the other males.
Also, most of the available literature about male homosociality suggests that male competitiveness is part of the method that males use to bond with each other. This coincides with my experiences with my friends and with what I have witnessed among other men. I think it may seem like male friendships are “tinged with an undercurrent of competitiveness” to anyone who lacks male friends or has difficulty forming bonds with other males, but in general the competition between male friends rarely prevents them from forming lasting bonds, and most men seem to have close friendships with their “brothers,” which sometimes causes conflicts with the girlfriends or wives who may resent that close bond.
Likewise, there is a difference between being ruthless during a competition and ruthless in general. I think you unfairly conflate the two. If what you say is correct, then the only reason I compete with my “friends” is to one-up them, not because I enjoy being around them or testing my skills against theirs. That would make me rather shallow, and while I am sure you think I am shallow (among other things), I find it difficult to believe you think all males, from college men to kindergartners, are that petty.
As for men’s interest in virgin women being rooted in their competition with other men and the fear being compared to other guys, unless you posit that males instinctively want to have sex with virgin women, that notion must come from somewhere else, meaning it is not rooted in men’s competition with other men, but in social, culture, and religious traditions.
I suspect, Poop, you’re not talking to my demographic made up largely of first–generation Latin, Asian, and Armenian immigrants.
That said, it’s not just about virginity. It’s about men under thirty calling women with sexual experience ‘sluts’ and seeing them as unsuitable for enduring relationship.
I wish I were erecting strawmen, I really do. But this is very, very real.
Hugo – apart from the the rubbish about homosocial approval, I agree with your analysis here. I think the analysis could benefit from more discussion about how the usual gender roles prescribe why men date and why women date, and how it feeds into the worry about such comparisons. At least, how the “Man is attracted to woman, man pursues woman, woman gives man a chance to win her over (or not)” dynamic puts me in a position where I worry alot about how I measure up, but don’t make the reverse comparison. Not that I know “the number” for all the women I’ve dated, but I do know for ~half, and yeah, it makes me a bit anxious when they’re more experienced than I am (which they have been more often than not.)
Poop’s reaction is pushing back too far, but you’re overrepresenting the case as well. My social demographic is a very widely varied background, and every guy I’ve known who wanted to marry a virgin was one as well. And while anxiety about womens’ experience is widespread, translating it into hostility towards them is pretty rare (though maybe memorable when it happens? Obviously one needs to account for observation bias when discussing anecdotes, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man refer to a woman as a slut.)
You’ve never heard of a man refer to a woman as a slut? Look at porn titles for one… My nephews call other girls sluts all the time… they are under 30…I heard guys my age say slut..I’ve been called a slut…
Brian writes:
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a man refer to a woman as a slut.
Wow. Just… wow. We operate in parallel universes.
Oh bah, there’s no particular need for dramatics. That one particular slur hasn’t come up for me isn’t very meaningful (an anecdotal indictment of anecdotal data
), I certainly have seen men be hostile to women because they were sexually successful. It’s just a throw away example to explain where I’m coming from.
And yes, that I have mild hearing loss means I’m a lot less likely to pick up on comments (of any nature) when they’re not directed at me, but especially (especially) in contexts like bars where background noise really kills my ability to hear anything.
kristina, respectfully, your husband sounds like an ass.
Brian, I’ve heard plenty of men apply that double standard: they want to marry a ‘nice girl’, and any woman who willingly has sex with them before marriage is disqualified from being a ‘nice girl’.
I think that “parallel universes” line has some validity. Among some immigrant groups, things may be as you say, but Hugo, how about comparing them with the young people in your church youth group? I’d bet they have quite a different outlook.
My memory of this kind of thing was a relationship I had that lasted several years with a woman who had a lot more experience than me. I was kind of intrigued by it, not that I ever asked her for exact numbers. The way I saw it, she’d had an adventurous life that I’d never had. I wasn’t jealous at all, I assure you, and I haven’t got any moral judgments to make.
John, among the young privileged white kids I work with, the obsession with virginity is considerably less. But that wasn’t the only subject of the post — the anxiety about being compared with other guys is still there. It’s just that instead of expecting virginity, the boys express considerable unease and anxiety about being with any girl who has more experience (or in many cases, even comparable experience) with their own.
Ask women if their boyfriends have ever nagged them about their “number”, or asked obseesively about their pasts. You’ll hear a lot.
I’m really uncomfortable with all the men replying to this post denying or minimizing slut-shaming. I wish they could step back and listen to the people who have to live with slut-shaming, which is the women.
@Wiley – this is a post essentially about mens’ internal motivations; we don’t need to deny mens’ lived experiences to validate womens’, or vice versa. That’s a fine and nuanced line, yes, but it’s the only way to real understanding. Slut-shaming obviously exists, but it’s also clear that how prevalent it is, and what form(s) it takes are context-dependent. Yes, my social context is much more one where men are afraid of comparisons to other men that an experienced woman can make more than where she’s viewed as tainted for having been sexual with men (though there’s some of that, and the level of it varies a lot across my social contexts). There isn’t a single, uniform social context we’re all in, and we shouldn’t be assuming there is.
“kristina, respectfully, your husband sounds like an ass.”
Well, yes Mythago, yes he is…lol…but he does recognize this and is still learning…As long as he’s not blind to the issue I’m willing to lend a hand…but I’m no angel either, I’ve done a lot of things to him that I’m not proud of.
“Brian, I’ve heard plenty of men apply that double standard: they want to marry a ‘nice girl’, and any woman who willingly has sex with them before marriage is disqualified from being a ‘nice girl’.”
This one is as old as the species. The sweet blond shiksa you could never, never take home to Mama – she would have such a coronary; that delicious litle peasant with the inexplicably delicate features, who of course would never be accepted in “society”, more’s thepity; that fun young English woman at work you shag until the inevitable day when your family lines you up with someone marriageable from the home district in Punjab – it’s all summed up in the line” But I never thought of you as marriage material.
It certainly happens in the other direction too. Remember Daisy telling Gatsby all those years alter “But rich girls don’t marry poor boys.”
Slut or wrong caste, it all amounts to the same thing. Some people are sluts just by reason of their origin for these people.
Hugo, do you have a post on how homosociality works in female groups as it relates to who is dateable or interesting or marriagelabe?
@Brian
What I said is true and relevant to the discussion no matter what the context is.
@Jim
While I, too, would like to see a post about homosociality among women, I don’t think Hugo’s qualified to write one, being a man and all. I suggest you check out Feministing’s archives.
Wiley, the men here are denying that slut-shaming exists in the capacity that Hugo says it does. Which is right? Who knows, they probably both are anecdotally, but since this is a post about men and their internal feelings it’s a bit presumptuous and arrogant of you to assert that they should defer to women in regards to this. Check your privilege.
Hey, I don’t think I’m even denying that slut-shaming exists in the capacity that Hugo alleges, I’m only saying it isn’t distributed in the fashion he suggests. Let’s not take criticisms of Hugo for speaking too generically and thinking of people too homogeneously and take it too far.
People aren’t homogeneous, culture isn’t homogeneous, and it’s a mistake to think that any of our experiences should be universal. But Wiley’s mistake (and Hugo’s mistake) isn’t one of privilege, but of assuming that mens’ experiences are uniform (and especially in Hugo’s case, it’s obviously difficult to try and assign that to privilege). It’s very easy in a forum like this to make that kind of mistake. But rather than try and apply labels like “presumptuous and arrogant” or “privilege”, which’ll just be inflammatory and divisive (nevermind probably unfair and unwarrented), let’s talk about our experiences and understand each other. Wiley’s uncomfortable with the implications she’s taken from our statements, but rather than apply any labels to (me, say), she’s engaged pretty constructively, and other people who found what I said surprising/objectionable have done the same. (Even Hugo’s rhetoric, which I found kinda over the top, stayed away from being particularly accusatory.)
Obviously I made a poor decision to try and use that anecdote to frame my experience of men being much more intimidated and afraid than contemptuous and hateful of sexually experienced women. Failing to realise it’d be so inflammatory is a failure of empathy on my part. In that, I fucked up. I didn’t represent my experience as universal, but in taking my statement to deny that slut-shaming is widespread, rather than to illustrate an accident of my social contexts (or whatever, I’m not really sure what’s causing the divergence here; as always, I’m tempted to blame whatever I experience differently on having spent ten years in special ed. schools, but that’s not even half my life at this point, so I dunno), they messed up. But engage constructively, don’t drop what’ll come across as personal attacks, whether you mean it that way or not.
Brian, I wasn’t yelling at you…I was just baffled that you haven’t heard a man refer to a woman as a slut… It could be because I hear it so often that it’s just ingrained into my psyche permanently, it could be that your social circles don’t talk like that, or haven’t been in a social situation where that would be relative to the conversation…I mean I’ve heard guys say slut to random women on the street, but it’s much more rare than if they are talking about current relationships, and especially PAST relationships. I’ve heard guys say slut when talking about an ex girlfriend that was a VIRGIN before they got to her, obviously not after the relationship was over…but because the girl was able to move on (even in longer allotted time periods) and she was no longer a virgin…she must be a slut because she must be sleeping with this other guy. I think immaturity has a lot to do with it, but sometimes it seems like it’s a defense mechanism so guys can ignore the hurt of the situation by labeling her “less than”…
I’ve even heard guys refer to an ex as a slut, but then get back together with her and claim he loves her and wants to marry her…I really can’t wrap my head around that at all!
Wouldn’t it suck to be a son in the Schwyzer family? While Heloise is off doing whatever the fuck she wants (to “break free of the constraints of femininity”) Hugo’s going to be watching Junior like a hawk, waiting for him to say or do something that is even slightly indicative of “toxic masculinity” so he can sit him down and talk to him that passive-aggressive tone he has about how what a spoiled and entitled brat he is. It’s like he’s subhuman. “Oh, Heloise punched you in the face? Well, that’s really not funny, but we need to look at the underlying social reasons why she might be upset with men, and understand and empathize with it.”
I have to agree with Brian that “People aren’t homogeneous, culture isn’t homogeneous, and it’s a mistake to think that any of our experiences should be universal.” It’s even more difficult to argue from ancient cultures and practices to current ones, especially with no framework for that society’s sexual ethics grounded in religious mores.
I too have no recolection of ever hearing a man call a women a slut, but I have heard many women use that term. What can I say. My wife and I met in college, were both virgins, dated for almost 4 years, and waited until we were married to have sex and have remained faithful for 23 years.
It’s hard to even know where to start trying to disassemble the multifaced and layerd assumptions underneath the reasoning of this post, assumption which drive the conclusions.
I am emotionally intimate with many women who are not my wife, including my mother and three sisters, who count because they are, in fact, not my wife. But besides that I have a dozen women friends from their 30s-70s (I am mid-40s) with whom I am emotionally intimate. I haven’t seen my best friend for 14 years, but we regularly engage in deeply intimate conversations on the phone and via email, and I have never felt an once of competitiveness with him.
I’ve never cat-called at a women, nor would I be friends with a man who did. I played baseball because I loved the game, and I liked winning, but invested no sense of worth in it.
My wife is a Col. in the military, served in Iraq twice, works among mostly men daily, is frequently gone. I have no worries or fears or jealosy. We have 5 kids. I could go one forever. Most of the people I know are like this.
I guess the best I could do to explain it is refer you to my favorite theologian, Stanley Hauerwas, and his essay on “Sex in Public: How Adventurous Christians Are Doing It.”
Most of it can be found here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=9ELaPH5QaaAC&pg=PA481&lpg=PA481&dq=hauerwas+sex+in+public&source=bl&ots=dprK4nBUQ3&sig=33vriudBk3zSNnb8wUnyj46eIbs&hl=en&ei=rl-vTNeWOoOclgfL59jlDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBIQ6AEwAA
My life choice are conscious and deliberate and driven by a sexual ethic rooted in my religious faith and beliefs, not my culture, biology, feelings or hormones. Here is that conviction from the article above:
“The virtue of fidelity is often ignored or attached by advocates of the romantic model [of love], as romantic love seeks intensity, not continuity. And fidelity seems to contradict the fact that people develop and change, and in doing so it seems unjust that they should remain attached to past commitments. But, as I suggested above, such fidelity makes sense only if it occures in a community that has a mission in which marriage serves a central political purpose. And marriage has such a purpose for Christians, as it is a sign that we are a community sustained by hope. Marriage is a sign and a source of such hope, for as long as there are people loving and working together, and bringing up children, there is a chance for new life. To take conscious hold on that life, to realize oneself at the heart of it, for others also, is a tremendously vitalizing spiritual experience.” (501)
Hauerwas has a a maxium he calls “Hauerwas’s Law”: “You always marry the wrong person.” What he means by that is that marriage among Christians “allows us to form a life together where fidelity and love are required without assuming common interest. We learn to love the other not because they are like us but because they are not.”
He goes on the argue that “extraordinary moral committments are involved in a community that encourages us to form particluar attachments that are morally legitimated for the general welfare of the community. Christians have legitimated suchcommitments because they believe the good that constitutes the church is served only by our learning to love and serve our neighbors as we find them in our mates and children.”
Hauerwas has a lot to say about the legitimacy of singleness as a choice also, so don’t think he’s arguing you must marry in order to love.
I’m tired of typing from the book. Pages 500-502 are particularly good, unfortunately 500 can’t be seen at Google Books.
Though I have a particular sexual ethic that is “the product of centuries of Christian insistence and training that the family is central to what the church means in this time between times” please don’t think that is the point of my reply. I am not trying to defend that position (though obviously I agree with it). I am not trying to stake out a particular moral position, only report that such positions are powerful factors in behavorial decision making.
I am arguing that it *is* a perspective that has practical affects upon mine and others’ ethics and action in the world and the choices we make, and there is none of that in this post. It’s all dseterministic sociobiology.
You can believe it or not but have absolutely no sexual desire whatsoever for anyone besides by wife. Our desires can be shaped and formed by chosen committments and loyalities. From within such a perspective, I “understand that love properly characteristic of marriage is not a correlative of the attractive qualities of our mates. Only a love so formed has the capacity to allow the other freedom to be other without resentment.” (501)
There is a different world out there than the one you describe through your lens gender-determinism.
My hat, what a picnic. It’s a festival of men writing in to announce “I don’t treat women this way, therefore this isn’t true”, a practice I noted in the original post. And it has the desired silencing impact — why would a woman who has already been slut-shamed feel interested in having to prove it. Sigh.
Omega, I assure you that I mentor as many young men as young women, have worked in all-male settings for years. What you perceive as a refusal to acknowledge male pain misses the point of the work I do — it’s about acknowledging that the pain is real, but that so much of the anger that is directed towards women is misplaced. That’s empowering young men to be change agents, honoring their capacity to grow and to heal themselves, helping them see that testosterone and y chromosomes are not barriers to empathy or the capacity to articulate emotion.
VCG, I’ve been a Hauerwas fan since “Resident Aliens.” I spent years in the Mennonite church, heavily influenced by communitarian spiritual values, where we recited Hauerwas and Wendell Berry and John Howard Yoder like Shakespeare. It’s all good stuff. I too believe in monogamous marriage, though I see it as one among a series of plural goods rather than the best or only appropriate end for human sexual desire.
Well you could have fooled me, because it seems that 95% of your posts and lectures follow the same basic structure: Introduce some arbitrary, generally sexual, phenomenon. Mention the manner in which said phenomenon impacts men (usually some variation on “emotional suppression”). Then, make a huge hairy point as to how it impacts women 10x more severely and you men better understand that you’ve got it pretty fucking good, you entitled oppressors (the last part is implicit). Proceed to blame/discuss how men (YOU GUYS!) are responsible for *both* the ways it impacts men and the ways it impacts women, and then reinforce that women have it comparatively 10x worse than men.
I just have a very, very, very hard time believing that there won’t be a lot of favoritism in the Schwyzer household.
Goodness, Omega, if you’ve read 95% of my posts you’ve really done your homework. Your concern for my as yet unborn son, oh-last-of-the-letters, is touching.
Actually, I have done my homework, and I don’t care about Hugo Jr. It’s just an example, butthead.
Kristina, I certainly didn’t take you to. Nobody has, and really, nobody has even taken any particular shots at me or anything. Everything that’s been directed at me has been in a pretty constructive style, which I think is admirable. It’s kind of off topic, but it seems worthwhile for me to emphasize that obviously slut-shaming is widespread and prevalent, and that those guys who’re saying “I don’t experience it, therefor it’s not widespread” are making the same homogenisation error that I mentioned earlier. None of us should take out experiences as completely typical, and somehow I suspect “Men who deride women as sluts” and “Men who spend a lot of time reading feminist blogs” aren’t demographics with a lot of overlap. So the outcome that’s shown up isn’t surprising.
Beyond that, I’m not sure it’s particularly interesting to speculate on why my experience is atypical.
More interesting to me, I think, is how to get past the inadequacy fears as a man. But I fear the chance for that conversation has already been lost.
FYI, I don’t have any inadequacy fears, in fact women are falling over each other to talk to me, all the time. I could beat Schywzer in an race also.
Look Hugo, Omega is proving your points for you now…interesting!
“More interesting to me, I think, is how to get past the inadequacy fears as a man. But I fear the chance for that conversation has already been lost.”
I agree, but I fear I’m not one to speculate on such things as I have an immense amount of fears of inadequacy myself…though in different ways…
Day late, dollar short, that’s my week.
Anyway, I would advance the theory that you’ve got this one exactly backwards – “getting” a virgin is a victory over other men, shaping her sexual experience in such a way that every man who comes after will be compared to you. At a basic level, getting there first mean you won the race. I’m trying to remember if it was myth or folklore in which brides to be were captured the night before their weddings as a way of “winning” them their betrothed.
Deflowing a virgin is an honor of its own – something no other man will ever be able to do. It’s not fear of competition that drives that, but fear of being second. At that level, women’s bodies become the battlegrounds for men’s sexual gamesmanship. How many different ways does our culture reinforce the message to men that they must successfull outcompete other men to win the girl of their dreams? That competition isn’t about finding the right mate, it’s about finding the desirable mate before someone else. Persistence, daring, creativity, a willingness to make a fool of one’s self all become part of the sexual game. In the best instances, the woman isn’t a passive vessel for male desire, she actively engages her various suitors in a complex game to drive them into more interesting acts to prove they are worthy of her (Ninon de Lenclos). Yet, the Helen of Troy syndrome exists in which the woman is mostly passive and mute – tabula rasa for male desire, that which inspires acts without needing to do anything. This complex dance is the motivation behind the Iliad; it’s coda the motivation behind the Odyssey.
Read the Medieval romances – Chretien de Troyes, the Romance of the Rose, the Lays of Marie de France – and you see complex patterns of male female interaction, of men attempting to win women’s affections through acts of bravery and derringdo but also shrewd women understanding the dynamic and using it to keep themselves safely above the fray. Fought over by two towering knights, a woman was safe from other men.
Men don’t want passive partners, they want their girlfriends and wives (and mistresses) to be interesting, to be vital. The fading flower of delicate womanhood is also the ignored, taken for granted, flower of womanhood. A woman with fire, who stands up for herself, will ultimately have her pick of men. In recent years, we’ve seen attempts to retell Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew” because it has always run false. Katherina is more interesting when she’s not obedient; she knows the game that is being played and plays along; I’ve long thought the end was tacked on to make a nice neat moral. Scheherazade is fascinating precisely because she’s so clearly brilliant. The Shahryar knows he’s being manipulated and willingly obliges because she is brilliant and challenging.
Fwiw, I am so glad I sleep with men.
Glendenb, I don’t think what we’re talking about are mutually exclusive ideas.
The desire for a virgin is to beat out other men, to be the first as you say. Slut-shaming is about many things, but it’s about the fact that the “slut” offers the man no opportunity (in his mind) to prove his primacy as well as about the fact that the “slut” can verify his deepest fears and insecurities. If he’s sexually inadequate, he imagines that the sexually experienced woman will know he ranks below other lovers she’s had — if she’s a virgin, on the other hand, she won’t be able to rank him anywhere other than first.
These are “both/ands” not “either/ors”.
That makes sense. And I want to push the analysis a little further. Slut-shaming serves several purposes at once. Among others things, it is a way to keep “good” girls in line (good girls won’t want to be sluts). But what if there’s another aspect of it- that women who fall on the wrong side of the slut boundary are also powerful. One of the dynamics of lusting after the good girls is they won’t do the things the “bad” girls do. The slut possesses sexual power. Men are intimidated by her sexual knowledge and power while also being drawn to her.
The seriousness attached to a social stigma is proportional to the power a person gets when they break it. Along with being willing to cross those lines comes the freedom from normal social mores and roles. In prior centuries, the West has had more formal ways of managing such things (the courtesan is a perfect example), but even without such formalism the cultural space remains.
I’m not arguing that being a slut is desirable. I’m arguing that being willing to publicly brave social stigma grants a different kind of power. There’s even respect given to those who brazenly embrace socially taboo roles – maybe you don’t invite them for coffee, but you grant them their autonomy. Maybe it’s as simple as we need the slut so we know what the “good” girl is; we need the cad to know the good husband, we need the creep to know the good guy.
Has anyone here read Baumeister and Twenge’s idea of slut-shaming among women as a traditional weapon of the weak? “Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality” is the piece I’m thinking of. Their basic argument is that women have historically been the policewomen of their own sexuality, using tactics like slut-shaming to make sure that any specific woman doesn’t “give it up” to men, thus making it harder for all women to use their sexuality as a bargaining chip against men. Of course, none of this would have been necessary if men didn’t hold all the power politically.
I think that Hugo brings up a common reason for some men being interested in women who are virgins. However, it’s not always the case that a preference for a virgin is because of homosociality. My very conservative friend, a virgin himself, was simply not interested in dating women who were not virgins. I asked him about this. He said that he wanted to explore new territory with someone who had the same perspective has he did. He ended up marrying a woman who was a virgin. It was just his preference.
The other thing that I would mention is that I have seen, in passing, several examples on the street of “prude-shaming” by white, college-aged men in the Wrigleyville and North Lincoln Ave. areas of of Chicago. The gist of it is that these men want to see girls kissing each other, dancing in a sexy way, or revealing more of their bodies. Resistance to these demands has sometimes been met with the women labeled as “uptight” or “prudes.” Disgusting, and a pretty solid argument for a two drink max per evening.
As for your first paragraph…this discussion was more aimed at the double standard as opposed to shared values…so no I wouldn’t find that guy unreasonable at ALL…
I have seen prude shaming too from men, actually more so than slut shaming…so it’s kind of hard to think men don’t have an agenda…
I’ve been slut-shamed since before I was one. Now I wear the label with pride.
I’m definitely on board with the homosociality theory — having once been a wolf-whistling construction worker the notion makes a world of sense to me.
I’d just add that homophobia is a big component of it as well. Or more accurately homophobia-phobia, wherein one lives with the deep anxiety that if one isn’t “one of the men” one will get his ass kicked for being a “fag.” It leads to all manner of unwillingness to disclose vulnerability, which in turn leads to isolation, alienation, and (when it time comes to actually engage in heterosexuality) a bit of hysterical desperation for “validation.”
Because it’s not just her “favors” a woman bestows on a man, it’s the only acceptable form of irrefutable proof.
Never mind, of course, that heterosexual behavior is no more proof of heterosexuality than, well, homosexual behavior is proof of homosexuality (funny how that “one drop” rule always only goes one way.) The big joke, of course, is that based on raw numbers anyway, far, far more perfectly and naturally straight men than gay men worry that this or that will make them “queer.” (My favorite is still the number of men who are terrified to touch their wife’s purse long enough to hand it to her.)
Anyway, one of my big theses of male entitlement/privilege is that it’s ultimately rooted in anxiety, insecurity, and self-doubt induced largely by the paradoxical need straight men feel to “pass” for… straight! It doesn’t serve 100% of all cases but it fits for the majority of cases.
As for the virginity thing I sometimes think that’s related to homophobia-phobia as well. The fictional Tony Soprano, for instance, mimicked a lot of real-life men when before kissing a woman he asked for reassurance that she’d never performed fellatio. Again, not in every case by a long shot but that anxiety is still very much out there: putting your penis in a woman’s vagina after another man’s penis has been there could make you… gay!
figleaf
Hugo,
the one thing I don’t understand about the “homosociality” trumps “getting laid” hierarchy in the male mind hypothesis is – why? What is homosociality good for – social support, emotional, material, “tribal”. It’s bascially adding “social capital” to the guy’s resource list. But whatever you say, you end up with the one question: why? What is motivating male humans to do all this, to comepete? What is the core motivation for climbing the ladder? I can see that there is a certain intrinsic value to not being outcast, but the ranking thing? It just doesn’t make any sense without the argument that a higher ranking in the intra-sex competition will allow a privileged access to the other sex – and thus – heterosexuality assumed – will increase the likelyhood of successfully reproducing.
Now I’m not saying that there cannot be cultural mechanisms that can become detached from the fundamental motivation. But only so far. Really – what *ultimate* motivation for the value of homosociality can you name that can *not* be used in a teleological argument about evolutionary fitness.
If you can find one, I’d really like to hear it.
I’m with Sam on this one. I don’t deny the existence or societal force of male homosociality – I see it all the time, and much of what I see is unfortunate. But WHY? Is it an end in itself?
I don’t know that we know the answer to that question, Sam. What we do know is that for many folks, prestige and affirmation are ends in themselves — we are too reductionist when we assume that access to scarce physical resources (sex, food, shelter) are the only ultimate motivators.
Sam – don’t be silly. Humans are social creatures and we’re evolved from primates that are social animals; early hominids didn’t live solitary lives, like cats. Homosociality is hardly the only way that humans (male or female) seek power and prestige.
Isn’t alliance-building reason enough? Hunting scales up pretty well. If I can put together five buddies to go hunting with, we’re better off than the tribe with bad homosociality where nobody can build a team. We can hunt mastodons or whatever while the lone wolves have to settle for smaller prey.
It seems to me that in the state of nature the ability to make friends, which finding a place in a hierarchy is conducive towards because it creates an externally-recognized peer group, is extremely valuable to male and female hominid alike. You survive better with friends, even if the friends don’t end up positively impacting your personal reproductive success.
Hugo,
of course looking at fundamental forces is going to be “reductionist”. That’s kind of the point. But I’m not trying to deny other forces, but to state that I think you’re wrong about the cause-consequence relationship you assume and the relative importance attributed to the respective elements in your argument. (“Contrary to popular wisdom, “getting laid†matters less than the social cachet of being seen by other guys as someone who “gets laid†regularly and easily.”) See, I’ve been in the position for a while – sort of everyone believed I was getting laid all the time when I was still a virgin approaching my graduate degree. Sure, that did improve my status among my male friends. But did *that* matter more than female acceptance? The chance of *actually* getting laid (and possibly have a romantic relationship?) Seriously, no… nonono.
Robert, Mythago,
sure – alliance building has intrinsic (survival/acceptance) value. That’s what I referred to with the “intrinsic value of not being an outcast” – but as you mention this is not limited to homosociality. Of course, human biological and social evolution is marked by both cooperation and competition. But what is intra-gender *competition* good for if not to create a mating preference hierarchy? I mean, even if there were a clear distribution of talent among the five guys who go hunting, there would be no competition for, say, being the boss, if that position weren’t linked to specific advantages – like being a more desirable mate and thus having better chances for reproduction…
This is akin to asking what is competition between artists or athletes good for. Some male competition is about mating. Some of it is just about winning the approval and respect of other males. Some of it about challenging oneself to be like other males. Some of it is simply a method of bonding. I do not think there is one answer to why males or females compete with each other. I do think that our society enforces male competition as being part of winning the approval of women, which I think is the major reason why modern masculinity is in the poor shape it is in. If we removed that aspect, it would reduce some of the animus between men that society encourages.
“Actually, I have done my homework, and I don’t care about Hugo Jr. It’s just an example, butthead.”
Think this places the troll’s maturity level at somewhere between second and third grade.
Sam,
You’re aware that the whole reason for sex is that people aren’t necessarily driven to reproduce? Sex is the mechanism by which humans beings are enticed to reproduce. To say that someone wants to be boss man because he wants to reproduce makes no sense. Not only is it not the most efficient strategy (too likely to result in death) but people intrinsically don’t desire children nearly as much as they intrinsically desire sex. For most of human history children have been an unintended consequence. To say that children are the whole point to everything in terms of motivation makes no sense. Evolution is just not as directive as you seem to think.
Men and women also both want to be admired, to have people be nice to them, to have the power to do what they want and have things occur that they like. That’s why people want to be top dog. Not because they want to increase their chance at reproduction. The desire to be liked I’d argue trumps almost any other desire. People have all sorts of complex desires that don’t reduce to one simple “point”. Again, evolution does not work that way. We don’t have a “point” we are a jumble of things.
Sam – what else, in your daily life, do you do besides have sex? And how do social status and power assist you in your daily life in ways other than getting laid?
Seriously, I’m the last person to tell anyone to think about sex less, but you seem to hand-wave off other important life activities (like, oh, access to food) that are affected by social status and social power to ask: yes yes, but how does that help us get some?
Victoria,
“We don’t have a “point†we are a jumble of things.”
maybe Mythago is right in her assertion that I should have more sex to stop obsessing about this topic
Sure, we are a jumble of things. And I may even consider the desire to be liked as an independent variable, but it certainly is *also* a variable that enters into the sexual choice array of factors.
Mythago,
“daily life” isn’t a particularly useful indicator when it’s about undestanding fundamental motivations (those that were there before the whole machinery started to turn into “the matrix”). I accept that survival (access to food, shelter, etc.) can be influenced by relative social status, which is an independent reason for homosocial competition. Yet if survival were the most important cause of homosocial competition, why is it apparently less pronounced among women/females? I think adjusting for less absolute calory consumption doesn’t account for the difference in competitive aggression. My guess would be, well, you know, (assumed/actual female) sexual choice as the main reason for male intra-gender competition.