The discussion on this thread – originally about an Ohio rape case – has gotten too long, and has drifted considerably. So I’m closing that thread and starting a new one.
The new topic appears to be questions of lust, gender roles and power. Do girls and women have more “sexual power”? Do boys and men feel more lust than girls and women do?
I’ll quote parts of recent posts by Aegis and La Lubu to start this thread off, but feel free to respond to any post on the old thread, here on this thread.
Aegis: Understanding the disadvantages that a certain social system grants in one area should not lead us to ignore the way that system also grants certain advantages in another area. Obviously, the pressure on women to be beautiful, and the pressure on men to earn money are both disadvantages. But because of that pressure on men, they often succeed in earning more money, granting them economic power (although this power require sacrifices in other areas). Those poor men, being forced into having all that financial power! Likewise, the pressure on women to be beautiful may result in them improving their beauty, and consequently gaining sexual power over males. Of course, female sexual power does not always translate into respect from males, and it often comes at a price of other types of power. […]
Surely being viewed sexually can often be a very positive experience for females! Isn’t it nice for an attractive woman to have a guy she really likes become totally smitten with her? Isn’t it nice for her to be able to wait for a guy to approach her, and then let him do most of the work when he does approach?
And some of my first experiences not being viewed as sexual were negative. I felt competely unnattractive to women until I was age 18, and this had horrible effects on my self-esteem and ability to interact with women. I also remember one time when a friend of mine who went to middle school with me told me only half-jokingly that she would like to marry me some day… just so she could sit in my big house and look at my artwork. I don’t think she would have been interested in dating me in a million years, but apparently I was good for earning money to buy a big house and adorning the walls of said house with paintings. Imagine how you would feel if a guy told you that he would like to marry you simply for your looks.
I am not saying that a guy who encounters comments like this and feels unnattractive necessarily has things as bad as a woman who gets catcalls and creepy older suitors all the time, just as I am not saying that a man never being seen as sexual in the business world has as much advantage as an attractive women who can easily attract men. Those comparisons are difficult to make.
One thing that bugs me about claims of “women’s sexual power” is that, insofar as it exists at all, it’s entirely indirect power. A woman’s so-called sexual power doesn’t mean that she gets to decide which project will be funded, who gets hired or fired, etc; at best, all it can mean is that she has the indirect “power” of influencing men who in turn get to make the actual decisions.
How much power did Monica Lewinsky actually have to determine US policy? I’d argue, virtually none. But no doubt it could be claimed by some that she had “sexual power” over Bill Clinton.
La Lubu: Aegis, being viewed sexually can be a positive experience for females. However, I would argue that most women have experienced being viewed sexually as either equally positive and negative, or more negative than positive. Why? Because we don’t get to keep being viewed sexually within its context, in other words, our perceived sexual persona is elbowing into all the nonsexual areas of our lives.
Like the professional world, for example. No matter how neutral our dress or behavior, the mere fact that we are Female, with a Female Body, brings sexuality into the equation as work. For women, this often translates into reduced opportunities at work. Potential mentors shy away from us because they don’t want to be tagged by the inevitable sexual rumors. Higher-ups don’t want to believe that women are on the job to work rather than find a husband. The Mommy Track is real. Even when we’re not mommies. How attractive we are or aren’t can translate into what work opportunities we are given, or aren’t. I once had a foreman on the job walk me around to all the journeymen already there, asking the guys if it was ok if I worked with them…he didn’t want to make anybody’s wife mad. Out of thirteen journeymen on the job, all said they’d work with me, that it was cool. But only two of them thought the whole idea of singling me out like that, for that reason, was complete bullshit. Only two other journeymen on the job thought it should have been irrelevant whether anyone’s wife got mad. The other guys thought it was nice of him to ask!
* * *
Again, don’t feel constrained to responding to only the above on this thread. Any of the posts on the old thread may be responded to here.
why in gods name would Monica be expected to have any power ? She was an Intern for chrissakes. How about the way Condi might use the juice on some guys around town ? might be more of a relevent Q. Only a man would think sex power works one way only, and only a man would assume women could/should/dont/wont have equal or better dollar power as time goes on. If you ask me, women already control a big part of the economy. In my business experience, women are making plenty of decisions. Not interns however, male or female, sans a BJ or not.
I think that the question of whether women weild “sexual power” is only legitimate when men don’t want to acknowledge rape culture. Otherwise it really is a non-issue. Absent rape, “sexual power” for either gender is irrelevant and meaningless. From my point of view, it is part of the rape apologist parcel.
To further clarify: both genders are sexualized into a rape culture, so the meaning of “power” is already slanted in favor of maintaining that power to a greater or lessor degree. Without acknowledging the context within which adolescents are taught about sexuality and in which they first express that sexuality, power can only be viewed as part of the continuum of rape and power over. Power, when used in the previous thread is only in the hierarchical, power over sense. Some male posters seem to think that women weild an organic power over men that is, in fact, a socialized power that often masks men’s rape enculturated sexual acts.
I totally agree. I have never claimed otherwise. Both you and La Lubu basically seem to be saying “sexual power does not create social/economic power!!” Yet I already pointed that out in my previous posts, and I think I was pretty clear in doing so. I agree with most of La Lubu’s post, but I feel that she wasn’t really addressing my point.
The point of my discussion of sexual power was to answer the question by several posters of how beauty translates into privilege and power. I think I’ve shown pretty clearly that beauty does grant some specific types of power and privilege, while at the same time beauty standards can translate into powerlessness for women in the contexts that you and La Lubu have pointed out. I am not claiming that the advantages/disadvantages of beauty norms exactly balance out, because I really can’t know that. Nor am I claiming that the sexual power women get in current gender norms balances out the socioeconomic power males get. Though I do claim that right now, women have more sexual power than men due to current gender norms privileging women in terms of attracting mates. I will explain and add some important qualifiers to this claim later, but first I will repost my discussion of sexual power.
And I will underscore again: the way I am defining sexual power does NOT mean that it grants social or economic power. I am thinking of sexual power in terms of attracting high quality mates (though that’s not all of it). If people think it’s misleading for me to call that “sexual power,” then I would be open to suggestions for another term.
More about women and passive approach to dating…
Here is a blog entry from the same girl I linked to earlier…
Lots of nasty “gender war” catfighting in there.
Now you see. They key point here is that this girl expects her dates to call her. The thought of picking up the phone and calling never enters her head even once.
And also another interesting quote:
Hmm… can we say “too high demands” ?
And now, if I attempted to use feminist logic in a reverse way I could say something like:
“Social notions and the media create unreasonably high expectations on men.”
This girl actually believes that she is somehow entitled to such a “prince charming” and she herself doesn’t have to do anything reciprocal to get in a good relationship.
Scroll down for nice replies by Robot and Andrew…
Beauty definitely causes women to have sexual power. First, I will define what I mean by “sexual power:”?
Sexual power is the characteristic that allows you to (a) attract mates sexually, (b) instill admiration/awe into mates, (b) have greater choice over ones potential mates, and the attractiveness of those mates, (c ) expend less effort and energy into the process of attracting a mate, and (d) gain tangible material benefits because of your sexuality. More choice + less effort + more material benefits = more power. There are probably a few other dimensions to it that I haven’t figured out yet.
An important relative of sexual power is the degree to which you feel sexually attractive. This variable is partially determined by sexual power, but it is moderated by your self-image, which is why beautiful people can often feel unnattractive. Sexual power does not necessarily have anything to do with the respect you receive, your level of self-esteem, the social or economic power you have, or your success in finding or having relationships (because relationships depend on platonic attraction / emotional connection in addition to sexual attraction). Yet sexual power can heavily influence all of those factors, both positively and negatively. The influence is simply moderated by other variables such as your reputation, your personality, etc…
Why does beauty translate into “sexual power”? for women? For several reasons:
1. Beauty gives women the power to attract mates. As the study I linked to showed, physical attractiveness is a major component of female sexual attractiveness to males. Beauty gives a woman more choices in potential mates, and the choice of more attractive mates, and this is power.
2. Beauty gives women the ability to cause admiration, awe, and shock in men. In other words, beauty gives women power not only to sexually attract men, but to influence male emotions also (in high amounts, even to the point of being able to intimidate and cow some men). This is power, regardless of whether males treat females positively or negatively in response to it.
3. Beauty gives women the option to do less work in courtship than males do, due to current social norms that prescribe male initiation. This is power. Women have the choice to be passive or proactive (at least in some contexts); men need to be much more attractive before the choice of being passive becomes realistic, and this choice is power. Note: I am not saying that women don’t do any of the work in initial courtship, only that they don’t have to do as much. I am also not saying that women do less work in relationships (because relationships require skills other than attracting someone), only that they have less work in attracting a mate. Neither am I saying that being beautiful doesn’t take work, only that most of the work can be done in advance at the store and in front of the mirror, so it’s not actually done during the courtship itself. (If I could buy some kind of cream that would make me witty and charismatic all day, I would.)
4. Beauty gives (some) women the ability to receive tangible material benefits such as unreciprocated favors, gifts, or dinners/meals from males. Love poems too. This is partly due to the anachronistic, sexist construction of romance. But having people willing to do shit for you just for the privilege of basking in your hotness is power, even if you consider such behavior unecessary and patronizing.
These four are always power for females on an objective level, because have more/better/easier choices is always power (although they can have consequences that are disadvantageous to females). Here are a couple ways that beauty often causes women to have power:
1. The admiration males feel for beautiful women can easily translate into adoration, especially due to current cultural scripts. Yet the admiration can turn into denigration, if the woman is perceived to dress/act in a slutty manner. Beauty can also cause a woman to be perceived as more intelligent (because physically attractive people are perceived as more intelligent in general), OR to be perceived as less intelligent, depending on the context.
2. Beautiful women have the opportunity to see themselves as more sexually attractive, because they are treated as more sexually attractive. Yet this effect can be canceled out by low self-esteem. Beautiful women are less likely to grow up socially isolated, because they will get more attention during their formative years. Yet the type of attention they get, competition with other females means that they won’t necessarily develop self-esteem simply from being beautiful.
Beauty is a tradeoff. Being beautiful may disadvantage women in some ways, but it gives them a lot of power in other ways. To ignore either of these facets of beauty is one-sided. Feminists often seem to ignore the advantages that beauty gives females, and cast female beauty standards simply as oppression. Anti-feminists often ignore the strain that female beauty standards cause women, and see beauty standards as evidence of female narcissism and manipulativeness of men. Both perspectives are one-sided and ignore the bigger picture.
P.S. Possible issue with this post: Perhaps it is misleading for me to call what I am talking about “sexual power.”? Maybe Warren Farrell’s term “beauty power”? is more clear. For instance, “sexual power”? sounds like it would include things like having quality sex with a partner who gives you orgasms. Females are less likely to experience orgasm in the current culture, so is that an area where females have less sexual power, or is it something else entirely? Perhaps “orgasm power?”? Wait… that sounds like it means something else ;)
If you cannot describe this “power” outside of narrowly heterocentric paradigms of sexuality, then I don’t think you can make sweeping and general comments about women’s sexuality. Afterall, women’s sexuality is not dependent on a male audience.
Further, I think you cannot adequately address even your own comments if you do not critically analyze how boys and girls are sexualized at puberty (taught about their respective sex roles).
Aegis, I’ve missed where feminists deny that physical attractiveness is an advantage. Most of what you wrote just describes the advantages of being physically attractive, regardless of gender.
Women aren’t passive in courtship. But they’re often expected to maintain the pretense that they are passive. This isn’t an advantage — usually, it’s a major disadvantage.
Receiving gifts is a trivial advantage, when gift-giving between partners is unequal. In that case, it’s usually an expression of male dominance: look, I get paid more, so I can buy stuff for you.
Hey everybody, it’s the very next paragraph of the blog entry that someone quoted!
Are you that intellectually dishonest, someone, or can you not read? Maybe they don’t have irony where you’re from. Here’s some more:
So, basically, she’s acknowledging that Prince Charming ain’t gonna appear at her window anytime soon, that these fairy-tale standards are seriously screwed up, and that she has some responsibility to take initiative. Passivity blows. Whether she gets to the point of acknowledging that men aren’t obligated to be Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty is anyone’s guess, but she doesn’t seem terribly enchanted.
Oddly enough, you glossed her as saying the exact opposite.
Finally, does it not occur to you that this woman is describing the weight of social pressure to be passive, even though she clearly wants to be with this guy? How she has to sit at home watching Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason while she waits for her man to call? And how that’s not really such a nice situation to be in, dependent on a man to make your life worth living?
I have no idea how what Q Grrl said counters what Aegis said…
Care to explain further?
No, it’s obvious if you read feminist theory.
… but I wasn’t countering Aegis. I was expressing my opinion.
What do you think of when you hear the word “power”? When I think of power, I think of something that can put a roof over my head and food on the table. If it does neither of those, it’s not really power.
I love my daughter. Immensely. More than anyone else in this world. Yet, despite that, you can’t really say that she has “power” over me. My love for her does not translate into her being in a position of power over me. I’m still the adult. I still make all the decisions.
That’s why I have a hard time with the conversation about rape degenerating into a discussion on women’s sexual “power”. I consider it a misuse of the word “power”. Real power has an aspect of force to it, whether that force is physical, financial, or through social custom or restrictions.
What force is the beautiful woman using against men?
piny says
To me it looked like she is angry that she still didn’t get a “prince charming” yet…
And she certainly didn’t speak about making the call herself, so I don’t see how you make the conclusion that she decided to take initiative.
She is just angry, but she refuses to change her approach.
Haha…
See how biased you are.
You say that women not making calls is social pressure on women.
Nevermind the fact that having to be the one to make the calls every time is quite pressuring.
At least you could say that it is social pressure on both sexes… that would be a decent starting point.
Although to me it looks like pressure on males mostly.
Acting passive like this isn’t “social pressure”, rather it is her own pressure on her dates!
Here is what she said: “If you don’t call me, you can get fucked. I’m not going to reciprocate.”
I think it’s a grass-is-greener situation. Assuming relatively equal numbers of heterosexual men and women (and relatively equal desire to be in relationships), the math simply doesn’t work out if there’s an imbalance of power.
So why are so many people convinced women have “all the power”?
* Men tend to focus on the subset of women they find attractive (who, if there’s a social consensus about their attractiveness, may in fact have quite a lot of “power” in this context), and then assume these observations hold true for all women. (Not sure if women do this too; I suspect it’s to a lesser extent because unattractive men are not as invisible in our society as unattractive women).
* The demands made on us are not as obvious as the demands we make on others; similarly, the power others have over us is less obvious than the power we have over others. (
* Many women have a lot more power in heterosexual relationships than they used to, thanks to increased economic power.
* Many women also have more power in heterosexual relationships than they do in other contexts.
* It’s comforting to think that one’s lack of romantic satisfaction is the result of a power imbalance between the genders rather than any individual failing.
She has realized that there is no such thing. She doesn’t think that Prince Charming exists. That’s completely different from the paragraph you quoted in isolation, where she demands Prince Charming and wonders why he hasn’t shown up yet.
She has decided not to wait by the phone anymore–that’s a change in her approach. She’s learning not to be passive, because passivity is not working for her.
Dude, you’re talking to a feminist. No one here thinks that men aren’t constrained by gender roles. The question is which role provides a relative amount of power. In this case, there’s the person who waits to be called and the person who gets to call or not call. Who’s making the decisions here? Who’s waiting for someone else to make a decision?
And–just a line or two down–you’re the one arguing that there’s little if any social pressure on women, right after providing an example of a woman who would rather sit at home nights than make a short phone call. Why is that? Why has she decided that it makes more sense to wait on a man than to ask him whether he’s interested? She’s depressed, bored, unhappy, so she clearly isn’t doing it because it’s fun.
Beauty has power, but that does not mean that women automatically have more “sexual power” than men. In fact, the idea that they would is counterintuitive. Let me tell you, Johnny Depp, Tom Brokaw, and yes, even George W. Bush have a hell of a lot more sexual power than I do. They first two are a hell of lot prettier than I am and GW is at least as pretty and a hell of lot more charismatic. All three derive financial, political, and social benefits from their sexual power alone, the likes of which I could only dream of having a fraction of – through any means.
The illusion that women have more sexual power than men comes from the fact that they have less power overall and so a) they are more likely to resort to wielding sexual power like a blunt object b) people are more likely to dismiss what little other power women do have, and focus only on their sexual power and c) those that do have power always dictate the terms on which other people can scramble for what’s left. Ergo, in a patriarchy where women are dismissed as the other, the only power women are allowed to have is defined by what (hertero) men can’t get by themselves: sex and babies.
Aegis, you weren’t the only one who was only wanted for what you could do and not what you looked like in high school, and we aren’t all guys either. The difference is that the we not as pretty girls tended to simply be unwanted, period. No one ever told me, jokingly or not, that they’d like to marry me so that could have all my pretty pictures or so that I could be around to fix stuff around the house. The guys who were wanted for their looks tended to be wanted for other things as well, while the girls were more likely to be only wanted for their looks, all of which creates the illusion that women have more sexual power than men.
It would be more accurate to say that women use their sexual power more often than men do because that’s what will get them the best results. But again, that isn’t because guys wouldn’t get the same results as women, its because guys have more options and tend to use them, so they are less likley to choose to wield (only) their sexual power and so it’s not as obvious when they do use it.
Jeff
Who are these many people… Not even me and Aegis say that women have “all the power”, and everyone else seems to hold the view that women are disempowered.
This is not true, obviously there is plenty of neglected men?
And of course women often ignore them when they speak about “male power” too.
Highly attractive* individuals of both sexes will get much more attention from the opposite sex, so why make these statements?
* By “attractive” I mean attractive in all senses, not just appearance. This is how I intended to use my “alpha”, “beta” and “gamma” terms, but they were met with extreme aversion for some reason… isn’t it better to have clear terms so that we can know for sure what we are talking about the same thing?
check out alt.romance sometime. You’ll find plenty of people complaining about disempowerment in the dating scene, usually along the lines of “it’s not fair that men have to do the asking out,” or “it’s not fair that ‘nice guys finish last,'” or “it’s not fair that women can get sex any time they want.”
Except that they can’t do it quite as much as heterosexual men can in the context of dating, because you can’t ignore the unattractive person who’s hitting on you the same way you can ignore the unattractive person you’re not hitting on.
I believe that the “power variation” is far greater among women, due to our cultural insistence on men being the instigators in heterosexual interaction.
I have a friend who sometimes tries the “you women have all the pussy power” argument. We’ll be in a boisterous row (his preferred method of conversation) and he’ll pull this out to anything I have to say about men having more power than women.
I’ve learned when it comes up to stand, grab my crotch and loudly reply, “I hereby order thee, by the power of my pussy, to agree with the point I just made! The all-powerful pussy demands it!” Then I declare myself the winner of the debate because, you know *points to crotch*, and if he tries to keep going I interrupt him and say, “Hey, the pussy has spoken, Hetero Man. Obey its power.”
It helps that I’m a babe, and not in the “all women are babes” sense but in the usually accepted sense. This hetero man looks me in my pretty, 20-something, symmetrical face and declares women like me have all this “pussy power” but what good is the alleged “power” if I can’t even get one man to concede one point in an argument I’m right about anyway (for example, the reason no woman has been US president is not because women just don’t have political aspirations)?
La Luba: Exactly – when I think of power, I think of choice. The notion of sexual power that has been contineously expressed by Aegis and Someone smacks of conditional power that hinges soley on the ‘male’ and how attracted he is to the woman who has ‘power’ at any given time. The power isn’t consistent, inherent or extending beyond the time which the man feels he no longer stands to gain anything from the woman. Beyond which, this particular ‘power’ as Brian stated is not limited to women. It seems really trivial to me to try to make having the option to choose where to go to dinner for a specific time frame related to a mans sexual interest a privilege that compares to the male privilege of being sexually promiscious without operating under the heavy handed moral judgement imposed upon a woman.
Hehe, sounds like a budding feminist to me.
I laughed ’til I cried. That’s classic.
piny:
But piny, where does she actually say anything that makes you believe she has decided not to be passive anymore??
Quote it…
This quote of yours makes sense… if we assume that she is handicapped and can’t pick up the phone and dial some numbers.
But she actually can!!
Look at this passage of hers:
How much more obvious can it be?
But no, she still doesn’t get the right idea.
She is angry and disappointed, and still she holds on to exactly the same idea of acting passive.
This is why I disagreed with you when you said that she decided that passivity doesn’t work for her anymore. She… didn’t.
Why do you think she has decided that?
Why doesn’t she call?
What will happen if she does?
Is stubbornly refraining from calling not the same as “playing hard to get”?
How can you say that the pressure here is applied on her? By whom is this pressure applied even??
She certainly ends up doing worse for herself, but it’s her own fault, for playing such a stubborn game.
She has an invariable condition that the guy must make the call, she never will.
She would rather not date at all then give in.
—-
I am pretty annoyed by all this stuff. Why can’t people act smarter?
Why play all those headsplitting strategy games?
Reading this makes my head hurt.
If people played less strategy games, dating would be better for everyone. Males and females, attractive and less attractive.
Why must something that is supposed to be about love have to turn into an outright war?
What a sad state of matters.
What hasn’t also been addressed here (perhaps in the previous topic?) is that even if you grant attractiveness as a real power, it is the most ephemeral of powers, and fades rapidly once you hit your 30s. Sure, some women hold on to its vestiges with their force of will, personality, and plastic surgery, but they cannot win against time; eventually, that power is gone for them. Whereas actual political or financial power can be held and even passed on to your offspring (who may or may not inherit any attractiveness you have). And attractiveness in men, because it is more associated with financial/economic power, as well as less stringent beauty standards, can fade without much impact on their ability to date, provided they have a minimum amount of financial security and ability to communicate. The older they get, the better their chances may get, actually, since women outlive men. The same cannot be said for women.
I have many guy friends and I understand the bitterness they feel at being rejected by someone (or several someones) they considered attractive–yes, in that situation, they had power over you. But I would argue it was/is a transitory, situational power. I don’t think it can really be compared with social/political/economic power.
Samantha, I am soooooo stealing that.
And thank you for making my day.
What we have hear is a lot of confusion over the meaning of the term power, which isn’t surprising because it means different things to different people in different contexts.
One classic and rather mechanistic definition of power from the annals of social science is that A has power over B when A can get B to do what B otherwise wouldn’t have done.
This definition is simple but elusive. A’s power over B is limited to a certain set of things. I (A) have power over my roommate if I ask her politely to get me a glass of water, because she generally will, and she probably wouldn’t if I didn’t ask. I don’t have the power to get her to, say, run into traffic or write my dissertation for me. To say that A has power over B using this definition is imprecise, as Ampersand points out. The power of beautiful women over horny men extends a bit further than my power over my roommate (I can’t get her to *buy* me drinks, just retreive them occasionally–vice versa as well, of course), but it’s still a pretty narrow and limited form of power in the grand scheme of things.
Of course, the most interesting form of power is more of a form of power to rather than power over–power to create, to construct, etc. This power remains overwhelmingly in the hands of men.
This is the part where she decides that passivity isn’t working; this is the part where she decides to resist the social pressure on her to sit around waiting for “Prince Charming.”
Yes, because she feels–or felt until very recently–that she is obligated to do so. She’s not enjoying herself, and she would obviously rather be on a date than not. And yet, she persists. Why is that?
Samantha: Sexual power doesn’t help you win debates, it helps you do other things. Such as getting people to do stuff for you, having a wide range of partners to choose from, being sure that getting sex is not much of a problem, having a “card” in relationships, and more…
Because what you are talking about isn’t about love, its about sex. I remember all this adolescent dating/game playing all too well and I don’t see how there was ever a relation to “love”. Love just happens, smacks you upside the head and then its all over for you (at least till finances make you start fighting).
I think a good portion of the argument here is about perceptions of power and assumptions that are made about how people will react. If you don’t make the mistake of assuming that these culturally engrained ideas are actually real I think you’ll find that they don’t exist.
Seconds on the classicness of the “pussy power”. Great stuff!
Her actions are to say that she’s not going to be a slave to a game, Someone, as much as you might not see that as one of the qualifiable choices, as I read it, it seems very much to me that she is saying she is coming to realise that she has other choices, not limited to being part of this dynamic. ‘There is no clause that says I have to date at all!’ is the exact quote that implies this ‘action’.
piny
No, she decides that she doesn’t want to date anymore or whatever.
The conclusion that she makes is not “I will now be more active and take it more in my own hands”.
But rather it is “guys suck for not doing what I want”.
In order for us to be able to say that she decided to change her passive approach to a more active one she needs to say something that would indicate this change.
A good example would be, “so I decided to make the call.”
See?
But piny, it isn’t social pressure on her, but rather it is her own expectations!!
Think about how ridiculous what you said sounds.
It’s like saying that a member of royalty refuses to dress up on his own, because he is under social pressure to wait for his servants to dress him up.
I already provided my explanation, she is playing a strategical game. And she refuses to enter into a relationship that isn’t on her terms.
What is your explanation? Is she afraid that something “bad” will happen if she makes the call? What exactly will happen?
Well the guy could reject her, but this just proves my point that she is playing a strategical game, not willing to take on pressuring tasks.
Please provide me with your own explanation now…
Ted
Eh…?
someone:
In what way does winning debates (ie having political power) not translate into “getting people to do stuff for you, having a wide range of partners to choose from, being sure that getting sex is not much of a problem, having a “card”? in relationships, and more… ” and lots of other stuff like more money, more opportunies, more rights, more freedoms, more security, do I need to continue?
Whereas sexual power, being more conditional and transitory than other types power, when used by itself, pretty much only translates into being able to manipulate people who have the real power. Ok, so you may be able to dictate stuff relating to sex, but only up to a certain point. I mean, I, living in the grand old USofA, where I may have less real power than most men, but still some non-sexual power, can say no to guy and be reasonably certain he may simply politely walk away and probably won’t hurt me, but in places where women literaly have no power other than sexual power, that isn’t true. So sorry, but I call bullshit.
1. I didn’t actually say that feminists “deny” that physical attractiveness is an advantage. I said that they consistently ignore that fact, because their analysis of beauty standards focuses only on the way that it hurts women.
2. Correct, most of what I wrote does describe the advantages of being physically attractive, regardless of gender. But that’s not the point. I was simply showing that physical attractiveness does grant certain types of power to women; I never said that it doesn’t grant power to men also.
It is also obvious from my analysis that beauty grants more power (and also more powerlessness in other areas), to women than it does to men. Because male attraction to women depends quite a lot more on beauty than female attraction to men (see the studies I cited), all those advantageous effects of beauty apply a lot more to women than they do to men. Hence my claim that women can get more mileage out of showing more skin than men can.
I never said that women are passive in courtship. I said that they can afford to be more passive and less proactive than males can. Sure, the expectation on women to be passive can be a disadvantage to them when they would have benefitted from being more proactive. But the norm of female passivity and male initiation also allows attractive women who want to play passive to sit back and let the man do most of the work. That is power; that is privilege.
From my post #442 in the other thread, on the subject of females being expected to be passive:
“The flipside of this norm is that males must be sexually aggressive to do well with females, and that (attractive) females who wish to sit back and be passive can do so. Like with showing skin, the norm of males being more sexually aggressive and proactive privileges BOTH men and women in some ways, and burdens them both in other ways. How can this be? Because males and females are not homogenous.
This system privileges sexually aggressive, assertive, extroverted males, and passive females; it punishes sexually aggressive females and passive males. Unlike the norms for showing skin, I think the norms for initiation clearly benefit females more than they benefit males. If you are a female who desires to be sexually aggressive but feels that she shouldn’t, that sucks, but at least you do have the option to be passive and wait for a guy to come to you. If you are a male who is passive, you are totally screwed, because the chances of a woman making direct advances on you, while not nonexistent, are pretty damn slim. Being a sexually aggressive female under the current system might mean not having the type of partner or relationship you might want; being a passive male under this system means not having a partner at all, unless you are very attractive or very lucky. And I think that males who are too passive are more common than females who want to be sexually aggressive, but feel they shouldn’t.”
Thus, I think it is very one-sided to pretend that the norms for initiation are more of an advantage for males than they are for females.
It’s not correct that gift giving is usually an expression of male dominance; actually, that claim is rather strange. Gift-giving can also be a gesture of supplication or adoration, and such supplication is enshrined in many gender scripts for romance. Putting a woman on a pedestal above a man may be just as sexist as putting her below him, yet it’s pretty hard to argue that she doesn’t have at least some type of power over him from being on the pedestal. Giving gifts or doing favors can also be an attempt simply to impress a woman (because under current gender norms, women are “supposed” to be impressed by that behavior).
And even if a man buying gifts is expressing dominance, his wallet is still lighter afterwards, and the woman still gets the gift. Framing males giving gifts or doing favors for woman simply as an expression of dominance is very one-sided, and misses important aspects of the construction of gender roles. When a man spends thousands of dollars buying a diamond ring for a women, who barely makes any less money that he does, it is pretty silly to argue that he comes off better from that exchange.
Jenny, neither I or Aegis have said that “sexual power” is an absolute form of power than can get you anything. It mostly works in a few types of situations.
Grabbing your crotch and then acting surprised that it didn’t help you win a debate is not a “classic” and it doesn’t prove anything.
It’s completely void.
You get guys approaching you, but they in all likelihood don’t get women approaching them as often.
This is your sexual power.
Aegis
Yes, I was trying to explain all this stuff in the old thread in many attempts.
Well, no, not at all, because she can’t fire this guy, let alone clap him in irons. A servant is someone employed to make your desires a reality. It would make as much sense to call her a servant, since she’s waiting on his word. But to expand your analogy, what if you didn’t think you had the right to dress yourself, and what if you couldn’t be sure that someone would help you do it? This arrangement isn’t working–she’s sitting at home naked, as it were. Her “servant” isn’t under any obligation to show up.
Why are those her terms? Did you read the blog post? She’s not happy. Why would she stick with this approach, if she is in fact doing so?
My explanation is that she has been taught to believe that women are passive, that they have to sit around waiting for men to call. They don’t announce desire. They don’t go chasing after the men they want. This obviously has its drawbacks–she’s writing the blog post because she has nothing better to do on date night, and doesn’t believe that it’s okay for her to make her own damn plans. It’s not that she fears social sanction–not for this, anyway–but she may well believe that it would make her unattractive to this guy she likes.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that men actually have more sexual power than women. Sexual power obviously means nothing without a certain amount of real power to back it up, most especially the right to autonomy. So, if sexual power becomes more potent when mixed with other power, then more real power one has, the stronger one’s sexual power (assuming equivalent beauty).
Which may explain why actors tend to make more money than actresses.
But then, it could also be that I’m biased since, as a hetero woman, men have more sexual power over me.
Like I said earlier, it’s pretty much irrelevant to me. If any single guy can’t get laid, that’s no indication that women have anything resembling a power advantage. God knows I don’t get all the damn sex I want either. Even if it’s slightly true that men want .5% more sex than women and therefore suffer .5% more frustration, it certainly doesn’t make up for the the power imbalances in every other aspect of life.
And seriously, someone give these guys a couple hundred bucks so they can purchase the mighty sexual powers of a streetwalker and quit whining that women have all this power.
piny:
So you are agreeing with me that by acting passive she wants to keep an advantage?
Now let’s examine your statement more deeply. Why exactly would she believe that something as simple as making a call would suddenly make her unattractive to a guy that seemed interested in her a while ago?
Who said that women making calls are unattractive?
Can you point out some sources of this meme?
And it must be an incredibly strong meme, since according to you it prevents her from even bothering to make the call, despite feeling so disappointed.
Someone,
To answer your EH??
Read everything that Aegis just wrote in post 34. Those are the assumptions that culture imposes on us. Now forget they exist and act like you feel you want to, not how culture dictates. Once you accomplish this you’ll be golden in the dating game and life in general. You’ll be genuine, honest and charismatic and both males and females will appreciate that quality in you. (by you btw, I’m not actually referring to you but any generic you out there whose life is guided by those assumptions).
For example if in most movies when a girl is show calling her potential date and then being rejected in a hurtful manner, and being in tears afterwards, this could act as a powerful deterrent to women taking the initiative to make calls.
But from what I have seen of american movies, they don’t have such a trend. American movies for the most part just repeat stereotypes, such as the guy calling and the girl waiting for a call.
Oh and I forgot to mention…
In american movies you can often this stereotypical scene of a girl waiting for a call, and then never receiving one and being hurt and disappointed as a result.
So there is actually more of a deterrent to waiting for calls than for making them?? At least in the area of movies… (which have a lot of influence on young people by the way)
Ok, well, um, actually…….guys don’t approach me. Unless you count the really creepy French guy who followed me along the streets of Paris one night during my junior year abroad.
My “already taken” male co-workers do occassionaly complement me on what I’m wearing, but I’d rather they tell me I’m doing a good job. Or what I could do better if I’m not. And while I’d really like to tell one of them that I love his long hair and if he ever cuts it I’ll never speak to him again, I think he might take it the wrong way since he’s one of the “taken” ones. So I give him advice on adjusting to his new position instead.
And I don’t quite get how guys approaching me would translate into me having more power anyway. It’s not like I get to pick the guys that approach me, unlike the these hypothetical guys who got to choose me to approach. I “get” to pick from a preselected handful, but they “get” to at least try for any woman. And according to one of my store’s recent bestsellers (I work at a bookstore) I should never ever approach a guy, ’cause if he hasn’t already it’s because he’s “just not that into me” and even if he is, and I do, then he won’t be anymore. These same people also assure me than I’m sexy! smart! and have woman power! as well, so…..whatever.
No, I’m saying that by acting passive she believes that she will please him and keep him from running away. Not quite the same thing, is it?
Well, this is one of the most famous incarnations.
Maybe Amanda can help with some links to relevant MSN dating-advice columns.
Who told you that men _have_ to be aggressive to get lucky with the ladies? How did you internalize that idea? Who first told you that?
Ted, okay that is nice… I do agree with you in a way.
I call it “not caring too much”. Which is a pretty simple idea.
But it doesn’t really have much to do with this debate does it?
No, because then some nice guy does call Bridget, or Meg, or Kate, or Sarah Jessica.
You refrute your own argument. IF she calls she isn’t acting “passive” anymore and loses her attractiveness and/or power (by the way you interchange the concepts).
Good point. For all this talk of women’s sexual power, prostitutes are the most raped women in the world. That demostrates men’s angry, emotional reactions to the incorrectly perceived sex power of women more than the s0-called power manifesting itself in women’s hands.
There’s silly talk that rears its head every now and again about how the sex-selective dearth of Chinese females will eventually give them more power because they’ll be considered rare and in a better position to use men’s desire for females to get what they want. What has happened is Chinese women have increasingly less power because only a fool would let something as valuable as a pretty Chinese female be controlled by a woman. For the goose that lays golden eggs, whether the Giant owns her or Jack steals her is not for the goose to decide.
Now I’ve got an Ani song on my head:
Don’t ask me why I’m crying
I’m not gonna tell you what’s wrong
I’m just gonna sit on your lap for five dollars a song
I want you to pay me for my beauty, I think it’s only right
cause I have been paying for it all of my life
First, please everyone, read my post defining what I mean by sexual power.
As I have said about a million times, sexual power doesn’t always translate into social or economic power (except sometimes in the cause of (d), but that is about the limited area of gifts and favors, not about socioeconomic power in general ).
Sorry, but that statement is just misguided. There are plenty other types of power that don’t put a roof over one’s head or food on the table. By your definition, things like the power to physically intimidate someone are not really power. If this was true, feminist theory would be in a lot of trouble.
I am not saying that sexual power, or the power to have someone love you, translates into overall power. But it still grants a certain type of power. Think of it this way: if you also had an adopted daughter who you didn’t love as much, which of your daughters would probably have more power over your emotions and privilege in your relationship with you, your real daughter or the adopted one? Yes, your love doesn’t translate into your daughter having power relative to you, but it probably does translate into her having more power over you than she would have if you didn’t love her as much. See what I’m getting at?
Why does “real” power need an aspect of force?
I hope you aren’t implying that I ever claimed anything like this, because I never have. Let’s leave the straw men in the field.
Correct. The whole picture of why women have more sexual power in much more complex.
I never claimed that I was the only one who had trouble in highschool. In the context of the original thread, I was simply trying to show that gender roles disadvantage males in highschool as well as females. So we basically agree.
The problem here is that you are looking at only the very top bracket of male attractiveness. At this top level, it is possible that males have as much sexual power as females. Also, at the bottom levels, it is possible that sexual power is about equal also. Yet in between, females have more sexual power.
Now this is actually a very good point, although it doesn’t show that women have less sexual power. Note: in my definition of sexual power, I am not saying that it necessarily gives women an easier time finding quality partners who want relationships with them, only attractive partners who want sex with them. Yet it is an important insight that men who have sexual power are wanted for other things as well; while this does not mean that men have more sexual power, it does explain why they may have more social power in other areas. Male sexual power depends to a greater degree on social status/skills, so it makes sense that males with higher sexual power are more likely to have higher social power in other areas: they have to have higher social power if they want women to be interested in them! I will more fully explain this issue and more when I make the post explaining exactly why women have more sexual power than men (within the confines I already stated).
Someone,
I cannot make heads or tails of what this debate is about in the first place. Seems to me its about justification for adolescent sexual frustration with a few tidbits about the role of attractiveness in all its manifestations and the influence it has on office politics. The only conection I can see is that if you are genuine and present good ideas that people will generally forget about physical attractiveness per se and that person will be “attractive” nonetheless.
I’ve never understood really what role gender plays in that, but I admit that I am in an isolated field and don’t socialize/interact out in the “real world” with the rest of my fellow (non scientist) humans all that much.
Piny
Not calling your potential date equals pleasing him.
Keeping this in memory…
Hmm… I see.
Here is the top review:
Look at the part that I have put in bold… It’s exactly what I have been saying… lol.
Playing “hard to get” is NOT the same as pleasing your guy!
Now let us examine your statement that acting passive in such a particular manner (not returning phone calls and not calling) is pleasing to a guy.
Is it really? I doubt that many males would agree.
I don’t. Perhaps Jeff or Ampersand or Brian Vaughan do? (Do you?)
Also this book sucks and it gives totally shitty advice to women looking for a relationship. It teaches them how to be manipulative, setting them up for failed relationships.
In the real world, such behaviour is going to annoy most guys (rather than please them, as you suggested), so these women will end up even more frustrated, when they actually never get a call.
Here is another nice review:
Yes, he puts it very nicely.
This book doesn’t help anyone, it just makes it harder for both males and females. What a crappy book.
It is neither power nor privilege. As Jenny points out, simply sitting there doesn’t determine which people would approach you. For a woman to attract the attentions of a man she is attracted to, she’s got to take some sort of action to get his attention — flirting, etc — and they have to keep working at it thereafter. The screwy thing is that women are usually expected to keep up the pretense that they’re passive — acting dumb and so forth.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard from women who tried to break out of that model, and were punished with especially ugly rejection or worse, when they were in their teens or early twenties.
You’ve never heard a woman worried because she just started dating someone, and he gave her a gift she wasn’t expecting? The usual response I hear is, “He must be expecting something.” That is what the “gender script” says, after all: he buys dinner, she “puts out.” Men giving women expensive gifts is often considered intimidating and creepy.
Ted
I don’t refute my own argument, but you prove it. :-D
Yes, if she calls she isn’t acting passive anymore, and she believes that acting passive gives her power. (It does if she is attractive enough.)
I don’t interchange them.
“Power” is the ability to set your own rules for your partner to follow (or else he/she is ditched), or to influence his/her actions in some way.
“Attractiveness” is a source of power.
Some really interesting, intelligent posts here. Fun.
I’m currently re-reading Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” which is devoted to this very topic. Wolf’s approach is that the myth was created and is maintained for political and economic reasons. Sexualized beauty power is a double-bind, intensified as late, and designed to compensate for (Western) women’s increased political and economic power in the 20th century. Regular men don’t benefit from it nearly as much as Madison Avenue does. Anyone here read it?
Someone, if The Rules disgusts you, there may still be hope for you. I doubt anyone posting here actually likes that book. It mostly comes up in discussion as the most over-the-top expression of sexist norms for women’s behavior in (heterosexual) dating.
You misunderstood Piny’s comment. Women are often taught that they shouldn’t take initiative, that to attract men they must be passive and flatter men’s egos. They’re taught to believe that they please men by being passive. Piny wasn’t saying that it was actually the case that men are pleased by this, or that women should behave in that way. Piny was pointing out how women are socialized to behave in a way that’s contrary to their own best interests.
Brian Vaughan, you make “women” sound like an incredibly gullible and nearsighted category of people.
I doubt that the women that follow books like The Rules or just come up with it on their own (like the myspace.com girl) actually believe that they are pleasing their guy by acting that way. Purposefully disrupting open communication and being manipulative is not pleasing. It is a powerstruggling game, just like the reviewer says. These women believe that this way they can have an advantage, but more often it just backfires on them.
Ted;
Honestly, that’s probably my number one frustration with this ‘continuation’ thread. The first thread was about rape, and upon the entrance of Someone, and re-entrance of Aegis trying to back Someone up, it became a debate about whether 18 and 19 year old young men know more about sexual dynamics and motivations of women, than women do. It’s been the worst kind of pandering, that I’ve felt compelled to respond to every now and then because of the outlandish statements being made. Then came the accusations of rudeness and lack of civility that seemed to completely ignore the fact that the thread had been completely hijacked from a legitimate and frightening issue, into a what very much has felt like a troll. The portrait of the mindsets that I’ve seen with regards to these young men is one of justification that are the framework built upon the very horrific thing the initial topic spoke of – women being seen as chattel – sexual objects that by virtue of no responsibility being accepted by the young men involved, responsible for being the sexual sirens (knowingly or unknowingly) that bring about their own doom.
I keep seeing huge posts by Aegis and Someone where strawmen abound and responsibility is neglected in lew of this absurd notion of lust equalling ‘sexual power’ in a positive manner, rather than accepting that it’s a cultural construct that has been used to firmly place women into the catagory of sexual object.
It all upsets me, and having attempted time and again in the past few days to read these posts in the context of debate, and time and again finding myself outraged at the psuedo-sophmoric-psych arguments tossed around by these young men as definitives about sexual dynamics.
Bleh.
The key difference here is separating pleasing someone from increasing your chances for this someone to act in a reciprocative manner towards you.
What is “pleasing someone”? Pleasing someone is making them happy, caring about how their feel.
What is “increasing your chances for this someone to act in a reciprocative manner towards you” ? It is any strategy that is supposed to make your partner act more reciprocative.
For example this book teaches its readers to play “hard to get” in order to increase their chances for the man to act in a reciprocative manner. (It is supposed to induce him into a mindset of being worried why isn’t she acting in a reciprocative manner towards him, and trying harder to win her affection as a result.)
But it does not teach them how to make him happy.
These are two different things.
Kim, I’m inclined to agree with you.
Brian Vaughan, you still didn’t answer me…
Would you be pleased if a woman ignored your calls and always expected you to call her, make all the moves, etc?
Several posters have raised an interesting question: don’t the existence of strippers, prostitutes, and Monica Lewinsky demonstrate that this “sexual power” I am talking about is really not power at all?
No. As I have said, sexual power doesn’t guarantee social/economic power (it can either increase, or decrease those types of power depending on other variables). Hence, the fact that strippers, prostitutes, and Monica may lack socioeconomic power doesn’t contradict my analysis at all.
All I have been trying to show is that beauty grants women sexual power, and sexual power gives more choice over higher quality sexual partners, and can sometimes lead to material benefits. Strippers, prostitutes, and Monica actually confirm my argument.
True, prostitutes don’t have much choice over their sexual partners. But being beautiful alone does not cause prostitutes to lose their choice over their partners; being in poverty or choosing to be a prostitute causes loss of partner choice. And note that beautiful prostitutes with more sexual power can charge more, and probably have more choice over their clientele, all else being equal. More beauty = more choice, and more material benefits. Same with strippers: the more beautiful ones can probably make more money.
Monica definitely had sexual power. She had the choice of a partner who was much higher in status and attractiveness than her. Think of it this way: if a man wrecks his personal life working at a high powered law firm, does it mean that his privilege in getting hired there in the first place isn’t really privilege?
Sexual power causes women more partner choice, and of more attractive partners, even in contexts where women lack socioeconomic power. Just because a woman’s relationships with the men she attracts might go bad, it doesn’t mean that that she didn’t have some type of power in being able to attract those men in the first place. We wouldn’t argue that male greater choice in certain industries isn’t really power because men may wreck their personal lives working in those industries.
My name is Jacqueline and I am the author of “Relationship Realism: Sans Hollywood Bullshit.”
After reading the above comments, I can see that my article is being taken completely out of context. It’s a shame that something I wrote as partial satire/partial self examination is being perverted by disgruntled readers to fit whatever viewpoint they may have. For shame!
To shed some light on some of the above comments about me placing the onus on the man to call, let me just say that he had told me he’d call … AND THEN DIDN’T. I have a phone, I know how to dial it, and I realize I, too, can contact the other person. My frustration, which I must not have articulated well enough in the article, was that we have expectations of men from their own words, and when it doesn’t happen, we’re devestated. Then I go on to examine WHY we are devastated (i.e. the whole fairy tale syndrom).
For those of you who would like to read the article in its entirely and judge for yourself, please link to: http://blog.myspace.com/15534586
Sincerely,
Jacqueline
Everything Brian said before I had a chance to. These expectations don’t have to be accurate in order to be accepted as such.
I see. So, passivity doesn’t actually give women power? It won’t actually give them an advantage? Men aren’t actually desperate enough to put up with this shit in order to get the sex that women don’t want as much and can therefore trade on? Huh. Interesting reversal there.
It’s also entirely different from having an advantage over someone. She’s behaving in a way she believes he prefers, in order to keep him from exercising the option of leaving. An advantage would involve her holding some kind of power over him, and she clearly doesn’t. She’s trying to present staying with her as a more attractive option. It’s like saying that your bank has an advantage over you if they offer you a free toaster for opening a checking account.
But why would a good-looking man not have had the same power vis-a-vis the high-status women he wanted?
An excellent post.
The concept of “sexual power” is not supposed to be understood as some mysterious power that protects you from harm and helps you out in life in every situation.
Rather, it’s something that gives you a general advantage in some areas of life.
Even when the woman herself is socially weak otherwise.
It isn’t a “counterweight” to social or economic power, it is a thing on its own.
In determining an individual’s likelihood to be successful in life, there are many other variables that are important, not the least being simple luck.
And nonetheless “sexual power” is something one would rather have then not have.
“Sexual power” is also different from the negative effects that a woman’s sexual attractiveness might cause her, such as unwanted attention for example. (Something many attractive women complain about.)
“Sexual power” is only the positive effects.
So we could say this: being sexually attractive gives you sexual power, as well as some drawbacks.
By the way Aegis… reply to my email you fool. :(
Why should the latter not be taken into account when toting up the advantage accorded via the former? If possessing something is a liability as well as a blessing, then you can’t very well talk about how great having it is, full stop. The unwanted-attention part definitely has an effect on how and when women may attempt to use sexuality to their advantage.
Piny
Passivity obviously does give power. This is self-explanatory, since by being passive you are making your partner try harder to win your affection.
The problem comes when you aren’t that attractive (eg. the target audience of The Rules, older not-so-attractive women without much positive relationship experience looking to get married), or you are overdoing it (the girl from myspace.com)
If you play it right it works.
Passivity is not necessarily coupled with “hard to get” either. You can be genuinely affectionate to your date, but still act passive.
Many girls may do it because they are shy, not because they are playing “hard to get”.
There are different reasons for passive behaviour, I already mentioned this in one of my posts in the old thread. Look it up if you want.
Summary:
Passivity itself is generally beneficial, if you can afford it. It is more beneficial on women, because women are approached by men more often than the reverse. Of course on unattractive women it isn’t going to help much… but neither will it on unattractive men.
This is why the target audience of The Rules will usually end up doing worse for themselves by acting passive, and especially in such a hard-cut way, never returning calls and such…
And another reason that passivity works better on women is because most women already do act passive. That means men don’t have that much of a choice if they wished to look only for non-passive women.
On the other hand, a passive man is at a loss since most men aren’t passive, so he will end up being underlooked, unless he is very attractive.
If all men suddenly decided to act passive no matter what, then two things could happen:
1) No one would be dating
2) Women would be forced into being active
This is an important part of how these dynamics work…
Aegis said:
But all these are true of good looking women (not the grand majority of women by any means) AND of good looking guys. My brother has sexual power – considerably more sexual power than my sister or I. He didn’t have it in high school (classic band geek), but when he reached his full height and his chest broadened out in his late teens. I think in his entire life he chose and asked one women out – everyone else he dated pursued HIM. Women gave him gifts. Women fed him. Women asked him out.
The woman he married saw him in a play when she was fourteen and pursued him for years – he wouldn’t even go out with her until she was sixteen, and they didn’t get married or engaged until she was in her twenties. Thing is, I think he kind of regrets his own passivity – it was easier to go out with the girls and ladies who pursued him, true, but it was so easy he didn’t usually date the girls who most attracted him!
My sister, OTOH, barely dated. I think in twenty years she went out with two guys, and that was only a few dates apiece. No one else asked her, but when she asked guys out that was perceived as her being “pushy” or “unfeminine.” So not only are women who aren’t beautiful not getting asked out – often, they quite literally can’t ask anyone out.
And the standards of beauty for women are extraordinarily constraining. I had more than one guy tell me, “I’d like to go out with you, if you’d just lose five (or ten) pounds first.” My “eligibility” as a date was determined by five or ten pounds! My weight fluctuates ten pounds a month anyhow – some of these guys would date me one week and have nothing to do with me the next! Generally, even when a woman is impressed primarily with a guy’s earnings or abilities, she gives him more leeway than that.
When “sexual power” is the main source of women’s power, and when most women simply don’t have access to said “sexual power,” I just can’t see why this is even an issue.
Aegis said:
Yes, but only to beautiful women. Most women are never that beautiful, and those who are only have this power for a very short time. Because men can be sexually attractive for a number of different reasons, more men can be sexually attractive. I’ve known a lot of guys whose sexual attraction was zip in high school who literally had ladies hanging on them vying for attention by the time they got to their late twenties – not because they were any more beautiful but because they’d learned to be charming or they were making good money.
Flipside? The beautiful women I knew had pretty much lost that edge at the same age. Female beauty is tightly connected to youth – doesn’t matter how beautiful she is, by the time a woman hits her thirties or forties novelists would describe her with, “he could see she’d been beautiful in her day, and some of that cachet still lingered….”
Ted said:
This has been my experience, as well. A friend of mine once told me I’d never have a problem getting a guy’s interest so long as I had a good long time frame to get to know him, because I was “fun to be around.” Physical attractiveness is far more important in situations like bars and parties, where you meet someone and you’ve got one chance to make an impression. My sister-in-law saw my brother on stage and she knew she had no chance to “snag” him through her looks – instead she joined clubs he was in and got to know him in a more relaxed social setting over time.
I’ve known a fair number of guys who divide the world into “women” and “people.” “Women” are the women they find physically attractive – and, oh, how they’d whine and moan about “women” and the power they held. But when I’d sit them down and point out that they were surrounded by females they didn’t recognize as women, who were having the same “bad luck” they were getting dates with the guys they were attracted to, they’d get very quiet. Those that got married, married females they’d originally labeled as “people” and thus ignored – once they started looking past the outside package, they suddenly had a fair number of possibilities for female companionship in their lives.
More piny
Because a disadvantage can’t be called a power.
See, here is what I said:
Is this ok?
This is true.
However we still see a great number of women trying to be as sexually appealing as possible. Despite the unwanted attention that they get, they still want to be sexually attractive.
From this I can conclude that for these women the negative drawbacks of being sexually attractive are not enough of a deterrent to give up trying to be sexually attractive.
(It might be for some other women, like religious christian women for example. But even when these women try to minimize their sexual attractiveness because they are set off by the drawbacks, it still can’t be concealed completely (things like face and hair and body shape…) so they will still end up enjoying the advantage of having more potential partners to choose from.
I am sure that even religious christian men will be more interested in a woman with a nice figure and a pretty face.)
Ok, I will be going now… more replies later.
Aegis, I expect that anytime now, some mother who adopted her child is going to come into this conversation and be right down your throat for the use of the terms “real” daughter vs. “adopted” daughter. People who adopt their children do not look at it that way, nor do I. See, I’m a parent. And the thing is, my love flows from me to my daughter regardless of whether it will be reciprocated. I don’t know that I can explain it to someone that isn’t a parent (and I don’t know if you are, but would find it hard to believe that you are based on that statement). Anyway, my point was, it’s something that’s coming from me, not her.
I still stand by my assertion that real power involves an element of force, even if it’s potential force. Power is a form of energy that enables you to meet your needs, like the roof over your head and food in your belly. In that light, sexual power isn’t really power, because the only “power” rests in the ability to basically beg others to get your needs for you. That is a far more vulnerable position than being able to meet those needs yourself. Sure, the beautiful prostitute can make more money from her clients than the less attractive prostitute, but the real power is the money that comes from the client. The client is the one who holds the wallet, and thus, the power.
And for those of us who don’t want to be prostitutes, what of us? What do we do, when our employers, educators, clergy, counselors, neighbors, etc. bring the baggage of the prostitute/client transaction into every relationship between a man and a woman? If sexual “power”, or better yet, sexual dynamics stayed in the bedroom, would we even be having this discussion? I think not. The problem is that sexual dynamics are foisted upon women without our consent, outside of proper sexual contexts. Meaning, that our appearance, sexuality, age, etc. carry a heavy weight for us (women) in nonsexual contexts that does not apply to men. Men have the freedom of neutrality that we do not have.
Just one more post…
shiloh says
Believe me, this is how I often feel about women that rant about “guys are assholes”, cheating, and such.
And it isn’t really true.
It is a complaint often used by both sexes:
“they only go after the hot girls with large boobs”
“they only go after jerks that mistreat them, or rich guys”
What Kim said (and similarly I have found myself drawn in against my better judgement).
This thread is just too depressing for words and serves of yet another example of how feminists never get to discuss rape and male abuses of power without some overly defensive male(s) insisting we must instead discuss how PHMT.
*sigh*
The highest priced bodies in prostitution are pretty girl child virgins and they have the least “choices” of any prostitutes. See golden goose example above.
Hence, the fact that strippers, prostitutes, and Monica may lack socioeconomic power doesn’t contradict my analysis at all.
That’s an intellectually dishonest statement. It’s not that sex workers “may” universally lack socioeconomic power, like it sorta happens but has nothing to do with sexuality, power, gender or anything we’re talking about. They lack power because men make them be their prostitutes, and that means to be sexually desired but not actually liked or respected. They resent the “power” they say Women have and use prostitutes to remind themselves that really, when it comes down to it, he can make her [stand in for Everywoman] do any nasty thing he wants because, when it comes down to it, he does in fact have more power over her in every way that counts including sexual power.
The disadvantages for women being unwanted sex objects is indeed power; it’s men’s power.
One man in a recent interview said when one of his friends says he’s dating a stripper, from that point on she’s forever referred to not as Jennifer but as “the stripper” by the group of men. I went to a frat party with my older brother and the men there knew me only by “Chris’s sister” or “jailbait”. They seriously didn’t even care what my name was, only which male I “belonged” to and my fuckability status. Some privilege, this sexualized prettiness that erases the need for women’s names.
I lived for a few years in NYC and here’s no way this feminist babe is buying your tripe about how peachy it is to be a prettier than average young woman. Getting verbally assaulted by street men is not about this pretty girl’s sexual power, it is about men’s sexual power. It’s homeless and minority men (most abuse came from them) saying to me, “You may have a career, home, and happy life but I’m still a man and you’re still a woman and we both know that places you literally underneath me, bitch.” That’s what they’re really saying when they say, “Bet your pussy tastes good” as I pass them on a bridge (true example).
shiloh, nice post on #70, especially the women versus people business.
When I first started reading this post (around 500 ago) I didn’t really get the whole “rape culture” arguement presented by Q grrl. I still don’t think I generally agree with the term, but over the last 200 or so posts I have begun to understand the point. Tis a sad state of affairs.
“…saying to me, “You may have a career, home, and happy life but I’m still a man and you’re still a woman and we both know that places you literally underneath me, bitch.”? That’s what they’re really saying when they say, “Bet your pussy tastes good”? as I pass them on a bridge (true example).”
Oh that’s real “sexual power” there. Gee I can’t wait to wield that. Oh that’s right I already do since it happens to me all the time at my college campus. Except for me it falls along the lines of,” so what you’re an honor-roll/Dean’s List student, you still have a pussy and pair of breasts, so automatically that makes you my little sex-toy.”
It’s degradation, not power. A woman has to degrade herself and reduce herself to a sex-object and sex-toy for men’s pleasure before they even notice her. She has to cater to their sexual appetites–which always reduce women to pleasure objects. It’s quid pro quo sex acts (bordering on abuse and rape) and it’s always the woman giving them up like an obedient little wind-up doll in order to receive a “pat on the head” from the men.
Damn I forgot to close the bold signs at the end there.
[I got it – Amp.]
Good point, shiloh. I have a good friend who isn’t traditionally handsome by any means but he can get a woman eating out of his hand unlike almost any man I have ever known. I’m a conventionally pretty woman who by the inane theories being flouted here should be able to manipulate a man and while he’s always praising my looks and whatnot, I know damn well that if we ever dated, I’d be the one constantly worrying about the cheating and unable to exert this amazing cunt-and-beauty power I have that gets me exactly shit. Honestly, I get more leverage off my sense of humor.
This is kind of a tangent — we hear a lot about beautiful and attractive women being harrassed, and being pressured into/deciding to trade on their looks while they can, but what of the unattractive women? If this “power” is based on being beautiful and sexy, the unattractive woman is pretty much dirt. And while it’s not spoken of as frequently as the “Damn, you fine!” variety, the “Damn, that bitch ugly!” type of harrassment has a great deal of vitriol with it. Of course, both types have in common the apparent belief on the part of the speaker that whatever he’s thinking, he can just go ahead and say, as if what he’s commenting on is just scenery.
I was sexually harrassed in middle school once on the bus, and not because I was an early developer or because I was trying to get male attention. The principal I reported the incident to obviously didn’t believe that anyone would have harrassed me. I practically had a negative amount of “power.” And subsequently, I avoided social interactions that might lead to situations like that.
I also found it very strange (and still do) that even though I heard and hear all the time about street harrassment, no matter where the women were and what they were wearing, men basically ignore me. What does that tell an adolescent girl (although I’m 26 now) about her worth, if men don’t even bother to harrass her? I still am amazed that my boyfriend finds me attractive, even though now that I’m past adolescence I’ve got a happier view of myself.
I’m no master at debate, so I’m not trying to present an argument or make a huge point — I just think it’s interesting that the women who are verbally abused for being ugly, or the ones who are ignored pretty much get forgotten in discussions about this sort of thing. I feel like I didn’t do a great job of explaining this, but here goes :-P
Oh, I forgot to add — An unattractive man might well get some flack, but keep in mind that there are men who seem to take it as a personal insult if an unattractive woman enters their sphere of vision, and they will do their best to let people know.
Hey, let’s not be sexist — what about the “power” that attractive men have over women?
Ha!!
You men know how shakey that is, even you pretty ones. It’s not worth much, is it? How’d you boys like to be trying to pay your rent with THAT?
And that is all the “power” in the world you think that women should have?
REAL power is about having resources which one actually commands totally, not just having some marginal ability to influence someone else to change the way they manage resources which they actually command totally.
Women’s sexual power isn’t worth a dime. Men just talk about it because it is the ONLY power they don’t have and that bugs them a lot. Men obsess about the tiny tiny little bit of power women have in this world, because that seems unnatural in a world full of burqas, brides burned in carpets and 75 cents on the dollar.
Women talk about it because it makes them feel a little better.
But it’s bunk.
Jan VanDenBerg
Jan,
Exactly.
Sexual power, as being discussed here, seems to translate into being able to pick sexual partners or get people to do things for you based of the promise or hint of sex.
As far as the first, the only difference in power between men and women comes from the supposition that men want it more. As far as getting sex based only on looks goes, if desire is equal, and beauty is equal, than everything else is equal.
When it comes to wielding “sexual power” for things other than sex, if you see women doing it more than men, its because of their relative likelihood of getting what they want through manipulating someones desire for them versus other methods. Its not that women are naturally so much better at wielding sexual power, but that guys tend to have more options, and women are less likley to (appear) have much to offer other than sex.
And this whole idea that you can focus on only the positive aspects of “sexual power” but not its limitations is ridiculous. Especially in light of how this discussion started.
If I can’t say no to unwanted sex then I don’t have any more power than if I never have the opportunity to say yes. In fact, I have less power, actually.
There isn’t much that “sexual power” can get me besides sex that (in a world without sexism) I can’t get better in other ways. And if I don’t have any other power, then I can’t say no, so I have no real sexual power either.
Jenny (and Jan) – that about sums about the whole discussion! Female sexual power is a double-edged sword, and in a world where it’s always someone else setting the rules by which it’s used, it’s a power that’s not truly under our own control.
Women’s bodies have been blamed for “leading men astray” morally, spiritually, and physically for centuries now. It really shouldn’t shock anyone when it’s pointed out that female beauty/sexuality is a pervasive excuse for rape in 99% of cultures today.
The only “sexual power” that matters is the power to say “no” when one wants to and not have anything bad happen — the power to NOT be sexy and still be in good standing.
How much power do women have to say, “Hey, I don’t feel like being sexy today; I’m not in the mood. Today I feel like talking seriously about heavy issues and letting vent to my own personal frustrations with regard to structural difficulties and assumptions being made around here.”
Yeeah! That’s going to get you anywhere!
Women have the power to say “no” and to present their true feelings sometimes, but frequently, they don’t. Not on the job, with a boss who just insists on having his ego massaged or there will be hell to pay, and not in the corporate, mainstream media, where women all seem to be leggy, busty and obsessed with men and sex to the exclusion of all else, where women are just about how men want them to be, in other words.
Remember how hated Hilary Clinton was — just for trying to be serious?
Try to talk about something BESIDES sex and, whoa, have you ever lost all that wonderful “power.”
When you don’t even have the power to change the subject, you haven’t got much power.
Jan VanDenBerg
Q Grrl said: Absent rape, “sexual power”? for either gender is irrelevant and meaningless.
Bingo! You know, for me there’s something even more wrong at the root of this idea of sexual power, the notion that not just sex but all human interaction can be reduced to power plays. It’s a horrible mentality. It screws with people’s minds. It assumes you have to think of love, friendship, sex like a matter of conflict, strategy and competition. Instead of playfulness, fun, communication, emotions, affection, respect, mutual assistance…
Economic power, social power, political power, military power, those things exist as long as we live in societies where hierarchies count. You can’t easily get out of that mechanism, you just have to live with it and not make it dominate your life. Personal relationships are the one sphere where we can at least try and prevent dominant power structures from creeping in. It’s not easy, and too often we are subjected to that mentality even as we reject it, but I just cannot understand those who accept it unquestioningly, thinking that’s what makes sex and human relations interesting. I don’t want any part of that.
Every time someone or Aegis says power they should be required to add: “The power of being sterotypically attractive till you’re forty or so” and see how that changes their argument. Not that I imagine it would change it much. I watched them derail a thread about rape into a discussion of female power. Yeah, well, you know what? If women had that much power the world would be a very different place. Pandering to these two is jsut amazing. I notice that the misquoted and misused author of someone’s piece didn’t get so much as a blink from either one.
I was reading the original thread (I’m not finished yet) and I just had to respond to these two topics:
First someone on straight women not being attracted to men’s bodies and being repulsed by male on male action:
“Males find females kissing sexy.
Females find males kissing disgusting or don’t care.
Why? Because women are the “sexy”? gender.”
Now that I’ve picked myself up off the floor from laughing so hard: OH MY GOD! As a straight woman who just recently discovered Queer as Folk (sorry, I just love the way they do the title) all I have to say is: watching Justin and Brain go at it has to be one of the sexiest things I’ve ever seen.
“Gay porn is mainly targeted at gay men, not women.”
And that of course is proof that all (sucessfull) porn is made for men because only guys want it, and for no other reason. There is no possibility that the people who make porn only think that guys want it, so they will only sexualize men when making porn for gay men, or that mostly men make porn (for the same reasons most directors are men) so of course porn that sexualizes men tends to be made by gay men rather than straight women.
I mean, all those shows about gay men must be made for gay men, right?
It’s not as if the largest demographic for shows like Boy Meets Boy, Queer Eye, or QaF is young women. I mean, really, what was I thinking? I must be an absolute anomaly.
And as for this:
“But I don’t use [boys] to refer to young men/male teenagers in general, because this isn’t how the word is used. It is used to refer to children.
But girls is used to refer to teenage girls and young women.
This is how the words are used in the contemporary English language, I didn’t make it so.”
When my mother was a few years younger than you, living in the south, nigger was a word used to refer to colored people. She didn’t make it so. But she damn well didn’t use it either. If you plan on referring to yourself as an adult you’d better damn well start calling me one too, and anyone else your age or older. Although if you continue to use the “everyone else does it”? defense, I’m going to start referring to you as a child. Not in an attempt to be insulting or anything, just to be acccurate, because if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck….
Jenny, these are all old arguments that were talked about and they are now dead. Why are bringing them up again?
“what Kim said”
This isn’t a thread about rape, it’s a new thread with its own topic, so this complaint is meaningless. If you don’t want to discuss this topic, then don’t.
noodles
I am pretty sure that this is a case of the “Appeal to Emotion” fallacy mixed with a “Strawman” fallacy.
You are doing two things:
1) Associating my comments about how people play power games in relationships with the negative consequences that ensue from this.
2) Accusing me of supporting this.
I actually agree with you, it would be lovely if all this powerstruggling didn’t exist, but it does. I didn’t invent it.
See, I even said it before:
Did you miss this part? Why are you accusing me of thinking that it makes sex and human relations interesting? I don’t, I think that it brings lots of negativity.
By the way, I propose a new rule for this thread…
Whenever someone asks someone else a direct question they have to answer it, unless the question is fallacious in nature. (Not based on the actual things that were said.)
Is this a good rule? Can we all agree to follow it?
Actually, this kind of rule will probably cause me to be bombarded with questions. So nevermind. ;)
Let’s just agree to try to answer questions and address the points that are made?
I will now try to respond to the posts that were made one by one…
Samantha
Samantha, I don’t believe that referring to someone as “Chris’s sister” or “Samantha’s brother” is insulting. It’s perfectly natural for
people to refer this way to a person that they don’t know that is related to someone that they know.
If you were a longtime part of that company, they would refer to you by your name.
As for “jailbait”, it is one of the negative effects which I have described.
Having negative effects due to being sexually attractive does not negate the existence of sexual power.
Here is a question to you: would you rather be unattractive, or as attractive as the average young woman? (You seem to be pretty insistent on
referring to yourself as a “babe” and a “pretty girl”, so I am guessing you must be significantly more goodlooking than the average woman.)
You will have to prove how does making lewd comments at you give these men sexual power.
Let’s look at the definition of sexual power again:
(Aegis)
Please explain how does insulting you help them with any of those five points? (He has b listed twice)
And I really mean it, do respond to this post.
I think that it’s pretty self-evident that being attractive does in fact grant you a certain degree of sexual power. (Which different
individuals may use differently.)
For example I am pretty sure that you have a wider choice of potential partners than a less attractive (average) woman does.
You don’t have to put up with a guy that acts rude, or drinks, or you don’t find him physically attractive, or has some other unwanted
characteristics.
You can set a rule: “If you want to be with me, you have to fit these criteria.”
And then the criteria which you set can be more demanding than ones that a less attractive woman can set.
This is how you have Type C of sexual power, a larger choice of mates, and access to better mates.
This doesn’t mean that you are guaranteed to find someone that you like and fits all of your criteria, but that you have a better
chance at doing so than a less attractive woman.
I notice that the misquoted and misused author of someone’s piece didn’t get so much as a blink from either one.
Yeah, I noticed that too. It was like she didn’t even post anything.
Someone, as I said in the opening post, “Any of the posts on the old thread may be responded to here.” If Jenny wants to respond to those “old arguments,” then she has every right to do so.
By the way, “appeal to emotion” isn’t a fallacy. In traditional rhetoric, an argument without an appeal to emotion (or pathos) is incomplete.
someone,
How did I know you were going to ask something like this:
“Jenny, these are all old arguments that were talked about and they are now dead. Why are bringing them up again?”
My response: read the last two sentences of the post that kicked off this second thread.
Ampersand, appeal to emotion is a fallacy in this case, since noodles was using it to further her argument.
Take a look at this:
She is saying that because the notion of power plays is a negative one (with which I agree very much), it is reason to believe that the notion is wrong.
With this I disagree, power plays are real, and sexual competition is real.