It is often said that fear is the most common cause of prejudice, and today there are few more maligned in modern society than she who is known as the slut. She is shamed, blamed, and slandered by men and women alike. But if a slut is really just a woman with the morals of a man, why should men fear a woman who so closely shares his desires? In short, the slut is feared by men because whilst she may share the sexual appetite of the man, only the slut has the near unrestrained capacity to act up on it. It is this capacity, this power, that terrifies men.
To best exemplify this we could perform a hypothetical experiment. Imagine 10 female friends of yours walk into a bar and approach 10 single males and without any elaboration or introduction invite those men into an immediate sexual encounter, no strings attached. It is feasible to expect a number, if not all, of these men would oblige (albeit with some suspicion). Now imagine the experiment repeated with 10 of your male friends approaching 10 single females and immediately offering them the same no strings attached sexual encounter without any further conversation. It would be a surprise to most if any accepted the invitation.
But of course we know that no female friend of yours would ever act upon this power, right? Well to understand why this is we must first go back to our evolutionary past for herein lies the first restraint upon the sexual power of females.
Subconsciously, behind both male and female sexual attraction is a simple evolutionary urge to procreate with a partner who will pass on their good genes to the inevitably resulting offspring. Studies have shown the most beautiful people in the world happen to have near perfectly symmetrical faces. This is not an accident, this is your brain acknowledging and drawing your attention to genetic perfection. Muscles on men, firm breasts in women, these are all signs that your sexual partner is a good person to procreate with and even though your conscious desires may want nothing to do with any children, your brain’s subconscious knows what’s best for your genetic lineage.
For most of the history of humanity however, there has been an additional concern for the female of our species. Once her subconscious is suitably impressed by the genetic offerings of her male counterpart she has traditionally had to further consider the many months of being somewhat incapacitated by pregnancy (not to mention the considerable chance of death during childbirth). Assuming both her and the infant survive the painful procedure of birth she then must care for an infant that is unique in the animal kingdom for being pathetically incapable of looking after itself for almost the first decade of its life.
For hundreds of thousands of years it has been evolutionarily advantageous for a female to first assess, before ceding to her immediate urges, if this potential mating partner was going to be hanging around for the duration of the ensuing commitment she would be unavoidably signing up to. Was he the type of male that could provide for her and the new arrival? Did she have any kind of emotional connection with this sharer of genetic information so as to facilitate a partnership in the raising of this offspring into maturity?
There is an evolutionary advantage for a child if their father loves their mother, and as a result men have also evolved to love and desire companionship. However unlike the female, the stakes have never been the same, it has never been a matter of life and death for men.
But from very early on men have been aware that these biological constraints on women are by no means a fail safe restraint on the sexual power of females. Enter religion. Almost every religion, and certainly all the abrahamic faiths celebrate the virginity of women, most make it a requirement for marriage. Considering society has for most of humanity left all financial power in the hands of men it has therefore been a requirement for females to maintain their virginity until marriage lest they face a life of destitution. The fear that a female may act upon her urges before such a marriage is secured is the primary motivation behind the phenomena of child marriages, rather than an act of child abuse these fathers often sincerely suggest this was the only way to ensure their daughter’s virginity was intact for the marriage she desperately needed for her survival.
Fast forward to the modern day in a modern country (sadly I am forced to note that not all corners of the world have progressed from the customs outlined above). For the first time in human history females are in control of the reproductive system. The birth control pill gives women an almost certain assurance that they can engage in sexual intercourse with none of the biological ramifications that have existed throughout human existence. For a species that has been around in their current form for about 100,000 to 200,000 years, the introduction of such a drastic behavioural influencer in just the last 50 years should not be understated. For the first time in history, the subconscious that for generations encouraged a woman to assess a man’s ability to help raise a child is resigned to just that… the subconscious, free to be overwritten by the reality of the situation. It is no coincidence that the same religions that demanded a woman celebrate her virginity were the first to condemn the introduction of birth control.
Additionally, the ever crumbling influence of religion has been met (again not coincidentally) with the ever increasing rise of female financial liberation. Whilst far from parity, in most western countries women can attain financial independence just as effectively as men. For the first time in history, although still confined to a few pockets across the world, women don’t need men any more than men need them.
So in summary, whilst the subconscious remnants of her biological constraints may still influence a woman’s desire to engage in sexual activity, she is now free to disengage from that subconscious if she so chooses. Furthermore, women are almost entirely unrestrained by any real institutional constraint or imperative sanctity upon her virginity.
Yet despite all these unprecedented and irreversible removal of restraints upon the female sexual desire… her power to act upon it still remains.
Enter the last bastion of social defence against complete female sexual supremacy… the creation of the slut.
The threat of being labeled a slut is the last remaining restraint upon the sexual power of females, and it works. Despite the absence of religious dogmas and defined gender roles, women still fear this unreasonable slander. Actions that earn man platitudes as a stud will see a woman’s dignity questioned. A man achieves conquests, a woman surrenders.
The slut is a monster created by humanities manipulation of our evolutionary functions. Women were trained by the severe consequences of their sexual endeavours to be particularly picky about who they chose to engage with. For generations it has been a form of quality control that men never needed. Mankind could always rely upon the law of averages to hope one of their many attempts at procreation provided a strong offspring.
The result was a fine balance, almost all men were obsessively committed to engaging sexually with a female, whilst the female, being conscious of the biological and institutional constraints ensured she paid little attention to any of her own sexual desires and focussed instead on when and where she would selectively choose to say ‘yes’..
Today the woman has mastered her biological consequences and has the capacity to ignore the institutional constraints. With the exception of the “slut” label, she now must only listen to her own hedonistic sexual desires.
All this, whilst men have enjoyed no such advancement of their psychobiological status. Whilst we have surrendered our social and financial controls over the female we are still at the mercy of our insatiable yet inferior sexual bargaining chips. Women have gained independence, men have gained little in sexual power.
No generation of men has ever concerned itself with their physical appearance to the extent we have. No generation ever cared what they looked like naked, how good they were in bed, and whether they had sexually satisfied their female partners to the extent we have. That’s because to previous generations it simply didn’t matter. Suddenly, mankind is forced to appeal to females on similar grounds that females had done for men since time immemorial.
The slander of the “slut” title is the desperate scream of the man who knows that if a female chose her sexual partners based on the same qualifications as a man, he would never be picked, or at the very least would not be the only one picked.
It is an attempt to remind a female of the historic constraints upon her sexual power. That just because she has the ability to have sex with almost anyone she chooses, it would be a gross disservice to her kind were she to act upon that ability.
The reality is the majority of females still require some level of emotional connection, commitment or mental attraction before they would consider themselves sexually attracted to a man, almost a ‘hangover’ from the long period for which it was an evolutionary necessity.
But for the females who have the capacity to override these requirements from time to time and enjoy the fruits of their sexual liberation for reasons of pure hedonism, us men have two clear options. We can either continue to try and restrain them by calling them sluts and hope that they care, or we can buckle up and go along for the ride.
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