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Frats Invite Sluts, Bitches; Women Accept Degradation. Why?
“Dear Bitches, I mean witches.”
So began Duke’s Alpha Delta Phi’s e-mailed invitation to their Halloween party. It continues just as charmingly:
“The Brothers of Alpha Delta Phi know what true fear is. Fear is having someone say ‘I love you.’ … Fear is riding the C1 with Helen Keller at the helm (not because shes deaf and blind, but because she is a woman). Fear is waking up with no wallet, phone, keys, or front tooth next to a girl who you could generously deem a 3.”
Not to be outdone, Duke’s Sigma Nu frat offered their own enticement:
“Whether your dressing up as a slutty nurse, a slutty doctor, a slutty schoolgirl, or just a total slut, we invite you to find shelter in the confines of Partners D.”
Ummm, how appealing! (And I don’t just mean their grammar and spelling.)
Someone had the sense to print out the invites and scrawl handwritten messages: “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention,” “Is this why you came to Duke?” and then wallpaper the campus.
Strangely, sorority sisters interviewed took it all in stride as “boys-will-be-boys.”
“Honestly, when I first received those e-mails I didn’t think anything of it,” said Emily Fausch, of Delta Delta Delta sorority. “This is the kind of thing I’ve come to expect from fraternities. In my heart, I know it’s a problem but I’ve really gotten used to it. I don’t take it too seriously. I think that college boys will be college boys.”
Now, not all fraternities are created equal. Some actually work to be respectful toward women. But at many frats, women are routinely degraded in attempts to create a sense of male superiority and “manhood” by putting women down, according to sociologist, Michael Kimmel.
But why do women so often support their own disgrace by continuing to fraternize with the frats? This woman’s comment that she’s simply gotten used to it is telling.
We live in a society that sees women as lesser-than, and which sexualizes male dominance. Both lay the groundwork for accepting ill treatment.
A few quick examples: Man, brother, and guy encompass women, but woman, sister, and gal don’t encompass men. So man becomes primary, and woman secondary. A woman marries and becomes Mrs. Leonard Smith. A man never becomes Mrs. Emily Struthers. Unless it’s an insult. Send a card from the family? Likely dad’s name goes first, then mom’s, then the children in order of appearance. Men tend to feel insulted taking the secondary spot. Women are just used to it.
We sexualize male dominance when Rhett takes Scarlett up the stairs for a night of marital rape and Scarlett cheerfully awakens the next morning. Or when Rihanna sings about enjoying mistreatment from her man, while Eminem celebrates abusing women. Watching women enjoy humiliation in porn or mainstream movies like The Secretary also eroticizes male dominance. The list goes on.
Continually treated as secondary, second-rate treatment becomes taken-for-granted, invisible. The women are used to it. It seems natural. Sometimes even sexy.
As too many frat brothers intensify the world of insult, women acclimate to the higher level shame.
All this teaches women to accept attitudes and behavior that regard them as second-class.
A college roommate of mine dated a frat boy who treated her like dirt. She defended him to all of us who cared about her. She had certainly learned to accept her own humiliation.
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Should You Ask Why Your Lover Loves You?
We often ask our lovers why they love us.
That may not be such a good idea.
When people become analytical – making lists of pros and cons, what they like and don’t – they can end up misleading themselves.
Social psychologist, Tim Wilson and his colleagues, found that analyzing our feelings can actually make matters worse.
Unfortunately, we don’t always know why we feel the way we do. So we might latch onto reasons that are easily identifiable, and easier to verbalize, than what’s really in our hearts. Our reasons sound reasonable, but they aren’t necessarily correct.
Now comes the bigger problem: After looking at our list, we may change the way we feel, at least temporarily, to match what we wrote. Maybe the list doesn’t seem too spectacular and we reassess our feelings.
Wilson gives a couple of examples. Suppose you enjoy dating someone, and you wonder why: What is it about this person? As you think about it, you start to notice that you and your partner don’t have much in common. With so little in common, you can’t have much of a future! So you change your mind about the relationship.
Then there’s that episode from Friends when Ross makes a list to sort out his feelings toward Rachel and Julie. He loves Rachel but can’t figure out why, so he writes down whatever comes to mind: “She’s just a waitress… She’s a little ditzy.” In real life, Ross would have concluded that he did not love Rachel as much as he thought, because all he could think of were negative traits. (But when he thought about Julie, all he could think was, “She’s not Rachel, she’s not Rachel.” Perhaps fiction is more forgiving.)
If you ever do chose to list the reasons why you love your lover, consider that you may not know, or may not be able to articulate, your real reasons.
Fortunately, the effects of “reasons-generated attitude change” are temporary. So at least don’t do anything rash based on your new perspective.
I once asked my husband why he loved me. He said he didn’t know. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t push the matter.
Georgia Platts
Source: Elliot Aronson, Timothy Wilson and Robin Akert. Social psychology. Pearson/Prentice Hall. 2007
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Why Are Men Surprised by Breakups?
Over the years I’ve dated men who’ve ogled other women. Actually, only four men behaved that way, most weren’t so rude. When I told them their behavior bothered me, it had no effect. One responded, “Someday you’ll have a breakthrough and get over it.”
Instead of breakthroughs, I broke up with each of them. They all were shocked.
Sometimes the surprise happens differently, as when men “hear” me say that I like what I don’t.
When I was in college at BYU some of the students believed that although Mormons no longer practice polygamy (only “Mormon Fundamentalists” do) polygamy was the way of Heaven. (A religious instructor told me this was folklore and not theology. I haven’t been to church in years and don’t know what the common view is now.)
Still, I heard men say they couldn’t wait to have many wives up in Heaven. Put off, I asked men how they felt about polygamy. I told one man that it pissed me off. But projecting his own interest onto me, he was certain that I was as intrigued by the idea of heavenly threesomes as he was. Perhaps he got his sex ed from porn? I was mystified. He was surprised when I broke off our relationship.
Breakups can be harder on men than on women. Partly because men are more likely to be surprised.
Why are they so often surprised?
The male role seems to be in play. Men are less relationship-oriented, so they are less likely to monitor their relationships. Men learn that they’re not supposed to listen to women. Not helpful! Taught to constrain their emotions, men are less able to read the emotions of others.
Women are commonly objectified, too. When men see women as objects, sex toys that exist for their pleasure, men don’t experience women as having feelings. They lack empathy and can’t feel women’s pain.
Additionally, men often have more power in society and in relationships. How could this hurt them?
The Wall Street Journal recently reported studies showing that power decreases empathy.
People moving up the ladder of success are typically considerate, outgoing, agreeable and extroverted. Nice “guys” do finish first.
But once in power, things change.
One researcher compared the effect to brain damage, saying that people who hold a lot of authority can behave like neurological patients with damaged orbitofrontal lobes, an area of the brain that’s crucial for empathy.
I’m not saying all men behave this way, but it’s an interesting observation.
Still, the scales of power are tipped in men’s favor, often because it feels natural and normal to many men and women. So it’s interesting that even limited experiments, like asking people to describe a time when they felt powerful, could make them more egocentric.
Power keeps people from hearing points of view that differ from their own. So when a woman says she’s unhappy, and her partner feels she shouldn’t be, he may not sense her suffering even as she tells him about it.
Power diminishes empathy. Lacking empathy, some misread their partner’s feelings.
Then its surprise! Bye, bye baby.
Women, if you’re having issues, perhaps this will help you to understand what’s going on. Maybe you can have a conversation (if he’ll make an effort to talk to you.)
Men, if you want to keep your relationships strong, recognize women as full partners. Be attuned and listen to them. And be empathetic and alert to your partner’s emotions.
Georgia Platts
Sources:
Elizabeth Rider. Our Voices. Wadsworth. 2000
Jonah Lehrer. The Power Trip.” Wall Street Journal. August 14-15, 2010
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Sources of Power in Relationships
There are many sources of power in relationships, but a few stand out:
1. Higher education, income, and occupational status, especially in marriage relationships when men make more money. Both partners tend to feel that a man should have more say since he contributes greater resources to the family.
When wives are economically dependent and fear they can’t support themselves, husbands can become especially powerful. Some abusive men purposely get their wives pregnant (by destroying their birth control) to increase their wives’ dependency – and their control over their partners.
Women are less likely to become more powerful when they make more money because they generally don’t want to diminish their partners.
2. Relationship options. Perhaps a woman is economically dependent, but she is beautiful and she knows it. She also knows that if she leaves the relationship, she can quickly find someone else. This gives her a lot of clout.
3. Traditional gender roles. People who hold traditional notions about gender are more likely to accept male authority. While our society has achieved greater equality, men still typically have a bit more power in relationships.
Interestingly, young men today more often say they prefer equal partnerships.
4. Strong personalities. Even among the traditional-minded, some women just have stronger personalities. The couple will often deem the man, “head of home” when really, the woman is in charge.
5. Whoever cares least about the relationship has more power because the partner who cares more is more likely to cave in.
There are two ways of looking at this. On the one hand it may simply be a sad, but true, fact of life.
Yet there may be some poetic justice. If one person is poorly treated, he or she will be more likely to leave. And this can create an incentive to change. If the relationship moves back into a better balance of happiness, equality can be regained.
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Why Don’t Women Like Sex As Much As Men?
What’s the difference between a slut and a bitch? If you are an American university student you probably know the punch line:
“A bitch has sex with everyone but me.”
So how do men view women’s sexuality? And what is the reality?
Sociologist, Michael Kimmel says that many men get their sex education from two primary sources: friends and porn. And their friends learn a lot from porn, too.
So how are women portrayed on the pornography front?
Women meet strangers and become immediately aroused, sexual activity quickly ensues, and they come swiftly to orgasm. And by the way, women love threesomes and orgies. Really, the more the merrier!
In porn women’s sexuality looks more like men’s than women’s.
Pornography leads single men to believe that other men are getting an awful lot of sex. And they wonder why they aren’t. “Why do babes (aka sluts) have sex with everyone but me? Those bitches!”
In the U.S. women’s sexuality is far different from how it is portrayed in porn. Typically, women are much more interested in romance and relationship than in casual intercourse. And while some women love sex (sometimes more than their partners) surveys show that they typically enjoy sex less than men do, and want far fewer partners.
Biology does not seem to be the main reason for the difference. While twice as much space is devoted to sexuality in the male brain, women and men have matched up far more evenly in other times and places in terms of sexual pleasure and interest.
I will be posting an ongoing series (interspersed with other topics) to discuss these questions, among others:
- How do men and women experience sex differently?
- What affects sexual experience and why do American women typically enjoy sex less than men?
- How do differences and misunderstandings affect relationships between women and men?
- What are the benefits and costs of the so-called male and female ways of sexuality?
- What can women learn from men and what can men learn from women?
To understand all this, we will need to explore sources of repression. Women get far more messages than men that sex is bad, which can repress their sexuality. Too often women are still punished for not controlling men’s sexuality. Calling women sluts rarely heightens their sexual interest. Quite the opposite. Yet men seem to be unaware of this — given how often they call women sluts and whores. Or they don’t care. Odd, since they say they want sex so much! But there is more on the repression front.
We will also discuss things you might not expect, like how objectification can dampen a woman’s sexual experience, even as it heightens a man’s. So focused on how she looks (whether pleased with her look or worried about it), she can’t get into sex. Meanwhile, men aren’t sexualized, so she has less to get so excited about.
Or, we still rank men above women in our society, and this ends up diminishing women’s sexual interest in ways that are not immediately obvious – though they should be. For example, when men see women as objects and not human beings, they may force sex. A past history of sexual violence often diminishes a woman’s interest.
Meanwhile, men, if you’re not getting a lot of sex, don’t take it personally. And don’t take it out on women. Calling them sluts and bitches will probably backfire!
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“Cock” vs “Down There”
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Sex: Who Gets Screwed?
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Sex Research: It Doesn’t Fit Me, It Must Be Wrong
A couple of people who joined the discussion on how women and men “do sex” questioned research findings I had cited because the data didn’t fit their experience.
There is reason for concern. Often, people want to look good, normal and acceptable, even when they are anonymous.
Prudish people are more likely to throw sex surveys in the trash. People who have more interest in sex are more likely to fill them out.
Men exaggerate the number of partners they’ve had, while women under estimate theirs.
Some people who are gay or lesbian may be in denial, or they may fear someone finding out, so their numbers may be underestimated.
Trying to look normal, most people say they have sex with their spouse once a week, since that’s the number they always hear.
At the same time, the data is based on a larger swath of the population than most of us interact with.
Most of us are friends with people who are like us, and who share our views. That’s why they are friends. And our group may not be typical.
One person who felt the studies didn’t fit his experience is in an open marriage, which constitutes less than 1% of the population. That’s not your typical group. Another is a feminist, also not typical of the population. A group of Southern Baptists would probably see things differently from these two.
Keep in mind that research reflects averages. You and your friends may not be typical.
We also tend to project our own views onto others. If we love sex, we don’t get that others don’t. If we think sex is dull, we have a hard time believing that others love it.
From the comments I’ve posted, it is clear that there is no one way that men or women behave. There is no one attitude.
But there are some strong social patterns:
- Surveys say men want, on average, 14 partners over a lifetime, while women say they want 1 or 2
- Women report enjoying sex less than men
- While prostitution finds plenty of male customers, female customers are in short supply. Gigolos are practically a myth
- Playgirl is perennially bankrupt, yet the male porn audience is huge
- Hooking up: College women get bored quickly and exit the scene, but college men want to continue casual sex even after leaving college
- Men are usually more enthusiastic about open marriage or swinging, and more often initiate the idea
- Male fantasies are more x-rated; female fantasies revolve more around romance
- For more survey data on how much women and men say they enjoy sex, see: DO Women Like Sex Less Than Men?
Is this conversation dated?
One woman commented:
- I came out of the feminist 70’s and this conversation seems a little dated. Really, we can do whatever we want to do and who cares?
Yet this issue still comes up with my 18, 19, and 20-something students. They still feel the conversation is relevant.
Another woman’s perspective:
- While we are free to do what we want, what good is the freedom when you feel used and discarded?
Or slut-shamed?
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