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Friday, 27 October 2017

The double standard

In the wake of all the recent revelations about Harvey Weinstein, a conversation about when to sleep with another human took place.

Historically, there has been judgement on women who followed their urges too soon, and a social narrative that indicates that a man will not be interested in a woman who gives herself too freely. But this narrative has holes. Within the narrative around sex that we have created as a society (a narrative that is thankfully changing, albeit at a snails pace), women are pursued, and, eventually impressed by the attention, become flattered and eventually learn to be attracted to the man. Which we all know is a lot of horse shit. You either like someone or you don't. You either want to jump their bones, or you don't. You can grow to like them more, or less, but you ideally wouldn't choose to spend time with them if you didn't like them. But so coercive the narrative, that it's possible men make themselves feel uncomfortable by being physically intimate too soon. Retrospectively wondering if the act was mutually lustful, or if they pushed someone beyond their comfort levels. Whether consent was present. Or not. And because men are taught not to be serious, or have emotional conversations with someone who they have done a shag with, because they are taught to separate the physical from the emotional, they have no way to get past this discomfort. This question of was what I did okay? Or really really not? And so they walk away, because it's too much. And they myth continues. Girl, I mean, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

Either that, or every man you slept with is as much of an ass as you thought, in which case, as you were.

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