Why has there always been an unfair double standard ?

I don’t think this double standard exists any longer – or is prevalent. In my experience, there is nothing taboo or dirty about men or women having a healthy, active sex life with many partners.

@hominid your right and wrong it doesn’t exist as much any more but it is still out there.

Well, speaking of, that stupid Arizona bill gives all kinds of protection to religious people, allowing them to discriminate for religious reasons, but, apparently, non-religious people don’t get the same protection.

Hey, damn it. I want to be able to discriminate too!!

I believe it goes back to women being men’s property to control.

If we speculate about the existence of this double standard historically, we could look to evolutionary psychology. There have been a number of studies that show that men generally fear sexual infidelity more than emotional infidelity, while women generally feel the opposite. Since a woman’s sexual infidelity reduces a man’s ability to be certain of paternity, it would make sense that this would be something men would fear greatly. But since a woman is biologically free from this concern, it would make sense that they view emotional infidelity as a serious violation. The pair bond is at risk. So, discouraging a female’s promiscuity could make sense in this context.

Sneaks up on @KNOWITALL with club in hand…“ugh, ugh!”

I think men that sleep with lots of women are also “sluts”, and I have told a few of them that to their face.

Because, right or wrong, women are seen as the mothers of the race.

I have heard the following argument, if you can call it that: Imagine you were a key that could unlock all locks, that would be cool. Imagine if you were a lock that could be unlocked by all keys, that wouldn’t be cool. ( I don’t like this metaphor, but apparently it makes sense to some people )

I’m not a lock to be opened by a key.. that is hideous.

I think it does have more to do with the property issue, like @KNOWITALL mentioned. The male of many species have ways of controlling the results of mating to ensure that their own offspring are the results of mating with a female. Male homo sapiens want to breed and ensure their seed is what results in the offspring, so they want to mate and mate and mate, but they don’t want the female to ‘breed around’ or he can’t be sure the resulting children are his. This is STILL reflected in ‘modern’ culture.

@cazzie Reminds me of Finding Nemo “mine, mine, mine”...lol

@cazzie An interesting idea, but in animal groups, the females will only mate with the best and strongest of the males, to ensure that her offspring is healthy. Inferior males don’t get the privilege of mating at all.

I have heard men refer to women who have slept with less than desirable men as “soiled”, but I never understood this. I am not a big fan of men with many conquests, so I don’t see why anyone would admire them.

@Skaggfacemutt the point you bring up doesn’t contradict what I wrote. I didn’t say ‘All Males’.

@filmfann Yeah, in the old west they called prostitues ‘soiled doves’, because doves are pure a/k/a “white” as snow, get it?

If we’re all honest here, I wonder how many women would like a lover with no experience. I wouldn’t.

Well, you said the males have ways to control the results of mating, as if the males pick the females. I am saying that it is always the females that pick the males, actually.

@KNOWITALL I tend to agree on the property side, but I think culture and religion did play a role in it in the past…
It’s a moral thing as well @Skaggfacemutt it about commitment.

@Skaggfacemutt for some reason your comment makes me feel sad for you.

Why, which comment? Do you mean the one about animals? Haven’t you ever watched National Geographic, and how the herd kicks out the young males, and the females will only mate with the dominant male. Weird, how can that possibly make you feel sad for me?

I don’t think you understood my comment at all.

The females aren’t choosing then, are they? The males fight amongst themselves and the women are left with the one male left. We are more complex creatures than that, thank goodness.

It still exists in the middle and high school level. Both my sons tell me stories about the girls with the “reputations”. One recently committed suicide because the the peer attacks over her reputation and the worst part is it was all hearsay.

Sometimes the female chooses the male who lost the fight, but be assured, it is the women’s acceptance of a particular male which/who does the choosing.

As for original Q. It is called history and not herstory. The men wrote and edited such words, their meaning and context and as such it is the males who pat their own backs and denigrate the females for doing the same as the males.

It is by now such an inbred thing that you actually hear more women than men denigrating their own sex for being a bit of a stud.

Also, stud refers to a part of the male anatomy lacking in most if not all femmes.

I don’t know about that, the females mate with whom they choose, and beat the crap out of the others.

But back to humans; I don’t think it’s “cool” to sleep around, no matter if you are male or female. I really don’t think I consider it less of a sin if the culprit is a man. I would never think of a guy that has boinked half the women in town as “macho.”

Junior high and high school kids are so immature, they are going to get peer attacks about one thing or another – if not sex, something else. I remember guys in my school getting razzed something terrible about sleeping with a girl that his friends thought was ugly, fat, or something. I have known girls in school that upgraded their level of desirability by sleeping with the cutest guy in school. I still think it swings both ways.

Why? Because we have not come a long way baby. There are plenty of sexist double standards. I was a 70’s girl and had plenty of sexual experiences because I WANTED to, not because I was some desperate, insecure slut.

Pffft…I defy anyone to call me a slut because I went for what I wanted, like a man ey? lol
I despise men that want some sweet little fawning, worshiping, nurturing woman to prop up their egos as well as the women that exploit waifishness and simpering condescending acts. Bah!
I am smart, bright and funny and yes, caring, but do not expect me to stroke your enormous ego. My ex husband was forever mad that I wasn’t the sterotypical little woman that would laugh at his jokes and fawn all over him.

He actually told me once that his mother always laughed at his dads jokes/stories even if she had heard them dozens of times before.
I replied that if I didn’t find something funny the first time I sure as hell wasn’t going to laugh at it a second or third or 27th time. He didn’t like that at all. lol
A lot of middle aged men want the Stepford wives…gag my with a spoonful of arrogance. haha
The programming is still alive and well.

@Coloma <applause>

I love an independent, strong woman, and think a man who settles for Stepford is really missing out. :) One of the reasons my husband and I work so well together is that he was raised by a strong woman, so he never expected anything less in a wife.

@tups I’ve heard the lock-and-key metaphor as well. The key that can open all the locks is the master key—the lock that can be opened by all the keys is worthless.

But honestly, whatever “evolutionary” reasons that may be given about males having many partners and females having to be more discriminating, I think ultimately it’s more about men having a dominant position in society for much of history. They want the freedom to sleep around but want the women they sleep with to only have one man.

@DominicX The Madonna-Whore complex?

Freud argued that the Madonna–whore complex is caused by oedipal castration fears which arise when a man experiences the affection he once felt for his mother with women he now sexually desires. In order to manage this anxiety, the man categorizes women into two groups: women he can admire and women he finds sexually attractive. Whereas the man loves women in the former category, he despises and devalues the latter group

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madonna%E2%80%93whore_complex

Yes, it doesn’t make sense. If anything, one would think women would be praised for their sexual prowess so more people could get in on that :P

I’m not saying that it’s an excuse, and it certainly isn’t fair, but I think the reason is that if the woman gets pregnant while she has multiple sexual partners, she won’t be sure who the father is.
There will never be any question who the mother is.