Honestly, my true answer is…. Maybe.

But so what? Why is woman’s self-respect subject to such (self-) surveillance and scrutiny? Sometimes it’s making love, and sometimes it’s “just a fuck.” Your pattern of sexual behavior doesn’t mean you don’t want or deserve the same things as the “prudish” girls do … like being appreciated. There’s no need to typecast yourself at all. Experimentation is wonderful and empowering. So why denigrate one “category” at the expense of another?

On the other hand, a woman who feels chemistry and has sex once with her friend’s boyfriend … is that “slut” behavior?

What is a “slut,” really?

I may be a conspiracy theorist, but articles like this are a type of veiled propaganda. Poor women! Now that you are educated you will never be able to get married and have babies and keep your uterus from floating around making you crazy and you will never be truly happy. I think there is also a bedrock bias that a women’s sexual power is equal to or greater than political or social power (why have the right to vote if you can get him to want to fuck you). I, for one, have the personal goal of doing a lot more whoring in my 30s!

However, the Slate article actually seems to accept this hypothesis. It’s like the author is saying “Yeah, men are crap…but it’s all women’s fault!”

Perhaps some of these authors need to take a few steps back and see that gender roles and society as a whole are changing…and that’s not necessarily a bad thing! If people in general are making different life choices than we were 50, 20, even 10 years ago, then perhaps there’s good reason for that.

Some follow apollo, some dionysis. These threads are dionysis heavy. Apollo couldn’t get any for all his quality. How ugly our baser desires can be!

Marriage often works best across an age difference. In our day, it is how we transcend a shoehorned ‘equality’ that we clamor for in word and piss all over in deed. I do not seek an equal, but a compliment. I meet fewer Daphnes now that I have taken in that lesson.

Maenads leave torn critters in their wake. They throw great parties, though.

I agree with some of our posters above that economic metaphors are nearly as useless here as in ‘economics’; I take economists just marginally more seriously than psychologists in our world of nihilistic equivocation. The comments have shown more insight than the original piece.
Witnessing divorce soured me on the whole business. We always impugn the players and ignore the game; I say law written for trial lawyers have eroded the very relevance of marital agreements.
The girls like their slackers. They have their reasons, even if some are not consciously
realized.
And I have mine. College sluts make great redtube fodder, but my distaste for such in real life is visceral. Perhaps I am just getting old.

We all do. And our feelings about these things change. I think this whole controversy is a symptom of our culture’s obsession with youth. It is our elders who tell of the worth of lasting marriage. Tweenagers and their senseless drives can rationalize circles around themselves till they are blue in the face. All will face a different song after they are done being kids.

The slate article was garbage. The comments, however, have been a blast to read.

Second, I agree with other commenters that the piece makes men sound terrible. Misdirected sexual energy is at the core of a man’s desire to succeed? Shoot, define ‘success.’ Are we talking money, prestige, power? Or, are we talking happy home life? Or happy hippy artist life? I assume he means the money part, though.

In that case, what of women like me who are successful business lady-types? All along I thought I was going to law school and establishing myself in a good career because I did not want to be broke anymore. I didn’t realize that I did all this to get access to better cock.

Wait! I’m not supposed to be after cock. I’m supposed to be after a good-earner with good genes for my babies.

Anyhow, this was a totally offensive article that did not belong on Slate! Grr. I don’t mind reading articles written by folks I might not agree with, but this article was utterly sexist crap that did nothing other than reinforce the stereotypical gender narrative. I’m tired of that point of view. It’s the proverbial dead horse of idea-land.

Fail.

This article is offensive to all women and couples. I have been living with my partner for over three years and we aren’t getting married anytime soon. How dare he devalue loving, consentual relationships!

There were a couple of points that the original author touched on that did seem to back up his thesis. The one that stood at most was the number of women participating in sexual acts that they didn’t actually want to participate in. That does not speak of women’s sexual liberation.

I think following up further on that point, and also on the point of ‘what these women say they want’ in the surveys, rather than what the author’s idea of what they way (marriage, children, LTR, etc) would also be informative. If these women are participating in behavior that contradicts their own personal desires, then the author may have a point. But he didn’t seem to spend any time on that topic.

@Darren – the article in Slate was “robustly researched”? It gave a couple of links to studies that are either obsolete (the 1989 one) or point to drastically different conclusions than what he is claiming, for example, this study (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2780366) that the author of the Slate article claims concludes that “when men outnumber women, women have the upper hand” actually claims that if there is an under supply of women, female rate of illiteracy increases, women marry young and do not participate in labor force. Quite an upper hand they have.

Now, anyone is welcome to think anything they want about the Slate article. It may very well be offensively antediluvian. I assure you, as a man, I find these “where have all the real men gone” articles equally offensive. I don’t define my manhood based on a woman’s idea of what my “adult responsibilities” should be.

Maybe, what we need, are more articles from women sharing how happy they are with how things have become, instead of articles from these frustrated princesses.

I mean really, don’t you poor women know that sexual pleasure is really just currency to get you a diamond and a house and if you don’t think of your vagina as some sort of fiat printing press that you’re really causing orgasm inflation due to your sexual (fiscal) irresponsibility which of course results in your whole gender humping your way down the Road to Serfdom where no one will buy you drinks in bars and even worse, it might lead to pussy hyperinflation where guys cant walk out of the house without slipping in a puddle and getting laid 14 times, but since its all devalued, the only girls who will get to live out their obvious life long dream of being married and breeding are the ones who have wheelbarrow’s full of vagina’s to beat the vagina/marriage exchange rate. However all is not lost girls, so long as you keep your vagina’s pure and pristine and pray for a husband every night, those few will be valued as gold.

Lets run with the metaphor eh? Maybe we can pool and securitize female sexual desire in order to better manage risk, since they were never educated in finance they cant know the value between their thighs. We can collect all of that risky devalued extramarital sex and break it into tranches, then issue a debt swap obligation to cover the liability, and in no time women will only be fucking republicans and criminal bankers and the rest of the country will need an ass bailout.

Side notes, a bunch of textual citations to crap is not evidence, and the plural of anecdote is not data. Also, and I could be way off here, but I think the examples laid down in the past two or three generations in regards to marriage in the US has done more to turn people off to the idea than women deciding they can screw how and why and who they want. On one hand, live and enjoy yourself and feel pleasure and think fondly on the lovers of your lifetime, on the other, fight about money, and kids, and housing, and cheat on each other once the source of your never ending responsibilities ceases to turn you on, and then fight in court for a few years and bankrupt yourselves and spend the rest of your life fighting proxy battles at each other through your children. I know what I plan to pick.

Regnerus is saying, “listen folks, you think we’re all lazy slobs who sit around play video games and smoke pot all day? That’s because we have no incentives not to! Haha! Maybe if women would quit putting out, we’d have incentive to get our shit together” I don’t think he’s digging into gender roles or questioning masculinity at all. He’s bragging about great we’ve got it, like that loud asshole in the men’s locker room. I think you’re all giving him way too much credit.

As an over-educated dood trying to find a job right now, it’s frustrating (and at times feels emasculating). I have tons of experience, 2 masters degrees from prestigious universities and the best work I can find is a very junior position. Maybe $40,000/year if I’m lucky. I think a lot of men are frustrated with this; feeling nostalgic to the days when you could get a relatively solid gig straight out of college. Thus, rather than accept that things are different, guys like Regnerus just pass the blame to women for taking the jobs once given to us. Then, they overcompensate by bragging about not moving through the ranks and becoming successful. They could if they wanted, they just don’t want to. Right.

Fuck you, Slate.

Ditto.

http://www.metafilter.com/100944/And-the-battle-of-the-sexes-continues

The article’s also based on the recent all-too-common popular media trope that modern youth are failing to mature and failing to thrive, which is as far as I can tell nothing but aging Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers griping bitterly at twentysomething Millennials who DARE to continue to have fun even though the economy sucks.

What a shitty, petulant piece.