Blame the Skanks?

While I was arguing, apropos of Cheryl's recent anti-rape post, for an increase in sex -- only, virtuous sex -- I missed the parallel exchange taken up by my co-educatee at Fear & Loathing in Georgetown,* for whom there are Certain Gray Areas pertaining to, shall we say, sexual morals so loose as to transcend even the concept of sluttiness. Leading Cheryl to respond:

Unfortunately, many conservatives seem to have given up on the idea of masculine honor, that taking advantage of a drunk woman (which you can do without legally committing rape) is unmanly and disgraceful.

Worse, they act like they're proud to have done so. The attitude is too often, "Great, now we can act on our basest impulses, and when things go wrong...hey, you skanks made the rules." And they make this argument even as they acknowledge that the playing field isn't really level, and sex will always be more emotionally-fraught for women. Shouldn't a recognition of that fact--of women's special vulnerability--entail a moral responsibility to protect those women, even the drunk, skantily-clad ones?

There is an element of very womanly -- and not manly at all -- vengefulness in these kinds of contemporary male creeds of complicit permissiveness: you dared to assert yourself foolishly; now watch as I consent to a role in your undoing. Except when the genders are in the original position, the woman's hand in the man's undoing usually comes in the form of suddenly revealing that she is not ever going to have sex with him, rather than, as is now the case, revealing, as the guy is wont to do, that he is immediately (but probably not ever after that) have sex with the suddenly disgraced girl. This should be a descriptive enough account  to suggest how what Cheryl's bearing witness to brings forth the worst of both worlds -- men unnaturally adopting a naturally female attitude to gratify their most male desires at the expense of female dignity, women unnaturally adopting a naturally male attitude to put a desire-shaped plug in a dignity-shaped hole.

None of this really has any bearing on the so-called 'adult world', in which lots of women like sex and seek it out from obliging males because they want to and can handle themselves just fine. But college is, in increasing part by design, a sort of state of nature -- artificial as all they are -- in which kids are socialized out of their usually partial training in ethical restraint. Or at least the good-looking kids, though there are competitive games for the less attractive ones, too, who -- if they don't have money already -- can look forward to handsome prizes tomorrow for top performance today. How college kids are supposed to excel while running the gauntlet of sociosexual discovery -- lost virginity, gay experimentation, drug-induced dalliances, falling in love for the first time, the weird breakup, the psycho ex, the attempted suicides, the campus counseling, the pregnancy scare, ad fillintheblankum -- is beyond me, excluding of course a carefully calibrated regimen of grade inflation and inside recruitment deals with enviable firms...firms that reproduce and institutionalize the chaos of 'private' life that sets the tempo of public practice long after higher education has become an asterisk associated with a particular compartment of 'issues'.

There are lots of things to blame skanks for, particularly messing with the minds of the guys they like but won't screw, but on the above, and on related counts, they need the possibility of shelter, not more lashes with yet further wet noodles.

* UPDATE: F&LG posts a followup:

So where does this leave us:
Any violation of the above responsibilities is to be frowned upon and denounced vociferously. However, rape, as a criminal act, must be defined as when one party continues an action even after the other told them to stop. Or when one party is unknowingly drugged. Or one party is too drunk to willingly consent. I am not sure how to deal with both parties being drunk and no force is used.

By busting in their dorm room with a fire extinguisher.

Comments

[Edwin Large]

More to the point, how many times have men heard the phrase, "She's hot...I'd f*#k her?" We seem to sexually develop in a pre-historic world where we find a woman in the field, hit her over the head with a club, drag her to the cave where we satisfy our needs. However, when we realize that we simply do not have ultimate power in the socio-sexual situations with women to back up the phrase, we often revert to their even more basest instincts to get the object through any and all means. Often, this manifests itself in plying women with alcohol to soften the better instincts and offer an opportunity for men to satisfy themselves. This has less to do with women labeled as "skanks" than it does with women who remind men that they have little or no power in initiating the sexual relationship -- guys will always call women "skanks" when the women refuse sexual advances, and they will continue to pursue unethical methods of satisfying sexual desires until they/we realize that human sexuality is a collaborative enterprise and requires more than a pre-historic ethical understanding of the male/female sexual relationship. There will always be exceptions, but a life time of striking out and watching friends behave abominably have taught me that this is, at least at some level, true.

[Fear and Loathing in Gtown]

Please see my last, and final post on the subject. I think it will clarify what I was trying to say because I think Cheryl mischaracterized it, and subsequently so did you.

Thanks

[James]

I've linked to it in the post for ready reference. Mostly this is just more riffing on the basic theme - apologies if this seemed to implicate your latest comments in an inaccurate way...

[Edwin Large]

My apology if it seemed that I was mischaracterizing your post -- it was intended to simply be "more riffing" as James stated. It was not even my intention to comment on your post, but build on the theme that James had started, even if it was unintentional, of virtue in the male/female sexual dynamic. What sparked my interest was not your post, but James' response to it, and I don't believe that I reference your post at all, but I am truly sorry if it came across in any other way.

[Kyle]

Sorry, I have an even more recent one then the one you linked to, which is even more clear.

I realize you both were just riffing, but Cheryl still contends that I am going down the skanks deserve it argument, which bothers me immensely.

[Edwin Large]

I went back and read all of the posts and agree wholeheartedly that you are not going down the "skanks deserve it" argument -- far from it. It is clear that you never condone inappropriate, especially violent, male sexual behavior. You do highlight an important area where, all things being equal, men are disproportionately required to be the bastions of virtue when the woman is not behaving in a virtuous way. I would also be bothered if my comments were mischaracterized in such a way. I have enjoyed reading your posts and look forward to more dialogue on different subjects.

[Cheryl]

I call truce!!! FLG, I take it back. Come to the Doublethink happy hour, and I'll buy you a drink.