My advisor and a dear friend who has taken pity on my linguistic penuries are checking the latest draft of my asshole thesis. So relaxation last night in the form of reefer and more I, Claudius. Watched up until Messalina got decapitated. Man, Messalina. She’s out of fashion now but her name used to be synonymous with a vicious she-beast of an epic super slut. For example, this passage from Jane Eyre wherein Mr. Rochester explains to the title character how his genteel whore mongering was different from his mad wife’s profligacy:I tried dissipation, never debauchery: that I hated, and hate. That was my Indian Messalina’s attribute: rooted disgust at it and her restrained me much, even in pleasure. Any enjoyment that bordered on riot seemed to approach me to her and her vices, and I eschewed it.
We don’t know what nasty shit Mrs. Rochester got up to before being locked up in her husband’s attic, but it does grate on the reason that he should get all pissy about it while describing fucking his way across Europe to the adoring woman he just tried to turn into a unconscious bigamist. Silly Mr. Rochester. Nonetheless, what a marvel a woman’s name can be such a strong metaphor almost 2000 years after her death. Like Jezebel, who’s even more epic since the stories about her aren’t so graphic and she’s even longer dead. It's ironic that these women probably didn’t do half the shit they’re credited with – the impressions we have of them now are likely post-mortem defamations from victorious enemies – yet language remembers THEM, not the victors.
When I was teaching English, I remarked time and again that many of my students - the Italians in particular - had a hard time distinguishing between ‘whore’ and ‘slut’. The notion that whores sell, sluts give, and this distinction is important seemed as foreign as English itself to many of them. At the time I thought that was just a bit of Latin silliness. I’ve since realized that bit of silliness is far more common than I once thought. It’s also less important, since both families of words are used as vicious pejoratives all over the place.
How very insulting. I declare, if I was a straight man I don’t know how I would be able to stand it; a widespread, ingrained notion that if a woman wants to nail you, she’s a crappy person, professionally engaged, or both? You poor bastards. Are you content to be considered so repulsive and sub-human? Rise up, men. Stop letting the world slap you down like naughty dogs by insulting us. It may be a long and hard battle. But one day, you shall achieve equality. You shall overcome!
13 commenti:
You've managed to fool a whore into thinking you liked her? Good job. I did that once in Italy so he'd give me weed.
Yeah, I find boy 'sluts' sad in the same way. In both cases it's a mad desire to be accepted, in both cases it amounts to an unsexual neurosis. But it bugs me the girls get shit on rather more for having that neurosis.
Oh Johannes. It makes evolutionary sense for *everyone* to have multiple sexual partners. Women are only fertile for a few days a month and there's no guarantee that one selected mate will be present on those days in traditional societies. Also unlike most animals, women’s periods of fecundity aren’t visually obvious or even physically obvious to herself, meaning if she wants a baby she essentially needs to be nailing men constantly. The thing is for women, it also makes evolutionary sense to have her multiple partners surreptitiously so she can fool one man into thinking her offspring belong to him and therefore providing her and them with meat protein from hunting expeditions and the societal status that comes with being permanently linked to a man who provides the extended family group with that meat protein. The marriage contract represents a compromise: a woman pretends to give up her right to nail the world so that a man gets her extra protein. Though really it's a social thing, since non-hunting foragers - traditionally women - get protein enough without the large game animals men traditionally hunt. But then, considering human sexual pleasure patterns and the fact that we've all been trying to nail each other without making babies for all of recorded history, I'm not sure how important these concerns are in terms of judging who gets to be called a slut and who doesn't.
A man-slut is the same as what you seem to think a woman-slut is: someone who has too much sex for reasons other than sensual pleasure. And if that sounds unrealistic, think for a moment of *Declin de l'empire americain* and the reason ugly fat old Remy was so attractive to women: it's rare enough to find a man who really, really loves it.
They *say* they do. But unless they leave comments, I don't know.
THAT WAS A HINT! I'M BORED AND STUCK IN FRONT OF A COMPUTER! AM I GOING TO HAVE TO CONTENT MYSELF WITH CALLING LADY A HO AND ARGUING WITH A TOKEN STRAIGHT MALE (TM) ABOUT THE NATURE OF SLUTTERY?
Oh god, it's only 15:20.
The fact some men are sluts has nothing to do with the equality you try to describe. If you suggest that some men make themselves impossible to respect through their sexual excesses, or that some men ill-advisedly fuck out of the same insecurity and fear of loneliness that projects slutty chicks into stupid sitautions, you're abusing *reality*. And language is nothing but a living, clumsy reflection of reality.
Besides, such men are already described as sluts by alot of people - and not just the kind you'd call 'faggotty'. The word has already changed. If you think a living language is an abused language, try to get a job with anal assfuckers in the Academie Francaise and leave the beautiful fluidity of the English language ALONE.
Interesting point that the language remembers Messalina and Jezebel and not their enemies, eventhough it's the enemies who were victorious. Very true...
You like that word 'stud'. Tell me, besides you now, when is the last time you heard it used in a way that wasn't heavily ironic?
Perhaps this an emotional subject for you, which makes you get "promiscuity stemming from psychic emptiness" to the exclusion of the more general "someone who has too much sex for reasons other than sensual pleasure". Perhaps it also makes you turn a narrow-ish discussion of the nature of sluttitude into sweeping statements about general fundamental gender differences. I agree men and women are different sexually. I'll add, if that were the only way we were different, this world would be less naughty than it is. And also, that the fundamental difference between one person and another, one culture’s mores and another, one culture's age to another, or ones person's mentality from one day to the next is so profound that your talk of ratios of motives for fucking is subjective, unrealistic, and dangerous.
But I'll admit "someone who has too much sex for reasons other than sensual pleasure" is also very subjective; a definition that I apply to promiscuous people whose motives *I* don't trust, because *I* am amused rather than disgusted by sexual juggernauts who're getting a lot out of life and don't want to insult to them.
Of course, if I was married to one I might feel different. So getting out of my own head and into the world, "someone who makes themselves impossible to respect through their sexual excesses" probably applies better. It puts the onus of deciding who gets to be a slut on the person who chooses to use the term. Exactly where it belongs. And again: if you don't think many, many men make themselves impossible to respect by their sexual excesses - what can I say except, pay more attention.
i think that the only difference between a slut and a stud is that men delude themselves with their bravado (oo! look at me I'm seducing all these women) and realize when they're 60 and alone that they're "psychically empty", or they may never realize it because men are just like that. women realize from the very beginning that being as promiscuous as a stud means nothing to their psyche and everything to their emotional and physical attachment, however brief, to another person.
i think it comes down to fear - a man would never admit to any kind of emotional attachment as a "stud". a woman, whose role is normally more motherly cannot generally be seen as a "stud" since that emotional distance is frightening to men - hence the negative connotation of the word "slut".
but the times, johannes, they are a-changin. the Rémi's of this world are 60 and dying. the women are wearing business suits and storming the Stock Exchange -- i simply can't dismiss the numbers of people i know that blur the line between what is man and what is woman, it's part of my reality. women and men may be fundamentally different but like many things in this world, i don't think it's a bad thing to say, "a slut is someone who has indiscriminate sex with many people and a stud is someone who has discriminate sex with many people."
dictionaries change every day.
It is a bit strange, isn't it, Jiri? It's difficult for me to think of another situation where 'losers' enter into the language like that. In fact it leads me to believe these women in particular must have pulled off stunning political achievements for enough enmity to be generated for them to enter into the language in such a pejorative way, and they may not have been the 'losers' in a real sense. Maybe like using history's greatest monster Napoleon as a one-man metaphor for a short guy with a power complex. Although maybe the world thinks of Napoleon as a loser. What do you think? When I think of him I think of a second-rank Corsican who took over the world, not the sad sack who was bored to death on St. Helena.
Oh, history, we look and look for the truth and sometimes all we find is ourselves! Even when we're lucky enough to think we have all the facts. I love history.
"I simply can't dismiss the numbers of people I know that blur the line between what is man and what is woman, it's part of my reality."
Oh, such lines. We never know how they'll be from one decade to the next, but we go to war for them, the French set cars on fire for them, and we torture ourselves over them! I agree they're there, but there are probably less fickle things for us to get emotional about. Like food and nudity.
Yeah... I think that those women were not the losers in the real sense, whereas Napoleon was. And he would have still stayed a looser even if he had conquered all of Europe and managed to hold onto it.
There are other people whose names are now part of our language - Freud and Kafka come to my mind, but neither of them got their heads cut off, and so you can't really say that someone was victorious over them.
Julius Caesar gave as a name for a month and got stabbed to death. But the month was named after him while he was powerful, and I'd say he was more of a victor than a loser.
By the way the president of Turkmenistan also named a month after himself (and another one after his mother), but that's a different story. Speaking of charming people, yesterday was Tiberius's birthday. He was born of November 16, 42 BC. A good reason to have a party, no?
Maybe I'll send you a copy of *I, Claudius* for Christmas (that might be my generic present for awhile). Have you read it?There's an urgency through it that reminds you of Robert Graves the author and stops it from being a perfect work of fiction - a little like a Robertson Davies book - but it has some DAMN good Tiberius stories.
Why do you think Napoleon was a loser? I think he was because he was the greatest monster in history.
Haven't read I Claudius - actually, haven't even heard about it before.
I think Napoleon was a loser because he didn't know when to stop and because he was willing to sacrifice anything for his personal ambition. At least that's the impression I have of him. And the idea that he set out to conquer Europe (or a good chunk of it) doesn't help either.
Why was he the greatest monster in history?
Well, I don't think the movements of history are ever due to just one man, but I do think when it comes to one man's personal ambition causing the maximum number of deaths Napoleon wins. He practically turned Europe into a tomb. And why? I don't know. Because he was Napoleon. Monstrous.
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