Wusses and Sluts: Across Enemy Lines

By: EM Sky
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:24:27
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Given the way we start out in life, it's amazing that so many relationships work out as well as they do. We spend most of our young lives desperately avoiding any and all traits that "belong to" the opposite sex, and then as adults we are suddenly invited to embrace that very opposite (in another human being, of course) and forge life-long bonds of love, romance, companionship, and mutual understanding. And we wonder why relationships seem so complicated...

Any girl will tell you that the worst thing you can be called as a young teen is a "slut." (Not that grown women would appreciate the epithet, but at some point labels stop having the same power to affect our sense of self-worth.)

But when you think about it, what does this particular slur mean? A "slut" is supposed to be a girl who sleeps around, right? She's a girl who likes sex, or who is more sexually expressive than her peers.

Why is this such an insult? It's simple really: in our world, sexuality is supposed to belong to the realm of men. (The biological origin of the six billion people on this planet being, of course, a complete mystery.) So if blatant sexuality is "a guy thing," then to call a girl a slut is to claim that she acts like a boy in her sexuality--which is seen as deeply offensive.

Meanwhile, over on the other side of the fence, boys are trying desperately not to look like "wusses." And wusses are boys who (supposedly) aren't "tough." They're boys who openly express their emotions.

Now the problem in this case is that tender emotions are supposed to belong to the realm of women. (How Ron Howard or Robert Redford makes such heart-warming films is, again, an unfathomable mystery.) So to call a boy a "wuss" is essentially to claim that he acts like a girl in his emotional expression. Which is also a devastating insult.

Wanting to avoid the derision of our peers, girls try desperately to act like they don't think about sex that much (actually we do), and boys try desperately to act as though they have no emotional sensitivity (actually they do). But then at some point these emotionally sensitive women and these sexually expressive men are trying to make a go of a life together, while at the same time trying not to veer too much into each other's territories. It's a recipe for disaster.

For a relationship to have any hope of surviving the trials and tribulations of life, we must venture into each other's territories. We must reclaim those natural aspects of our personalities that we spent so much time trying to deny.

So am I claiming that men are naturally as emotional as women? Or that women are naturally as sexual as men? Well, maybe we are, and maybe we aren't. But I am definitely claiming that we have far more of both territories in common by nature than we are currently taught to express.

Schoolyard society teaches us to deny most of our common ground, and I think that's a terrible shame. How bad would it be, honestly, for us to admit that women have powerful sexual drives and that men have powerful emotional ones?

After all, women have been making love with men, and men have loved the offspring of these unions, through time immemorial. If women were just a little more free in expressing their natural sexuality--not in an empty show of emotionless "power" but in the genuine sharing of heartfelt passion--and if men were just a little more free in expressing their natural emotions--not in a "needy" show of abject insecurity but in the genuine sharing of love and compassion--we'd all live much more balanced lives.

And we'd all be that much happier sharing those lives with each other.

- EM Sky, on Business, Life, and Society for the Whole Human Being

Article source: Expert Articles