Female Chauvinist Pigs?

[delalluvia]

So are you saying women are weaker???

Brad

What opinionista said.  Physically, of course.  There is sexual dimorphism in our species.  Men, on average, are bigger and have more musculature than women.  Just fact.

[delalluvia]

I often have the vice versa feeling with American movies. 'Under no circumstances have sex before the third date, otherwise he'll think the woman is a sl*t' seems to be a motto in Amercian movies and series.
 
I have to admit that it adds the stereotype of "the prude Americans".

Sad but true.  The northern Americas were settled by Puritans, don't forget. 

A friend of mine once met this guy, and she wanted to sleep with him on the first date.  She was that attracted to him.  But she decided not to because her clothes were too complicated to easily get in and out of.

That simple fact made up her mind.

Luckily for her, I guess.  The guy went on to have a 4 year relationship with her and let it be known that had she slept with him on the first date, he would have considered her a 'slut' and never seen her again - after agreeing to have sex her first, of course. 

The fact that she would have slept with him on the first date and is thus someone he would have considered a slut and not worthy of his company as boyfriend but perfectly fine because she waited one extra week apparently didn't register to him as wonky thinking.

It does to me - and my friend.  Go figure.

[delalluvia]

True. But throughout history, this has been common practice for powerful men in many societies.

And incidentally, there is no known culture in which women commonly have multiple husbands.

There are several actually.  The one I remember best is somewhere in the Himalayan area - Tibet, Nepal, someplace like that.  But it's certainly not because women have more status or get more status when they have more husbands. It's their solution to lack of fertile land availability.

The woman usually marries brothers.  No matter who gets her pregnant, they are all related, so the land stays in the family and the woman can only have a limited number of children to pass the land to through inheritance. 

That is one culture where a man's desire to procreate with a bunch of different women is a disadvantage socially - and economically.

[serious crayons]

The woman usually marries brothers.  No matter who gets her pregnant, they are all related, so the land stays in the family and the woman can only have a limited number of children to pass the land to through inheritance. 

That is one culture where a man's desire to procreate with a bunch of different women is a disadvantage socially - and economically.

Not only that, but the genes stay within the family. Evolutionarily speaking, it's the classic exception that proves the rule.

[lia]

There are several actually.  The one I remember best is somewhere in the Himalayan area - Tibet, Nepal, someplace like that.  But it's certainly not because women have more status or get more status when they have more husbands. It's their solution to lack of fertile land availability.

The woman usually marries brothers.  No matter who gets her pregnant, they are all related, so the land stays in the family and the woman can only have a limited number of children to pass the land to through inheritance. 

That is one culture where a man's desire to procreate with a bunch of different women is a disadvantage socially - and economically.

It looks to me as if this system must produce a lot of surplus girls. Seeing that boys often get a raw deal in US polygamist setups or even get discarded: I wonder what happens to the girls not required for breeding in the example you describe above?

[delalluvia]

This is a fascinating discussion, particularly to the mother of both a boy and a girl, even though by now both are - at least on paper - adults.

I wrote about one aspect of this elsewhere, i.e. why it's predominantly women who write slash (m/m fanfiction), and some of it seems to me to fit right into this discussion, so here's most of it:

...why women write m/m fanfiction, instead of sticking to what they (should) know, i.e. m/f stories and m/f sex. The trouble is that heterosexual sex is simply loaded with prior assumptions, 1000s of years of conditioning won’t go quietly. Two men meet, they like each other (NOT a prerequisite), they have sex (even if in secret). That's what men do. No no, I know that's not what all men do, but it's accepted by society, nobody thinks of them as "sluts" just because of it. A man and a girl meet, and no, they don't just have sex. Society demands that there's at least some commitment before they have sex, otherwise the girl is considered a slut. Not the boy, of course. And afterwards: does he think any less of her because of it? Does he actually want a relationship? Do we think any less of him if he doesn't? What about the risk of pregnancy? There's an inherent power imbalance in heterosexual relationships, caused essentially by the biological difference. Even today the old double standards often prevail: boys may be given condoms and told to be careful, girls are much more likely to be exhorted to abstain until after marriage. And not entirely without reason: after all it’s the girls who are mainly suffering the consequences of unwanted pregnancy, boys/men can walk away more or less unscathed (except hopefully financially) and society won’t do any more than frown heavily. Another aspect: in my job I see a lot of police reports, and the cases of violence within relationships seem to be about 100 m/f to 1 f/m (though no doubt many more case go unreported). I have yet to see a police report of f/m rape, I see a lot of the other sort, plus the occasional m/m (though the latter are no doubt underreported, too).

The ramifications are endless, and a lot of women, consciously or not, turn to writing m/m fiction to bypass all of them and just concentrate on personality issues. Two equal partners, even their sexual roles interchangeable, just imagine the possibilities. Too bad and really ironic that a lot of those writers promptly proceed to make one (or both) of the protagonists into a woman in all but shape. Conditioning, as I said before.

Edited to clarify: I wrote "girls are much more likely to be exhorted to abstain until after marriage. And not entirely without reason". No, it's not how I brought up my kids, I am well aware of the dangers of forbidden fruit (see alcohol), but I can see how parents who love their daughters and want to protect them from the life-changing consequences of early pregnancy may come to think abstinence is the only way to achieve that.

Great post.  I posted something along the same lines on a thread in the Story board when I wrote about why I prefer writing m/m fan fiction:

I write m/m fanfiction in at least two fan worlds - have 2 stories going based on BBM (but in alternate universes).  I've always been interested in gay male relationships.  They just tend to be fascinating to me because of the dynamics, so different from male/female or f/f relationships.  In m/f fanfiction, there is always the running undercurrent of domesticity, the soap opera dramas of pregnancy, children, marriage, family relations, all of which are extremely uninteresting to me.  While gay men and women can also be involved in these things, obviously, most of the fanfiction I prefer and write doesn't deal with them

e.g. they're knights well met while fighting the crusades, two monks, two soldiers, etc.

[delalluvia]

It looks to me as if this system must produce a lot of surplus girls. Seeing that boys often get a raw deal in US polygamist setups or even get discarded: I wonder what happens to the girls not required for breeding in the example you describe above?

Not sure.  One healthy woman can have a child for every year of her marriage, but seeing as how these people live in such staggeringly remote areas, I tend to think that health care probably isn't the best or readily available and perhaps infant/child mortality takes sufficient numbers of the 50/50 split between male and female babies.

Gag, just found this, granted, the reporting is over 30 years old in this case, but I don't think rural areas have improved that much and it does seem to indicate large surpluses of baby girls wasn't much of a problem in the past:

...indigenous Tibetan populations in northern Nepal who also lack modern health care: for example, in Limi as of 1976, on average 43 per cent of the children born to women had died by the time of the study[17]. Similar findings were reported for the Nyinba of northwest Nepal, Where 54.3 per cent of all children born to women had died[18]. Fieldwork conducted in a relatively poor pastoral nomadic population in western Tibet between 1986 and 1988 also revealed a higher percent of morality, at 26 per cent[19].

http://www.tibet.cn/tibetzt-en/jhsy/jhsy_4.htm

[magicmountain]

Forget raunch – here come the “ladettes”

There's a growing group of young women who are featuring in statistics that used to be the domain of testosterone-driven young men.  More girls are being arrested and charged with aggressive assaults and other crimes than ever before. Girls are now drinking at the same or even more dangerous levels than boys, and they are doing this at younger and younger ages.

These "ladettes", as they have been called, think that being totally drunk, behaving aggressively and even becoming violent is the way to go.

****
The number of women found guilty of crimes has jumped dramatically, partly as a result of alcohol-fuelled young "ladettes" trying to emulate young males. The number of young women offenders has risen 17 per cent in the past four years, compared to just 4.5 per cent for men.

The most significant increase is for traffic offences and in offences against the justice system, which include breaches of bail or bonds and obstructing police. In each of these categories the number of women convicted in NSW jumped about 35 per cent between 2003 and 2007, according to the most recent figures obtained from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research.

Paul Dillon, director of Drug and Alcohol Research and Training Australia, said minor offences were often linked to alcohol. The behaviour of such ladettes was the result of a societal change around alcohol, which had gone from frowning on women drinking in public to a time in which women were drinking as much, or more, than their male counterparts, he said.

Women were also using illicit drugs in more risky ways, and methamphetamines, in particular, if mixed with alcohol, were often linked to violent behaviour, he said. "The whole idea of gangs of young women committing offences was something that was most probably not really heard of 10 years ago."

http://blogs.watoday.com.au/fionastanley/2008/06/the_rise_of_the.html

http://murraybridge.yourguide.com.au/news/national/national/general/ladettes-lead-upsurge-in-female-crime/1416671.aspx

But maybe there's hope with this "Ladettes to Ladies" program lol

http://www.lifestylechannel.com.au/shows/show.asp?id=80&tab=episodes

PS When I was around 11 or 12 I was totally fearless and an out of control delinquent - around the age of 15 I told myself to stop being an idiot and snapped out of it. My inner parent (or inner lady) must have kicked in lol.