[lbo-talk] Language of Contempt

andie nachgeborenen andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com
Fri Jun 2 15:32:16 PDT 2006


There's the old-fashioned "gigolo." But as you know basically the reason there isn't an equivalent is the lingering double standard. It's OK, even admirable or enviable, for guys to fuck around as long as they are not married. Girls who behave like guys are "supposed to" and fuck as many guys or gals as they can are sluts or whores or easy or promiscious, which is supposed to be a bad thing. Every single piece of this doctrine of sexual morality is indefensible, of course.

In our distant youth, some time after sister #1 came out as gay, my late mother caught sister #2 (then a Sr in HS) with her boyfriend in a compromising position. Now at the time, I was a good deal more red than I am now, and chased girls a lot and caught them a fair amount of the time. (I did always use a rubber.) Our mom came out with the immortal cry anguish, What have I done wrong? My children are a communist, a lesbian, and a whore." This despite the fact that I was at least as active as sister #2. But it was my politics and not my pastimes that upset my mom.

--- Charles Brown <cbrown at michiganlegal.org> wrote:


>
>
>
> When I was still teaching, I would occasionally ask
> my students to
> propose a male equivalent of "slut" -- i.e., a word
> that had all the
> polemical force of "slut" but that clearly and
> unambiguously applied to
> males only. No one ever came up with a really
> persuasive candidate. The
> brighter women in the class would often fall back on
> "asshole,"
> acknowledging that while it wasn't specific to
> males, it was the best
> epithet that didn't focus on females. It is really
> amazing how much of
> the available language of contempt is gendered, in
> origin and usually in
> current usage. "Son of a bitch" is classic: aimed at
> men, but focusing
> on their mother, as though the worst thing you can
> say about a man is
> that he has a sexually erring mother.
>
> Carrol
>
> ^^^^
>
> CB: I know women who just use the same term for men
> who sleep around a lot
> as the one currently popular in hip hop genre which
> is a derivative of the
> term of offense on this thread.
>
>
> >From http://stangoff.com/?p=289#comments
>
>
>
> Difference
> Filed under: General, Gender
> By Stan at 10:43 pm, 5/12/06
> .constructed as hierarchy.
>
> http://stangoff.com/
>
>
> "The relationship is more like the relationship of
> worker and capitalist, in
> that workers' have only their labor power to sell
> and must sell it to make a
> living. By excluding women from wage-labor or
> equitable pay, they are
> economically forced to accept the deal. Marx's
> metaphorical "general
> prostitution of all labourers " gets at this from
> another angle.
>
>
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm
>
> Quoting Marx from the Economic and Philosophic
> Manuscripts of 1844:
>
> "Finally, this movement of opposing universal
> private property to private
> property finds expression in the brutish form of
> opposing to marriage
> (certainly a form of exclusive private property) the
> community of women, in
> which a woman becomes a piece of communal and common
> property. It may be
> said that this idea of the community of women gives
> away the secret of this
> as yet completely crude and thoughtless
> communism.[30] Just as woman passes
> from marriage to general prostitution, [Prostitution
> is only a specific
> expression of the general prostitution of the
> labourer, and since it is a
> relationship in which falls not the prostitute
> alone, but also the one who
> prostitutes - and the latter's abomination is still
> greater - the
> capitalist, etc., also comes under this head. - Note
> by Marx [31]] so the
> entire world of wealth (that is, of man's objective
> substance) passes from
> the relationship of exclusive marriage with the
> owner of private property to
> a state of universal prostitution with the
> community. This type of communism
> - since it negates the personality of man in every
> sphere - is but the
> logical expression of private property, which is
> this negation. "
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________
>
http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
>

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