That said, you’re still letting men slide for being sluts. Every time there’s a morality piece it always comes back to the girls behavior. I’m tired of hearing all this concern for girls emotional and physical well-being, and no one bothering to think about how much damage is done to teenage boys, or even how much damage the “boys will be boys” attitude does to teenage girls. More importantly, do we have any hard statistics about how many people actually participate in hook-ups, and more importantly, how frequently. Most people drink on occasion without getting anywhere near an addicts behavior, should they be treated like an addict because they drink? I don’t think hook-ups are right for all women, but I don’t think slapping a “Slut” label on women who it works for helps anyone. I think this whole “hook-up culture” is overblown, the amount of people actually hooking up is probably much smaller then most people think. You and most other writers of morality pieces seem to me more interested in punishing sluts, for being, well whatever it is you don’t like, since everyone has a different definition for what a slut it.

Basically, if you really wanted to curb “hook-ups” you’d be more interested in empowering women. Encouraging them to do soul searching, figure out what’s best for them. Not to do it because society presents it as a norm or because some guy wants to. Heck, do the same for boys, soul searching might help some boys figure out that they’d prefer to not try and sleep with everything that moves.

“You prefer to ignore underlying causes, and direct causes and would rather just blame the sluts.”

I never said men weren’t responsible for their behavior. They are. But this is a blog for women, not men.

The undercurrent of “women as victims” concerns me more. Put this into a different context. Assume a girl loves the taste of alcohol, and if she takes one drink, she loses the internal self-restraint to stop pouring the next drink until she is so drunk she passes out. If this is her regular routine, she has an addiction … she’s an alcoholic.

Is it hateful to call her a drunk? Is she the victim of the local bar or alcohol store, the movies, or parents who somehow failed to tell her not to drink? Is the solution to close every bar and alcohol production plant in the world to remove all temptation? I don’t think so. The problem resides within the individual, and she’s in need of serious medical help. Identifying/acknowledging the problem is prerequisite to recovery.

Conversely, should society say that the alcoholic behavior is the new norm, and it’s okay for everyone to emulate the alcoholic’s lifestyle? Absolutely not!

I’m sure there are a few girls with a sex addiction who need serious medical help. But the vast majority of girls/women are not sex addicts. We have the fully-functioning internal restraint necessary to resist temptation. If we’ve adopted the sex addict’s behavioral lifestyle, we also have the ability to stop it any time we want. And most do.

I think that was Raquel Welch’s point: the hook-up culture pushes the notion that the sex addict’s behavioral lifestyle is the new societal norm for relations between the sexes. It’s a lie. The non-addict simply isn’t physiologically wired that way. As earlier posts about fairly famous feminists who rejected the hook-up behavior reveal, the emptiness of the lifestyle leaves even the hardiest woman with a defeated self-condemning hangover (and probably a few sexually transmitted diseases she didn’t expect).

“Besides at no point in your post did you talk about how women can be sexy or what sexy is.”

Great point! One worth exploring. How would you define sexy?

So, in other words, men are incapable of abstaining from sex. In your words, men can’t say no to sex. At all. Heck, by what you’ve said, men are incapable of controlling themselves in anyway. But it’s not their fault for being irresponsible, they aren’t being labeled sluts and scorned by society. Conversely, you also say

“we girls are the masters of our own bodies, and no one forces us to participate in any form of sexual activity?

So we have complete, rational control of our bodies at all times, and men don’t. Wow. My point stands. You prefer to ignore underlying causes, and direct causes and would rather just blame the sluts. You prefer to ignore that it takes two to tango, and that the guy is just a responsible for slutty behavior as the girl, but it’s easier to just accept the status quo. It’s easier to not think and just hatefully call out sluts.

Besides, at no point in your post did you talk about how women can be sexy or what sexy is. Instead of seemingly taking a position to talk about how to be sexy without being slutty, you completely bypass it to go off about how awful sluts are. Instead of trying to help, you’re more interested in tearing people down. You might not be a slut, but that kind of pettiness isn’t sexy.

Yes, I think so. Except in rape or child abuse cases, we girls are the masters of our own bodies, and no one forces us to participate in any form of sexual activity. (Force is what makes rape so heinous.)

We can hardly play the “victim,” either … of society, Hollywood, poor parenting, peer pressure, and certainly not men … if we choose to engage sexually. If a girl’s a slut, she has no one to blame but herself. (Maybe ’slut’ is like porn: we may not be able to define it easily, but we know it when we see it.)

Lots of people question why teenage boys won’t control themselves in sex or anything else. Car insurance companies have done plenty of research on why boys are more reckless (irresponsible) than girls behind the wheel. But they are. The bottom line is that boys need cooperative girls willing to sink to their level to make it happen.

So the choice is the girl’s, and responsibility/blame goes with that choice. The good part is that any girl can change her behavior any time she wants. Life offers lots of second changes.

Thanks. Really, thanks. Instead of thoughtfully trying to look at how society and media have pushed forward oral sex as consequence free, instead of questioning why the mother in article wasn’t already talking to her daughter about sex, instead of wondering why american parents in general are so afraid to talk about sex and it’s consequences, and instead of wondering how teenage boys are damaged by this as well, you just go and make it all the girls fault. No one likes a slut. Let’s not worry about how damaging those messages are either. Let’s just keep in mind that a 13 year old girl who particaptes in oral sex (I’m not even touching the statutory rape laws and the fact that she’s under the age of consent and thus legally can not give consent and am both hoping and assuming her partners are also underage) is a slut, just cause. Never mind that it’s probably perceived as completely normal to her, and that no ones probably told her otherwise.
And thanks both to you and Raquel Welch for enforcing that sex is always dependent on the girl, and thus this “sex epidemic” is to blame on females, more specifically sluts. Cause a guy could never make a decision to not have sex, no matter his belief system, feelings or anything else can keep a teenage boy from sex. God forbid we ask guys to not sleep around as much. They just can’t control themselves and thats why we have to count on girls, who are subject to the same raging hormones at that time of life, to keep them in line. If the girls fail, they’re sluts. Is the guy a slut though? No, it’s normal for him to want sex, so society and people like you instead blame the girl, the slut, how dare that brazen hussy do it.
Do we address how malicious the word slut can be, do we discuss how one person’s definition of slut and a group of bully’s drove Phoebe Prince to suicide? Do we address the culture that demands girls be somewhat sexual, less they be called frigid and prudish, but they can’t be TOO sexual, cause then they’re a slut, and no one will ever love them ever if they’re a slut. Do we question why we don’t expect teenage boys to control themselves, to keep it in their pants, to honor their commitments. No, that would require thinking. It’s just so much easier to call some girls sluts then to actually try and make a difference. It’s so much easier to say “something’s wrong here!” then to actually address the real problem. As humans aren’t we capable of so much better?

(Also, Lady Gaga is full of Awesome. Free condoms are provided at her concerts for anyone who wants them.)