three sexual partners

SLUTS!

or studs, depending.

I agree with Amanda.  Like the anti-abortion loons (whose premise is pretty much shot out of the water by the study showing that making abortions illegal just gets you more illegal, unsafe abortions, not fewer abortions) their supposed concern for others is a fig leaf for their real agenda - getting the women of this country back to being barefoot, pregnant, and shackled to the stove. At least they still feel they can’t openly advocate that as a good in and of itself.  It’s sparse comfort, though.

Also, further to Amanda’s point, young beautiful women are dangerous because they have power.  It’s an odd sort of power, but it’s real in that they can get older men to do stuff for them by dangling sex in front of them.  They threaten the power structure by being bottom rung dwellers who can exercise considerable power over top rung patriarchs, and it’s a sort of power that doesn’t follow The Rules for authoritarian power structures.

God damn, I expected the use of contraceptives to be lower for pledge-takers but I did NOT expect that amount of sexual partners (I’m guessing you didn’t either by the italics).  I’m not entirely sure of the whole method, so it might not be a problem, but if you factor in problems with response bias the average given in the study population could be lower than the actual, because these “abstinent” kiddos probably see sex as shameful/dirty and would want their “number” to be smaller. 

...And as immature and meaningless as it is, it also makes me giggle that I’ve had fewer sex partners than the average amount pledge-takers have.  Plus have no shame/guilt/going-to-hell feelings attached to the sex I have had.  Being educated on sex is pretty much a win-win.  (But of course, then we can’t control people’s vaginas)

[Male/White/Hetero/Christian] privilege allows people to ignore facts in lieu of ideology.  I have a super catholic [white, hetero] uncle who is completely incapeable of changing his mind in the face of any evidence - unless it comes from the Pope, I guess.  My family has learned to change the subject really fast when he brings anything stupid up.  One of his sisters ran into a former boss of his that told her that her brother was incapeable of admitting he was wrong.  Now, anyone judged solely on merit would have been demoted or fired after long enough of that kind of bullshit.  I know I couldn’t get away with that kind of crap at the corporation where I work, but I don’t go golfing with the management, nor have I bonded in the locker room with any potential apologists for bad behavior. 

It shouldn’t surprise you that he has also been hospitalized for anxiety.  Not that anxiety conditions are unique to asshats,* but maintaining that kind of ignorance in the face of reality takes a toll on a person.  It almost makes him a sympathetic character, until he starts talking about abortion.

*It runs in the family and surfaces for obvious reasons - my cousin has to hide his sexuality to half of his family and at his job in Ohio, where they took sexuality OUT of the anti-discrimination clause in 2004 (I haven’t heard any updates on that).

I’m shocked.  Shocked!

There was a news story about this on our local news radio station, which introduced it as a “controversial” new study. I couldn’t help yelling at the radio that just because some people don’t like the results, that doesn’t make it “controversial.” Especially when it confirms the results of several previous studies, and there are none that contradict it.  Idiots.

<Also, further to Amanda’s point, young beautiful women are dangerous because they have power.>

Disagree. I never felt that “power” I supposedly possessed when I was young and cute. I just felt skeezed out, sometimes physically threatened, or demeaned from older men’s attention. And young men don’t really fall at young women’s feet (unless the girl is unusually amazing looking) because there’s a huge pool of young woman to date, and pretty much any healthy young woman is attractive because of youth For the demographic girls and young women are attracted to (boys and young men), youth isn’t really a commodity, because it seems like the norm.

I don’t see how men flirting with you or opening doors for you or having men being nice to me in the local deli or wherever constituted me wielding power. I don’t get that kind of attention now, and my standard of living certainly hasn’t diminished.

The power thing bothers me for another reason: there’s an element of “look what you’re making me do/feel” to it that plays into many men’s “I can’t help it! Men are raving lustful animals” philosophy.

Or perhaps I lived my youth wrong, and should have traded my nubile young body for goods and services while I could. Or pretended that I was gonna fuck a guy but instead steal his wallet. Or tried to sleep my way to the top. Second thought: fuck that.

I would say that there’s jealousy in the Anit-Sex Leaguers, though. Jealousy from older women, and jealousy and anger from the men who are bothered that the urge for younger meat is often left unsatisfied in a culture where women aren’t sold of as child bride and prostitution is both illegal and not really a choice most young women make when they have other options. I think there’s an element of “I must stop these girls from fucking young men! The bitches won’t fuck me, why should they get to fuck at all?”

The whole “only sluts use protection” theme has been pretty well known since I was in high school 25 years ago. Cause if you use birth control pills or carry a condom, you were planning to have sex, and “good girls” never, ever plan to have sex.

What’s really interesting is the finding that virginity pledge-takers end up having so many partners. I wonder if this is a result of the kind of all or nothing thinking that usually goes along with this mindset: “Oh well, now that I’ve had a sex, I’m a slut, so I might as well sleep around.”

It reminds me of a study of “the dieting mentality” a few years back. Most people who have a snack an hour before dinner will eat less at dinner because they aren’t as hungry. The study found that constant dieters who “cheated” and had a late afternoon snack would usually eat even more at dinner. The thought process was “I’ve already blown my diet, so I might as well splurge” or “wow, I’m such a horrible loser, I deserve to be fat.”

The high school pregnancy rate in the parish schools of my hometown was astronomical. Seriously, one small girls’ school had like seven pregnant seniors in a class of around forty students. Oddly enough, in my public high school, where I would estimate the percentage of Roman Catholics was around 95% (no exaggeration), it was far rarer. Or at any rate pregnancies that were taken to term were far more rare. I can’t attribute it to sex ed, though - our sex ed started at 10th grade, lasted for two or three classes, never mentioned contraception as far as I can recall, and mostly sucked.

Ha ha, that ring!  Jesus sez, “Eeew, stop that, that’s disgusting.”

The thought process was “I’ve already blown my diet, so I might as well splurge” or “wow, I’m such a horrible loser, I deserve to be fat.

Sounds like a line from a movie I love about a gay Mormon. “Well, I’m already going to Hell for kissing you, so….”

But yeah, this abstinence-only education is absolutely about keeping people ignorant and stifled so that they will suffer in some way for their actions. Education leading to wise choice-making and a lack of needless suffering? We can’t have that!

Where do you want to begin on the causation?  Natural teen rebellion?  Sexual repression getting worse as you get more repressed? 

Disillusionment is personally my favorite.  After being told for years that sex is an ugly, violent, sinful, selfish, abhorrent beast you finally get some action and discover just the opposite.  Sex is great and it brings you and your significant other that much tighter together.  Suddenly, your parents and teachers and Sunday School bible-beaters are exposed as liars.  Bonds of trust broken, you run off and do whatever you damn well please until you eventually get burned enough to realize WHY it is unwise to go boink ever pair of boobs in the girl’s gym.

The system is set to self-destruct.  Elders set up a rule set that no child can live up to and threaten them with pain and misery if they deviate.  Children - inevitably - deviate and become disillusioned with rules.  Children start breaking all the rules as they are unable to distinguish legitimate boundaries (don’t go down to the truck stop in stripper heels chase people old enough to be your father) with ridiculous superstitions (don’t eat shellfish or you’re DAMNED FOR ETERNITY!)  Children get burned by excess and return home traumatized.  Elders reinstate exaggerated worldview in children who now may have children of their own.  Children no longer deviate for fear of breaking the “wrong rule”.  Children become Elders, lather, rinse repeat.

The cycle is a beautiful self-perpetuating pity-fest of stupid.  Parents accept transgression in exchange for repentance (so the Bristol Palins of today can become the Sarah Palins of tomorrow).  Meaningless rules are upheld because no one can determine which rules are safe to break.  And everyone gets subjugated by their Elders.

We CERTAINLY didn’t have virginity pledges at my church growing up, and all I can say is, thank god! If it weren’t for good church girls, I would never have gotten laid, or not nearly as much.

Dorothy, which is why I keep my birth control empties taped to my kitchen wall. 1) Visual reward for not missing pills, and 2) people kept telling me to hide the packet better and that pissed me off. I have already had it up to here with people telling me to hide my indecent ladythings all the time, and I’m only two decades in.

Dogcat - Amanda covers most of what I was going to say in response to your comment, but I’ll elaborate a bit on this: I never felt that “power” ...

It’s quite possible to have power and not realize it or be able to control it.  The power I’m referring to is the ability to cause significant things to happen, and one of the things that feeds the volatility of this particular kind of power is that the significant things are not necessarily intended or desired by the person wielding the power.  It’s sort of like what happened with Lewinsky/Clinton.  She just wanted some attention and physical affection, but what she got for herself was all kinds of horribleness from Ken Starr, the right wing noise machine and the media, while the power structure itself took a fairly savage beating, with a number of key players like Gingrich (and almost the president) being forced out.

Wow!  Another in a very long line of research reports going back almost to the beginnings of the abstinence only movement which show that these programs are totally ineffective in preventing teenage sex and actually increase teen pregnancies and transmission of STDs because kids in these programs are less likely to use birth control.  Why does our freaking media keep acting like this as a surprise or actual news?  Virtually every single research study of these programs has shown exactly the same thing and we have known this for years.

Zifnab25 -

Abstinence has never worked.  Period.  It does not work even when there are widespread strong social pressures against extramarital sex.  It did not work when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s and, according to the most comprehensive survey on the subject, did not work when my parents or grandparents were growing up.  In fact, the rate of premarital sex does not seem to have changed significantly since 1900.  It probably goes back further, but we do not have any data on that.

I’m sure they have multiple partners for the same reason that most people do. Most relationships don’t work out, especially when you’re young and trying to figure out your desires and your bad traps.

True, but starting out with distorted thought processes and negative attitudes towards your own sexuality can only increase the pressures and problems in any given relationship. And the “dieter’s mindset” is completely subconscious.

I happened to overhear a couple of teenage girls in my congregation talking while they were showing each other their new J*sus rings.  According to them, if you turn the J*sus face towards the palm, they’re great for handjobs, whatever that means…

Yeah, I get what you’re saying, Togolosh, I just wouldn’t define what you’re describing as power. I don’t see how passively existing in a young female body constitutes power, particularly when it usually doesn’t provide any real power to the individual. And again - it’s kind of dangerous, and I’d say complete bullshit, to say that this amazing power of a hot young woman somehow causes a man to do or say things he can’t help.

I just don’t get how making someone horny and then refusing to fuck him on command constitutes female power. And I certainly don’t see why being female, and having someone resent you and punish you for that fact, or even merely inciting lust,  is somehow wielding power. I mean, really: do small children have power over pedophiles? Invoking lust does not equal power.

But by definition abstinent teens aren’t having sex, so abstinence programs still work.  It’s the teenagers that are broken.  We just need millions more to have the promise belts that go with the rings.  Then a few more million for the GPS systems and the panty-sniffer devices.  Something that detects wetness and sends the info to nearby cell phones.  Then, we can start the public shaming on the television.  With names, cup sizes, and phone numbers.  So we can call their parents, of course, when we see them out in the afternoons.  And then if that doesn’t work, we can start with the monogrammed “A” on the slutty little girls’ schoolgirl outfits.  With the short skirts.  And the pure white panties.

Excuse me, I need to go be alone for a while.

To catch my breath, of course.

And pray.  Yeah, that’s it.  To pray for the sinners.

“It’s quite possible to have power and not realize it “

Thank you.

Dogcat - I guess it’s a problem of definitions then.  What I’m talking about sort of fits in at the boundaries of what we refer to as “power” but it’s not a good fit.  I use the word “power” because there isn’t a good word that springs to mind for the thing we’re talking about.

Mark, you’ve got it all wrong! Those good church girls would have been much busier with you (after, perhaps, a little initial convincing) if they had been virginity pledges rather than unpledged hussies. Your church failed you!

Having something that other people want can *always* be power. It can also always be an avenue to being exploited or abused. Whether what you have that other people want is land, money, high intelligence, a fertile womb, or a beautiful body, it’s *always* a double-edged sword, dogcat.

I felt no sense that I had power when I was an attractive teen girl either. But I *did* have it. The majority of men are not rapists; their reaction to the presence of an attractive woman is to try to do things to get her attention in a positive way so that she might willingly spend time with/have sex with them. Or, even, just think more nicely about them, because whether the man in question is actually in a position to ever see the woman again, let alone have sex with her, they’re still kind of trained by culture and their own desires to try to be nice to her. This isn’t about opening doors; this is about cops letting you out of a speeding ticket with a warning, friends changing your flat tire for you in the middle of the night, guys lending you videotapes of your favorite show, and other things that men simply don’t do for other men.

But of course there’s a dark side to it. One of the things men do to get positive attention from women is to make it clear that they feel a sexual attraction… which, if the woman also feels an attraction, gets them positive attention, but is really really skeevy when she doesn’t. And women are much, much more aware of the constant threat of rape hanging over our lives than men are, so men often see themselves being “nice” to women who then ignore them as women wielding power over them rather than women shrinking away from a potential rape threat. Men, who don’t fear rape, would be genuinely thrilled if a random woman complimented them, so they think this is a nice thing to do, not threatening. (I’m not talking about catcalls here; those men know damn well they are harassing their target. I’m talking about genuine compliments that still feel inappropriate and skeevy.)

Sex isn’t the only thing in the world that has this double-edged relationship to power. Wealth normally brings power, but wealthy Jews were murdered in the Holocaust almost precisely *because* they were seen as rich and therefore if the German government killed them, it could take their stuff. Many wealthy people who were not well-connected to the Church (and especially wealthy women without protection from politically powerful men) were denounced as witches and killed so the Church could have their stuff. The Native Americans were murdered so we could have their land. Hell, women have been oppressed for millennia because we have the fantastic ability to create new humans out of a male waste product and the stuff we eat, with our own bodies, and this astonishing ability has been *so* often used as both a reason to oppress us and a means of doing it, we actually usually don’t even think of it as a power.

And as disturbing as it is to go there—yes, small children have power over pedophiles, such that small children who are attractive to pedophiles with power may survive in situations where small children who are not attractive will be murdered instead. Whether they would *prefer* to survive under such circumstances may vary from person to person, but it is quite possible to exploit someone who wants to rape you for your own survival, and women (and children, and teen boys) have been doing it as long as there has been war and civil unrest. If you have something, *anything*, someone else wants, there is a possibility you can exchange it for something you want, and if the something you want is food when you’re starving or to be allowed to live another day, the people who don’t have that power may envy you as they die, even if the price you pay for your survival is horrible.

The problem I think you’re encountering is that, as people who *were* attractive young women, we are aware that the price we paid in our lives for being attractive young women was considerably higher than any “power” we got out of the deal, largely because we live in a patriarchy/rape culture. But men (who are often trained not to empathize with women) don’t see that part of it. They see the part of it where they actually are doing nice things for women, not the part of it where women are systematically objectified, threatened and oppressed (in part because if you’re not a rapist, you may assume that women just know you’re not a rapist and so you don’t get why a woman would possibly be scared of you.) So yeah, there’s power there, but it doesn’t come close to matching the “power” the adult men have over the attractive young women, so it doesn’t feel to those of us who experienced it as power at all… unless we *did* go down the road of exploiting it, and that makes many women who do exploit that power feel disgusted, used, or worthless. It’s almost a power that’s more damaging to use than not use.

This power of young women sounds a lot like the power of exploding Pintos, which many drivers were also unaware of.

Damn, I only had 2 partners before I got out of my teens.  Even the virginity pledgers beat me out!

This will sound like a duh comment, but sex gets much better the more you practice.  Part of the reason I didn’t have sex a lot in high school was, after I lost my virginity and he’d dropped me off at home, I kept thinking “That was it?  Crap, I’d rather stay home next time and watch a movie!” I can’t imagine how disappointed I would have felt if, having waited until marriage, I had crappy sex.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the number of partners also has to do with the secrecy and shaming. If you have pledged to God and everybody that you won’t have sex and are paying lip service to the belief that being a good person equals no sex, then when what might be a perfectly normal bump in a relationship comes along, who are you going to discuss it with? Who are you going to ask for advice?

For that matter, how are you going to know that it was a perfectly normal bump in the relationship? We teach people that True Love™ lasts forever and solves all problems, and that True Love™ is the only reason to have sex. Cue the music. The first fight after the first sex is therefore guaranteed to be traumatic. Easier to dump the partner (who was clearly defective) and find the next one.

I’d be interested to see if these multiple partners really are a matter of “I fell, therefore I might as well be a slut” (likely indicated by a zero to sixty attitude) or whether it is a matter of serial True Love™, with a period of dating before “falling” all over again.  If I had to guess, it might be different patterns for boys and girls, boys getting a lot more support for being sexually active.

Whoa. Didn’t see Alara’s excellent post while typing mine, and regret the tone-change.

I’d like to bring in something that got hashed out very well on a vanished board; the relation of sexual power to class and race is Extra Special Toxic. The stuff that’s recognizable as power to get what you want is mostly reserved for white UMC women with decent people skills. Many many women have told me that if you’re sexy and young and poor and dark, the chance of having men do things for you is still very low; what you spend all your time dealing with is men whose lust has teamed up with a sense of entitlement so that they’re angry at you before you’ve said a word.  Fits what I’ve seen from the sidelines. Ick.

The high school pregnancy rate in the parish schools of my hometown was astronomical.

“Abstinence babies.”

Alara, interesting post, but it’s still not convincing me that this is “power”. I never felt like cute guys that I thought were out of my league had power over me. So the power that sexual attraction has only occurs one way - female power to men’s dispower? Because men are insatiably horny and will never turn down sex, but sex is something you have to bargain for with women, or pay for, or at least cajole.

A guy can be nice to a girl because she’s hot; she’s not responding, and he decides she’s an uppity bitch, and is rude or insults her. He still want to fuck her, but somehow his resentment makes the supposedly “natural” power of the girl to get men to fawn over her makes him act differently. So how is she somehow wielding power in either scenario? He can’t make the choice of whether to be attracted, but he can make the choice in how to react to his desire. Because he can’t make this choice, in what way is she wielding power?

I guess it’s a hot button topic for me because of things you (Alara) mentioned in your post. Female power is nearly always framed as some magical power that attractive females hold, yet unless they actually make some kind of concrete transaction, this supposed power usually gets them nothing, and often is a negative thing.

Clew, I’ve never seen it from that angle, but again - how is that power? It doesn’t even get you help moving boxes or a free cookie at the deli or your tire changed or all those other things that young women’s amazing sexual power is supposed to provide.

Alara, i would respectfully disagree on two points.

First, while being an attractive female can be powerful, being inadvertently being harassed by a guy who has bought in to the Hollywood-esque “keep bugging her until she figures out she loves you” indicates that this power is only given to attractive females as long as she’s gracious about his attentions.  As soon as she indicates his attentions are not welcome, he takes the power back and she becomes a “manipulating bitch”, even if she didn’t accept the free drink or fancy gift.

Second, saying young children have power over pedophiles is incorrect for the same reason as above.  If the attractive child says they don’t want to touch Mr. Creepy on his naughty parts, the pedophile doesn’t respect the child’s wishes and let them go their merry way.  On the other hand, children who are not attractive to the pedophile have a higher chance of being left alone (assuming the pedophile is the type that fixates on a specific characteristic.  If the pedophile is nonspecific, the attractiveness of the child has no effect, though availability does).

The high school pregnancy rate in the parish schools of my hometown was astronomical.

Teen pregnancy rates nationally are highest in the states dominated by the fundamentalists who are pushing this abstinence crap.

Wrinkles you get from aging happily and naturally just don’t look nearly as bad as the wrinkles you get from living under stress or being treated like you’re second class.

It’s twooo, it’s twooo.

Oh give me a f**king break.  Anyone who doubts that good-looking women have influence over hetero men need to pull their head out of the sand.

MikeEss makes a really good point above.  A post like this should come with pearls, so that I don’t have to waste time to find pearls to clutch.

In fact, the rate of premarital sex does not seem to have changed significantly since 1900.  It probably goes back further, but we do not have any data on that.

I recall reading that in colonial America, around a third of pregnancies were conceived pre-wedlock. Anyone have further data?

My personal anecdata is that both of my parents, conceived in the ‘40s, were conceived out of wedlock.

annejumps -

Actually, my own great great aunt (my father’s mother’s mother’s sister) had an illegitimate son and my grandmother had an older half-brother of somewhat sketchy paternity (from an unspecified “earlier marriage”), who was likely also illegitimate.  Both were born befor 1900.

“Anyone who doubts that good-looking women have influence over hetero men need to pull their head out of the sand. “

and the award for most socially tone deaf comment on a feminist blog goes too . . .

notorious PAT, i guess only one or two of us count as “good looking” or the guys who fall for that fake power are kind of pathetic. or a lot. cue Nice Guy TM music, i’m thinking.

it’s a shame PAT thinks all men are mindless monkeys. bummer.

dogcat—maybe I wrote very poorly? I would not call what a young woman with good looks and a stigmatized class puts up with power. Well, it’s certainly not her power.

In the other case, it has looked to me as though it takes good looks (for men or women) to get certain internships that are springboards into certain jobs. Nor are good looks enough; you need all the other cards and some skill playing them.  Not statistically relevant to ‘every woman’, but unduly predictive of the people on TV… makes it easy for me to remember the four people I’m thinking of, anyway.

The number of partners doesn’t surprise me. I went to a hardcore fundy school through tenth grade and was a super-Christian that drank the wait ‘til marriage kool-aid.  I was so adamant about the fact that I was going to wait. Then I lost my virginity at 16 and discovered I liked sex a lot, but what I didn’t lose was this romantic notion of how magical and special sex would be with the right person, so I kept trying to recreate that illusion with different partners throughout the rest of my high school career. Does that make any sense? It definitely wasn’t a sense of ‘Well, I’ve already done it and become a slut so I might as well keep going.’ It was all these years of build-up about sex and romance and true love conquering all that made me jump from partner to partner.

As for the power of attractive young women, yeah I felt pretty powerful at times when I was in that category.  In many ways it was nice that people paid attention to me and did things for me that they might not have had I been less cute, but in a lot of ways it was also really awful and I felt like public property because I was always being hit on and commented on and sometimes I just wanted to be left the f**k alone. I think a lot of the reason that I got fat is because I just wanted to be invisible or treated like a person in my own right. I really wish I would have understood feminism better back then because I really worried about whether or not I’d be anything if I wasn’t pretty. I had huge anxiety about losing my looks and not being special anymore.

Abstinence has never worked.  Period.  It does not work even when there are widespread strong social pressures against extramarital sex.  It did not work when I was growing up in the 50s and 60s and, according to the most comprehensive survey on the subject, did not work when my parents or grandparents were growing up.  In fact, the rate of premarital sex does not seem to have changed significantly since 1900.  It probably goes back further, but we do not have any data on that.

It fills the church pews, which is its only real goal.  You vilify something everyone is naturally inclined to do and when they indulge in excess and suffer regret, you pile on the guilt and the “I-told-you-so” mentality.

Everyone commits the crime, but only the Elders determine who gets forgiven and who gets the scarlet letter.  The end result is an institutionalized system of social controls where the sheep keep themselves in check (or at least try to) under a cloud of fear and self-hatred.

It’s been at work since well before the 1900s.  Just take a look at the Scarlet Letter.  The Abstinence System in all its glory.  The pastor gets all the nookie he wants and gets paid for “protecting” his parish from the woman he knocks up. 

Likewise, the evangelical community gets paid boko-bucks to come in and proselytize in schools while picking up converts when transgressors go out, get burned, and return home to repent.  The Abstinence Only administrators become the social gate-keepers and power brokers, capable of making or breaking popular students with praise or persecution.  And the students who fall in line are elevated to positions of prominence - student councils, abstinence scholarships, general positive recognition - such that they can then assume the position of Elders - PTO leaders, School Boards, church leaders - in the future.

It all banks on instilling value in “purity” at a young age, then decreeing who is and who is not “pure” down the line.  You create a social commodity, declare yourself rich in it, and then sell it to all takers.

Clew, no, you didn’t write poorly. Though my reply may have been phrased poorly - I got what you meant - I agree that the alleged “power” of youth and beauty doesn’t seem to benefit the young women you referred to.

It’s funny how this thread started being about people who don’t want to believe something because they don’t like it. . . and now it’s about different people who don’t want to believe something because they don’t like it.

So, PAT, when these beautiful young women direct their Amazing Potential Pussy Power at you, what do they get in turn? Leered at? An extra enthusiastic “Thank you!” or “Good-bye”? Wow - that sexual power really gets young woman something special - they get noticed by you. Totally makes up for any downside to being young and female in this society. Nothing makes me feel as powerful as giving someone - anyone - a hard-on. It’s a real rush.

It’s funny how this thread started being about people who don’t want to believe something because they don’t like it. . . and now it’s about different people who don’t want to believe something because they don’t like it.

Yeah.  Isn’t it funny how some people just won’t change their minds, no matter what information or arguments they’re presented with, once they’ve made up their mind about something.

Didn’t we go through this on the thread about high school status, where we had to explain to you why the head cheerleader isn’t necessarily omnipotent? 

Alara’s magnificent post describes how yes, attractive women (like anyone else who has something that someone else wants) do have power of a kind, under the right circumstances, but that power is a double-edged sword at best. 

Dogcat and Mrs. W’s Class argued - if I understand correctly - that the “power” of being attractive is so outside the “powerful” woman’s control, so dependent on the reactions of men who may just as easily turn nasty if they feel they’re being denied something they deserve (i.e. the woman’s attention or even her sexual favors), that it doesn’t really count as “power” at all.

How does this:

Oh give me a f**king break.  Anyone who doubts that good-looking women have influence over hetero men need to pull their head out of the sand.

Refute any of that?

Purpleshoes:  *All* ladythings are indecent and should be hidden.  Except, wait, aprons.  With frills . . .

Annejumps:  I heard that too, I think the rationale was that they couldn’t afford any infertile pairings, because so few of the offspring survived.

You know, there actually is something to that fabulous-sex-with-the-true-love thing.  I didn’t find out until I was several lovers (and a husband) into my adult life,though, so I don’t think it warped my development.  I had previously dismissed it as ridiculous fairy tales. 

All of my kids grew up sensible and unencumbered by unwanted pregnancies. I think it’s because we always treated them like real people—real questions got real answers.  “True love” is absolutely! no excuse for irresponsible behavior.

Older, I am likewise horrified by the implication that Purpleshoes would leave feminine products out where someone could see them, as if the monthly curse is a routine or natural part of a woman’s life. Hopefully you’ll see the errors of your ways as you mature, Purple, and stop flaunting your womanhood and your base and carnal desires.

I remember a friend in high school being upset when her father yelled at her for leaving a box of sanitary napkins in plain view in the bathroom. Not sure if he was disgusted with menstruation, or freaked that his daughter wasn’t a little girl anymore.

LOL.  Who could’ve known that nature would whup politics?

It’s almost as funny as the idea that “politics drives culture.”  Yeah, if you’re a complete control-freak moron.

Great post.

Dogcat and Mrs. W’s Class argued - if I understand correctly - that the “power” of being attractive is so outside the “powerful” woman’s control, so dependent on the reactions of men who may just as easily turn nasty if they feel they’re being denied something they deserve (i.e. the woman’s attention or even her sexual favors), that it doesn’t really count as “power” at all.

If I have a gun, but I can’t hit the broad side of a barn and people - upon seeing that I have a gun - are prone to shoot at me, it can certainly be argued that I am powerless.

If I have a red-hot smokin’ body, but I can’t reliably leverage it for personal gain and people - upon seeing my chisled abs and buns of steel - are prone to pick fights with me to indulge their own egos, it can certainly be argued that I am powerless.

That said, if you came to me with gun in hand and a bodacious bode and bemoaned how you were physically helpless and no one wanted to be your friend, I would say you were full of shit.

So, PAT, when these beautiful young women direct their Amazing Potential Pussy Power at you, what do they get in turn? Leered at? An extra enthusiastic “Thank you!” or “Good-bye”?

If ten people line up for a job interview (especially an entry level job or one in which all applicants have roughly equivalent job experience), and one is a gorgeous female, and the woman is not hired, I am surprised.  If ten people are on the line for layoffs, I’ve never seen the cutest girl in the room as the first to go.  If you’re a waiter/waitress working for tips, you get tipped more.  If you’re a sales rep looking to push your product, you sell more.  If there’s a big party - perfect for networking with future clients or powerful friends - you will be invited.  Smart cute girls never have to hire a mover when they go to a new apartment and they never have to buy a drink at the local watering hole.  They get out of traffic tickets, they get into clubs, and they don’t have to wait in line if they’re willing to tolerate some oggling from the opposite gender.

Pretty people are offered more opportunities.  They are “attractive” which means people want to be near them.  The ability to compel people into close proximity can be leveraged for enormous gains by the savy individual.

This isn’t to say that all beautiful women live glamorous lifestyles of ease or that there are no downsides to stoking sexual desire in other.  But if you want to claim that “pretty people have it oh-so-hard!” I know a fair number of non-pretty people who would love to argue differently.

That said, if you came to me with gun in hand and a bodacious bode and bemoaned how you were physically helpless and no one wanted to be your friend, I would say you were full of shit.

Two fallacies at work: bad analogy, and strawman.

Gun = tool to work your will directly upon the world.  One flick of one finger, and someone dies.  That power may be of little use to you until you learn how to aim (or completely beyond your use if your eyesight or physical coordination ar sufficiently poor), but is your personal power to use.

“red-hot smokin’ body” = ability to (maybe) influence people to react in a way that you want them to react.  Assuming they don’t take it as a reason to attack you instead.

That’s the bad analogy.  The strawman:

I doubt someone with a “bodacious bode” is going to complain to you that no one wants to be her friend.  Much more likely, she’ll complain how everyone wants to be her friend, but only because they all want something from her, and they’d all turn on her (some to the point of actual violence) if she doesn’t keep them happy.

Would you say she was full of shit then?  Would you say that she’s powerful anyway?

Gun = tool to work your will directly upon the world.  One flick of one finger, and someone dies.  That power may be of little use to you until you learn how to aim (or completely beyond your use if your eyesight or physical coordination ar sufficiently poor), but is your personal power to use.

“red-hot smokin’ body” = ability to (maybe) influence people to react in a way that you want them to react.  Assuming they don’t take it as a reason to attack you instead.

The metaphor was hardly perfect.  That said, the underlying point was that you can learn to use your physical attractiveness.  I can learn to use my firearm.  Appearance is a tool and you can learn how to use it to better effect.  Simply crying over the fact that you don’t know how to leverage your physicality to achieve an advantage doesn’t mean the advantage doesn’t exist.

I doubt someone with a “bodacious bode” is going to complain to you that no one wants to be her friend.  Much more likely, she’ll complain how everyone wants to be her friend, but only because they all want something from her, and they’d all turn on her (some to the point of actual violence) if she doesn’t keep them happy.

You don’t have to be good looking for people to turn on you when you don’t do what they want.  I work in an office.  If I don’t do what my boss wants, I get fired.  Perhaps this is because I am too attractive.

Being good looking gives you something to offer.  Perhaps a more comparable analogy than guns would be money.  I can’t pay you to do what I want, but I can make the offer very tempting with a large enough sum.  Likewise, I can’t force you to hire me or carry something for me or buy me a drink simply by wearing a really tight t-shirt across my bulging biceps, but if I’m a fat slob covered in Cheetos dust, you will feel less inclined to offer aid.

Still, the cry of “I’ve got too many friends who only love me for my /insert asset here/(pun!)” historically rings hollow.  Attractiveness is an edge in a society.  Stop pretending its not.

Wow, Zifnab.  That was just…that was nasty.  That’s damn near MRA territory.

If ten people line up for a job interview (especially an entry level job or one in which all applicants have roughly equivalent job experience), and one is a gorgeous female, and the woman is not hired, I am surprised.  If ten people are on the line for layoffs, I’ve never seen the cutest girl in the room as the first to go.

You do notice, don’t you, that both of those examples assume that a hetero male (or lesbian female?) is in the position of actual power to hire and fire?  Doesn’t that tell you anything? 

Smart cute girls never have to hire a mover when they go to a new apartment and they never have to buy a drink at the local watering hole.  They get out of traffic tickets, they get into clubs, and they don’t have to wait in line if they’re willing to tolerate some oggling from the opposite gender.

I notice that your definition of “smart” here is roughly equivalent to “unscrupulous and manipulative”.  Nice. 

Also, as others have pointed out:

1) Many men feel entitled to something after helping said “smart cute girl” move, buy her a drink, let her off for a traffic ticket, or let her into a club.

2) Cute girls (smart or not) rarely get the choice as to whether they’re willing to tolerate some “oggling” (and cat-calling, and groping, and…) from the opposite sex. 

But if you want to claim that “pretty people have it oh-so-hard!” I know a fair number of non-pretty people who would love to argue differently.

Another strawman.  What people keep saying is that the “power” bestowed by attractiveness is double-edged, less useful than it seems, and doesn’t come close to making up for discrepancies in actual power for women.  You and PAT seem deeply offended by this and I’m starting to wonder why.

Of course attractive people have advantages in society.  But by saying attractive WOMEN have “power” over heterosexual men you are basically claiming that heterosexual men are powerLESS in the presence of attractive women.  Hetero men may be more likely to hire hot women or buy them drinks, but that doesn’t mean those women are somehow forcing men to act a certain way against their will.  You’d swear attractive women were practicing witchcraft on hapless, helpless men.
Heterosexual men tend to confer privileges on pretty women.  That’s NOT the same thing as claiming pretty women have power over those men.  You are placing the responsibility for men’s behavior on women, which, y’know, is pretty anti-feminist.

The so-called “power” attractive women have by virtue of their attractiveness is sort of like the “power” women have when they wear heels and do strip aerobics.  That is, it’s hardly “power” at all.

Heterosexual men tend to confer privileges on pretty women.  That’s NOT the same thing as claiming pretty women have power over those men.  You are placing the responsibility for men’s behavior on women, which, y’know, is pretty anti-feminist.

This.  Perfect.  Thank you.

Speaking of teen pregnancies guess who had their son and named him, Tripp Easton Mitchell Johnston?
(hint: related to Trig)

Tripp?

On the other hand, abstinence education is wildly successful at lining the pockets of the abstinence-education business:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070618/reynolds

Never forget that this is valued by the right largely as a form of wingnut welfare. And that is the primary motivator behind the resistance against making it go away.

Attractive women (and girls) have something of value, which is a sort of power, or at least a powerful tool.  How it’s used and how it’s allowed to be used makes all the difference.  Some wield power, some let power wield them, and some just don’t let it bother them all that much.  But it’s there nonetheless, and the passive aspect of attractiveness can lead to all sorts of powerlessness too.

Attractive people are expected to fulfill wishes, are often thought of as less intelligent (though not always, as those who believe in racism tend to think—as an example—that Nordic features connote intelligence and superiority,) and are hated when the expectations aren’t met.  When the pretty lady doesn’t want to date someone, she’s stuck up.  When the model doesn’t think posing nude is good for her career, she’s too prissy.  When the woman with immaculate hair and makeup takes too long to get ready to go out, she’s not spontaneous enough.  Sure, other people go through bullshit too (and, on the whole, worse stuff,) but the attractive ones have problems when out in society.  Must have something to do with being women, I guess.

Wow, Zifnab.  That was just…that was nasty.  That’s damn near MRA territory.

That’s life, Seraph. 

I notice that your definition of “smart” here is roughly equivalent to “unscrupulous and manipulative”.  Nice.

We’re talking about the raw expression of power here, and that is only as unscrupulous and manipulative as you want to make it.  If I pay a porter $50 to care my luggage to my car is that less “unscrupulous and manipulative” than if my girlfriend smiles and asks nicely?  No one put a gun to the guy’s head either way and the only thing either of us care about is that the job gets done.

What people keep saying is that the “power” bestowed by attractiveness is double-edged, less useful than it seems, and doesn’t come close to making up for discrepancies in actual power for women.

It’s a different kind of power and only as potent as its wielder.  If you’ve got a million dollars to spend, you can’t compel me to do anything I wouldn’t do if you were wearing a low cut top.  If you have friends in the Senate, this doesn’t physically force me to lend you money, even if I can see why doing so would be advantageous to me in the future.

You’re arguing about what gives a person more “power” and that’s very relative.  Being a CEO gets you a nice car, a big house, and a beautiful spouse, but so does being a Supermodel.  Who has more power?  The Supermodel has access to all the same country clubs.  The CEO doesn’t necessarily have more money.  The Supermodel can garner political support by running the talk show circuit and has a loyal fan base at its beck and call, star power that the CEO doesn’t possess.  Does this make the Supermodel more or less powerful than the CEO?  I would argue more so.

If you want to talk political power, you can certainly make the claim that there are more men in high office and that physical beauty doesn’t translate well to official stature.  But then you’re weighting the ability to hold high office above the ability to have a large bank account or the non-governmental political clout of large social circles - something a woman like Jenny McCarthy or Angelina Jolie have leveraged early and often. 

I think you need to sit down and really consider what “power” is.  It’s not - as SarahMC jokes - witchcraft that makes people mindlessly obey your commands.  It is a combination of carrots and sticks that encourage people to fulfill your requests and demands.  I would argue that being physically attractive is a powerful carrot (and being denied access to an attractive individual a powerful stick) in our modern society.

WHAT, exactly, is that “something” attractive women and girls have, jon?  Name it.

WHAT, exactly, is that “something” attractive women and girls have, jon?  Name it.

Attractiveness?  What does a 3000 year old Ming Vase have that makes it sell for a million dollars?  What does the Mona Lisa have that keeps it behind glass at the Luv?  What does a rose have that a blade of grass does not?

Are you denying the value of beauty?

< Seraph: You and PAT seem deeply offended by this and I’m starting to wonder why.>

A lot of men are angry when they perceive that women are using their magical sex power to get goods and services for “free”. The girls and women aren’t living up to their end of the bargain - they’re enticing these poor men and then not putting out.

But it’s nice to have Zinfab set all us girls straight about female sexual power. Because what the fuck would we know about it? Hell, I didn’t even know I had it when I was a young woman. Sometimes I was naive enough to believe that a man was being kind or polite to me because he wasn’t, like, an asshole. I guess now when that happens, it’s either because I still have some residual pussy power, or it’s out of pity.

And of course comparing a supermodel or Angelina Jolie to the experience of the majority of women makes sense, since nearly every woman in the world is either a supermodel or Angelina Jolie. I’m both. It’s fucking awesome.

No I am not denying the value of beauty.  A stunning painting or lovely sunset does not have “power,” however.  It may be powerfully emotional or eye-catching but that is where it ends.
But in what way is a PERSON’S beauty valuable to another person, particularly another person of the opposite sex?  And why is a woman’s beauty more valuable than a man’s?  Are you actually saying that the beauty in and of itself is that thing women somehow hold over hetero men?  What do men getting out of it, other than masturbatory inspiration?

Also, Zifnab25, what the hell does it mean to be “being denied access to an attractive individual?”  Please be clear about what you mean because you and a couple others seem to be dancing around what you truly want to say.  Do hetero men merely want to be in the presence of attractive women?  To look at them?  To possess them in relationships?  To fuck them?  What?

Clearly I am very tired because I am failing to properly contruct many of my sentences.

Sometimes I was naive enough to believe that a man was being kind or polite to me because he wasn’t, like, an asshole.

And that there would be another fun facet to the whole argument.  One man’s stunning beauty is another man’s meh, she’s OK.  But it sure is fun to have to parse every encounter to see if a guy’s just being nice or is trying to get into your pants.  And there’s nothing quite like the power rush one feels when a seemingly nice guy stops being so helpful when he realizes you’re not available right then for whatever reason. 

I actually do have a superpower: I can make people bowl poorly just by concentrating.  Yesterday, I thought this was the worst superpower in the world.  But at least it does something concrete whenever I use it: it makes my competitor bowl poorly.  If I were attractive, I guess I’d have the power to occasionally make some men in some situations treat me with some distinction, as long as it wasn’t too terribly inconvenient for them and I responded the way they expect me to.  So I’d have a weak power that depended on the subject I was applying it to, and would never work in a situation more serious than a traffic stop.  Also, I lose it as soon as my boobs stop being perky.  Now there’s a power you won’t find on an Xmen character any time soon, and their boobs are perky forever.

Wow, Zifnab.  That was just…that was nasty.  That’s damn near MRA territory.

That’s life, Seraph.

No, Zifnab.  It’s your own really, really twisted worldview. 

I note that you haven’t really answered this:

You do notice, don’t you, that both of those examples assume that a hetero male (or lesbian female?) is in the position of actual power to hire and fire?  Doesn’t that tell you anything?

or this:

1) Many men feel entitled to something after helping said “smart cute girl” move, buy her a drink, let her off for a traffic ticket, or let her into a club.

2) Cute girls (smart or not) rarely get the choice as to whether they’re willing to tolerate some “oggling” (and cat-calling, and groping, and…) from the opposite sex.

Still less this, which really sums it all up:

Heterosexual men tend to confer privileges on pretty women.  That’s NOT the same thing as claiming pretty women have power over those men.  You are placing the responsibility for men’s behavior on women, which, y’know, is pretty anti-feminist.

Now to answer some of your other, rather disturbing, assertions:

If I pay a porter $50 to care my luggage to my car is that less “unscrupulous and manipulative” than if my girlfriend smiles and asks nicely?

Yes.  Since we’re talking about a porter, if he’s not being paid, he’s being ripped-off.  Besides, I would hope that you’d ask him nicely even if you are paying him (smiling is more optional).

You’re arguing about what gives a person more “power” and that’s very relative.  Being a CEO gets you a nice car, a big house, and a beautiful spouse, but so does being a Supermodel.  Who has more power?  The Supermodel has access to all the same country clubs.  The CEO doesn’t necessarily have more money.  The Supermodel can garner political support by running the talk show circuit and has a loyal fan base at its beck and call, star power that the CEO doesn’t possess.  Does this make the Supermodel more or less powerful than the CEO?  I would argue more so.<blockquote>

The supermodel will fade from the scene after a few years, after which she loses the fan base and the interest of the talk-show circuit.  Any wealth she retains after that point depends on how well she managed her income during her career.  The CEO has decades to accumulate wealth, connections, and control over multiple businesses and media outlets (possibly making him the supermodel’s boss in the first place, or at least allowing him to control those talk-show appearances), so I would argue that you’re very, very wrong. 

<blockquote>If you want to talk political power, you can certainly make the claim that there are more men in high office and that physical beauty doesn’t translate well to official stature.  But then you’re weighting the ability to hold high office above the ability to have a large bank account or the non-governmental political clout of large social circles - something a woman like Jenny McCarthy or Angelina Jolie have leveraged early and often.

Yes, I am.  Lobbyists hold a lot of influence (very little of it based on “prettiness”), but in the end, the people they’re trying to influence - the actual officeholders - are the ones who make the votes and the decisions.

You do know that you sound just like 19th-century anti-suffragists who argued that women exercised quite enough political power through “moral suasion”, right?

Dammit.  Messed up the blockquotes:

You’re arguing about what gives a person more “power” and that’s very relative.  Being a CEO gets you a nice car, a big house, and a beautiful spouse, but so does being a Supermodel.  Who has more power?  The Supermodel has access to all the same country clubs.  The CEO doesn’t necessarily have more money.  The Supermodel can garner political support by running the talk show circuit and has a loyal fan base at its beck and call, star power that the CEO doesn’t possess.  Does this make the Supermodel more or less powerful than the CEO?  I would argue more so.

The supermodel will fade from the scene after a few years, after which she loses the fan base and the interest of the talk-show circuit.  Any wealth she retains after that point depends on how well she managed her income during her career.  The CEO has decades to accumulate wealth, connections, and control over multiple businesses and media outlets (possibly making him the supermodel’s boss in the first place, or at least allowing him to control those talk-show appearances), so I would argue that you’re very, very wrong.

What does a 3000 year old Ming Vase have that makes it sell for a million dollars?

Rarity?  Unimaginable craftsmanship?  Historical value (hell, a 3000-year-old chamber pot has historical value)?

What does the Mona Lisa have that keeps it behind glass at the Luv?

Historical value again?  The fact that it was painted by one of the true geniuses of human history?

Many of the things I mentioned that come with attractiveness are true for men as well as women.  Positives and negatives both.  But with men as the Standard and women as the Other, guess whether or not the positives and negatives are distributed evenly.

And that thing that comes with attractiveness is called sex appeal, charisma, panache, coolness, comeliness, beauty, va-va-voom, and a whole lot of other things.  I wasn’t being coy when I didn’t say what it is, but I guess I was being vague since I wanted to speak in generalities.  Be too specific, and the yeahbut crowd voices in.  Be too vague, and I’m being evasive.  Sometimes it’s not worth contributing, sometimes it is, but sometimes—like right now—I just want to go to bed.

A supermodel is MORE powerful than a CEO?!?!  Powerful to do what?!  She could be richer but at the end of the day she functions as a decoration and her value is completely tied to her attractiveness.  She’s one horrific car accident away from powerlessness, by your definition.  Or ten years, depending on her current age.
Oh, how being reduced to an ornament decorating hetero men’s worlds makes me feel so powerful! 
What a joke.

Heterosexual men tend to confer privileges on pretty women.  That’s NOT the same thing as claiming pretty women have power over those men.  You are placing the responsibility for men’s behavior on women, which, y’know, is pretty anti-feminist.

This.

Thank you.

Repeating for good measure:

Heterosexual men tend to confer privileges on pretty women.  That’s NOT the same thing as claiming pretty women have power over those men.  You are placing the responsibility for men’s behavior on women, which, y’know, is pretty anti-feminist.

I mean, really: do small children have power over pedophiles? Invoking lust does not equal power.

It does in the standard Nice Guy/thwarted entitled asshole worldview. You have it in your head that you should be able to have whatever you want just because you want it, and when you don’t get it, you’re continually shocked and convinced there’s something wrong with the world, no matter how many times you’re thwarted. Self-pity is the defining emotion in your life, and your view of the world, other people, human relationships, and power dynamics is based entirely on your obsession with the sex you’re not having.

Coincidently enough one of my coworkers, who is very attractive, is having an issue with another coworker constantly stopping by her cubicle to talk to her.  She doesn’t feel privileged, valued, or powerful because a creepy guy is bothering her.  She’s irritated by the fact that she’s trying to do her job and can’t because he’s enamored with her and won’t leave her be.

This afternoon I walking near her cube on my way to talk to someone else and hear her call my name.  So I walk over to see what she wants and her admirer is outside her cube again.  She hands me some of the work I asked her to do and she starts to talk about it in detail.  Unfortunately I’m busy and I’m oblivious to the fact that she wants to talk to me about this so that the creepy guy will leave.  I tell her “Thank you, I’ll look it over.” 

As I’m walking away another coworker stops me and tells me “Hey, that guy won’t leave her alone.  She wanted you to stay and talk with her so that he’d go away!  I called her over to my desk earlier today to get away from him and now it’s your turn.”  So I go back to my desk and call her to come over and see me.  I apologize to her and we talk for a few minutes while waiting for the creepy guy to clear out of that part of the building.  When he’s gone she returns to her desk. 

Now that I know about this issue I’m obligated to report it.  I’m left with the incredibly difficult choice of:

A)  Speak to her supervisor and say “_____’s too attractive and is a disruptive influence to the poor hapless men around her.”

or

B)  Go to Creepyguy’s supervisor and say “He’s hanging around _____’s office and is creating a difficult work environment for her.” 

The eternal choice between douchebaggery and non-douchebaggery.  Oh why do you vex me so cruel fate?

Definitely option A. She knows that she’s wielding her pretty power, and even if she doesn’t, it’s her fault. She’s like a Ming vase or the Mona Lisa to her creepy co-worker - he just can’t help being enthralled by power and wanting to possess her. I feel for the guy. She’s obviously just leading him on.

Besides, she should appreciate the attention. Remind her that she’ll be upset when she’s older and doesn’t inspire this kind of reaction. Maybe you could try to get her fired - what’s she doing working at an office anyway? She probably only got the job because of her looks. Have you suggested she become a supermodel? She’s taking a job away from a man or older, less attractive woman, when she doesn’t really have to work at all. Not with the power she has.

Attractiveness?  What does a 3000 year old Ming Vase have that makes it sell for a million dollars?  What does the Mona Lisa have that keeps it behind glass at the Luv?  What does a rose have that a blade of grass does not?

Louvre. And since the reason it’s so famous isn’t because it’s pretty, but because it was a work by Da Vinci which was stolen and later recovered. Ming vases would not date back 3000 years, seeing as the dynasty lasted from 1368 to 1644 AD, making the height roughly contemporaneous with Da Vinci, actually.

also, you are a vapid twit. Seriously? Do you think the value of art can be summed up as “it’s purdy?” You are walking proof that the drive to cut humanities budgets from public schools, in place of sports and drive for “test scores” is crippling people.

There’s no power like the power of being unconscious and bleeding to death! You can cause traffic jams as drivers slow down to gawk. You can make people throw up or faint from the sight of all that blood. And you can make emergency responders and medical personnel drop whatever else they are doing and tend to you. If you’re really lucky, the ME may be awoken from a sound sleep to evaluate the cause of death for official reports.

Does that sound stupid? If so, think how stupid it sounded to say that people have power over people more powerful than them simply by passively existing (being a pretty woman, or a child in the presence of a pedophile).

Insofar as being young and/or attractive conveys power, it is even more beneficial in a non-sexual context. As a child, teen, and young adult, I had older women being nice to me quite frequently, and my smile was enough to keep the relationship positive. They didn’t *want* from me; they wanted to please or comfort me because I was a sweet child/clever girl/little sister/daughter figure/mirror for their younger selves. In return, I absorbed the lesson that being kind to the young is a worthy cause and would be mutually heartwarming.
A mentor/protege relationship between men is not unusual, either, I would assume from the prominence of such relationships in our cultural discourse. So why is the discussion not about the power young men have over heterosexual older men? The power to get assisted into jobs and fast-tracked into a position of authority; the power to get free lessons in golf and life; the power to become the heir to the throne for an egotistical empire builder?
But the guy might buy a cute girl a trinket, so that’s totally more powerful than being groomed for the big time in the Old Boys’ Network.

Fail. Massive, massive fail.

Hi there! Long time lurker, first time poster here.

Perhaps instead of ‘power’ or ‘privilege’ in this context, ‘value’ would be the better word.  Value is not inherent to anyone or anything but something conferred by the evaluator according to whatever standards said evaluator chooses.  Men treating what they consider to be ‘high value’ women differently may be reality, but it’s a consequence of the men themselves, not anything the women are or aren’t doing.

To add to this, also: I love how I have so much power over men who are attracted to me, because none of them have ever threatened me physically because I wouldn’t jump on their cock. I totally have all the power when some frat-boy asshole who I have been indifferent to for two hours decides I need him to “walk me home” and won’t “take no for an answer.”

Dudes. Please just accept that you don’t understand and never will. (Which I know is a stupid request from men who have already proved to us that they don’t give a shit about our autonomy.)

I should mention that both P.A.T. and Zinfab have proven themselves to be Nice Guy TM sympathisors for a long time. Less so Rape Apologists, but still sketchy.

Just thought it’s interesting that even though the resident Nice Guys have shown up to appraise the value of teen pussy, our openly anti-sex conservatives have absolutely nothing to say about this study’s results. I wonder if they can even read it.

Gold has power, right?

Everybody wants gold, and will do all kinds of things for it, all over the world and all through history, so gold must be the most wonderful, powerful thing to be on the planet. Who wouldn’t want to be a bar of gold?

Oh wait, all a bar of gold can actually do is lie there and be fought over? That doesn’t sound like actual power after all…

Or put it another way. A sandwich, too, has “power” over a hungry person. So the sandwich is calling the shots in society, right? After all, without food you die.—Or is any power in this scenario really residing in the hands of the person who has the sandwich, and the ability to give it, or keep it for their own? If you’re the sandwich, you don’t get any choice in the matter - and all this “nubile women/pussy power” talk is just saying “you damn sandwiches, making me so hungry!” to us women.

“Valuable”—or, really, “valued” as in by certain persons, under certain circumstances, because nothing is objectively “valuable” without a valuer and without context - is NOT the same as “powerful.”

So much critical thinking FAIL from Notorious P.A.T. and others - deliberate or not. Using two, mutually-exclusive definitions of “power” interchangably is either 1) massive logic fail, 2) massive intellectual dishonesty. Either “power” in a given context means agency, the ability to deliberately, consciously, and effectively change the world around you by your actions, or it doesn’t: it can’t mean agency and passivity at the same time.

“I have the power!” shouts He-Man, and it doesn’t mean that he’s now Helen of Troy to be fought over like a MacGuffin by all the real power-brokers in Eternia, and nobody would ever admit that it does: if a hero in a film claimed, or was claimed by others, to be “powerful” and yet all he did was stand there while everyone else does things to him and around him, you’d laugh. The MacGuffin has no agency, even if it’s a human MacGuffin. Which means that any “power” it has is entirely dependent on the choices of others…which means it’s not power at all.  “Power” you can’t actually do anything with is a meaningless word. There’s a reason why a male character in a story who is a passive MacGuffin, fought over by other characters but not actually making any choices that affect the outcome of events, gets called “The Chick” - and it’s not a good one, but it’s still true, “forty years after feminism” blah blah blah.

The “power” of a beautiful woman who uses her beauty as a tool upon straight men to achieve her own ends - and this is much rarer IRL than it is in fiction - is not her beauty, but her ability to strategize, to figure out how to convince X to give her Y, and her ruthlessness, or determination, in being willing to antagonize others as well as to use them, and her ability to conceal what she is doing to avoid that antagonization for as long as possible. These are all gender-neutral abilities, and they are what real power consists of, whether the desired access which is being more-or-less tacitly offered is to T, A & C, or to money, or a job, or authority within that job, or some rare collectible, or something intangible like revenge.

However, the politician who gets ahead by promising results to voters, or the media tycoon who promises fame to a new star, or the art dealer who promises rare artifacts to the obsessed collector, all have actual control over what they withold - and nobody begrudges them this, and nobody considers them personally disgusting, tainted, irreversibly contaminated either, when they do “put out” the promised infrastructure repairs, movies, or Ming vases in return for votes, studio contracts, or cold hard cash. So it isn’t exactly the same, thanks to the double-standard.

And IRL, even the most beautiful woman in the world (as determined by the str8 men in her immediate presence) can’t just walk up to Sir Rupert or Donald Trump and say “I have perky tits! Give me all your money!”, can’t just walk up to GWB or Vladimir Putin and say “Give me the keys to your missiles and I’ll let you have some pussy!” and have it work. I’ve seen this sort of thing backfire rather hilariously in the workplace, in fact: young, straight salesmen made horribly uncomfortable by the incompetent-but-stacked bleached blonde barely-legal clerk in the 4” heels, tight unbuttoned blouse, and skirt so short that we all knew what color her thong was each day, coming breathily on to them, to the point where they complained about it to HR and stayed out of the office as much as possible until she was finally let go after being caught talking on the phone instead of entering data one too many times. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t what she was trying to accomplish, either.

One last analogy: a gun is a lump of metal and other materials stuck together for a very limited purpose. It has no power beyond that given it by human agency, it’s just a tool. It has no value except in so far as it’s a useful tool, and its use is seriously limited. You can’t eat a gun, you can’t build a house or fix a car with it, you can’t track down crucial information with it - and if you run around waving it at people to try to convince them to give you money with it, you will not necessarily have the result you want.

I know that when I had a gun in my possession, I wasn’t able to use it to stop my coworkers from bullying me with it, I couldn’t use it to convince anyone to give me a better job, or fix my car for free - it was a lump of wood and metal in my closet. The only way I could have used it to stop the sexist behavior of coworkers and random men on the street would be to have gone postal with it, before the inevitable death-by-cop unless I took the ancient Greek route out of the tragedy first.

Which, you know, is an act of weakness itself, the lashing-out of someone who has no social power (or none that they know how to wield, or are willing to “stoop” to using) and feeling the pain of this [perceived] lack of agency, thus uses the last, brute-force resort to try to affect the human world around them , whether it’s a knife or a gun or a bomb or a car used as a weapon. But even then, they’re not getting what they really wanted, with it.

Of course virginity pledges don’t work and are risible. But even if teen virginity pledges were 100 percent effective, abstinence education would still only accomplish its objectives by lying to teens, both male and female, and putting them in danger - exaggerating failure rates of contraceptive techniques and withholding or flat out misrepresenting disease prevention and treatment information.

Also, I should add, by finger-wagging and moralizing about aspects of life that do not implicate morality whatsoever. It is shameless normative indoctrination to norms that would wrack people with misery and loneliness. Just because these religious lunatics are unhappy doesn’t mean they have to foist their issues onto kids.

...And of course it also ignores the whole issue of handsome men getting things via sex appeal from women - whether they deliberately use their looks or not - because we have desire too, and sometimes social power despite the patriarchy, and I’ve had guys try to use their George Clooney-knockoff looks on me to get discounts, or faster turn-around times for their company’s projects, or fines “taken care of,” or “help” with term papers, and I’ve seen it work on other women, too. (I don’t say I’m not susceptible to human good looks - being sexually ambivalent myself - but if your charm is oozing perceptibly, whether you’re male or female, then the result is going to be to make me back farther and farther away, and reach for the tongs to handle your case with instead. Manipulation gives me the hives, and I have always had a nasty suspicious mind in that regard.)

It also ignores the fact that the class of “door holding behaviors” is not exactly being done for the recipient: men who command me to go first onto the bus, who insist on making me go through a door at their command, and not according to my own leisure, or take a seat even if I’d rather stand, are doing it for themselves, not for me.

And come on, no man really thinks that merely by holding a door or giving up his seat on the bus, he’s going to get nookie in a quid-pro-quo. Any one who really thought that would belong in a mental hospital, getting treatment for their delusional state. It’s not “the lure of sex” that motivates the door-holding, any more than I expect to get some in reward for helping that John Cusack-lookalike gather up his papers that were blowing away on a windy street one time.

At best they’re just paying tribute to the ghosts of their ancestors - “that’s how I was raised” - it’s a meaningless ritual that we both engage in because of dusty tradition, even if we both rather wouldn’t; it is not a favor to me that he does, but a favor I do his conscience, like not laughing at people who go out of their way to avoid the number 13 or throw salt over their shoulder or other superstitions and taboos that I don’t share: the inconvenience to me from joining in his ritual obeisance to the ancestral spirits of his family is minor enough that I don’t mind, if he isn’t offensive and pushy about demanding my compliance, which is often the case with the elderly “gentlemen” who do it.

But most of the time - and especially from the younger men who do it - it comes across as pure dominance, pure control, a power display: I get to tell a woman what to do, where to go, to sit down and shut up, and she can’t argue because it’s “chivalrous,” it’s polite! She HAS to be grateful to me, or else SHE’s in the wrong! And all the other guys see what a Nice Guy I am!

Which, you know, I really resent being used as an object demonstration of some random dude’s superiority complex. It’s almost enough to turn me into that legendary Feminist Who Yells At Guys For Holding Doors, some days…

Same thing with “guys giving you shit you don’t want, didn’t ask for, and makes you feel uncomfortable” - even if there isn’t a more or less explicit expectation of quid-pro-quo nookie, it’s still a demonstration of power, and a manipulative, coercive behavior: See, I am so much superior to you, I give you expensive things (read: CAN give you expensive things) and thus place you under moral obligation to me, as well as showing our respective social status to the world - I can afford to give you shit, and you can’t afford to say “no” and make it stick!

Yeah, there’s power in the exchange, but it ain’t on the part of the girl on the receiving end…

Just because these religious lunatics are unhappy doesn’t mean they have to foist their issues onto kids.

But Luke, haven’t you ever heard the old saying, “Misery loves company”—?

*Applauds bellatrys*

Men always forget about agency.  Because they are steeped in it.  Thank you very much for bringing that up.  Bravo.

I guess Notorious and Zinfab got tired of having their asses handed to them. See how powerful you ladies are - you drove the duouchebags right into silence!

I guess Notorious and Zinfab got tired of having their asses handed to them.

Shit, I’m sorry.  Some people have to catch some sleep sooner or later.  No need to get all pissy because I didn’t stand around reading every last post.

Gold has power, right?

Everybody wants gold, and will do all kinds of things for it, all over the world and all through history, so gold must be the most wonderful, powerful thing to be on the planet. Who wouldn’t want to be a bar of gold?

Oh wait, all a bar of gold can actually do is lie there and be fought over? That doesn’t sound like actual power after all…

Or put it another way. A sandwich, too, has “power” over a hungry person. So the sandwich is calling the shots in society, right? After all, without food you die.—Or is any power in this scenario really residing in the hands of the person who has the sandwich, and the ability to give it, or keep it for their own? If you’re the sandwich, you don’t get any choice in the matter - and all this “nubile women/pussy power” talk is just saying “you damn sandwiches, making me so hungry!” to us women.

And yet, if you are the sole sandwich keeper - if you decide who does and does not receive sandwiches - then you have unparalleled power over anyone that gets hungry.

Likewise, if you are chairman of the Fed, with unlimited power to issue currency, you have a great deal of power over the economy (normally - not so much right now).

I think what everyone here has failed to do is define what “power” is.  There is this assumption that man “have it” and women “don’t” because men are men and women are women.  There have been a number of comments that basically boil down to, “I’m powerless because someone else can beat me up” and if you’re running on that basis alone all I can conclude is that “power” in the mind of the current crowd consists entirely of muscle mass.  In that case, men will always be - on aggregate - superior to women and the entire argument is moot (unless you want to argue whether or not men are on average more muscular than their woman counterparts).

Being pretty - much like being rich or politically connected - will not prevent you from getting beaten up.

But being pretty - much like being rich or politically connected - can garner you material possessions, personal loyalties, and capital investments.  In that sense, because you can gain money through exploitation of physical appearance, I would weigh beauty and wealth interchangeable.  Likewise, you can gain political connectivity through physical appearance, so I would weight beauty and political connectivity as interchangeable.

Since I’ve defined “power” as the ability to obtain material possessions, personal loyalties, and capital investments and all three of these things can be obtained by wealth or social connection, and both wealth and social connection can be obtained by having a desirable physical appearance, I conclude that physical appearance can translate into “power”.

If you want to seriously argue the point, I’d ask that you first define what “power” is, then define how you accrue it, and finally conclude why physical appearance is insufficient in accruing power.  Simply tossing out anecdotes about that time guy A hit pretty girl B doesn’t cut it.

And, if it makes you feel better, replace “Ming” with “Shang” and accept my sincerest apologies.

I agree with bellatrys. It´s pretty people, not pretty women who have a sort of soft power: people (Men and women as well, though not so much) like to keep you around. You get invited to parties, you get mentors, everyone is nice to you and does you small favours. You are seen to confer status to whoever is with you. It´s because men have more real, hard power that young women are suppossed to be the special ones, but I have witnessed young, good looking men getting star treatment just because of those looks.

But as someone said higher up the intelligence to use this soft power to influence people is far more valuable than the looks. And most of the times it makes the difference between being a target of harassment or a recipient of favours.

And again I can only speak from my perspective, and I have looked very good, but never weak or vulnerable. Maybe if you´re petite and delicate the threatening side of male attention may have mattered more than the increased status beauty gave.

You are seen to confer status to whoever is with you.

This is an important thing to remember. Quite a few men place a lot of importance on how much their female SOs impress other men.

Thing is, Zif, I know quite a few pretty girls who’ve been blamed for bringing on their own assaults simply by existing as a sexually desirable female in sight of an entitled creep. It’s not only anecdata about Guy A hitting Pretty Girl B. When it keeps happening and happening and happening, it’s a TREND. The kind of trend that is kind of scary to your average female, whether or not she’s conventionally attractive and considered sexually desirable.

If the flip side of leveraging your pretty girl advantages is being afraid you’ll make yourself vulnerable to rape, that’s quite a downside. More of a downside than the possibility of a guy spending his free time moving a pretty girl’s boxes without getting a “reward” for it, or the possibility of that guy being out of pocket five bucks for a drink at a bar that the drink recipient doesn’t “pay back”. Because the transaction is virtually never explicitly stated, and i know more than one pretty girl who’d rather pay for her own drinks and not have to spend the rest of the night fending off some guy who thinks that transaction means she must pay attention to him. I also know more than one pretty girl who’s gotten all female friends to help her move because she’s nervous about letting guys in her apartment and them getting “the wrong idea.” Fear of assault versus fear of putting yourself out. Hmmm, tough choice.

You don’t have to be good looking for people to turn on you when you don’t do what they want.  I work in an office.  If I don’t do what my boss wants, I get fired.  Perhaps this is because I am too attractive.

BEING FUCKABLE FOR YOU IS NOT A WOMAN’S GODDAMN JOB. Her failure to be so DOES NOT JUSTIFY PUNISHMENT. You are an ASS.

If the flip side of leveraging your pretty girl advantages is being afraid you’ll make yourself vulnerable to rape, that’s quite a downside.

Then your definition of power is ultimately rooted in physical strength.  If one person can physically overpower another the former is more powerful.  And since you don’t have to be pretty to get raped, it takes appearance largely out of the equation.  At the end of the day, your only concern with power is the power not to get raped.

As that has become the end focus of the discussion, I will happily concede that being attractive is no deterrent against rape and therefore pretty girls (and, I guess, pretty guys) are powerless unless they are more muscular or more well-armed than their attackers.  In that case, all I can suggest is that all women own guns.  Then they will be just as deadly as their potential male attackers and we will achieve harmony between the sexes at last.

Oh, that would solve everything. Attackers never take guns and use them against their victims. Juries would never consider the shooting of a man who *might* have raped a woman to be undeservedly harsh.

We certainly are getting off-topic in catering to some people’s personal gripes.

Then your definition of power is ultimately rooted in physical strength.  If one person can physically overpower another the former is more powerful.

Fuck you and the shitpile of male privilege you rode in on, Zifnab.

In that case, all I can suggest is that all women own guns.  Then they will be just as deadly as their potential male attackers and we will achieve harmony between the sexes at last.

I’ve heard this line before.  Does anyone remember where it comes from?  Is it MRA?

BEING FUCKABLE FOR YOU IS NOT A WOMAN’S GODDAMN JOB. Her failure to be so DOES NOT JUSTIFY PUNISHMENT. You are an ASS.

Hey, if we’re going to be ridiculous, I might as well note that being fuckable is everyone’s god damn job or you don’t perpetuate the species.

I’m arguing that good looking people get special treatment.  I’m not sure how that translates into good looking people being required to put out.

And I’m not sure when “I will no longer offer you special treatment” turned into a punishment, but apparently being a woman entitles you to be batshit crazy in defense of your right to proclaim persecution over your prettiness.

god damn job or you don’t perpetuate the species.

I’m arguing that good looking people get special treatment.  I’m not sure how that translates into good looking people being required to put out.

If you’re honestly not sure how that works, you’re appallingly stupid. I’d like to think you’re instead arguing in bad faith. But after this thread…I’m leaning toward the former, gotta say.

Zifnab:
I’m arguing that good looking people get special treatment.  I’m not sure how that translates into good looking people being required to put out.

Um, Zif, SPECIAL does not always equal GOOD. Special treatment may be unsolicited, unwelcome, and is often even feared.

“SPECIAL does not always equal GOOD. Special treatment may be unsolicited, unwelcome, and is often even feared. “

Are you suggesting that being “desirable” to every single whiny, entitled creep who happens past you isn’t good? 

man-hater!

/snark

Um, Zif, SPECIAL does not always equal GOOD. Special treatment may be unsolicited, unwelcome, and is often even feared.

You make it sound like people are rape-tackling each other in mini-malls or something.  Again, I could make the same argument about money - Oh boo, hoo!  If I wear a Rolex watch I am more likely to be mugged, ergo being rich puts me at a massive disadvantage to being poor - or political power - Oh boo, hoo!  As President, I am more likely to be shot, ergo I am a persecuted individual and victim of unsolicited and unwelcome attention.

I mean, yikes, if being beautiful is such a heart-rending terrible burden why do we have a multi-billion dollar cosmetics industry?  What woman with any regard for self-preservation would consider getting a face lift or a boob job?  You’re practically pinning a “RAPE ME” sign to your forehead with every dab of rogue, every dribble of eye-liner.  Teenage girls should - logically - be diving head-first into burkas because no one is more at risk than young attractive females.  When every man is a potential rapist, I can see exactly why the more attractive a female becomes, the more feeble and powerless she grows.

My eyes have been opened.  Physical beauty is not an asset, it is a curse.  A massive liability.  I’m surprised you don’t have to pay higher interest rates or something.  All so clear to me now.

Meanwhile, no one seems the least bit interested in addressing my original three questions:

What is power?
How do you attain it?
Why isn’t physical attractiveness sufficient to attain it?

I’m arguing that good looking people get special treatment.

Here’s what you’re not getting, Zif:

“Special treatment” for a good-looking woman is having doors opened, getting dates, possibly marrying someone who makes a lot more money than she does.

“Special treatment” for a good-looking man is getting promoted, getting raises, and marrying whoever he damn well pleases.

Like it or not, getting promotions and raises are the kind of thing that have a lot more long-term effects on one’s life than getting doors opened for you.  Pretending that making an extra $100,000 a year because you’re good-looking and having people open doors for you because you’re good-looking are the same thing is what’s making people mad at you. 

Pretending that having doors opened for you and making an extra $100,000 a year conveys the same amount of power is what’s making people think you’re stupid.

What is power?

Money.  What, after the past 8 years you thought there was some other answer?  In this society, money is power.  It’s why 80-year-old men can marry Playboy playmates.

How do you attain it?

Usually by playing games with the stock market (which has turned out so well for all of us), but sometimes it’s inherited.  If you’re a woman and sufficiently unscrupulous, you can marry into it, but your access to it will always be equivocal because it will be your husband’s money, not your money.

Why isn’t physical attractiveness sufficient to attain it?

Because physical attractiveness fades, but the power of money doesn’t.  Haven’t you ever heard “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend”?

It´s pretty people, not pretty women who have a sort of soft power: people (Men and women as well, though not so much) like to keep you around. You get invited to parties, you get mentors, everyone is nice to you and does you small favours. You are seen to confer status to whoever is with you.

Also, there’s charm. Charm is a definite talent, and those who have an aptitude for it do have an advantage in life.

I think “charm” may be what some people think of when they describe the scenario of a beautiful woman smiling and asking nicely for some small favor, and getting it. Where these people make the mistake, though, is in thinking that charm is something beautiful women have to a disproportionate degree, and that it gives those women a larger advantage than it does men.

Men with charm use it to pursue their own personal power—to further their careers, for instance. Women with charm are expected to use it to latch on to men with power by appealing to those men.

“My eyes have been opened.  Physical beauty is not an asset, it is a curse.  A massive liability.  I’m surprised you don’t have to pay higher interest rates or something.  All so clear to me now. “

Well, thanks for making it clear to newbies like me that you’re not actually interested in learning anything.  It will make it much easier to dismiss and ignore you in the future.

Though, this has made me realize that the world must be a scary place for such entitled, privileged boys. Knowing absolutely NOTHING about the topic at hand, yet still unable to stop babblind endlessly lest some silly chick think she knows more about sexism and the experience of women than he does means he has to keep on digging in the desperate hope that people will get bored and stop engaging this nonsense and he can declare himself the winner.

It would be sad if it weren’t so maudedamn funny.

You make it sound like people are rape-tackling each other in mini-malls or something.  Again, I could make the same argument about money - Oh boo, hoo!  If I wear a Rolex watch I am more likely to be mugged, ergo being rich puts me at a massive disadvantage to being poor - or political power - Oh boo, hoo!  As President, I am more likely to be shot, ergo I am a persecuted individual and victim of unsolicited and unwelcome attention.

Zifnab, I’ve only been hit by a car while crossing the road one time in my life, and it was 18 years ago. Amazingly enough, however, once was enough, and I will probably continue to look both ways three times before I cross until I’m too old and bedridden for crosswalks. Likewise, one sexual assault or attempt tends to be quite enough to make a pretty woman aware of the potential pitfalls of trusting men who’re giving them unsolicited help in return for possible sexual favours.

Incidentally, I’m no raving beauty, strictly average. But I have friends who are very conventionally attractive, and I’d say the extra problems are sometimes about enough to cancel out the extra perks. We’re all still women, after all.

This is what not getting laid for too long does to some people. You turn into one of those cartoon wolves who looks at a woman and sees a huge, juicy steak. Or, as the case may be, a Ming vase or a Rolex.

And yet, if you are the sole sandwich keeper - if you decide who does and does not receive sandwiches - then you have unparalleled power over anyone that gets hungry.

Good thing no one is the “sole sandwich keeper,” then. There are billions of women in the world, millions of which you would probably find attractive, and they aren’t part of a pussy-providers’ guild, but independent people who have their own preferences. Not to mention attractive men who have the same power over women and men who want to fuck them. But I guess the only power that matters is the power you imagine people have over you.

It’s worth pointing out that unlike Rolex watches and Ming vases, most human beings don’t like to be thought of as commodities for sale, and if you think of them and treat them that way, you hurt your chances of getting what you want from them like almost nothing else could.

It’s really unhealthy to have such a self-obsessed, adversarial view of other people. I would suggest professional help.

“Special treatment” for a good-looking woman is having doors opened, getting dates, possibly marrying someone who makes a lot more money than she does.

“Special treatment” for a good-looking man is getting promoted, getting raises, and marrying whoever he damn well pleases.

And there, I think, is where we disagree.  From where I sit, I’ve never seen a guy get a promotion or a raise based on how perfect he keeps his hair.  By contrast, I’ve known a few female classmates who are frustrated that the ONLY way they get recognition in some classes is by their appearance.  Likewise, I know a couple of girls who are convinced their coworkers only keep their jobs by flirting with management and that any promotions and raises that follow will, again, be the product of flirting rather than hard work.

And I would certainly argue that a beautiful woman has her pick of whom to marry while a man - no matter how good looking - isn’t marriage material without a house and a job.

Men with charm use it to pursue their own personal power—to further their careers, for instance. Women with charm are expected to use it to latch on to men with power by appealing to those men.

Again, I totally disagree.  There are men and women alike who use their charm to advance personal power.  Hillary Clinton can be incredibly charming.  Michelle Obama has done remarkably well for herself and I imagine her force of personality took her some of that distance.  Grumpy anti-social assholes don’t seem to get far in my company or any business my friends are in - even good ole boys know to treat each other nicely - and charm has won my sister career advancement.

I hear all this 50s stereotypes getting tossed around - women have to “latch on to a man”, women aren’t expected to have a job, women need to marry well and hide in the kitchen - and I wonder if I’m living in the same country as some of you.  I can count the number of married girls I’m friends with on one hand.  I’ve got easily a dozen unmarried career-minded female friends and coworkers who haven’t hit the glass ceiling just yet.  The good looking one get perks and favors.  The not-so-good-looking ones don’t.  No one has been attacked or beaten up - to my knowledge - because they were just too pretty for their own good.  I’m just not seeing what you are seeing.

Zifnab, if you don’t see it it is because you are willfully blind.

Zifnab—

Look at your male friends.  I’ll wager good money that the most attractive ones and/or the ones that use their personal charm to manipulate others are also farther up the career ladder than the ugly or socially inept ones.  Attractive people, regardless of gender tend to have advantages conferred upon them by others.

That the standards for acceptable male attire and grooming are much lower than those for females is another function of systemic sexism, and works to the detriment of women, who must spend much more time and money to keep to the minimum standards of professional attire and grooming.

Ach, boss is back and I’m out of time.  What you’re just not hearing, Zifnab, is that for many women, the negatives to being attractive significantly outweigh the positives.  Having a door opened for you just doesn’t have the same impact as having some boozy ass demand that you have sex with him, ‘cuz he did buy you that drink.

And seriously?  Just ‘cuz Person X gets aroused by looking at Person Y doesn’t mean that that either Person Y is aware of it, much less “doing it” deliberately, nor does it mean that Person X is entitled to sex from Person Y.  Person X’s arousal is his (or her) own damn problem, not some magical condition imposed upon him by Person Y.

The good looking one get perks and favors.  The not-so-good-looking ones don’t.  No one has been attacked or beaten up - to my knowledge - because they were just too pretty for their own good.  I’m just not seeing what you are seeing.

And how sure are you that your female friends tell you all their traumas?

Yes, there are perks. HOWEVER, sometimes those perks come with strings attached. How many women will it take to tell you that before you get it? Also, it’s very hard for a woman to correctly gauge 100% of the time whether a given favour/perk will have strings attached or not.

Is it bull for a woman to be told that she brought something on herself by virtue of being pretty? Of course, but it’s still a very powerful narrative which persists.

“How many women will it take to tell you that before you get it? “

Obviously, it’s the fact that women are saying it to him that’s the problem.  Sexists only hear male voices. Perhaps, if one of the male commenters explain it to him, he’ll finally understand it.

“No one has been attacked or beaten up - to my knowledge -”

Doesn’t that just say it all?  It’s never happen - to HIS knowledge, ergo, it’s never happened and every single woman here telling him differently are just liars, or something.

Obviously, it’s the fact that women are saying it to him that’s the problem.  Sexists only hear male voices. Perhaps, if one of the male commenters explain it to him, he’ll finally understand it.

Nope.  Unless he’s another one who makes the “gender-neutral pseudonym on a feminist blog must be female” mistake, I already tried and it didn’t work.

From where I sit, I’ve never seen a guy get a promotion or a raise based on how perfect he keeps his hair.

And yet multiple studies have shown that’s how it works.  Handsome men get more breaks than ordinary-looking men.  “More breaks” means more salary and more promotions.

So either the 10 studies cited in the linked article are all completely wrong, or your perception is off.  Which do you think it is?

The other reason you probably haven’t seen that effect from “where you sit” is that, unlike women, good-looking men are not required to perform in order to get their benefits.  They don’t have to flirt with the right person—it comes to them as a matter of course.  So while you and your co-workers are watching your good-looking female coworkers flirt to get ahead, the good-looking men are being promoted and given raises right under your nose.

And Zagnut at 1:29 proves him/herself to be the troll we all suspected.

In terms of power and who has it when two persons of the opposite gender interact, take a look at the situations we’ve discussed so far.

If I get pulled over for going 65 in a 50 mph zone and I get out of the ticket by flirting with the cop, who has the power in this relationship?  The cop, of course: he isn’t affected, whether or not he writes a ticket.  I, on the other hand, have a vested interest in trying to avoid a ticket, so I do what I can to convince the cop to go easy.  If I beg shamelessly, cry my eyes out, praise law enforcement or plead and get out of the ticket, no one would think I had any power.  Flirting when I would normally not have is just the same.

Now let’s look at a different transaction: the interaction between a prostitute and her client (most prostitutes are women, so I’m examining the more common situation).  This is an interaction where both parties are technically equal, since both parties have equal power to say yes or no.  Still, who is perceived to have more power?  The male, who paid for sex.  Why?  In Wild Wild West, a client propositions Artemis Gordon, who is disguised as a saloon girl.  When Artemis says he’s not interested, the client replies, “But you got to be interested, you’re a whore!”  Prostitution is attractive to many men because it’s considered safe, where the woman can’t say no.  It’s never considered that she has the right to refuse service.

Offering women free drinks are an equal transaction as well, yet the same perception of power is obvious as in the above example.  Don’t believe me?  Ladies, the next time a gentleman sends you a free drink, send the server back with the simple message of “No, thank you.”  Don’t justify your answer or explain, and see what occurs.  The last time I tried this, the “gentleman” angrily demanded that I explain why I sent the drink back.  Why did he believe he had a right to know?  I refused the implied transaction (free drink for conversation, sex, whatever), and that should have been enough.  The man felt ok to accost me for refusing his “gift” because he felt he had the power.  I didn’t have the right in his eyes to refuse his advances, and he became angry when I did.  As I said, “you got to be interested, you’re a whore…”

And how sure are you that your female friends tell you all their traumas?

Break-ups, family fights, pet deaths, when they’re short on cash, when they hook up again.  And they hear about my shit too.  As they are my friends and not merely my casual acquaintances.  :-p

Maybe I’m just too blind and ignorant to realize the horrors that occur on a daily basis.  But, while I have heard girls complain about unwanted attention, I’ve never heard of anyone getting brutally assaulted over it.  Sorry if this offends you.

perpetuate the species

Take a basic course in evolutionary biology. That phrase is 100% nonsense, on the level of “colorless green ideas…”

It does mark you as pretentious, though.

The “right” sexual/social partner can bring with them higher social status which can lead to better opportunities to network in a society and can lead to all sorts of perks, personal and professional.  That’s true for men and women, gay and straight, rich and poor, young and old, and even religious and secular.  Attractive people have an advantage in that dynamic*.

Does that negate the concept of “power” when looked at under the light of the patriarchal underpinnings of our society?  Hell, No! in general.  But it can in some instances.

On an individual level, anyone can overcome almost everything.  But in general, we’re much more stuck than we’d like to admit, or we’re willing to admit it while some don’t like to hear it.  I think that’s the general problem this comment thread has experienced.  Does that count as feature or bug?  Put me down in the column for “Yes”.

*So do rich, talented, and driven people, for those keeping score at home.  But we’re not talking about that.  How we’re talking about this is another question altogether.

Zifnab: Fuck you for equating living breathing human beings to inanimate things like vases and paintings.

Like we needed the assurance that we’re still viewed as commodities, not, you know, people.

Me, to my teenaged daughter: Apparently abstinance vows don’t stop people from having sex.

Teenaged Daughter: No shit.

I think that sums it up nicely.