A Cure for Insecure Sluts

Perplex me, as a social phenomena. Observation tells me that betwixt genders there simply are preferences present in everyone. People who prefer manogamy and people who prefer polygamy. And even though promiscuity abounds in both men and women, 'slut' as a term is applied liberally to women and almost always ineffectually to men.

I suspect that being promiscuous is frowned upon by men and women, as a behaviour trait in women perhaps because the power in relationships I guess tends to favor men. As such perhaps when women are being promiscuous they seem to be taking on authority above their station? As such I find 'slut' a bad word and perhaps one of the few 'naughty-ish' words I would actually like to see used less.

Furthermore my personal experience has only served to demonstrate o me that as a man I have almost 0 power over my own relationships, almost every crucial decision about any of my relationships futures having been made without my input.

So as a serial monogomist myself, I do possess sympathy for men and women that just prefer change in sexual partners. I don't have sympathy for cheaters though, because if you like variety don't try and have your cake and eat it too. If you want to commit to something, commit to single life punctuated by one-night stands, don't try and stash a security blanket for birthday's, christmasses and valentine's day (and for reassuring your parents your life is going somewhere) by having a partner you cheat on.

But I have another theory that cropped up after viewing some of yesterday's Sports Illustrated and another friend commenting today on what a perverts paradise the CBD is.

The girls for whom 'Slut' is particularly damaging are those infected with the unrealistic body images that grace our magazines, newspapers and television sets.

Particularly photography though. A skilled photographer captures the exact moment a model looks into a camera as if they are looking at you lovingly, they the flirtatious girl next door, a lifelong friend, a soulmate.

This though is why so many men are ultimately dissapointed when they hear a model speak, or shake their head in the supermarket line reading magazine cover after magazine cover announcing Rihanna's perplexing marriage to her beater boyfriend, in a magazine not read by people that ever would have listened to her music.

The foundation of all attractiveness is personality! Photo's allow someone to assume that a model has a good one. We are blinded to the key criterion from whence we determine attractiveness: kindness

Naomi Campbell supermodel has never been able to pin down a decent guy, because if her agencies and various journalists of the world are to be believed: she is a psychotic bitch.

Now let's bring it back to the unfortunately judged women known as 'sluts' much of my reading says that cheaters cheat most often simply because they want reassurance that they can, that they are attractive. So too with a young person trying to test out the hypothesis for the first time 'Am I attractive?'

If the agreed universal standard are people like 'Sports Illustrated Bikini Models' then you are already off on the wrong foot. You are adopting a standard that disregards, or cosmetically covers up personality.

But here is the experiment one might devise for themselves under the psuedo logic of a pythonesque witch-hunt:

'Swimsuit models are attractive because guys want to do them, if guys want to do me I'm attractive.' Note importantly that this is a tragically insecure position to start from, but more worryingly are the 'undefined' terms, most notably 'guys'.

Which guys?

I like to think that a too-simplistic-but-functional-test-for-this-format test might be decent guy/arseholes. The too-simple test is, a decent guy who met a swimsuit model in life would imagine talking to her somewhat before any physical intimacy, an arsehole would imagine some meeting where physical intimacy was arranged with no questions asked.

Or for a more day to day sense, a decent guy is interested in who you are, an arsehole just wants to fuck your body. (as team america reminds me, perhaps 'dick' is a better euphamism than arsehole).

Now in my time I have come across 1,2...6 or so girls that are overly concerned about their attractiveness and adopt the 'if guys sleep with me hypothesis' whilst leaving guys undefined, and this results in the following basic behaviour pattern -

Step 1. Getting really drunk, stoned or high
Step 2. Offering themselves to any guy they come across
Step 3. Some arsehole(s) fuck them
Step 4. Word get's around faster than the sex act itself
Step 5. Girl evaluates hypothesis and decides that the 'guy' she succeeded to attract is not statistically significant and that they ultimately are no closer to determining their attractiveness/self worth.

I must stress I have almost no personal experience of such behaviour. I am a serial monogomist, but it never stops me from hypothesising about what goes on in other people's 'black box' and by that I mean 'black box' in the flight recorder sense/marketing psychographic sense not some filthy pun about vaginas.

The other thing being that the above process is actually tremendously unappealing to decent guys. It is not unheard of, but this tragically means 'decent' people are the most likely to use 'slut' in the judgemental sense.

Unable to get a decent guy, the only guys that reinforce this attractiveness test for the insecure, are never going to provide the emotional aspect that might actually shore up your confidence that you are attractive. Whilst at the same time each successive iteration of sleeping with an arsehole for various reasons makes you less appealing to the kind of person who might, those people are going to reserve the emotional support for people that right or wrong they deem worthy, whilst making you feel less attractive by calling you slut, driving you back into the arms of an arsehole.

Before I get into my proposed 'cure' I just want to take the above paragraph into my personal context. I know that generally reputations reinforce themselves, and that this is a social trap (whilst having certain uses) a bit like 'the boy who cried wolf' where the cultivated reputation of distrust prevented the boy from being trusted when in need. So too I recognise that somebody labelled a 'slut' in my 'balifornian' culture may not have needed to behave like one, if people had stopped calling them slut and treated them like decent human beings. That being said, I do like kind people, but what is ultimately my litmus test in any initial conversation with a prospective mate is whether they are 'interesting' which makes me a 'snob' rather than a 'decent guy' since rather than conversating with a girl I have a tendancy to interrogate somebody I'm interested in. But alas, someone preoccupied with an insecurity like attractiveness just isn't going to be interesting, in much the same way that somebody feeling insecure about shelter and thus talking about mortgages and the property market is not interesting. So I do my own small part in not breaking a vicious social condemnation cycle by offering emotional stability to insecure girls. (But I have when they are interesting people).

I realise that 'slut' is not a technical term, and applied to all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons. I have no problem with 'secure sluts' who simply just don't want to be with one person because they find it incredibly boring. I do have problems with the social phenomena of insecure sluts, that are too often emotionally insecure girls suffering from the old 'garbage in = garbage out' adage of data management.

The 'garbage in' is the faulty information about attractiveness. I think it is both worse and better, in a paradoxical way. My behavioural test of attractiveness is worse in regards that it is harsher than the faulty hypothesis - 'a guy is attracted to you if he wants to talk to you' and if you wanted to decrease the margin of error 'a guy finds you attractive if he wants to spend time with you' but its better because you don't have to go so far as to inhibit your mental inhibitors and offer up your secret garden to any guy passing by.

I mean hopefully you want the kind of guy that is confident enough to have you mentally present for their sexual performance.

But if you clean up the garbage notion that attractiveness is purely physical, and acknowledge the reality that nobody ever had a relationship that was all sex no conversation and the majority of relationships are vastly more conversation than sex (largely due to the fact that conversation is more socially acceptable in more places than having sex is) then you might just come to accept that personality is important.

And here perhaps is the second most frustrating thing of the process. The whole, getting drunk, drugged, or beating yourself over the head with a rock in the hope that somebody takes advantage of you is entirely unnecessary if you instead just 'asked someone out'

It's like that old mildly amusing Seinfeild standup, where he talks about how Americans number 1 fear was public speaking, their number 2 fear was death. So a guy giving a Eulogy would rather be the guy in the casket.

I am equally perplexed as to why I've met so many women that would rather take their chances getting extremely drunk with a guy than ask him out. You find out quickly whether they like you or not, and if they don't you get rejected.

The last time I got rejected was two years ago, and it's net effect on my life was maybe 0. Pretty close anyway, I did hardly see that person again but that's most likely because they moved countries. We are still facebook friends, and like most of my facebook friends we never talk. And if I was brutally honest I was probably only hanging out with them because I was interested in them as a partner, not as a friend.

I do do both, public speaking, and asking girls out. I have also on rare occasions rejected people (tragically because I have treated a decent human being as a decent human being and they more tragically interpreted this as sexual interest instead of the basic respect they are entitled to). And I have to say that rejecting people is an incredibly empowering and flattering experience, its almost as good as your first kiss with a new partner. So when I get rejected I always focus on how good I make that person feel. They must be walking around saying 'yeah I'm a mother-fucker' (well girls don't really talk like this but I like to think they do) getting high fives from their friends that hate me and what not.

It's not humiliating as such (it is a little) it's really quite generous. An emotional stroke. (which people don't admit to as much as they should. Another example of the 'upside' of unrequitted love is when an ex that dumped you gets upset that you've moved on. People appreciate the security blanket of being liked, even if they don't 'buy the product')

So too people don't realise that public speaking is laughably easy from the lecturns perspective - the audience wants you to succeed, they aren't actually craving your blood. Jokes are much funnier in a formal setting than if you had to put them past your more ruthless friends in a social context. etc.

Anyway that is my cure for 'sluts' and only the certain kind that are emotionally damaging themselves. If you love a variety of sexual partners, power to you. I mean seriously, go for it! But if you are just worried about whether the boys think you are pretty, um... man up and fucking ask them out.

I think the saddest part of being a woman in our society (well not really the saddest, but at least most perplexing) is that with the given social stigma, even if you are beautiful, charismatic and warm you are still supposed to wait for the guy you like to ask you out. Almost as if the 'she could have any guy she wants' is an invalid statement, replaced by 'she can have any guy that asks her out'.

I wouldn't fucking accept that. So yeah, if you like some guy -

just
ask
him
out.

Also big ups to girls that do ask out guys, the world is a better place for your existence. You are heroes in your own special way.