NSFW Did the Dichotomy with woman's sexuality in western culture evolve as a result of women's actions or was it simply male craziness?

What? Now you are blaming women for the way that men label them?

How sensitive are you?

No, it is not the way that women treat men that causes them to be labelled. Women should have the right to have sex with whoever they want without acquiring any labels.

Why don’t men have labels based on their sexual behavior?

But it’s supposed to be about different women consistently acting like a Madonna or whore so that theory doesn’t hold water.

And what she ^^ said too.

@Ladies. Not blaming. Musing after a drink.

@janbb I know what the theory is saying, that men categorize and internalize those categories about women in general. But how did it get started if I am of?

It is the result of thousands of years of patriarchy and male chauvinism. Women were considered either property of their fathers or their husbands and were expected to be completely obedient child factories. Naturally women who did not submit to this misogynist tyranny were then vilified.

Women were screwed either way, because men couldn’t make up their minds. If they don’t have sex with us, they’re prude bitches. If they want to have sex with us, but not be completely ours, then they’re whores.

Like @ragingloli said, now it’s a modern case of vilifying women for wanting freedom.

I don’t think the cause is either of your proposed candidates. Instead, it seems to me that the Madonna-whore complex is what happens when a prudish ideal meets the naked truth. The prudish ideal is a bizarre picture of women in which they are maternal but non-sexual. The naked truth is that typical men and women both like and want sex—and not just sex, but good and mutually enjoyable sex.

If one accepts the Victorian view that men are creatures of desire that women must hold off and tame, and that women have sex only for procreation and to keep their men in line, then any woman who enjoys sex must be a whore and unworthy of marriage. But if the naked truth is that the average person seeks out good and mutually enjoyable sex, then any woman who fits the virginal ideal is unfit for a long-term relationship.

It gets further complicated when you realize that men are also subject to strict social roles in sexist societies. While they may not be subject to the sorts of institutional oppression that face women, their social options are often much narrower than those allowed to women. That is, there is often a very narrow picture of what is masculine with everything else being described as feminine.

Sexual prowess is typically part of “being a man” in such societies. But if you can’t have (mutually enjoyable) sex with your wife (who must be virginal and maternal), and if you can’t have sex with anyone else (yay, monogamy!), then you’ll have to go find those who society deems to be nobody (the whores). They don’t count, of course, because they are women who have abandoned femininity by having sex for pleasure.

This situation does not arise out of the actions of women, yet it is no more a function of ordinary male psychology. It is a result of the intense cognitive dissonance that comes from instilling incompatible values in people. Historically, these values have been promoted by groups looking to control others (not necessarily as rulers) by making them feel guilty or shameful with regard to their biological drives.

Sex, as it turns out, is ideal for this sort of manipulation. You can make people feel guilty about any of their drives, and there are certainly those who shame others for their eating habits, their sleeping habits, and so forth. Sex, though, is the only drive where the desire can be made to seem disproportionate to its function. It’s hard to argue that daily eating and sleeping are suboptimal, but daily sex may seem unnecessary if you think its only function is reproduction.

Reproduction, however, is not the only function of sex. It’s not even the only social function of sex. Even if we believe that reproduction gives as a complete evolutionary explanation of why sex came about, it remains the case that sex changes relationships and promotes—though does not guarantee—closeness and cooperation. Properly done, it is psychologically healing and relaxing. This is one of the reasons it is such a terrible thing to take advantage of or use as a weapon.

The dichotomy derives from organized western religions view of women as being the reason men are led astray into sin. Of course men have dominated these religions and these faiths serve as a means of social control.

The obverse of the dichotomy derives from the schizophrenic approach-avoidance feelings men have in response to physically attractive females.

To blame women for this dichotomy is an obscene distortion!

@Dr_Lawrence a number of people are saying blame, and expressing offense.

I am sorry if you feel I am blaming. I am curious only as to their participation in the phenomena. If you agree the phenomena exists, than I am curious to explore where it may come from, and whether it is wholly male psychology or if women participate in and reinforce the condition.

I do agree it may come from organized religion, and suspect it may stem from the destruction of Minoan society, which worshiped female deities, while worshipers of male deities in the Ionian Greek societies were spared.

But it seems like a thin explanation for trends two eons old. What reinforced it across 2 thousand years?

It’s false. We don’t characterize women in one digital bit. It’s clever to write about. It was a wonderful sound bit for the Women’s movement. But it’s a gross oversimplification. We evaluate women on a number of scales – intelligence, approachability, physical attractiveness, sense of style… just as they evaluate us on a number of scales.

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Of course, we evaluate first whether or not she has big boobies.

@6rant6 I don’t think anything about the Madonna-whore theory requires that Madonna or whore be a woman’s only or even dominant label in anyone’s mind. It’s about a psychological complication, not a psychological reduction.

@ragingloli said it a lot more eloquently than I could (and used a lot more big words too). I always said it was so difficult especially for catholic raised females of my generation. You are taught to repress any sexual feelings you may have until you are married, then suddenly you are to blossom into a completely sexual being. It is probably true of all of my generation but I am particularly aware of the catholic angle.

It still goes on, young males are considered studly if they have sex with as many females as they can (with nary a care about whether or not a child is created) whereas young females are still given the message that such behaviour is not socially acceptable. Even Beyonce says to put a ring on it.

So no, it is not the fault of the female, it is the males with their domination of religions and creation of what is feminine or not and their definition of what is socially acceptable depending on the culture of the moment.

@SavoirFaire Even so – false, misleading, reductionist, anachronistic and inflammatory. “Don’t men just pigeon hole women all to hell!”

It’s equivalent to saying “all white see all blacks this way,” or “all intersexuals see everyone else that way. ” It’s bullshit.

@6rant6 But it’s not about all men. It’s a proposed explanation of a problem found in some men. Just because depression is listed in the DSM-IV doesn’t mean that psychologists think everyone is depressed. Similarly, just because some men might be afflicted by the Madonna-whore complex doesn’t mean that all men are.

@SavoirFaire You’re still asserting the existence of a “Madonna-whore complex.” We have conflict about people, regardless of their gender identify. We like people who are competitive when they are on our team, but see them as bullies or ball busters when they’re not. We like people who are smart, but not so smart that they make us feel stupid. We want our porridge, “Just right.”

Women have conflict about how sexual their men should be. Not too much – except when it’s welcome. Using the word Madonna to talk about this ambivalence in our regard for libido casts this discussion into a gender-biased arena. People jump too easily to, “Yeah, they do that to us!” Thoughtful people should stand up and say that choice of words is inflammatory and should fight against its use.

As a matter of fact, they should do more than stand up. They should jump up and down!

Simon De Beauvior could answer this one for you.

I’m confused about how “making a good long term man wait for sex while having sex immediately with a hot loser and never meeting him by the saber tooth tiger den again” has anything to do with the Madonna/whore complex. The Madonna/whore complex as described on the Wikipedia page and then a bit in your details is about the tendency of some men within Western culture to see mothers as asexual but good (even though they cannot become mothers without being sexual), and whores as sexually desirable but bad; thus, once their wife becomes a mother, she is no longer sexually attractive to him (or at least he only feels comfortable having “wholesome, respectful” sex with her, not the raunchy, kinky animal-fucking that probably got her pregnant in the first place) and thus he is “forced” to find women who aren’t his wife (so, probably, whores) to fulfill his desires. Also: I don’t think ancient women were doing this. The idea that women say they want nice guys, but actually want abusive jerks, and that’s why we have to pity the “Nice Guy” who can’t get any pussy and is in fact so nice that he thinks horrible things about women and constantly has to be convincing women of his niceness, is a fairly modern trope.

Do some women seem to affirm this stereotype, choosing to be either the type of girl you marry or the type of girl you fool around with? Sure, at least in part because society will pigeon-hole them into one group or the other regardless of how varied and complex their actual person is. And when you tell women they only have two choices, you can’t be shocked that many of them believe they only have two choices. Not to mention that when this dichotomy started back in Biblical times, women were literally property of men and the death penalty was rather common for infractions, so of course many women decided that they’d rather live than start a one-woman revolution. And again, I would point out: men have had the power. Men still mostly have the power. The one with the power to change this is probably not going to be the group who’s legally forbidden from owning their own person. Yes, some women also categorize men into “good men who care for their wives and children” and “dogs who only want one thing”, but again, I would point out that men had almost all of the power and could and have rather easily created mass-media portrayals that challenge that stereotype (not necessarily for the better), and as women have been able to make gains like no-fault divorce, abortion rights, and better wages the popularity of the dichotomy has gone down.

@6rant6 I am not asserting the existence of anything. My responses to you operate not on the assumption that the Madonna-whore complex is real, but only on the premise that your responses misconstrue what the theory says. A theory can be misconstrued regardless of whether or not it describes a real phenomenon. Case in point, the “Madonna” part of Madonna-whore is not about sexual ambivalence. Nor do I think what you describe is ambivalence. Saying that women (or anyone else) only want sex when it’s welcome is empty. Wanting and being welcome are synonyms in this context, so all you’ve said is that women want sex when they want sex. This is true, of course, but trivially so; and if it describes a sort of ambivalence, then even the most sexually active people are ambivalent about sex on your description.

In any case, you’ll note that I did “stand up to” the word choice used in the OP by rejecting both of the explanations proffered for how the Madonna-whore complex—if it exists—might have come about. What I further noted, however, was that the theory itself is not saying that men did this to women or that women did this to men. Thus there is no need to stand up, nor jump up and down at the mere suggestion that something like the Madonna-whore complex exists because it does not involve saying anything like the words you are attempting to put into the mouths of psychologists. That does not mean that the theory is accurate, of course, but it does undermine objections like the one you are trying to make. We need to criticize theories on the basis of what they actually say, not on the basis of how we may have misinterpreted them.