The stud / slut paradox

After food and shelter, procreation and passing one's genes on to posterity seems to occupy the minds of all living things.

But the animal kingdom has it easy. Take rabbits for instance: it is 'Go, Sow, Thank you, Doe'. No angst and arguments about morality.

Humans tend to agonise about sex.

Young people worry about shedding their virginity and the aftermath. Older generation worry about diminishing excitement, about marriages settling into comfortable grooves of co-existence and losing the heady romance of the initial years. The still older generation, fifty plus people, worry about waning libido and fading charms. Unmarried people worry about lack of active and regular sex-life; married people worry if they are missing out.

Everybody and her aunt agonises about sex. And then there's gender politics.

There is a curious disparity in how we have come to see the same behaviour with two different parameters. If a man has slept with x number of women, he is a stud. If a woman has slept with the same number of men or even less, she is a slut.

How come?

It is curious how things seem to come in flux. It was only some months ago I was discussing this with a friend; now I find rimi talking about it, and in more detail here . It is the same old story, but I am beginning to wonder how this morality of a woman being faithful for life and a man being free to distribute his genes came about in our Kamasutra land.

As far as I can figure out from the classics, India had never been a land that suppressed its sexual appetites. Sex as a taboo subject and sexuality as something to be slightly ashamed of and embarrassed about... This attitude has come to us from the years of being a British colony. The poets tell us that we celebrated our sexuality lustily and with not much censure or outrage.

But the attitudes nowadays seem to veer from one extreme to another. Poor Khushboo. She only stated the obvious. I wish she advocated safe sex a bit more. In for a penny, in for a pound, after all. :D

When I was young and wild, there was no specter of AIDS, but caution and prudence always played a part in how my circle of friends dealt with intimacy.

People do have sex, and procreate. It is a biological imperative. But social norms change. People have casual sex these days, without any strings attached or any commitment towards a long-term relationship.

But if a man is indulgently allowed to sow his wild oats, why frown upon the fields that got sown? If being sexually active before entering a longish or life-long relationship is acceptable for a man, why is a woman who does the same considered depraved and cheap?

Folks, I was going to talk more about this, but circumstances intervene, and I will be disconnected for a few days. So mull this paradox, and let me know. You too, rimi. You Bubbly, you. :D

To be continued.

Cheers!