Gender-Based Sexual Inequality Gender Equality

¶ … Gender-Based Sexual Inequality

Gender equality in the United States has achieved tremendous strides, particularly since the middle of the last century. Prior to that, female suffrage and the exigent need for assembly line and factory workers to support the wartime production efforts during World War II were the only major steps toward gender equality in the U.S. By the latter part of the century, a combination of factors (i.e. Roe v Wade, a constitutionally recognized right to privacy in connection with the widespread availability of contraception, and the sexual revolution of the 1960s) had broken down many so-called traditional" American attitudes toward the role of women in the workplace, and in society, more generally (Macionis, 2002). However, the gender-based double moral standard for sexual conduct is one specific component of sexual inequality that remains a fixture, even in the 21st Century, throughout most of American society.

Thesis:

American beliefs about sexual morality still reflect a fundamental inequality in the manner in which existing social mores and widespread attitudes distinguishing appropriate sexual conduct from inappropriate sexual conduct prescribe completely different (and entirely indefensible) moral rules for males and females. It is an attitude that survives virtually intact despite all the other very substantial areas of progress defined and enforced by the weight of constitutional law. In large part, it is likely due, precisely, to the fact that it is a function of social mores that are primarily perpetuated from generation to generation and the fact that they are not associated with any quantifiable deprivation of rights or conduct that is addressable by rules of law.

Besides the degree to which logically-sound moral and intellectual criticism of this aspect of American culture suggest the need for change, there are also significant social consequences to gender-based sexual morality that affect men and society as a whole, in addition to the obvious ramifications to women in American society.

Eliminating this nonsensical belief system is necessary for the healthiest possible self-esteem of American women, for the betterment of intimate social relations between the sexes, for achieving genuinely moral mores pertaining to dating, and for eliminating various unnecessary and detrimental complications that often arise with regard to long- term mate selection (Geddes, 1954).

Argument:

It seems that the male fear, or discomfort, with freely-expressed female sexuality is practically universal in human society, differing from culture to culture only in relative degree and in their specific manifestations. Female chastity, in general, and virginity until marriage in particular, are a tremendous focal point of attention all over the world:

in parts of the Middle and Far East, women engaging in premarital sex risk death by immolation at the hands of their own fathers and brothers for the sake of preserving their family honor; adulterous married women are often murdered by their husbands with tacit legal approval; in parts of Africa, kindergarten-aged little girls are subjected to primitive brutality in the form of crude "surgery" to remove the clitoris to be considered; and in the U.S., women are very strongly encouraged to refrain from most of the very same sexual conduct that are promoted, virtually as badges of honor and achievement for their male counterparts, and practically from earliest pre-adolescence throughout most of adulthood.

Strictly from a logical perspective, the view that specific conduct is either commendable or shameful depending only on one's gender is absurd. American men build their self-esteem (at least in substantial part) as a function of sexual conquests;

often, the more superficial the circumstances generating the sexual opportunity, the more admirable in terms of a man's social status amongst his peers.

Meanwhile, American women are taught to play defense to preliminary sexual overtures and to prolong the nonsexual phase of courtship even when doing so may actually conflict with their genuine physical desires at the time; they are continually subjected to both overt and much more subtle messages that their sexuality should, at the very least, be limited to that which occurs in the context of genuinely romantic relationships (Verene, 1976). Likewise, between romantic relationships, they are encouraged to remain celibate to the extent that single (and estranged) American women need airfare and accommodations to Las Vegas or the Bahamas to indulge any natural sexual desires they may have beyond those "authorized" by American social mores.

Not all that uncommonly, a man loses any sincere romantic intentions toward a particular woman after bedding her, for no other reason but specifically because she allowed the sexual overtures that he initiated to progress. There are even instances where man who takes a woman's virginity then rejects her as a potential partner because he believes that virginity is a necessary prerequisite for any woman with potential as a wife.

Admittedly, these are extreme examples, but they do exist; much more importantly, they are no more ridiculous in objective principle than less extreme manifestations of gender- based morality in any respect.

The logical flaws underlying gender-based sexual morality are so fundamental and glaringly obvious, that even strictly objectively, it is absolutely impossible to justify except through post-hoc rationalization. To make matters even worse, American men have every natural incentive to perpetuate practically any conceivable rationalization for doing so. That is because the same rationalizations can so easily be twisted into excuses for duplicitous and deceitful conduct on their part necessary to absolve their own entirely earned) guilt and justify the shameless pursuit of meaningless sex by misrepresenting their degree (or type) of interest in a given woman. The rationalization is that only virtuous women "deserve" empathetic consideration or honesty.

Closely related to that rationalization is the equally popular suggestion that a woman who is promiscuous, even if only when single, is therefore also necessarily untrustworthy in relationships (GFTAOP, 1966). Actually, the two rationalizations differ only in their use: the first is helpful mainly when a man is seeking to justify misrepresenting feigned romantic intentions when his only real intentions are to trick a woman into consensual sex that is more meaningful to her and completely meaningless to him; the second is more useful when a man already in a relationship needs justification for seeking sexual activity outside his primary relationship.

The irony is that objective ethics teaches us that lying for personal gain, especially at another's expense, is fundamentally immoral; in most other human affairs, it is actually prohibited by criminal law with substantial consequences for theft or misappropriation by trickery or deceit. Meanwhile, objective ethical principles are hard-pressed to define any logical justification for condemning sexual conduct that does not involve deceit or violate any concurrent relationships or understandings with anyone else, let alone ethical principles for its condemnation only for one gender (Baker & Elliston, 1998).