Pop singer Christina Aguilera is defending her reputation for sleeping around and dressing in slutty clothing.
She says,
“I see a lot of double standards in society, Men can do things and women can do the same things yet get criticized for it, labeled for it — they are just constantly put down for things that men can do so freely and so openly and get almost praised for”
She also wrote a song about it:
Can’t Hold Us Down
I don’t understand why it’s okay
The guy can get away with it & the girl gets named
All my ladies come together and make a change
Start a new beginning for us everybody sing
Her argument is false. She makes two errors. She assumes that men are praised for sleeping around and she assumes that men and women are the same.
Men are not universally praised for promiscuity. They get labeled with names like womanizer, skirt chaser, or lecher (maybe she should expand her circle of influence).
The second point is that men and women are not the same. Perhaps there is not as strong a condemnation of men as women. That is because of the respect our society has for women. Women have long been thought to be able to control their more base instincts better than men. Women are assumed to be more monogamous than men. In times gone by, women required men to give up their promiscuous ways by committing to marriage. This respect for women was the basis for all of Western society for millennia.
Now Christina wants to turn that upside down. I don’t understand how women giving up the power they had in society gives them more respect. Ask any man if he respects a woman who jumps in the sack on the first date. I remember a conversation I had with another man a few years ago. He said, “Sure I’ll have sex with a woman on the first date. I won’t respect her, but I’ll have sex with her.”