Loose Women, Lecherous Men (16 page)

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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

Tags: #Social Science, #Feminism & Feminist Theory, #test

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Page 60
that given his sexual profligacy, he is a rabid transmitter of AIDS. Sexual conservatives and liberals alike have singled out gay men of all races and ethnicities as paradigmatic performance-oriented, promiscuous sex seekers whose lifestyle of casual or anonymous sex is regarded as the primary cause of AIDS.
Latinos are frequently categorized in sexual terms as passionate but ultimately self-serving Don Juans who display a machismo that defines their masculinity in terms of their sexual prowess. However, Anglos' class stereotype of Latinos as coarse and uneducated often makes these very same macho men sexually unappealing to middle-class white women determined to find a man who will maintain, if not enhance, their social status. Many middle-class white men see large Latino families as no more than welfare recipients.
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The way sex guarantees authority for the Asian or Asian American man depends largely on his class: the working-class Vietnamese immigrant cannot afford to entertain a blond American girlfriend in the way his rich Japanese counterpart can. On the other hand, despite the commonly held Anglo stereotype of the sexually restrained Asian, Asian cultures are notorious for a socially sanctioned sexual freedom which Asian men enjoy regardless of class but which Asian women do not.
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All of these stereotypes derive their pervasiveness and staying power from the social status and authority conferred on white, affluent, heterosexual males in patriarchy. The sexual stereotype of the uptight and ineffectual lover, which the black man may have of his white counterpart, will be of little consequence to the wealthy white man whose institutionalized power gives him a sexuality all his own: "He's
so
rich! Isn't he sexy?" Unlike white women and people of color, such men represent success objects who have become sex objects without becoming sexually subordinated or vilified. A rich man of color may also be made sexy by his money, but his stereotyping by whites has notoriously restricted his social stature to that of the successful drug dealer, pimp, or professional athlete. Such restrictions are only exacerbated by the fact that successful African American corporate businessmen or academics are often accused by members of their own race as "selling out" to white culture. Even less well-to-do white men can ignore blacks' stereotypes of them simply in virtue of an entrenched racist social standard that marginalizes the perspectives of people of color of all classes. Sexual stereotypes exist both within and across social categories, but the prevalence of any one stereotype is determined by the power of the stereotyper to define the parameters of the category.
Women of color are multiply oppressed, both by the appropriation of their sexuality by men and by the particular sexual stereotypes associated with their race or ethnicity. Many women of color are sexually stereotyped as promiscuous in virtue of their race or ethnicity in addition to being heterosexually identified. If they are lesbians or poor, they are further victimized in virtue of their sexual preference or class. Black women are frequently stereotyped by whites as wild and untamed sensualists who can offer white men a kind of exotic sexual thrill that white women cannot. When a black woman chooses a white lover, she is often considered by both black men and black women as a traitor to her race, someone trading on her stereotype to increase her social status. To white women, she is often a threatening sexual competitor taking unfair advantage of her color.
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Latina and American Indian women are stereotyped by many Anglos as poor, illiterate, and eternally pregnant. Single, young Latinas are often categorized as promiscuous despite the acknowledged sanctions of the Catholic Church, to which many Latinas belong, but especially when those same sanctions discourage contraception or family planning. Middle-class white men attracted to the sexual fecundity of the Latina stereotype also often expect a feistiness they associate with a fiery Latin spirit that may be a particular turn-on. Ironically, many modern Latino households maintain a traditional double standard whereby husbands may have affairs, but wives should be virgins prior to marriage and faithful afterward. On the other hand, the machismo image of the Latina's peers makes it especially difficult for Latina teenagers to say no to sex when young Latino men buy into their own stereotype.
82
Asian and Asian American women are commonly typed outside their cultural community as docile, submissive, and restrained sexually, making them tempting targets for many Anglo men grown bored with more assertive or demanding playmates. A frequent assumption is that Asian women eschew promiscuity, only tolerating sex because it is required of married women or forced on them by unscrupulous mercenaries in the commerce of prostitution known as "sex tourism." Geisha girls do not dispel this assumption, since they are typically regarded as women for whom sex is a job, not a joy, and whose promiscuity is tightly circumscribed by their male clients. In addition, the extremely strong prohibition against women's adultery in most Asian cultures reinforces the presupposition that Asian women much prefer monogamy or no sex at all.
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Promiscuous lesbians are marked as heterosexually frigid, unattractive dykes who couldn't land a man if they tried. When model-beautiful, they are propositioned incessantly by men who cannot understand why they are "wasting their looks" on other women. Poverty makes white women and women of color especially vulnerable to men who appear to promise financial security in exchange for sex. Because each woman has a social location defined by her race, class, and sexual preference in addition to her gender, her oppressions multiply when she is
not
white,
not
affluent, or
not
heterosexual. Her age, her physical ability or attractiveness, even her willingness to wear makeup may also work against her if she does not accommodate the sexual expectations of her culture. Men and women both suffer from strict sexual stereotyping, but the cultural expectation that women be sexually subordinate to men undermines many women's self-respect in a way that expectations for men to live up to the sexual dominance and agency definitive of the masculine ideal do not. Multiple oppressions will be particularly painful for women who are already sexually oppressed by a society that makes much of monogamy into domestic and sexual servitude for women but often makes promiscuity a degrading, if not dangerous, undertaking. In the final section I examine some of the arguments offered against promiscuity amid a growing AIDS epidemic.
Pregnancy and Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Before modern scientific research developed popular and reliable birth control methods and prior to the introduction of antibiotics, pregnancy and sexually trans-
 
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mitted diseases were commonly offered as reasons against promiscuity. If women chose to avoid painful and dangerous abortions, they faced the prospect of unwanted or stigmatized children, or lives alone without the financial or emotional support of the fathers of their offspring. Men faced the moral and legal responsibilities of paternity. Sexually transmitted diseases were often difficult for sexual partners to detect and were notoriously painful once contracted. Some, if left untreated, were lethal.
A counterclaim of the pre-AIDS sexual revolution was that with the advent of modern technology, including modern birth control drugs and devices, safer and easier access to abortions, and medications to ease the pain of venereal disease, promiscuity was a safe, sane, and even recommended way to enjoy sex. Women could at last taste the pleasures of sex free from the fear or guilt of pregnancy, and men could indulge their fantasies fully liberated from the Victorian banes of enforced marriage or debilitating disease. Despite the conservative moral lament that sex was appropriate only within the confines of marriage, the practical arguments discouraging a variety of sexual partners seemed to be dispelled once and for all by modern science.
Decades after the flowering of the 1960s sexual revolution, however, American middle-class access to abortion and birth control still does not include the millions of poor or working-class single women with or without children, who have no health insurance or benefits to cover the costs of family planning. Women of color are particularly affected, since they rank extremely low in average income relative to single white women or white men. For poor married women, men at home are no guarantee of a steady paycheck or emotional support for birth control. Furthermore, despite the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling of
Roe v. Wade
establishing a woman's legal right to abortion, many states still make abortions psychologically and practically difficult for women of all classes.
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Thus, marriage provides no guarantee of ready solutions to unwanted pregnancies, nor is it a bulwark against the venereal disease that errant husbands may bring home with them. Many teenage girls are not allowed by their parents or physicians to use birth control, yet they continue to have sex with boyfriends who find condoms uncomfortable or inhibiting. The sexual revolution not only appears to cater to the interests of men over women in the ways discussed in the preceding sections; it also appears to cater to an adult, white, and middle-class bias as well.
The politically liberal solution has been to advocate for state and federal monies for education and access to contraception and abortion. The conservative moral solution has been to continue to argue against the morality of promiscuity, calling for a reinstatement of the intimacy, emotional commitment, and strong "family values" that monogamous marriage promises. The emergence of AIDS in the late 1970s seemed made to order for a sexual counterrevolution aimed to strike a fatal blow against promiscuous sex. For many conservatives, AIDS symbolizes the inevitable decline of a sexually permissive society, a society that condones a gay lifestyle that conservatives believe is disgusting or perverse. AIDS is regarded by many such conservatives as just punishment for an unnatural sex life irresponsibly lived. Intravenous drug users who contract AIDS are denigrated not for their sexual habits but for their immoral lifestyle. By the mid-1980s, when the sexual transmission of AIDS came to be regarded as a serious threat to the heterosexual community, AIDS became a ral-
 
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lying cry for conservatives eager to use the fatality of AIDS to redouble social support for monogamous marriage over promiscuity.
85
Even those who do not blame the gay population for the AIDS crisis typically give considerable weight to the admonition to avoid promiscuous sex. Condoms are no guarantee of protection. One can test negative for HIVthe Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which has been regarded as the primary cause of AIDSbut, due to the virus's dormancy, test positive in subsequent trials. How reliable are the tests? Since the virus has no apparent history in the United States prior to 1978, many believe that any sexual partner since that time must be considered suspect.
86
Wishing to avoid the politics of repression against the gay community that AIDS has been used to exacerbate, many political liberals lobby for a return to monogamy for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. There has also been a strong faction of the gay community that has begun advocating a monogamous lifestyle in apparent imitation of the heterosexual norms many gay men have long rejected. Many in the gay community regard this trend as internalized homophobia that blames AIDS on a promiscuous gay lifestyle. Alternatively, some gay men advocate a pluralistic gay sexuality designed around safe-sex guidelines and defined in gay terms.
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The following argument emerges: promiscuity puts people at high risk of contracting HIV. HIV causes AIDS. AIDS is fatal. Therefore, promiscuity puts people at unnecessarily high risk of death. The correlative normative conclusion asserts that promiscuity should be avoided. A second set of what I call "Russian roulette" arguments asserts that promiscuity is wrong, since single instances of HIV testing cannot test for all future contractions of the virus; hence, one cannot know whether or not one is infecting (or being infected by) multiple partners over time. Because this knowledge is vital to a safe sex life for all parties, any one partner's promiscuity is immoral. The premises of the first argument bear examining, as does the validity of both the first and second sets of arguments.
First, why would someone think that
promiscuity
puts one at high risk of contracting HIV? This premise implies that promiscuous sex is sex with someone whose infection with the virus one is unsure about. Uncertainty typically accompanies indiscriminate or anonymous sex (indeed, the risks of such sex can be a large part of its allure); however, uncertainty need not be a factor in all promiscuous relationships. A gay or heterosexual man can be on such intimate terms with each of his sexual partners that he knows their sexual histories well enough to be at low risk. The terms may not even be intimate, just reliable, as when a man has sex with recent divorcées whose long prior marriages are known by many to have been faithful ones. Promiscuous women who have been lesbians for several decades or who have never had heterosexual sex, and have always practiced safe sex with women with similar sexual histories, are similarly at low risk.
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Many heterosexual women buy their own condoms because they want some control over the condom's reliability and want to make sure that all of their sexual partners use them. Discriminating George from a previous example required each of his partners to be tested for AIDS; promiscuous Joan could require each of her regular sexual partners to take frequent AIDS tests. If the
test
is the reason for the uncertainty, then this is an argument for abstinence from sexual partners who have had sex with anyone since 1978, not an argument against promiscuity in favor of monogamy or romance.

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