Philosophy of Sex and Gender, Article Review Example

Dossie Easton’s and Janet Hardy’s The Ethical Slut is a winning, persuasive, logical fairy tale.   As lucidly written as it is, the work has a consistently adolescent feel to it because the authors seem to be writing, not from any experience of life and people, but from a removed plane of existence, as a teenager would.   This contrary view of the work could be seen as an unhappy, cynical reaction to their Utopian vision of a world where “slut” is applied to all, and with pride.   Unfortunately, the reality is that their arguments and stances are completely removed from the evidence of thousands of years of gender relations.

For example, the authors neatly blame societies and cultures for the deeply rooted bias which presents “slut” as a shameful label for a woman, and “stud” as a badge of honor for men.   The most obvious failing in this reasoning is that it requires cultures to generate themselves, apart from the input and will of people, when all “moral” institutions known to mankind have been very much the product of mankind.   This is Kantian ideology at its most specious, in that it seeks to detach morality from its actual creators.   The rationales behind the biased morality may be immoral, based on male supremacy, or any number of other things, but the relevant fact is that they exist because people have accepted, if not demanded, their existence.   Societies do evolve and gender inequalities are often, eventually, resolved, yet the fact that openly sexually active women are condemned does not appreciably change.

This then goes to a deeper issue ignored by Dossie and Hardy.   That is to say, if many cultures over many eras have identified promiscuous women as “sluts”, should there not be a more profound investigation into what prompts men, or humans, to so consistently damn women who blatantly enjoy sex?   Even the most severe religion holding to this feeling is still a human construct; code of morality is result, not motivation, and the history of humanity seems to strongly indicate that a kind of reflex of reverence is attached to female sexuality.   Women bear children as a result of sex, and it is likely that this simple and profound reality shapes the most visceral ways in which all people regard the sexual activity of a woman.  It is juvenile to assert that both men and women may be “sluts” because sex is a very different experience for men and women, and it is so regardless of cultural circumstances.  All the joyous cheering in the world for a true equality in how the sex lives of each are viewed does not at all alter the fact, and The Ethical Slut, ironically, skips over the seriousness of sex in its adolescent denial of gender perceptions reflected, but not created, by society.