Savvy Women

Ms. Anderson mentions the pressure that all single people are under to be sexually active. Yes, it’s a sexual world we live in, and to feel a part of that world we have to play the game. Oops! Did I actually use the word “game” when referring to sex? I assure you it wasn’t my intention to do so. The word just popped out of my mouth (or was on the tips of my fingers, in this case). I guess I’ve just proved Freud right. Sometimes we do “slip.”

When I was growing up, I assumed (because I always heard) that males and females play the game of sex differently, according to different rules, and with the purpose of achieving different aims. Boys, as the lore of life went, have sex because they’re just too “animalistic” to help themselves. It’s part of their nature to want to “breed” and to spread their “seed” far and wide. Girls, on the other hand, have sex to achieve intimacy. They “give it” to their boyfriends (even Fredricka Whitfield uses the phrase “give it away”) as a way of expressing their deep, emotional attachment to them.

I’m wondering now, as I write this, if these differences really are true, or if they’re just silly notions propagated by Hollywood. Popular media, it seems, needs stark contrasts as a way of creating and perpetuating dramatic tension. You can even see this in mainstream televised news. International conflicts are always portrayed as contests between “good guys” and “bad guys.” Of course, conflict is exciting. It sells. It keeps people tuned in. And you can only have it when there is a protagonist and an antagonist. But when this sort of black-or-white, “TV thinking” begins to affect our everyday thinking, we can develop overly simplistic views on lots of different subjects.

(We can start believing that there are male reasons for having sex and female reasons for having sex and that these are diametrically opposed.)

What I’ve noticed while watching the TV news is a preponderance of stories about these hard economic times we’re living through and the lengths to which individuals are going to make ends meet. And then, while looking at the Huffington Post this morning, I found this article, written by Phyllis Caldwell who heads a group called the Washington Area Women’s Foundation. According to Caldwell, during recessions, women are much more likely to suffer financially than are men. To prove this point, the author provides a number of shocking statistics, including this one—of all impoverished people living in America fifty-six percent are either women or girls.