This blog post is about how and why the modern sexual climate (which I call Sex 2.0) has made it impossible for there to ever be genuine sisterhood amongst women.
Now a few years back, British actress Sienna Miller publically complained about the lack of sisterhood amongst women, the tendency for bitchiness, competition, gossiping, constant judgment and negativity.
She was quoted in an interview with Style Magazine saying:
We say we want to be equal, but men don’t sit around bitching at each other. There’s no sisterhood.
She is quite right. Author Kelly Valen conducted a survey of 3,000 American women and she had this to say:
Many of us are feeling ambivalent within the gender. (I suspect women in the UK are experiencing much the same.) Some are questioning the intentions and emotional safety of their fellow females thanks to what they call an insidious undercurrent of negativity and competition. Indeed, most respondents told me they’d suffered emotional wounding at the hands of other females at one time or another, most of it from gratuitous, garden-variety nastiness – you know, gossip, judging, one-upping, exclusion, status jockeying, and other manipulations. I’ve now heard far too many tales of unnecessary, hurtful gamesmanship.
She also said:
As a savvy British judge put it during the Keeley Houghton girl-bullying case, people don’t realise that the “evil, odious effects” of these hurts often stay with us for life. Yet, ironically, few of us wish to acknowledge, much less talk about, it. To many, it’s an ugly reality best swept under the rug.
The Circle
So why does this circle of hatred amongst women exist and how was it created? Well, as regular readers of the site know, at the heart of Sex 2.0 are the two sides of the Sex 2.0 deal; the female side and the male side.
Women are raised by society their entire lives to believe that they have to sell their sexuality in exchange for security, ultimately the security of marriage to a man. This is the female side of the Sex 2.0 deal.
Men are raised to believe their entire lives that if they want a long term sexual relationship with a woman they have to claim her as exclusive sexual property (primarily to ensure that they end up raising their own children). This is the male side of the Sex 2.0 deal.
Society also teaches us that anybody and everybody that steps outside of this deal is to be stigmatised, demonised and despised. So, if you are a heterosexual woman and you have no interest in selling your sexuality in exchange for security but you want to have sex anyway, what does society label you as?
Yep, you got it. You either get called a slut or a whore depending on whether you give it away for free or sell it. Those that follow the 2.0 deal are labelled as “good girls” and “possible long term girlfriend” or “marriage material”.
Therefore society separates heterosexual women in 3 categories – slut, whore or good girl – and they all hate each other. Why?
Sluts
Sluts hate whores because they are offering men a shortcut to sex, one that does not involve buying them drinks in bars.
Sluts hate other sluts because they are competing for the same guys (usually the alpha males) in the same bars.
Sluts hate good girls because they are trying to take all the best men out of the available dating pool altogether and trying to keep them for themselves in a fenced relationship. And that’s just greedy!
Whores
Whores hate other whores because not only are there a limited amount of customers but an endless supply of even younger prettier ones keep arriving which not only dilutes the market but it drives down their value in the sexual marketplace as they get older.
Whores hate sluts because they are giving away the product for free. This cannot be allowed!
Whores hate good girls because they keep trying to get in the way of supply and demand by keeping their men away from them. Damn meddlers!
Good Girls
Good girls hate whores because they are offering men a way to get sex without paying the price of security; they can pay by the hour instead. This is a way to hack the system and break the back of the marriage market. This cannot be allowed!
Good girls hate sluts too because sluts are giving away – for free – something that they believe that they need to sell (sex) in order to attain the security of marriage to a man.
Good girls hate other good girls because they are competing for the same thing. They are trying to land the best man they can. They are also told that this competition is a zero sum game in which for them to win, every other woman on the planet has to lose.
See the problem? How can their ever be a sisterhood if women follow the Sex 2.0 model? Thankfully the Sex 2.0 model is already completely redundant and leaving it behind is simply a case of raising ones awareness and level of consciousness about deciding to play no further part in the 2.0 framework.
The Circle Of Hatred Is Normal But Not Natural
Back to author Kelly Valen:
We pay a lot of lip service to the idea of our uncivilised behaviours – whether we’re talking about trouble in the sandpit, at school, online, the mommy front, cocktail party circuit, or workplace. Yet when I looked into things, I found that no one had ever examined the actual fallout or aftermath of all this. There’d been no examination of conscience and no accountability to speak of. Meanwhile, the media certainly hasn’t help matters, insisting on dressing up our troubles with cute, inflammatory “mean girl”, “cat-fight” and “frenemy” headlines that pit women against one another and perpetuate the very problem we’re trying to abate.
Yes, the fallout and aftermath from all of this is totally normal, it is also not natural. Women are deeply co-operative by nature as evidenced by the flood of a oxytocin (a very stress relieving hormone) that women experience when they first bond with a new female friend or spend time with and old one.
What Kelly is referring to here is the normalisation of un-civility and emotional (and sometimes physical) violence that women direct towards each other. This normalisation of such deeply disturbed behaviour is, of course, the 2.0 trademark and it reveals exactly how deeply pathological 2.0 is.
The only winning move with a game like Sex 2.0 is not to play. If you agree then Sex 3.0 might be for you. Come join the revolution.
