Taylor Tarpey
Sociology 345
30 July 2012
In today’s society, we as men and women are burdened with a double standard of how one’s sex life is supposed to go. We hear from our friends and family, from churches and neighbors, that sex is something you do with the person you love and trust, someone who you are going to share the rest of your life with. Sex comes with marriage, and with marriage comes a promise that you will remain with this one person “’til death do us part.” But this is no longer the case, as people all over the world are having sex way before marriage. We develop attractions to the people we see in school or in the workplace, and we date each other, and in other cases, we “hook up.” This is where sex comes in. It seems as though we may have lost that meaning of sex and intimacy and promise, and now we have developed a game. A race even- who can have sex with more people? Who is the most experienced? Who is the best? And as we all want to try and win this race, backlash is inevitable. As men increase in numbers, they increase in “manliness” and power among each other. As women increase in numbers, they decrease to “sluts and “whores” or to “easy” individuals. Where in the world did this come from? Of course, the power of man did not originate in the 21st Century. Man has been the number one sex as early as the 1600s, when scientists, doctors and religion claimed that the bodies of men and women were one. A body in this time period was “fluid,” and ever changing, and men and women were represented in a hierarchy. A male body was a perfect body to compare all others to; it was strong, full of heat and truth. A female body was one that lacked vital heat and perfection, making these bodies the inverse of a male body. Women retained, inside, the reproductive structures that are visible on the male body. Women were weaker, softer and colder and always looked down upon. They were also considered more out of control and their