| > Rephrased the way I understood it to mean… But your rephrasing doesn’t match the original. He says he would feel like a fool supporting a woman from 40-70 who was “giving it up easily” in her earlier years. Can I ask if English is your first language? I don’t wish to be rude, but the idiomatic phrasing “Giving it up easily” does not mean walking away from relationships frivolously. It means she was having sex, giving up her virtue (or vagina, pick a v word). It is a phrase which presupposes that it is a woman’s job not to give ‘it’ up and that she is easy or a slut if she does. It means that when men came to her seeking sex, she did not turn them away as she should have (ignore the men though, that’s just natural and not to be judged). It’s not about criticising someone for walking away from relationships, it’s shaming a woman, and specifically a woman, for having had sex. This is classic misogynist rhetoric, casting a woman’s value as proportional to her sexual past, making it her role to limit access to sex. And yes, this probably does come from insecurity, that doesn’t make it ok. He also talks about the promiscuity of college-age girls, and how he is having trouble finding meaning in dating women his own age, and how he wants his partners to have had few sexual partners, where he himself talks about having been sexually active for two decades. I think it’s fair to say there’s a lot going on here, but some of his comments reveal quite weird attitudes towards women. Wherever those come from, they manifest as misogyny and double standards. |
Sure, no offense taken, and you are correct, I am not a native English speaker indeed, and while I know my share of idioms I was completely unaware that “Giving it up easily” was an idiom specifically referring to getting laid frequently, leaving no room for ambiguity. Thanks for the astute guess and subsequent clarification, happy to stand corrected!
100% on board here, whoever wants to have fun and explore their sexuality in whatever way or frequency they see fit is a perfectly normal thing to do, and it by and far does not mean that person would be unable to commit in a relationship on mutual agreement of exclusivity later on. So the double standard and badmouthing is not acceptable by any means in any way, shape, or form.
I don't even compute how person A would "look like a fool" being in mutual commitment with person B if person B had their share of fun and experimentation in a previous period of their life. If anything, person B now knows exactly who they want to be with and what they like, so they're more likely to keep their commitment since they chose to commit armed with that knowledge!