Dr. Susan vs. Dr. Laura: Do Sluts Deserve Respect?

Oh, Dr. Laura. It’s like you hear a question, think, “what would make Susan’s eye twitch with anger?” and then offer that up as advice. Here we go, kittens!

The question: My boyfriend and I argue about men who just want sex from women and whether it’s the woman’s fault for getting hurt by these types of men. We agree that women should not sleep with a man outside of the bonds of a commitment if she wants to avoid this kind of hurt, but I think men have a responsibility here too. A recently divorced friend of ours wants to have sex because he hasn’t had any since his ex-wife left a year ago. He plans to get women he already knows to have sex with him but isn’t sure if he should just break up with them afterward. My boyfriend is not shocked by this as he feels this is a part of life and if a woman gets hurt it is her fault. I think men are selfish when they put their sexual desires before a woman’s feelings. My father would never do this. But my boyfriend thinks men who actually take responsibility for their sexual desires are wusses. I’m thinking of breaking up with him because if we ever have children someday, part of me would die inside if he told my sons it’s okay for them to act like animals and how a woman feels afterwards is not their problem. What do you think?

Dr. Laura’s answer: I love this question. This is ““ I wrote “Ten Stupid Things Women do to Mess up Their Lives,” a whole book to answer these, but okay, I’ll give it to you in short. When a woman has casual sex, outside of commitment, which I mean a ring, a date, and married, then it’s casual. Casual has no commitment attached to it, has no obligations, and women who partake in this pretending that it’s okay to be having a good time since the feminist movement and the sexual revolution said “we should be as free with our bodies and our sexuality as men are” hurt themselves. So actually, what your boyfriend is trying to tell you is a reality of life throughout most of the animal kingdom, and that is, as my mother once said, “no man is going to throw a perfectly good woman out of his bed.” So if you want to be meaningful to a man, you have to wait until you are actually meaningful to a man, or else what you are doing might be a chuckle, but it’s not meaningful. And I don’t think this at all implies that he is going to tell his sons just to do girls or he’s going to tell his daughters anything which is making you worried. Trust me. When he gets to be a dad, it all changes.

My response: Are you kidding me? NO REALLY, ARE YOU KIDDING ME. Break up with that man immediately, and here is why: wait, there are too many reasons. Here are a few:

1) Expecting somebody to change once they are a parent is asking for a lifetime of disappointment and, while you’re at it, you are basically deciding to meld your life forever with somebody else’s with your belief that they aren’t good enough as-is. There are plenty of people out there who are good enough as-is. It’s not fair to anybody to decide to procreate while secretly hoping that their entire moral system will change once they become a parent. Sure, priorities get nudged around once parenthood hits, but to expect a person’s faults to disappear because his blood runs through your child is a terrible idea. A terrible idea.

2) Of course he’s going to try to vomit his belief system onto his children. And Dr. Laura will be here to back him up. Do you really want your sons to treat women that way? Answer: no. Break up with him.

3) You don’t just have to worry about your future children. This man is telling you outright that men have needs that they cannot control, and women are responsible for keeping themselves in check. So. What happens four years into your marriage when you are breastfeeding your daughter (whom you are afraid to leave with him for too long, lest he tells her that her worth depends on her willingness to forego temptation) and have zero libido, and he has needs that he can’t control? Or if somebody at his job offers to have sex with him, while you are under the impression that you are in a monogamous relationship? That would be all her fault. If he were to say yes, she is the slut. You are probably also the slut, because, well, you’re a woman. He, though, he is not to blame. He will never be to blame. Can you really trust him to keep his promises to you when he truly believes that women are to blame for any indiscretions? He thinks men who take responsibility for their sexual desires are wusses. He will never be responsible for anything he does to you or behind your back.

4) There’s something to be said about the company that people keep. If he is rooting on a friend who is thinking about having sex with his friends and then dropping them – these are not just women that he might pick up in a bar, which wouldn’t be much better but at least he wouldn’t have earlier obligations to him – he is saying that loyalty to women is worthless once both parties have agreed to have sexual relations. What consensual act might you engage in with him which will render all obligations to you insignificant?

The fact that women continue to accept such men as worthy partners, when they are so obviously filled with contempt for all women, perpetuates the problem. One might say that he does not feel this way toward all women, but one would be wrong. If a consensual act between a man and a woman automatically makes the woman worthless, the woman’s worth from the beginning was meaningless. Dump him. He doesn’t deserve the attention of any woman; let him figure out on his own how to meet his needs.