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Authors: Linda Lemoncheck

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Page 28
sponsibility for family planning or family support. Without the promise of sex in exchange for the financial security and social status of marriage, single women often complain that they have had to throw away one of their few remaining bargaining chips for physical and emotional well-being. ("Why buy the milk when you can get the cow for free?")
1
Furthermore, living in an economic climate that continues to undervalue women's labor, many divorced or deserted women left with children to support are often relegated to a life of financial struggle. It is ironic that in an era promising women's sexual liberation, the prostitution that Kathleen Barry refers to as "female sexual slavery" is often the only avenue of gainful employment available to unskilled or underemployed women worldwide who are the sole providers for themselves or their families.
2
In addition, women still live in a world where many believe that something is wrong with a woman who does not have "a (one) man in her life," a belief especially disturbing to lesbians, whose daily confrontations with heterosexism make being a monogamous couple no protection against social stigma.
3
Aging single women become sexually less desirable in a culture that defines a woman's sexual attractiveness in terms of her youth and beauty, a fact that puts older, heterosexually active women in fierce competition with their younger counterparts for still sexually attractive older men. For women who do choose marriage, the specter of a multitude of heterosexually active single women often represents not only a real threat to any hope of an emotionally stable and financially secure domestic life but also the threat of contracting their husband's sexually transmitted diseases. A single woman, not an errant husband, is most likely to be singled out for censure or abuse, since it is she who has historically been described as tempting men into sin.
4
In this patriarchal climate, a sexually promiscuous woman is regarded derogatorily by both other women and men as nothing more than a "slut."
At a time of often brutal and unpredictable sexual violence against women, the spontaneous or casual sex associated with promiscuity has made many women eschew sex with multiple partners as too risky to be worth any anticipated pleasure. The alarming frequency of acquaintance rape, in which the victim knows her assailant, has left many single women with little prospect of a safe sexual life. Yet many women, especially teenagers, feel tremendous peer pressure to have sex, in a post-Victorian society that still marks sexually reticent women as "frigid." Such pressure can lead to psychological turmoil when the emotional investment a woman may have made in her sexual relationship is not reciprocated. At its worst, resistance to such pressure can lead to rape. Combine such concerns with the fear of AIDS, which has everyone from sex educators to political pundits advocating abstinence as the only safe sex outside of marriage, and it is no wonder that promiscuity is regarded by many women as the pursuit of personal danger and sexual anxiety, not sexual pleasure and psychological well-being.
5
The issue of a woman's control over her own body has been one of the most important political platforms of the women's movement. To tell a woman that she cannot or should not be promiscuous seems to run counter to the feminist effort to secure sexual agency and self-definition for all women. Many feminists regard the sexual liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as its contemporary vestiges, as serving primarily the interests of men precisely because the movement made
 
Page 29
more women sexually available to men without affording enough women the economic and political tools to escape being sexually subordinated by them. According to this view, sexual liberation convinced women that sex without love or marriage was a good thing without giving women the opportunity to define what good sex is
for women
. Heterosexual and lesbian feminists alike have argued that truly liberating sex for women requires a fundamental reconceptualization and reevaluation of women's sexual exploration, pleasure, and agency.
6
Such reframing raises difficult questions, however: Should a feminist reconceptualization of women's sexual desire include a sexually promiscuous lifestyle? Or are promiscuous women simply appropriating a masculine sexual value that is ill-suited to our temperament as women? What exactly counts as promiscuous sex, and what, if anything, can promiscuity contribute to women's control over our bodies in an environment increasingly characterized by sexual violence, disease, and death? This chapter explores these questions from the "view from somewhere different" introduced in chapter 1, which characterizes women's sexual promiscuity as a contextual and dialectical function of both women's sexual oppression and our sexual liberation. From such a perspective, a woman's promiscuity is understood contextually, in terms of her particular social location ("What is it like to be her?") and in terms of how those who would question her behavior are perceived by her ("What is it like to be us in her eyes?") From the "view from somewhere different,'' a woman's promiscuity is also understood dialectically, as both encouraging her subordination by men ready to exploit her sexuality and facilitating her exploration of one among many different ways that she may give meaning and value to her erotic life.
The next section of this chapter explores the variety of meanings that are given to the terms "promiscuous" and "promiscuity." I argue that many of the difficulties in sorting out some of the complaints against sexual promiscuity may be attributed to this semantic variety. I also show how a patriarchy that has an investment in women's sexual monogamy also has an investment in convincing women that monogamy is the only safe haven for intimate and satisfying sex. Further discussion examines some of the specific complaints that feminists have against women's adopting a promiscuous lifestyle. I argue that because a woman's promiscuous sex can be, although it need not be, sex that respects and nurtures the particular sexual needs of her partners, feminists who object to sex that is impersonal and objectifying cannot reject women's promiscuity out of hand. I then address some of the arguments offered in favor of women's sexual promiscuity, particularly the argument that a woman's promiscuity promotes her sexual satisfaction and growth by encouraging her to explore her own sexual needs. I argue that the "view from somewhere different" can empower women to negotiate the tensions among conflicting moral views on promiscuity by describing promiscuous sex as dialectically situated in a world in which women are both the subordinated objects and active subjects of our sexual lives. I also examine some of the special complaints reserved for a sexually promiscuous woman that do not apply to her male counterpart and explore some of the stereotypes of promiscuous sexual behavior that circumscribe women and men of color. I contend that the denigration of a woman's promiscuity acts as a way of limiting her capacity to act as a self-determining sexual subject. The closing discussion examines the argument that promiscuous sex is lethal in an era of AIDS and so objectionable
 
Page 30
on those grounds alone. My claim is that AIDS is reason for caution regarding our sexual behavior, but the danger of AIDS is not sufficient reason for condemning all promiscuous sexual exploration, nor is it sufficient to support an argument for abstinence. On the contrary, because AIDS has been used to heap renewed abuse on a homosexual community struggling to define a sexual lifestyle that does not simply mirror traditional heterosexual norms, I argue that we should be wary of any arguments that treat the medical crisis of AIDS as a social commentary on the dangers of sexual liberation.
Only a Numbers Game?
In the conceptual analysis that comprises much of the traditional literature on the philosophy of sex, very little has been written on the meaning of sexual promiscuity.
7
However, what is traditionally meant by the term "promiscuity" is vital philosophical information if we are to examine any feminist attempts at its
re
conceptualization. For example, if promiscuity is only a numbers game, then why did polygamous Mormon men at the turn of this century, men with six or more wives, each of whom received weekly conjugal visits, rail against the evils of promiscuity? To cite hypocrisy or self-deception is too facile. If we resolve the Mormon case by claiming that promiscuity must also constitute a failure to promise a lifelong sexual commitment, then the unmarried woman, widowed three times, whose current sexual experience consists of her exclusive two-year romance with her childhood sweetheart must be considered promiscuous.
8
Compare this sexually faithful woman to her sister, a barhopper who goes home with a different man every night, and the behavior suggests a difference in kind, not just degree. Furthermore, if the dangers of pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases explain our contemporary disapproval of promiscuity, then why is the disease-free woman who uses effective contraception, sleeps only with AIDS-tested disease-free men, and, like our barhopper, sleeps with a different man every night derisively considered by many people to be a "slut"?
What these cases suggest is that exactly what we mean by sexual promiscuity will depend on the identity and context of the subject "we." What I intend to show is that it is a philosophical mistake to try to offer a single
definition
of sexual promiscuity, one with necessary and sufficient conditions that are designed to cover all possible contexts of its use. Rather, I will take the approach that the term "promiscuity," like so many expressions in the English language, is used in a variety of contexts with meanings related to, but not identical with, one another. Instead of
the
meaning of promiscuity, I will uncover a wide variety of meanings for the term derived from the particular social location of each speaker and the social context of the speaker's sexual behavior.
9
Like the "view from somewhere different'' introduced in chapter 1, this approach eschews the universal analytic categories typical of the "view from nowhere" in favor of assigning meaning on the case-by-case basis of social location. This approach is consistent with a feminist philosophy of sex that appreciates the context-specific dialectic between gender and sexuality.
10
Consider the following propositions:
1. Distributing condoms to high school students only encourages them to be promiscuous.
 
Page 31
2. If Magic Johnson hadn't been so promiscuous, he never would have contracted HIV, the virus that can cause AIDS.
3. A promiscuous woman is a loose woman.
Note that in all three propositions, the reference is to
sexual
promiscuity. High school distribution of devices designed to inhibit the exchange of bodily fluids
during sex
makes many parents fear that their children are being given tacit permission to be
sexually
promiscuous. Many people believe that Magic Johnson's
sexual
promiscuity resulted in his contracting a virus typically, but not necessarily, caused by the exchange of bodily fluids
during sex
; and it is the
sexually
promiscuous woman who is the
sexually
loose woman.
However, not all contexts in which speakers use the token terms "promiscuous" or "promiscuity" prompt us to identify the type as sexual. Promiscuity also has a nonsexual sense that connotes merely indiscriminate or careless behavior. Suppose a sexually promiscuous bank executive is our proverbial "loose woman." We may know this much about her yet still know nothing about the way she spends her bank's money. On the other hand, the bank executive who is promiscuous with her bank's money is an incautious financier whatever her sexual habits. Furthermore, promiscuity can connote an abundance, excess, or profusion with or without sexual overtones. The sight of a promiscuous display of bougainvillea is the sight of vibrant color, while the sight of a promiscuous display of Chihuahuas is the sight of dogs in heat.
In addition, a sexually promiscuous person is a sexually active person. A teenager who fantasizes about sex after acquiring a condom but never acts out those fantasies is not a sexually promiscuous teenager; and no matter how strong Magic Johnson's intentions to be sexually active may have been, if none of those intentions had been fulfilled, he would not be accused of sexual promiscuity. A sexually active person need not be promiscuous, however, as many faithful and happily married couples will attest. Moreover, former president Jimmy Carter could admit to "lusting in his heart" after women other than his wife Rosalyn without being accused of sexual promiscuity because while he and his wife may have had a great sex life together, he was not sexually active with the women about whom he fantasized. A loose woman doesn't just think about sleeping around; she sleeps around.
A commonly held view of the sexually promiscuous person is that she is sexually active in an uncoerced or voluntary way. When a single woman is raped by a coworker whom she accompanies home after a cocktail party, she is often accused of sexual promiscuity by those who think she was "asking for it" or "really wanted it," not because she is perceived as the victim of coercive or involuntary sex. Sexually molested girls are sometimes considered promiscuous when there is some question as to their seductiveness or sexual precocity, suggesting their willing cooperation in their sexual molestation. When a victim of sexual abuse can convince her skeptics of her coerced participation in sex, her molestation becomes a form of assault perpetrated against the innocent, not a form of promiscuous sexual activity voluntarily pursued.
The freedom to be sexually active, however, involves more than freedom from physical coercion. As Kathryn Pauly Morgan points out in her discussion of women and romantic love, a genuine choice must include both knowledge of, and access to,
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