Image: I ::heart:: Heavy Metal Sluts, by brandi666

From Kathleen Bogle’s Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus:

Despite men insisting that women should not hook up “too often” or with “too many partners”, they were unable to offer a convincing operational definition of these terms. In other words, men had a sense that it was not acceptable for women to “get around”, but they did not seem to know what “getting around” would really entail. When I pressed them to explain what “too often” or “too many partners” meant, they always resorted to giving a somewhat preposterous definition. Larry, a senior at Faith University, seems to have trouble identifying what qualifies as “a lot of guys”.KB: You [said] “If a girl sleeps with a lot of guys she’s a slut.” How many would be a lot, in your opinion?
Larry: Umm. In a short amount of time, it would be like twelve guys. If she was just randomly doing that and had like no… but just did it and was like: “Okay next.” You know, something like that.
KB: Okay.
Larry: And would do it like that, sleep with five guys in a week. One every night, that would be like a slut. The problem with Larry’s explanation is that the behavior he defines as that of a “slut” does not generally happen. Rarely do college women sleep with “fives guys in a week” or “twelve guys” in a short period of time. Even among the most sexually active college women, such behavior would be considered exceptional. None of the quantitative data on the sexual behavior of American women indicate that young women engage in this level of sexual activity with multiple partners. Yet many of the men I interviewed gave answers simlar to Larry’s about what women do in order to get labeled “sluts”. (106-7)