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WATCH: Sex, Love & The Double Standard

by Rachel Sklar | 11:56 am, November 23rd, 2010

» 6 comments

You don’t have to tune in right here and right now to see double standards at work — they are, alas, scattered over every element of our culture. Double-standards about sex and gender are a given – hello, Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, Katie Couric, Michelle Obama and, now, Lindsey Vonn! — but we see double-standards across the board in terms of how partners in relationships are treated externally, and the roles that are or are not expected of them — and of course whether or not you are wearing clothes at any given point along the process makes a difference, too.

Enter “Love & Other Drugs” — the new movie starring Anne Hathaway & Jake Gyllenhaal that deals with, inter alia, the similarly-carefree sexual proclivities of two singles who meet, couple, and then figure out how things progress from there. One is a man; one is a woman — and, as Jessica Valenti would point out, while he’s seen as a stud, while she is seen as…what? That’s the jumping-off point for our discussion today, going on to ask a bunch of questions like, How are the rules still different for women? Who has broken those rules, and what happens to them? Where does the “power” from “empowerment” come from? What messages do we get from the media? And how do things change depending on how naked you are? These questions and more will be answered by our all-star panel of Cindy Gallop from IfWeRanTheWorld.com, Sarah Kunst of Guest of a Guest, Brooke Moreland of Fashism, and Leslie Bradshaw of Jess3 — and me, Rachel Sklar, your moderator — starting…NOW.

p.s. This is how apparently women and tech are perceived at Men’s Health….

…and this is how ESPN mag sees Lindsey Vonn….

…and this is how Wired features women…

#loveandotherdrugs

redleaf

Some conservatives will complain about the nudity in the movie.
However, if Anne and Jake pulled out knives and began violently disemboweling people…well, that’s awesome!
Just no scenes of characters making love, please. Our kids are watching.
http://www.pmm.nl Ron C. de Weijze

I sense we are about to embark on a different, but very familiar, set of rules for understanding the relationship between man and woman. First, they need to be not ruled by groupsism. Second, they need to have each other as the master/mistress of their thought (and feeling), the one in charge of what feels good and bad, the other in charge of how to know that ahead of time. Then, when good=true and bad=false, everything falls into place.
Just4thefax

Fact: All three covers speak for themselves. I saw doubles, then doubles, and then doubled again. I don’t get it?
buntyp

The problem here, as I see it, & I am a Male, all my life, is one word – ‘ROLE’.

Leave that one word out, & the Debate is ‘STERILE’.
buntyp

redleaf, if you ever bother to look back at this article, let me tell you a likkle storey, this kind of stuff you’ve written here. was almost with monotonous frequency, was the stuff of in-numerable columns, in Playboy Mags. from the late 1950′s.

One whole generation has passed, & your’e just picking -up on this?????
buntyp

Correction, redleaf, nearly 2 Generations have passed.