This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW Working Title: All Women Are lustful
I'm not sure about the examples. I suspect some are just examples of some women being lustful without it being portrayed as typical. Someone suggested that Nymphomania was the word for this, but that is not normally applied to women in general.
MercuryInRetrograde: Cut this: "In Real Life, most modern males like promiscuous women for saving them the trouble of chatting up less easy females and giving them access to sex, which makes the trope even less negative than All Men Are Perverts. However, in the old days this was an extremely negative trope - so negative that it's hard to overstate the matter. Go far back enough, and you find the belief that women would become both indiscriminately sexually voracious and criminally immoral if they lost their virginity to anyone but their husband - even to a rapist or child molester. It was commonplace for families to abandon girls who had been raped, or even to sell them to brothel owners like London's Mother Needham, because they were seen as irredeemably filthy. One of the main pimps of 18th century London (Jack Harris) was suspected in his time of getting women to work for him by abducting and raping them - the victims would have absorbed the cultural norms as much as anyone else, and seen themselves as worthless for anything but prostitution and crime. A result of this was that rape victims rarely reported having been assaulted; why would they, when they would have been the only ones punished?" It has nothing to do with the trope. If it had anything to do with the trope, then it would go more along the lines of 'the women couldn't be raped because no woman, ever, would say no to sex with a man.'
I also edited out a lot of the back and forth bickering unrelated to the actual trope.
Jordan: I'm not sure how to phrase it, but this page really needs some mention of the misogyny behind this trope at least in the earlier versions- I mean, in Ancient Greece and Medieval Europe this was tied to a belief that women weren't fully human. I'd also contend that the reason the term man-slut is hardly ever used is because society sees it as a good thing for men to be promiscuous but doesn't see it as good for women to be so.
MercuryinRetrograde: Does society really think it's a good thing for men to be promiscuous? Or just assume that they _are_? After all, our society also seems to believe that men's sexuality is somehow degrading to women. Just a cursory review of All Men Are Perverts strongly suggests that although this behavior is expected of men, it certainly isn't seen as positive behavior.
Unless I'm misinterpreting the often violent retribution meted out by female characters against lecherous male characters. I mean, let's imagine instead, the woman was slapping the man every time he ate a cheese danish. We can all agree that eating a cheese danish is pretty much neutral behavior. Or maybe she slaps him every time he pets a puppy. Petting a puppy is positive behavior right? So if we think men's lecherous/perverted behavior is neutral/positive(just like eating a cheese danish or petting a puppy) we have a woman who physically assaults a man when he's doing neutral/positive things. Somehow I don't think that's the creator's intent. I think their intent is to depict female characters punishing men for unacceptable behavior.
Even the title would be different if that were so, more along the lines of All Men Have A Healthy Sex Drive Which Is A Totally Positive Statement Akin To All Men Want To Pet Puppies.
Further 'I'm a man, I can't help it', isn't exactly a sterling endorsement of men's humanity or morality. Why, exactly, can women help it? Let's use a less charged example to analyze the dynamic. Let's say there is a pair of Aristocrats watching Peasants act like inebriated morons. One says to the other, 'Peasants have so much more liberty in expressing their base emotions!' And the other says, 'Quite. We would be judged far more harshly for joining in the revelries.' Then they have the Peasants whipped for being a nuisance.
This trope exists because in our sex phobic society women are supposed to be _better than men_ at upholding our morals and standards of behavior. And when we're not, it reflects more harshly on us. Unless we go the route of 'those evil peasants made me do it!'
BTW, there is no modern version of this trope, that's the point.
Jordan: I think your peasant metaphor is an interesting one, and I agree that their is some sex-phobia/denial that women have a sex drive. I'd say that it's interesting that both this belief and the earlier All Women Are Lustful are misogynistic, just in different ways.
I'm not sure I agree though that All Men Are Perverts is intended to reflect badly on men (whether it actually does is another question). My impression of anime and its use of the hyperspace mallet is sort of a way of both having fanservice, but then making it acceptable by having the character punished for perverted behavior. There's also an issue that because the female character responding violently is often a tsundere and in real-life Japan, you have evidence of sexual harassment traditionally being something for women to just tolerate, makes me think that audience sympathy is supposed to be with the male "pervert".
Also note that tropes like the Casanova and Handsome Lech have many examples of male characters who are cool/praiseworthy for numerous conquests, and I think this treatment, at least in the West, is far more common than dissing men as perverts.
MercuryInRetrograde: "having the character punished for perverted behavior" Do you see what you're saying? How can this behavior be both positive and punishable? Would it make sense if these women were punishing men for petting puppies or any other positive behavior? No, it wouldn't. Therefore being seen as All Men Are Perverts is not a positive thing. IME with western cinema, female characters also punish male characters for lecherous behavior by slapping or shunning them.
As for Casanova characters, they may be lauded for their conquests, but they, and the people who laud them, are often depicted as shallow, selfish and narcissistic if not brutish. There always seems to be someone disapproving of them and often they are subject to getting their comeuppence in the end—either they mend their ways and become faithful to one woman or they are implied to suffer some unpleasant 'now I die alone' fate as they grow old.
Alrune: Removing Moral Guardian material and pseudo-social studies/moralizing lines. Left edits that seemed justified and reinstated the former lines that made sense.
Don't tell viewers what they ought to think or how they ought to react, that's what TV execs are for. We can discuss the validity of this trope in a modern setting all you want, if you think it's not applicable then fine. But the trope does exist even though it's now a Forgotten Trope.
I understand you want to take several tropes to a higher ground but viewers' reactions and writers' characterisation are what they are, whether you like it or not.
MercuryInRetrograde: I'm not telling anyone how they ought to think and react, but the fact remains that this trope is dead. It's not used today for precisely the reason that it doesn't make sense to modern audiences. And as such I was trying to contrast the two viewpoints. It is the reverse of AllMenArePerverts and both cannot exist simultaneously in the same society. You can't believe, on the one hand, that men are degraded by female sexuality—thus have a word for men who are too sexual with women—and on the other hand that women are degraded by male sexuality—thus have a word for women who are too sexual with men. Or maybe you can, but said society would certainly not look like our own.
Also, this trope as it's written is completely inconsistent. How can male sexuality simultaneously be considered 'better then' _and_ degrading to female sexuality? The flow of concepts is likewise choppy, with new ideas introduced unsupported and unrelated to previous established ideas.
Alrune: How can male sexuality simultaneously be considered 'better then' _and_ degrading to female sexuality?
You are completely missing the point. Please read again. I never said male sexuality is "better". I said male perversion is seen as worse than female perversion but yet seen as normal. Yes this is contradictory. But that's the point.
Male sexuality equals selfish promiscuousness in many viewers and writers mind. Yet it is normal since A Man Is Not A Virgin and I'm a Man; I Can't Help It. It's considered "manly" to lust after women indiscriminately since, in the mind of many writers andsupposedly in that of all viewers, men are chasers and women are virtuous victims who need to be "taken". It's also a proof that the characters is 100% hetero since we all know how the audience react to an Ambiguously Gay character. It doesn't sell.
Yes the trope is dead but there are still some touches of it popping out every once in a while, in order to counterbalance the idea that women have no sex drive whatsoever. Yes, we have yet to see it applied straight out in a modern show.
MercuryInRetrograde: Ultimately I get your point, I just don't think it applies to this trope. Let me try to explain. This trope is like antimatter to tropes like My Girl Is Not a Slut and Really Gets Around. Why? Because in societies that employ this trope women who are lustful are considered typical, whereas societies that apply tropes like My Girl Is Not a Slut and Really Gets Around are societies which think lustful women are atypical.
While a discussion of the fact that male sexuality is considered degrading to women is important, I don't think it's relevant to this particular trope. Unless it's contrasted with the attitudes in these societies that women's sexuality degrades men. But then the discussion starts to drop into 'does not compute' land for most modern people.
Media is starting to acknowledge women's sex drives and the fact that women like sex but it's shown as a positive thing which means it doesn't fall under AllWomenAreLustful. AllWomenAreLustfull is negative in the same way AllMenArePerverts is.
Jordan: Ah, it just hit me why some of your description was troubling me. You say that this trope is a gender-inversion of All Men Are Perverts and comment that older societies believed this in the same way that our society believes in the latter. However, All Women Are Lustful was backed up by the idea that women were animals, conspiring with Satan, etc., while All Men Are Perverts can often be kind of a tongue-in-cheek Take That Me. So, they aren't really comparable. Edit- what I mean, is Mercury Retrogade, do you think that the present is as oppressive towards men as women have been historically treated? I get the impression that you do.
MercuryInRetrograde: To be honest there's no point in taking the discussion further. You won't understand and I'll end up feeling like committing suicide. Hopefully the it'll be a moot point when the nuke is finally dropped. Godspeed.
Jordan: I'm sorry. I phrased that much more rudely than I should have.
MercuryInRetrograde: Well, if you're interested, you can start with the history, in the last century, of trying to control male sexuality to see just how 'harmless' our attitudes towards men's sexuality really are.
Love this quote on one 'chasity' belt for young men: "Not insensitive to the potential effect of electricity applied directly to the genitals, Mr. Todd, allowed that the cage could be insulated with chamois to prevent too strong a current, i.e. one powerful enough to burn flesh."
Said attitudes also lead to the widespread adoption of removing parts of infant boy's genitals to prevent them from being sodomites, miscegenators, masturbators and adulterers.
This is, ultimately, what leads me to the epicenter of moral angst. You see, in those societies, just like our own, the lengths they went to punish female sexuality were also considered harmless and justified. Looking back we see the barbarism, but at the same time we are blind to our own because it's so obviously harmless and justified. And so the pendulum swings. Over and over. It's enough to make one pray for the human race to be Cleansed By Fire.
Jordan: I've read about that weird attitude among the Progressives/Victorians- The Road to Wellville is a good historical fiction work on that. I remember seeing on a related note, a liberal site arguing fairly convincingly, that using the term "progressive" wasn't the best idea given the large number of crazy ideas espoused by the earlier progressive movement. I don't think there's really any justification for such cruel pseudo-science.
MercuryInRetrograde: And yet the victims of their sexual attitudes were, and continue to be, majority male. Looking at what has been done to boys and young men in the name of sexual purity in the last century—genital surgery and torture—does make me think the two attitudes All Women Are Lustful and All Men Are Perverts are directly comparable.
BTW, thanks for your apology, I wasn't offended by what you said, just sort of overwhelmed.
Alrune: Focused back the main trope on how it relates to other tropes and why it's no longer playable in modern works without Take That! or social diatribe.
Johnny E: "In order to apply to a modern work [...] their sexual insatiability would have to be seen as negative and damaging towards men not as a positive statement about women's sexual empowerment." Why, exactly? Sex And The City provides the page pic, is it not an example because of this? (Of course, SATC tries to have its cake and eat it too, since it's chock-full of references to All Men Are Perverts. "Honestly, My Girl Is Not a Slut, she's just Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places! Like toilet cubicles!"). In short, as long as we keep a consistent standard of "unhealthy level of libido", either a work portrays one sex or the other as oversexed, or it doesn't.
Dab here: I would thank everyone involved for writing this article. Despite seeing this article today for the first time, this trope has been a pet peeve of mine for a while now, I've edited a lot of articles with the intent of making people aware that the whole men-are-perverts/women-are-angels dichotomy is very much a Newer Than They Think modern trope. Darwin inadvertently plays a key role here - throughout most of history when western values were based on the bible to the early 19th century, sexually promiscuous men were variously deemed mentally ill or otherwise weak in character.
Since you seem to have trouble communicating, let me arm you with a few words: Normative and descriptive. A normative statement means "It should be that way", whereas a descriptive statement says "It is that way whether we like it or not". Another word: Framing. Framing is the (descriptive) perception of the world of the author, the set of both normative values and scientific facts the author exposes, commonly shared with his culture. An author that makes a normative statement "Women should be sexually promiscuous" is thus framing a world where women aren't sexually promiscuous (but should be).
It is important to understand that this forgotten trope is purely descriptive, and exists in a world where the norm is that women should behave themselves, conceal their visual cues of fertility and retain virginity, but don't (Framing = Women are horny devils). This is a different framing than the norm that girls should hide their secondary sexual characteristics etc because otherwise they'll be attracting dangerous and perverse male attention (Framing = Men are Perverts without self control)
What I feel is now still missing is an article that describes the following trope: Women do not really want sex anyways. A subtrope of Closer to Earth maybe? It's usually normative, and always descriptive and permeates modern western television and movies. Where women who masturbate are portrayed as "only doing it for show" or prostitutes who are framed as being exploited. Sex and the city was referenced - and is no exception. Samantha for example is clearly framed as a sexual deviant, and all Carrie does is kill some time in serial monogamy till she can get back together with Mr. Dong.
Alrune: There is a YKTTW about this here [1].
It was at first named All Women Are Prudes but I think that No Woman Likes Sex is more fitting.
Dab: Is "All Women Are Lustful" as a title really the appropriate Distaff Counterpart to "All men are perverts" ? "Perverts" makes the title already a moral judgment: Those guys are baaad, mkay. "All Women Are Lustful" sounds like the equivalent to "All men have healthy sexual drives". Neither is really a trope to speak of. What I'm saying is, the page's title is confusing with regards to the moral judgment which is actually what the trope is about, and so the title should instead be "All Women Are Succubi", a Succubus alternatively being a witch or a demon, or a demon posessing a witch, that uses evil magic to mind control men allowing the succubus to steal the delicious life essence from their hapless male victims. The important part here is the implicit moral judgement in the title, the whole framing changes, all in one word. Aristotle and the bible for the most part really did believe that all women were mindless joghurt-hoggers, and those were the defining influences on western gender stereotypes until Darwin reversed them with the background of a sexually hysteric Victorian Britain. And THAT is what this page is about, not Women Can Have Sexual Appetites Without Being Deviants.
macroscopic: A troper named Lanthorn reverted my change of a You Suck pothole to This Loser Is You. If you read this, that trope was renamed because of frequent misuse and I'm currently working (albeit slowly) on fixing all the wicks. Please leave it as is.
