Sexual Double Standards #
Freud claimed:
“All human behaviour is ultimately motivated by sexuality.” He also he said, “We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.” Did he mean both genders?
Toxic Masculinity has been around for a long time. Pagan myths perpetuate it by sanctioning Zeus’s ravishing a variety of mortals. The patriarchy has dominated in most religions in the hierarchies of Synagogues, Temples, Churches, and Mosques claiming the authority of a male deity.
History indicates that women are judged more harshly. Women suffer from a double standard; the exact same behaviour that types women as sluts, types men as studs. Women are either virginal saints or predatory sluts.
In Homer’s world, erotic excellence is a sacred gift like any other human excellence, to be cherished without moral reflection.
The only way to become a good heroic strong man (BSD) is to prove your virility by bedding lots of women. If a woman has sex with lots of men, she’s tainted as impure and a horrible cuck- hold.
Heterosexual men who have affairs are just heterosexual men who had affairs. But, the women with whom they have those affairs quickly get labelled with another term, mistress, one for which there is no effective male equivalent in English.
The Trojan War was fought over women; both Helen and comfort women for the soldiers.
Hesiod warns his listeners:
“Men have been undone both by being trusting and by not being so. Let not a woman who dresses to show off her behind deceive your noos, cajoling you with her crafty words, ready to infest your granary".
“Eros unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind and wise counsels of all gods and all men within them”.
Plato maintained “Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.” Rather than physical or emotional, it is rational.
Hamlet accuses all women of affectations and cosmetic ruses to seduce men.
“> I have heard of your paintings too, well enough;/ God has given you one face, and you make yourselves another:/you jig, you amble, and you lisp,..
Lear describes them as:
Down from the waist they are Centaurs,
Though women all above:
But to the girdle do the gods inherit,
Beneath is all the fiends’;
Henry Lawson’s Joe Wilson finds himself “a coward going down to the river in the moonlight to fight for her”.
Robin Williams claimed that “men have a brain and a penis, but only enough blood for either one to work at one time”.
Richmond players, Shai Bolton and Daniel Rioli became involved in a nightclub fight when someone made insulting comments about Shai’s girlfriend.
In modern portrayals, teens get pregnant because their hormones overpower them, pro-choice women choose abortion because they “have no choice.” The message is clear: we are products of our primal instincts, our genes, our families, and our circumstances, nothing more.
Jean Paul Sartre and Simone De Beauvoir, shared a life of non-exclusive intellectual and sexual companionship. Rather than an open marriage, their pact included “to be one another’s ‘essential love’ with contingent lovers on the side”. Monogamy was vastly over-rated.
Beauvoir wanted:
“a Love that accompanies me through life; not that absorbs my life”.
De Beauvoir lost her teaching position as a result of her “suspicious living arrangements”. Sartre’s position remained safe.
Andrea Waling at La Trobe University writes:
Sexual encounters often involve intricate layers of emotion and experience, influenced by culture, religion, and other factors, with elements like shame, pleasure, joy, uncertainty, fear and anxiety.
“Understanding the complex variables that inform decision-making in these contexts is crucial for creating educational resources that help people navigate sexual consent in different situations.”
Baudelaire maintained:
As for me, I say that the sole and supreme pleasure of making love lies in the certitude that one is doing evil.—And both man and woman know from birth that it is in evil that all sensual pleasure resides.
Men and women fall in love with an idealised version of each other. The high idealistic romantic notions of the young are eventually dashed by reality and represents a loss of innocence.
Double Standards through Literature #
Primitive societies were obsessed with fertility, replenishing the tribe, so women were considered birth machines or baby incubators. They were precluded from war to keep their wombs safe to produce more fighting men.
The Epic of Gilgamesh demonstrates the age-old battle of the sexes – the gender wars. Gilgamesh abuses his privilege by demanding to sleep with new brides – Prima Nocta. The gods, responding to the people’s complaints, raise a feral man and use the priestess of love, Shamhat, to seduce, domestic, socialise and humanise Enkidu. Her woman’s power, overpowered this man
Enkidu puts a halt to Gilgamesh’s abuse and they become good friends. The fury of the goddess, Ishtar’s failure to seduce Gilgamesh, ends in Enkidu and Gilgamesh killing the Bull of heaven, and in Enkidu’s death. Later in his quest for knowledge, Gilgamesh receives wisdom from an old woman. There is no evidence of any love life for either of the heroes.
All societies attempt to subjugate women
Greeks #
Greek myths include female goddesses yet blame Pandora for all the evils of the world, while the Judaic – Christians blame Eve.
Homer’s The Iliad depicts Agamemnon as a serial oppressor of women. Not only has he sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to the virgin goddess Diana, infuriating his wife, Clytemnestra, he insults a priest of Apollo by abducting his Priest’s daughter as his “comfort woman”. When Agamemnon is forced to give up his booty, he commandeers Achilles’ young maiden, Briseis. Achilles, in high dungeon simply refuses to fight anymore. Later, when Briseis is restored to him, Achilles declares his love for her. Erotic excellence is a sacred gift like any other human excellence, to be cherished without moral reflection.
After other disputes over concubines, Agamemnon returns home after ten years with his booty, Cassandra, from the Trojans. Clytemnestra welcomes him home with libations and offers him a soothing bath where she brutally and bloodily stabs him, setting off a family feud of blood vengeance spurred by the Furies.
Mock Invocation to The Odyssey:
“Sing to me muse, and through me tell the story of a man who lets all his men die, lies to everyone he meets, cheats on his wife with assorted nymphs and takes ten years for a journey that google says should have taken two weeks.
In the Odyssey women were either a help or a hindrance for the Greek hero on his journey home.
They were seen as playing an important part in the family and household. Like Penelope, they were required to be good wives or virtuous like Nausicaa. Independent and sexually liberated women, the Sirens, Circe and Calypso tempted Odysseus. They lived beyond the control of men, so were seen as dangerous and this was used to justify their lowly status and general powerlessness.
Odyseuss demonstrated appropriate behaviour towards the virgin princess, Nausicaa.
However, Odysseus’ sheer hypocrisy, in killing all the suitors and the maids who had slept with them is problematic, because they are not at war. In Homer’s memorable line:
“They were strung up like little birds; they kicked their legs but not for long.”
These vivacious victims requite the hero’s desire for patriarchal order.
Penelope tests her husband on the secret of their marriage bed. She asks him to move it, When he passes: “and so she too rejoiced, her gaze upon her husband, her white arms around him pressed as though forever”.
“You go home now and attend to your work, the loom and the spindle, and tell the waiting-women to get on with theirs,” says Hector to his wife, Andromache, in The Iliad. “War is men’s business.” The eight-year-long conflict in Syria gives the lie to that age-old view.
Hesiod #
Hesiod also paints a submissive role for women in his poems. Eros, fairest among the deathless gods, who unnerves the limbs and overcomes the mind. Sexual attraction is an inherent and irresistible force all humans and animals.
Men have been undone both by being trusting and by not being so. Let not a woman who dresses to show off her behind deceive your noos, cajoling you with her crafty words, ready to infest your granary.
Whoever puts his trust in a woman puts his trust in tricksters.
In The Theogony, Hesiod claims a tryst between Ares, the god of war and Aphrodite, goddess of love produced the offspring Harmonia. Opposites attract.
The idea that sexual intercourse is inevitably debilitating for men seems to be widespread in Greek thought, as it already appears in Pythagorean philosophy. Hesiod’s description of high summer as the season when women are most attractive and men in turn weakest (Works and Days 586, echoed by Spartan archaic poet Alcman in fragment 347.4).
“Women! This coin, which men find counterfeit!/ Why, why, Lord Zeus, did you put them in the world, in the light of sun?/ If you were so determined to breed the race of men,/ the source of it should not have been women. . . .”
Ovid claims
“All these things have been caused by the passion of females. It is more violent than ours, and has more frenzy in it”.
Evidence is found by Medea falling in love with Jason of the Argonauts and Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, who assists Theseus in killing the Minotaur.
Hebraic #
Deuteronomistic History is a literary patch- work. It is clearly the result of the editing together of various earlier sources—not a single original work written by an individual or group of authors at one time. The text contains jarring discontinuities, snatches of poetry, quotations from other works, and geographical lists interspersed with long passages of narrative.
The figures of David—shepherd, warrior, and divinely protected king—-and of his son Solomon—great builder, wise judge, and serene ruler of a vast empire—have become timeless models of righteous leadership under God’s sanction. The archaeological discoveries of recent decades have clearly shown how far from the glamorous scriptural portraits the actual world of David and Solomon was.
Yet, both David and Solomon also have great human flaws. One afternoon, David, walking on the roof of the Jerusalem palace, saw a beautiful woman bathing on a neighbor’s roof. David found out that she was married to Uriah the Hittite, so he sent a servant over to get her, and he slept with her, and she went back home. When she found out she was pregnant, David arranged for her husband to be sent to the front lines of the battle field, where he was killed. Bathsheba gave birth to Solomon, who became King after David.
When David was old and stricken in years; his servants found a young virgin to lie in thy bosom, that my lord the king may get heat. 4 And the damsel was very fair, and cherished the king, and ministered to him: but the king knew her not. Kings I.
You might wonder why he doesn’t avail himself of some of Bathsheba’s warmth?
Solomon is celebrated throughout the world as the richest and wisest of kings. He marries a pharaoh’s daughter and gains renown as an insightful judge, author of proverbs, and master of knowledge about all the riches of creation—The queen of Sheba journeys all the way to Jerusalem from her distant kingdom in Arabia to meet him, Solomon’s image is the ideal convergence of wisdom, opulence, and power in the person of a king. Yet he was known to have hundreds of wives as well as concubines.
Caesar divorced his second wife, Pompeia because of her involvement in a scandal with another man, although the man had been acquitted in the law courts; Caesar is reported to have said,
“The wife of Caesar must be above suspicion,”
suggesting that he was so exceptional that anyone associated with him had to be free of any hint of scandal. Yet there is evidence that Caesar fathered many children with many women, including Cleopatra.
The Magna Carta, 1215, Article 54 reads:
“A woman who witnesses a murder of anyone other than your husband? Sorry, you can’t testify. “No one shall be arrested or imprisoned on the appeal of a woman for the death of any person except her husband,”.
‘Illegal, unjust, harmful’
……..
Young women marry men hoping to change them; young men marry women hoping they won’t change.
Shakespeare
Tis not a year or two shows us not a man: They are all but stomachs and we all but food; They eat us hungrily, and when they are full, They belch us. – Othello – Emilia, Act III sc.iv
Labels for Sexual promiscuity #
Men can be can euphemistically be called:
a Cad, dandy, philanderer, Lothario, flirt, ladies’ man, playboy, Romeo, seducer, rake, roué, debauchee, womaniser, Casanovas, pants man, Ladies’ man, Lothario, Casanova, Lad..
Similar activities pejoratively call women
sluts, hussy, nympho (maniac), puta, tart, tramp, skank, strumpet, trollop, harlot, scarlet woman, coquette, flirt, seducer, siren, tease, vamp, temptress, seductress, enchantress, femme fatale, cock teaser….
To Scott Morrison: Can’t help but notice that one of your female Ministers - Bridget McKenzie - was forced to resign over YOUR Sports Rorts scandal, and you bullied female Australia Post CEO out, but you refuse to fire two male colleagues who have failed the character test. Typical. Vic Rollinson
The Conversation: #
Bitch
‘Bitch’ has a 1,000-year history. Its use has always been about power
September 16, 2025 Karen Stollznow Research Fellow, Griffith Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University
A few years ago, I was called a “bitch” in a workplace meeting simply for speaking up. The word stung, not just as a personal insult, but as part of a long tradition of policing women’s behaviour. Bitch is one of the most charged gendered slurs in English. And yet, today, it can be playful, empowering, or even celebratory.
This contradiction fascinated me. How did one word become both a weapon and a badge of honour? That’s the question I set out to answer in my book, Bitch: The Journey of a Word.
Bitch has a long pedigree. First recorded more than 1,000 years ago as bicce (pronounced “bitch-eh”) in Old English, it began as a straightforward term for a female dog.
Almost immediately, though, it leapt into figurative use as an insult for women, comparable to calling someone a “slut” today. Interestingly, around the same time it became an insult for men as well.
The jump from “dog” to “bitch” as a slur was easy. In ancient Greece and Rome, the equivalent words for “dog” were already being used as a scathing insult – albeit used differently for both genders. Aimed at a woman, it usually implied disobedience, immodesty or shamelessness.
Aimed at a man, it referred to human vices such as greed, arrogance and cowardice.
By the 18th century, bitch had become one of the most powerful gendered insults in the English language. British lexicographer Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) called it “the most offensive appellation that can be given to a woman”. In many ways, it still is.
Unlike other contemporaneous slurs such as “shrew” or “harlot”, which have mostly faded from use, bitch endured. Its survival lies in its flexibility: it has been used to chastise women as nagging, manipulative, or domineering – but also, more recently, to praise them as strong, ambitious or unapologetic. For example, “you’re a bitch” versus “you’re a boss bitch”.
The long life of the word shows us how language both mirrors and moulds society. Words can wound, but they can also be repurposed as symbols of power.
A entry for the word ‘bitch’ in a second edition copy of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, published in 1765. Author provided
A weapon against women (and men)
Bitch has long been a catch-all insult towards women. It is most often aimed at those judged “unpleasant”, but in practice can be triggered by almost anything.
Crucially, a woman can be branded a bitch not only for negative traits, but also for traits considered positive in men, such as assertiveness, ambition, sexual confidence and authority. Powerful celebrities and politicians are frequent targets.
Aimed at men, the term carries a different sting. It implies weakness, submission, or effeminacy: a man who fails to perform masculinity “correctly”.
Within LGBTQIA+ communities, the word has been reimagined. It can be used playfully, or affectionately as a term of endearment. Outside those spaces, however, it often retains its edge as a term of abuse.
Language and power
In the 1960s, feminists began reclaiming bitch, aligning it with independence and power. Campaigns and pop culture, from American feminist Jo Freeman’s BITCH Manifesto to singer Meredith Brooks’ 1997 song Bitch, recast the insult into a badge of pride signifying strength and confidence. Viral phrases like “boss-ass bitch” continue this tradition of turning stigma into self-empowerment.
Yet, the word is not, and may never be, fully reclaimed. Its sharpest edge remains a slur. For many, bitch still retains its bite. Whether it lands as offensive or complimentary depends on context, tone and power dynamics.
Like other reclaimed words such as “gay” or “queer”, bitch can empower or hurt, depending on who wields it and who it is being directed at.
The word has spawned countless contemporary idioms, from “resting bitch face” to “life’s a bitch, and then you die”, and evolved playful modern spellings such as “biotch” to “biznatch”.
Its ubiquity shows how language reflects and reinforces attitudes about gender, power and behaviour. At the same time, it teaches a broader lesson: language is alive.
Words continually evolve along with society. And the struggle over who “owns” bitch mirrors broader struggles for gender equality. The word’s potential to empower or harm is a direct reflection of how society treats women.
The story of bitch
Over more than a millennium, bitch has survived censorship, bleeping and outright bans, only to return in ever-changing forms. Yet its original meaning remains: a female dog. All of its senses coexist, from insult to compliment, and from playful to profane. Its survival depends on its versatility and its unmistakable power to provoke.
True reclamation may depend less on the word itself and more on improving the conditions for women in modern society. Until then, bitch remains a powerful word: a sharp instrument of insult, and a mirror of our cultural values.
Ultimately, the journey of bitch shows us words are never neutral. And as our society changes, this 1,000-year-old word will continue to speak volumes.