Yup, It’s pretty simple, but I think it has huge societal ramifications that aren’t adequately explored by most. At the most basic level, it seems pretty clear that a woman in this society is acculturated with a whole slew of socio-cultural expectations and mores, many of which directly contradict each other. The one you asked about, that which I referred to as the “prude/slut dichotomy,” is as simple as basically creating a scenario in which a woman is by definition guilty of one or the other negative classifications. If she freely appreciates and explores her sexuality, shes a slut, a whore, a dirty, vulgar, unacceptable item; if she adheres to all the explicit sexual norms demanded of her, shes prude, anti-social, and so forth. Either way, she is reduced to one dimension, to an object, which, rather than subjective and complex, can and must be classified. Anything that negates a human being’s subjectivity is by definition negative, and an extremely powerful tool of social control.

More importantly, though, is that the antinomies that such a system necessarily demands a women’s consciousness be constructed around are in a sense paralyzing, for a human being kept in constant confusion and disorientation is a human being with a truncated will and identity. So unless a woman can escape this false consciousness, which is naturally no easy task in a patriarchal society bent on doing just the opposite, she is made docile, apathetic, and so forth with regards to her freedom, identity, and political engagement. People often raise an eyebrow at this, suggesting that these sort of sociological statements lack proper grounding in biology and so forth, so I always like to bring up what I think is a good example of the biologically foundational aspects for these human propensities, the most striking of which is Learned Helplessness.

Two American Psychologists, Martin Seligman and Steve Maier, took 3 groups of dogs and attached them in similar harnesses. The dogs in group one were put in the harnesses, then released. The dogs in group 2 and 3, however, were subjected to painful electric shocks while harnessed. Whereas the lever available to the dogs in group 2 shut off the shock (a fact they quickly learned and made use of), the dogs in group 3’s lever was powerless, and their shocks were determined by the corresponding dog in group 2. Thus, for the dogs in group 3, they were essentially helpless to stop the shocks. Later, in part two of the experiment, the dogs were put in boxes which shocked them, but from which they could escape by simply jumping over a small barrier. The dogs from both group 1 and group 2 quickly leaped out of the box but the dogs from group 3 simply stayed put and continued to be shocked. The helplessness they had learned in a considerably different setting had instilled in them a helplessness even when it was completely in their power to save themselves. Even a good deal later in the year, when put in a vaguely similar experiment, two-thirds of the dogs from group 3 had retained their sense of helplessness from that one experience.

Now, of course, I’m not trying to suggest women are like dogs, but I am positing that Learned helplessness is a bio-psychological reality, and if one experience like that above could instill a deep-seeded and widely-applicable sense of helplessness in a relatively simple creature, I think the contradictory expectations put upon women (and many other oppressed groups, mind you) takes on a whole new light. If, in all these aspects of woman’s life so central to her identity, she is made to feel powerless, failing in some sense in society’s eyes regardless of her actions, that society is a teaching her a far deeper and more insidious lesson: total helplessness, passivity, and submission.