Brendan’s definition of a slut.

Brendan wrote an intriguing definition of the term slut in the discussion of the previous post:

On the “what is a slut” issue, the question really isn’t about a numerical cutoff, which is why that’s generally an unfruitful way of looking at the question. A slut is someone who has an instrumental view of sexuality — that is, one who views sex in a hedonistic way for the most part. A person with this mentality towards sex will not link sex with marriage exclusively, because the view of sex is distorted and based on hedonic elements which we all know can well occur outside of marriage as well. That is, sex is about two (or more) human beings collaborating physically to bring each other sexual pleasure, and this is a “good” in and of itself as long as ‘enthusiastic consent’ is present. That is an instrumental/hedonist view of sexuality, and is the sine qua non of being a slut. That is the case whether one actually has a high n or not — lots of other factors go into one’s n, and not all of them are subject to individual control (although quite a few are). There are women with low n’s who nevertheless have a very instrumental/hedonist view of sex. Eventually, that will come out and express itself, even if it is decades later, because marital sexuality will eventually fail to hedonistically satisfy. The same holds true of men as well — men who have a hedonistic/instrumental view of sexuality are also sluts, whether they have a high n or not. The point isn’t that all of these people will “stray” sexually, if they marry — rather the point is that their relationship to sex is more hedonistic and less sacramental, and is therefore fundamentally distorted, and therefore will eventually lead to some challenges down the road. There are plenty of people who have fairly low n’s who nonetheless have a slutty view of sex, who then end up questioning their commitments later in life when they may feel they have “missed out” sexually — that is a decidedly slutty thing to say, because someone who does not have a slutty view of sex would not feel that they have “missed out” by skipping the opportunity to have instrumental/hedonistic sexual encounters and experiences when younger (or feel the interest in having them later in life) — they simply were not interested in having sex under those conditions because of their understanding of what sex actually is, and what it means (note that I am not suggesting it is always black and white in any person, and there are people who have non-slutty attitude towards sex but who may struggle with slutty thoughts about sex — that probably reflects a lot of people as well, which isn’t very surprising due to the generally sinful condition most of us find ourselves in).

So the issue isn’t really the “n” as much as it is the attitude. Note, however, that this really only works one way. That is, a higher “n” person is virtually always someone who has (or had) an instrumental/hedonistic view of sex — a slut or a (claimed to be) ex-slut. Someone who has a sacramental view of sex will generally have an “n” of zero outside marriage (but not always — some non-sluts do make a mistake due to sin, but still the number would be very low, like 1). So it generally isn’t the case that people who have higher n’s are not sluts (or were not sluts) — they were at the time. The question then becomes “are they still one”, and that has to do with their attitude towards sex and what it means to them. Conversely, a person can have a very low “n”, like DH, and still be a slut interiorly when it comes to sexuality, seeing it as instrumental and hedonistic — this just means that the person is selective in his/her hedonism. And, as I said above, and as we see in DH’s case interestingly enough, if this fundamental attitude towards sexuality remains intact, generally this will be expressed in some way at some point in life, either before one makes a “commitment” or, in some cases, after. It’s not that such persons can’t live a monogamous life — they can, if they take commitments seriously. It’s that their attitude towards sex can lead them to question the sexual aspect of their commitment more easily, and lead to regrets about it (or even earlier sexual reticence, as I note above) later as life marches on.

The logic he uses is elegant, and I would argue that he is drawing the line in accordance with biblical sexual morality (which almost no one in our current culture Christian or not ascribes to).  For this reason alone it is worth serious consideration.

I disagree that this is the definition of the term slut though, because the term is fundamentally sex specific and his definition is universal.  The sex specific nature of slut has not to do with the sinfulness of fornication (which is the same for men and women), but with the degree of practical risk involved with marrying such a person.  The greatest asset of a marriage are the children it produces.  With this in mind, no one wants to marry a partner who appears defective regarding their ability to protect this asset.  The wife has the role of protecting that the children are unadulterated.  The husband has the role of physically protecting both the wife and their children.  As I have argued previously, the closest counterpart for men to the term slut is coward.

However, this doesn’t negate the truth in Brendan’s definition, and men who view sex according to Brendan’s definition of slut are certainly not a good risk for marriage.  This is even worse if the man ranks too highly in alpha traits.