Comedian Steve Harvey has a book out about men (for women), and it's in high demand right now. Here are some bits I like (lifted from the Oprah site.)
*
When a man approaches a woman, Steve says, he already knows what we wants from her, but he doesn't know what it will cost. "How much time do you want from me? What your standards? What are your requirements? Because we'll rise to the occasion no matter how high you set the bar if we want to," he says. "The problem is, women have stopped setting the bar high."
...
Without ironclad standards, Steve says you'll always end up back in the dating pool. "You've got to quit lowering your standards," he says. "Set your requirements up front so when a guy hooks you, he has to know this is business."
...
[On the topic of waiting 90 days before having sex--just like the 90 day probation period of a job.]
So what if you don't want to wait 90 days? Steve says if you change the probation period, you do so at your own risk. "You all keep changing the rules. And men are aware of the fact that you are changing the rules. We're aware of the fact that you act desperate. We're aware of the fact that you think there's a good shortage of good men out there," he says.
"We play on all of that. … We created the term 'gold digger' so you won't ask us for nothing. We created the term 'nagging' so you can quit badgering us. These are terms that we created so you can require less of us."
3 comments:
Some interesting points....
gmc
The bit about the "90-Day Rule" has been on my mind all week. Now, all I've read is what you posted here, I didn't go and check out the book you're talking about. But it seems as if this guy is counselling women to wait until they're three months into a relationship before having sex with a guy, or risk getting used/taken for granted/not taken seriously/seen as "desperate" for a "good man."
If that's the case, I'm wondering what this call for a return to return to old-fashioned, "respectable" sexual code of conduct says about how we see women's sexuality in specific, and women more generally. Does it not frame a woman's sexuality as a commodity that she should try to get the most out of? Is this Steve guy not telling women not to, in effect, "give it up" to easily for fear that they won't be able to get what they want with it?
While I'm not advocating a return to a "sexuality without consequences" a la the "sexual revolution" sort of attitude, and I can see the *ahem* virtues of exercising a little patience and discretion, it strikes me that women--and men for that matter--should have sex for one reason only--because it's what they want to do; not because it's part of a broader strategy to get something....
I don't know his full point. I only quoted it, to get to the other part--the idea that women shouldn't be so afraid to have standards. And he's not talking about men because the book was specifically written for women, coming out of his experience of women calling into his radio show.
It's Steve Harvey, the Af-American comedian. And I get the impression that he's especially speaking to Af-American women, or maybe that's who he sees as his audience. So there may be some cultural context here that neither of us would *get*.
Maybe he's saying that if what you're looking for is a serious relationship, then this is just one way of signaling that (as well as by setting other standards.)
Post a Comment