The slang term thot recently made its way into the Oxford English Dictionary where it was defined as “a woman who has many casual sexual encounters or relationships.”
The etymology section goes on to clarify that thot originated in rap and hip-hop music and is an abbreviation of “that ho over there,” ho being a dialectical shortening of the word whore.
Basically, it’s a mildly derogatory or at least dismissive term for a promiscuous woman, but there is a lot of subtext worth dissecting. Let’s get into it.
How Women Exploit Sexual Value
Many of the gender imbalances in our society are due to the different reproductive functions of men and women. Specifically, women cannot reproduce as easily. They only have one egg per month, and if it’s fertilized, they must endure nine months of pregnancy.
As a result, they want to choose the best mate, so that their offspring will have the best chance of surviving. Their strategy is to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, so it better be a pretty good basket.
Men, on the other hand, produce hundreds of millions of sperm a day, meaning their best reproductive strategy is to just reproduce as often as possible. Theirs is a strategy of numbers, quantity over quality.
All of this is biological engrained in human DNA, but it leads to interesting cultural and social dynamics. Because women are pickier, it creates a one-sided constraint on the supply of sex, inflating the sexual value of females. Basically, society considers their sexuality as worth much more than a man’s. It’s sensible then that this higher value leads many women to take advantage of this inequality.
This exploitation of their own sexuality manifests in many different ways. In many cases, women literally exchange sex for money, prostitution, often referred to as “the world’s oldest profession.”
In modern days, this translates into a wide variety of sex work, from influencers with OnlyFans accounts who are frequently called thots, to porn stars and strippers.
Of course, the exchange doesn’t have to be for money. Many women attempt to use their sexuality to secure other resources by marrying or dating men who have already accumulated a lot of resources. They may also use their sexuality to gain access to high-status social circles or put themselves into opportune positions to connect with other high-status individuals. In these ways, women attempt to exploit their sexual value.
It’s Not Men—It’s Women Restricting the Supply
As with many other things, feminists have developed an inconsistent narrative around female sexuality. For men, it’s damned if you do (toxic masculinity), damned if you don’t (incel). Feminists want to simultaneously blame men and the “patriarchy” for repressing and shaming female sexuality. However, they also blame men and “patriarchy” for women’s participation in the sex trade, calling it exploitation.
However, men simply aren’t the ones creating the stigma around female sexuality. It’s women.
Studies show that “slut shaming” is practiced by and large by other women. In other words, if you hear someone disparaging a woman as a thot, it’s most likely another woman doing it. This is because a sexually promiscuous woman is flooding the sex market. As a result, men are willing to trade fewer resources for sex, since they can get it more easily.
Slut shaming serves as a kind of oil cartel for women where they can keep a cap on the supply of sex and make sure men will pay as much as possible for it, whether literally or figuratively. Hence, women who offer it for lower “value” are a threat to other women who want to exploit it.
Women Shaming Women: A Vicious Cycle
Unfortunately, a vicious cycle develops. Oftentimes the women who are willing to trade sex at the lowest prices are those who have the fewest resources to start with, like racial minorities and young women, who just happen to be the most sexually valuable.
However, when a young woman tries to make a quick buck with an OnlyFans account, older women who can no longer compete may shame her to try to keep a hold on their own sexual value. Meanwhile, the young woman feels no need to learn a marketable skill, because her sexual value is getting her by quite well.
Soon, though, she’ll be old, and her sexual value will decrease. Now she’ll be the one more older woman shaming young women because her own rapidly depreciating sexuality is the only thing she has to offer.
Who’s Exploiting Whom?
If you’ve noticed, this entire scenario is possible because women take advantage of their biological and natural sexual value to get resources from men, resources that men usually have to get through working much harder and more strenuous jobs than having an OnlyFans account.
Now, I’m a full believer in the market and don’t believe any labor is more “essential” than any other. If some men are willing to work twelve-hour days in exchange for a few nude photos, they are entering into that agreement voluntarily under their own assessment of value. And if some women are willing to trade their sexuality for a quick buck, they are also entering into the same agreement voluntarily.
However, this is all just to point out that our assumptions about female sexuality overlook many of the realities.
Men are not exploiting women, nor are they repressing their sexuality. On the contrary, certain women create the stigma around female promiscuity because it benefits them and increases the amount of resources they can get out of men.
Before we, men and women, disparage others as thots or “male pigs”, or criticize the dynamics of female or male sexuality, we should ask ourselves why. Is it just to serve our own purposes? This is not the path to gender equality.
