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MADONNA-WHORE COMPLEX

There’s an unspoken societal rule that asks for women to either be Madonna or a whore. I recently realized there’s actually a psychological theorem around it:

The Madonna-whore complex.

 

Generally, women are supposed to be prudes and therefore deserving of respect, or very sexually attractive/active and don’t inherently deserve respect.

Women can’t be both at the same time.

 

It’s also applicable to the idea of women’s rights.

 

Any woman who stands against sexual harassment must be prude in order to establish the narrative that her “Innocence” was brutally taken away from her, or that she’s “fit” to fight sexual harassment and as such, it will be very difficult for say, a sex worker, to fight against sexual harassment in the society.

There’s a need for this patriarchal Madonna-Whore Complex political correctness before we can get angry that a woman’s been harassed. 

 

Still expanding on this theorem is the reason why people defend objectification of women by weaponizing women’s rights to flaunt their bodies and bask in their sexualities and sexiness. They insist that if women could “objectify” themselves, why can’t they?

 

While I personally do not believe in the concept of “cheating”, perhaps this Madonna-Whore Complex may explain why men would prefer to have sex with other women other than their partners, or find other other women more sexually attractive?

 

The Madonna-Whore complex is a broad and interesting topic that is not wholly dissected in this post but also, here’s an extract from a website I found brushing over the idea;

https://www.modernintimacy.com/the-psychology-of-the-madonna-whore-complex/

 

Freud originally coined the term MWC to describe men in heterosexual relationships who no longer viewed their partners, for whom they had romantic feelings, as sexually attractive. It was Freud’s theory that men with MWC could not differentiate between their love for their mother and their love for their romantic partner. Men suffering from MWC often can’t view women’s sexuality as “loving” and “sexual.”

To cope with these feelings of anxiety, they compartmentalize their romantic love for women they deem to have the qualifications to be a wife and mother, but have little to no sexual arousal and devalue women they consider promiscuous, but whom they sexually desire. In other words, men with MWC can only become fully sexually aroused when reducing their partner to a sexualized object, degrading her in the process because the “good girl” or the “Madonna” can’t be fully sexually desired.”

 

Look around you and tell me this Madonna-Whore complex doesn’t exist.

 

Written by Sisí Afrika.

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