What is a man most likely to have hidden under his bed? “His slut” apparently - Women's Agenda

What is a man most likely to have hidden under his bed? “His slut” apparently

Have you ever watched the TV game show Family Feud? For the uninitiated, the show’s premise is simple; two families compete with each other to guess the most popular responses to questions posed by the host.

So, for example, the host will ask: What’s the best thing to put whipped cream on? The show will have previously conducted a survey of 100 people and tallied the 5 most popular responses. The contestants then have to guess what those responses are. In this case, a contestant correctly guessed that the most popular response was “ice cream”.

Harmless – if a little vacuous – you might be thinking. Most often you’re probably right, but not today.  

Today’s episode of Family Feud in America asked this question: “What is a man most likely to have hidden under his bed from his wife?”

Let’s start with the question itself. The implication is that wives are controlling and overbearing, forcing men to cower in corners and hide their misgivings from dominant, humourless wives. Am I reading too much into it? No. This particularly female stereotype is welltrodden.

Despite the question’s flaws, the answers are worse. In the survey conducted of 100 Americans, the third was popular response was “her sis/his slut”.

Truly. At best it’s a misguided, sexist joke about married men objectifying women who aren’t their wives (hilarious, right?). At worst it speaks to the notion that husbands are entitled to use women for their own pleasure.

Leaving aside for a second the fact that the third most popular choice was “his slut” as the thing most likely for a husband to be keeping under his bed, I am –naively? – shocked that “slut” would even be used on a family television program at all.

The word, and its connotations about the sexual behaviours that are and are not permitted for women, is abhorrent. Its appearance on television is a reminder of a bygone era when it was considered acceptable to use misogynistic slander to describe women based on how they look or how they act.

Unfortunately, though, it seems that era is not as far gone as I would have hoped. 

In case you’re wondering, the most popular response to the question was, unsurprisingly, “porn”. The second was “snacks”. The third, “her sis/his slut”.

I don’t know about you but the combination of those three responses illustrates a sorry state of affairs.

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