"No one will buy the cow if the milk's for free"
This motto was passed along to me by my mother. I'm sure she was well meaning. It’s a motto a lot of mothers of her generation passed along to their daughters.
Here’s what the motto communicates:
“If you give sex away before marriage, no one will want to marry you."
Or in other words:
"The only thing that makes you worth having is what's between your legs."
This motto is about two things; being a sex object and using sex as a means of power and control.
In my upbringing, religion often echoed this motto. Religion tells girls that if you are not a virgin on your wedding night, you are damaged goods (a damaged object), soiled ( a soiled object), less than perfect (objects can and must be perfect), less desirable (than the perfect, unsoiled object),
less than.
Not only does this motto teach a girl that she is only desirable because of sex and is not much more than a sex object, but sex in this cow scenario is not about love and intimacy but about control. This motto says that I can (and should) control a man through the withholding of sex.
Holy cow.
(To comment click at the top on the title of this post - "Mottos - Part 2 "The Cow")