It's been brought up many, many times.

The cock carousel. The penis train. Promiscuity. The partner count. The word itself.

Slut.

It's easy to see that there are drawbacks to being one. Feminists decry "slut shaming", redpillians often say that men shouldn't commit to one, men in general just say that, right or wrong, they don't want to commit to one.

But what is a slut?

Religious conservatives who claim to have red-pill values say that PUA shouldn't be a red pill thing, because it creates sluts. PUA redpillians say religious conservativism isn't red pill at all, because attempting to increase a woman's sexual partner count by one is what "male sexual strategy" is all about. How could it be otherwise, when religious conservativism is, at its core, an attempt to culturally restrain that which cannot be restrained... human nature?

But all these arguments fall flat unless we can answer one important question.

What is a slut?

And it is an important question, because there is an apparent contradiction in red pill theory, a self-swallowing aspect to the way many people think about it.

In attempting to be attractive to women, a man tries to increase their count of sexual partners. Yet he himself does not desire to commit to women with high sexual partner counts? Is he not creating the very thing he shuns? Is he not destroying the very world he wishes to live in?

But if he tells women not to submit to men's sexual advances, is he not defeating his own efforts at sexual conquest?

Is a man nothing but a hypocrite when he shuns the slut? That depends upon the answer to one important question.

What is a slut?

Will the correct answer to this question make this apparent contradiction go away? I contend that it will.

To answer this question, we must remember one fundamental truth about the sexual marketplace: Women are the gatekeepers of sex, and men are the gatekeepers of relationships. When we think of a slut as a woman with a high count of sexual partners, we must be aware of what this implies.

First, that she has allowed men through the gate of sex many times.

Second, that she has been allowed, by men, through the gate of relationships very few times... for otherwise, she would have slowed down her pace of acquiring new partners considerably.

Now we are ready to answer the question.

A slut is a woman whose sexual market value consists mostly of sexual availability, and little else.

Or, equivalently,

A slut is a woman who does not have the ability to turn sexual encounters into relationships.

Looked at in this way, of course men don't want to commit to sluts. The very definition implies it.

High partner counts are a symptom of sluttiness, not its cause. Sluts acquire high partner counts not because they "open their legs too easily", but because the men they have coupled with do not wish to stay... and so they must, once again, find a new man.

A slut is pumped and dumped many times. But it is being dumped, not being pumped, that makes a woman a slut.

This resolves our apparent contradiction. If a woman's goal of avoiding sluthood is not to avoid sex, but to make a man stay afterwards, this is in no way opposed to a man's goal of getting to sex. It is the sex that is the male biological imperative, not the hasty departure afterwards.

In fact, that hasty departure provides him with no pleasure at all. Would he not rather met a woman with whom he wishes to have sex again? Would he not rather meet a woman whom he prefers to a hasty departure? Of course he would.

But that is out of his control. Just a woman, the gatekeeper of sex, cannot control how sex-worthy the men around her are, a man, the gatekeeper of commitment and emotional investment, cannot control how relationship-worthy the women he meets are. The only power they have is the binary choice whether or not to open the gate.

So, to avoid being a slut, don't refuse to have sex. Instead, have value beyond just sex. Make men want to see you again. And your partner count will stay low without having to resort to withholding tactics.

Because withholding tactics don't work. A slut cannot "reform" herself by withholding sex. If her only sexual market value is availability, then withholding that leaves her with... nothing to offer. A slut can only reform herself by increasing her value in other areas. If she does so, men will want to stay, and her partner count will stop increasing so fast.

That partner count is only a symptom, not the disease.

To avoid being a slut, be a keeper.