Before I get into this article about how women are just not working hard enough for men’s pleasure and attention, I thought I’d share this little statistic that Shakes’ Sis found.
The BBC reports on a new German study that finds “four years into a relationship, less than half of 30-year-old women wanted regular sex,� but “the proportion of men wanting regular sex remained at between 60-80%, regardless of how long they had been in a relationship.�
I have some serious questions about this study like Shakes—like her, I’m inclined to think it’s less evolution* than it probably is that women’s dissatisfaction with relationships is generally higher than men’s, especially after the children are born due to social factors like women work harder on average than men at making their partners happy—but it’s important to juxtapose with this article because the important thing here is that it’s women, not men, who are the ones who are more likely to check out sexually.
Broadsheet has linked to one of my favorite anti-feminist wingnuts masquerading as a feminist, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. His column is about how important it is for women that have newborns to be very insecure and paranoid that their husbands will lose all interest in the sexually. The solution that immediately comes to mind for this problem is not to have children, but for some reason, Boteach is unable to sign onto the idea that men should be deprived their god-given right to the holy heir. So instead he instructs women to conceal their role as mothers from their husbands, because he thinks not only are mothers not sex objects, but they’re not even women.
The erotic nature of a wife’s body is one of the principal elements of attraction in marriage. When a husband ceases to see his wife as a woman, and begins to see her as “the mother of his children,” a negative trend has begun in his mind that can only subvert his erotic interest.
I guess there are three sexes—man, woman, mother.
Boteach recommends that men not watch actual births (though it’s okay to be in the delivery room, just not staring at the goods), which is advice I have to agree with, due to my squeamishness. But where he really gets looney is when he advises women to conceal breast feeding from their husbands, because men are apparently simple creatures who can’t differientiate between an infant clinging to the boobie and the next door neighbor clinging to the boobie.
I told the mother that in being so devoted to her son, she had committed the cardinal sin of marriage, which is to put someone else before her spouse, even if that someone is your child. Furthermore, I said, her obsession had turned one of her most attractive body parts into a feeding station, an attractive cafeteria rather than a scintillating piece of flesh.
In my book “Kosher Adultery,” I make the point that infidelity is primarily a sin of omission rather than commission. It is not the bad thing you do that destroys a marriage, but all the good that you fail to do, preoccupied as you are with a sinful relationship that diverts your attention away from your spouse. Similarly, with the example of breast-feeding, a wife who spends a year giving all her emotional and physical affection to the baby has left her marriage a barren wasteland, bereft of romance and affection.
By god, when a man marries you he expects your boobs to be his property and his alone. One wonders if Boteach knows how much contempt for men this article radiates. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m sure most men can tell the difference between caring for an infant and a refreshing bout of afternoon adultery. Boteach backs off this analogy after dangling it out there, but it’s nonetheless disturbing that he thinks it’s remotely appropriate to compare the two in the first place.
What’s really interesting is reading between the lines of this article instructing women to be paranoid that their husbands will lose all sexual desire at the drop of hat. Although Boteach wouldn’t dare admit that the more real problem is that women are exhausted by all their responsibilities and it’s actually women who lose sexual interest—because that admission would imply that if men want more attention from women, they should be willing to relieve women of some responsibilities and equality in the home is not an acceptable answer to these problems—he still manages to hint that this is the real problem when he notes that a woman who has to give all her attentions to her baby is bound to start ignoring her husband. And that just makes Boteach’s advice even more irresponsible. If the real problem he’s seeing with couples he counsels is that the women have devoting all their energy to baby care, then how is it going to really help for those women to make minor changes like breast feed in private? If anything, I’d think that adding one more responsibility to the wife’s plate is going to eat away at her time and energy even more, leaving less of her energies for her husband than before.
*Even though the lead psychologist tries to spin this “just so” story to sound flattering to men, the ugly truth is for once there’s not much you can do to make this sound great for men. The evo psych explanation for these findings points to the idea that men are naturally clingier than women. In other words, men are just such girls. I’ll also note that the drop in women’s libido goes up dramatically with age, which might be explained by older women not wanting sex because they’re from generations where women’s sexual satisfaction was considered unimportant.
63 Responses to “Boobie! Mine!”
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I’ve been reading your series of posts on the unequal demands placed on women with great interest. I am the married mother of three children, a full-time undergraduate student, and part-time college tutor. I just want to say thank you, because you get it.
Hm. This dovetails well with Pam’s Parenting Horrors post.
And if the husband looks on during delivery, his wife’s vagina becomes “a mere birth canal.” What’s so ‘mere’ about that?
I suspect that women lose interest because anger and resentment pile up until distaste for the partner kills desire.
Sure, children do a lot to make one exhausted and emotionally drained. And sure, men are not always rational about wives becoming mothers. Many many of them don’t take on enough chores to cement them as “fathers”, and when they resent mothers, women inevitably resent *them*.
Vicious circle.
From the Real Evolutionary Biology™ POV, Boteach’s advice is 100% wrong and bizarre. Both sexes should “naturally” put the children’s needs before that of the spouse, because in the evolutionary scheme of things offspring are the big payoff.
My husband and I once had the “if the plane crashes who gets off first” conversation, and I confessed that though I’d rather spend the rest of my life with him than with the kids, I would leave him in the burning plane while I got them off first. “You’re damn right you would,” says he. I’m pretty sure he’d find Boteach’s assumption — that the husband and baby are in a struggle for the woman’s affection — offensive and even psychotic. But then, he loved seeing me breastfeed, though it also made him jealous — of *me*, for being able to so easily give the baby what she was crying for, but not of the *baby* for getting to hang onto my breast. That’s just cracked.
WTF is wrong with a man who can’t stand the sight of his wife feeding his child in the healthiest and most natural way? I think any man bothered by the sight should have a vasectomy, because they aren’t meant to be fathers.
Dude, you’ve seen them before. Other people whinging about the surprise sight of a boob, I can kind of understand, although I think the answer is “look away”. Babies need the feeding. But for a man who knows those breasts, he had better be able to cope.
Does he freak out if his wife walks barefoot on the beach, because her feet are no longer sexy to him, being useful? Does he insist she wear gloves all the time, lest seeing her chop carrots should put him off her touch forever. Does she have to wear a veil over her mouth, because lips that *speak* aren’t sexy like kissing lips?
He’s nuts. I believe the phrase is DTMFA?
Umm. I thought it was much more a reflection of women’s dissatisfaction with men & mens’ ability to learn. Oh, eww. Because, apparently men can only look at women as pieces of flesh. and not just the boobies, of course: all the bits not busy doing housework.Or because they’re from generations that have been browbeaten into thinking menopause equals end of sexual identity & desire (tho this seems to be less and less effective, I’m glad to say).
As usual, the blanket statements this guy makes are ludicrously overstated. I’m sure there are plenty of guys who don’t want to know that his wife feeds the baby out of the same breasts he likes to squeeze, much less pushed a baby out of the same vagina where he wants to put his wang, but that doesn’t mean we’re all that way.
My wife’s maternal activities give me even more respect for her, and mutual respect is a foundation of our shared intimacy. But even on a visceral level, I don’t find her nursing to be a turn-off, even in public. At the very least, we’ve become more open about both our bodies, and that carefree sense is a boost to sexual comfort.
What’s really disturbing about the good Rabbi’s baloney is the way he treats the marriage. When he talks about the wife commiting a “cardinal sin” against marriage, and parallels her dedication to her infant with “a sinful relationship,” he’s essentially setting up the husband as God himself. I realize he may be thinking that the marriage, being a holy institution, is a proxy God, but since the husband is allowed to consider only his own needs, it’s pretty clear who’s being sinned against.
I think any man bothered by the sight should have a vasectomy, because they aren’t meant to be fathers.
If they don’t understand the primary reason for breasts in the first place, they need a lot more than a vasectomy. They need a brain.
That is the stupidest article that I have ever read in my entire life, and Amanda posts plenty of stupid articles by wingnuts.
Male entitlement dripped from every sentence.
Boteach is pushing his own interpretation of Hasidic Judaism (which, if I understand, is not exactly embraced with fervor by other Hasids). He’s also making the usual wingnut mistake of assuming that if he’s got a neurosis, everybody does.
You know, given his ‘evolutionary’ explanation for behaviour, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that others in Shake’s discussion found that by looking at some other papers by Klusmann, that he’s on record as dismissing social science explanations for human social/sexual behaviours.
Such evo-pysch or evolutionary explanations for behaviour ALWAYS end up as ‘just so’ constructions, which reveal considerably more about the theorist’s own assumptions than anything about how human evolution might have operated.
In other words, it’s bullshit.
Furthermore there is WAY too much diversity across cultures to think that there is evolutionary basis for social or sexual behaviour. To argue otherwise is to not just be academically simplistic in your theorising, it’s also the height of ethnocentric arrogance to presume that your culture’s traits are somehow magically the acultural baseline.
Hence, in the social sciences we have a wonderful technical term for people that advocate for this kind of position; “Idiot”. An easy rule of thumb technique for recognising them is that all their vocal emanations will be coming from the area of their posterior.
I’ve seen Rabbi Shmuley on a local morning news channel several times. He comes across as far more personable than most of the fundies that would normally be spouting this crap (if I had an overly religious Jewish uncle, he’s what I’d picture).
However, what he spouts is still crap, kinda like a male Dr. Laura, and you believe it at your own peril…
Oh, the “who is more important, spouse or child” thing has come up here before, and I know I’m in the minority, but I agree the spouse should be more important in their own fashion. But that doesn’t mean neglecting the child. It does mean still caring about and talking about non-child things, as part of being interested in each other. It means that sometimes junior can get his own glass of water when he’s old enough and the two of you are cuddling. It means when the kids start fighting over which one of them you love best, you can tell them that you love Spouse best, and all your kids equally, but your love for each other is what started the family. My parents told my brother and I that, and it wasn’t a trauma.
However, you get your kids out of the burning airplane first, because they are children. Adults see to children’s safety. Even if you hate the neighbor’s kid, you pull him out of the way when a car comes around the corner suddenly. You definitely make your own kids’ safety top priority, because an adult should know how not to panic in a fire.
[…] Amanda Marcotte and Shakespeare’s Sister both point to this BBC article about women in long term relationships quickly losing interest in sex. Unfortunately, I can’t find the study, so all I have to go on are newspaper articles about it. The researchers from Hamburg-Eppendorf University interviewed 530 men and women about their relationships. […]
“In my book “Kosher Adultery,â€? I make the point that infidelity is primarily a sin of omission rather than commission. It is not the bad thing you do that destroys a marriage, but all the good that you fail to do, preoccupied as you are with a sinful relationship that diverts your attention away from your spouse. Similarly, with the example of breast-feeding, a wife who spends a year giving all her emotional and physical affection to the baby has left her marriage a barren wasteland, bereft of romance and affection.”
That is so totally fucked up. Any “man” who is jealous of his child has no business being in any kind of relationship in the first place. Especially a parental relationship.
Oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, it’s not a zero-sum game, already! In addition to what everyone else has pointed out so far, why on earth would a woman have to choose between her partner and her baby? Can’t you just love them both, give both the love and affection? And how insulting is this to men? The good rabbi acts as though men are incapable of any kind of nuanced reasoning. I’d hope that someone who’s a father is mature enough and capable of understanding the COMPLEX relationships now in place, and that the adults are playing MANY roles: parent, lover, etc.
“, he’s essentially setting up the husband as God himself. I realize he may be thinking that the marriage, being a holy institution, is a proxy God, but since the husband is allowed to consider only his own needs, it’s pretty clear who’s being sinned against.�
Well, remember this asshat is an Orthodox Rabbi. I studied Judaism for years with such a Rabbi. They entire religion treats women like garbage.(Unsurprisingly I didn’t convert). This “it’s all HER fault� trash coming from him doesn’t suprise me at all - neither does his implicit denial that men ar any part of the problem. Male entitlement is the sum and total of the abrahamic religions.
And don’t be surprised if he trots out theYeshiva defense in response to criticisms of this misogynistic crap. His rebuttal would be little more than “you just don’t understand.� and “God says� blah blah blah. He makes me ill.
Has anyone ever watch this asshat’s show on TLC? Is everything the woman’s fault on t.v. too?
I’m breastfeeding my infant right now and yet my husband still manages to find me sexually attractive, Funny how that works. I don’t breastfeed in private either… yeah, if there are people over I’ll be discreet, but in my own house with my husband? No way in hell am I worried about covering up my breasts, he’s seen them enough times that it shouldn’t be shocking or disturbing to him. I don’t blame him for not wanting to see our kids actually being born, however. It is pretty icky in terms of blood, body fluids, etc… and nothing I want to see either.
I’d forgotten about the good Rabbi until I found out he had a show on TLC called Shalom in the Home. I watched an episode, and he actually seemed pretty even-handed with his advice. A stopped clock, and all that… guy’s still a nut and shouldn’t get any attention.
Slightly OT, but the three sexes comment (man, woman, mother) reminded me of a Tide commercial that I loathe. The ad copy says something like “Smell like a mother AND a woman!” while “Be My Baby” plays. My first reaction to it was “Fuck you, I’ll smell any way I damn well please!” I don’t know if it’s just a Canadian ad, or if it gets airplay in the US as well.
Another item in Shmuley’s writing that is so nuts is his reference to a woman’s breastfeeding as an “obsession.” Seems like he’s missing a fundamental understanding of how frequently newborns need to feed and how breasts work to make milk. To Shmuley, frequent feedings are a devotion of choice of the mother, something she could otherwise avoid if her priorities were rearranged to appropriately put her man ahead of her own selfish desires (no doubt to win her children’s affection through food). The ignorance is appalling, and the conclusions made within it are astoundingly offensive.
In the Boteach family arrangement, the husband is simply the largest and most demanding child. I’m surprised he doesn’t come right out and endorse adultery for men whose wives dare to neglect their needs in favor of the children.
Bloody hell, can’t the wingnuts be consistent? One minute women are baby machines, the next they’re sex objects. No wonder they’re always complaining - whatever a woman does, she’ll be contradicting one of her supposed functions.
I actually read the rabbi’s book “Hating Women” and found bits of it laugh-out loud funny. One of the more memorable bits in the book is his argument that women should neglect their hygiene so that their men can be aroused and intoxicated by their natural smell. As support for his argument he quotes a letter from Napolean to Josephine in which he tells her to stop bathing because he’ll be home in a week. Eeeewww!!
Wow antifeminists comming at us from both sides, evo=psych moron about how once again women= coy man = fuck anything that moves, then on the other end the warning not to do anything that might wither the fragile boner. Though according to Orthodox custom, sex is the womans marraige right, it is the husbands job to provide it, if he doesn’t she can get a divorce. Given that, I dont think the Rabi would go around claiming women have smaller sex drives, so if hes determined to blame it on the woman, hes go to go with the booby thing.
Well, I guess that study proves that Michelle Duggar possesses the sacred secret of teh Sexy. She should teach a class or something.
One wonders if Boteach knows how much contempt for men this article radiates.
Pfft, where have you been? The only thing the fundies have a lower opinion of then men is women, and you know that’s saying something.
In theory, women are the superior sex in Orthodoxy. In practice, everything is wrong about us (I come from a Haredi family, but am a Conservative Jew as of now). On the one hand, we are being forever urged to hide our “stuff”, because men are easily aroused and always willing to indulge in sinful activities. On the other hand, we are urged to become sex bombs and whores, because any unsound move can hurt fragile male desire to have sex. They ought to make up their minds - otherwise, they will turn into utter jokes.
There are an awful lot of straw people being thrown around in this debate.
First of all, the study has nothing to do with the rabbi. Bringing him into this makes no sense. Just because Amanada “is inclined to think” something doesn’t make it gospel.
Second, the study isn’t all that surprising. Men on average have a more consistent sex drive than women. There are reasons, both physical and psychological. Men don’t have monthly cycles and bear (also nurse) children, two biological factors that affect a women’s libido over the short term.
Some women are obviously too tired because of work or duties at home and/or resentment of husbands. But tarring all or most men as having a “Madonna-whore complex” is stretching the facts and stepping into stereotypes based on a know-nothing imbecile like the rabbi.
In subjects like this, the real life experience of people run a wide gamut and — more importantly — changes over time, so making snap judgements is bound to be wrong.
It is not the bad thing you do that destroys a marriage, but all the good that you fail to do, preoccupied as you are with a sinful relationship that diverts your attention away from your spouse.
Could there be a clearer, more naked expression of male entitlement than calling a mother’s relationship with her baby “sinful”?
If I’d have listened to this joker, I’d have missed seeing our babies being born, which was the greatest experience in my entire life. Not that I had the choice to look away anyway, since the midwife was a half-hour late, twice.
It should also be mentioned that in other articles by this idiot, he talks about how some men become so obsessed with only certain parts of a woman (i.e. men who date only women with dd’s), that he’s missing out on the bigger picture.
And with this one, he shows us that he is this type of ass by reducing a wife/mother to breasts and vagina.
Dr. Petra demolishes the German study, as she tends to do…
Cmbs,
First of all, the study has nothing to do with the rabbi. Bringing him into this makes no sense. Just because Amanada “is inclined to think� something doesn’t make it gospel.
Sounds like you missed the opening:
Before I get into this article about how women are just not working hard enough for men’s pleasure and attention, I thought I’d share this little statistic that Shakes’ Sis found.
[…]
it’s important to juxtapose with this article because the important thing here is that it’s women, not men, who are the ones who are more likely to check out sexually.
Amanda mentions the study specifically because it contradicts the Rabbi’s thesis in the article: that men lose interest sexually because “mothers” aren’t sexually attractive to men.
The Rabbi was the point of the post; the study was a convenient lead-in. And whether or not she agrees with the study’s causal explanation of the phenomenon is irrelevant. (In general, though, evolution seems like the last cause you should posit, because you can’t test it easily.)
Cmbs, you don’t seem to know what a “strawman” is. The rabbi is claiming that men have a fragile sex drive and that the sight of a breast that is being suckled by an infant is enough to destroy it. The study shows that it’s women who withdraw sexually. Amanda seems to be showing that no matter how you slice it, women get blamed.
Oh, sweet Jesus Christ on a popsicle stick, it’s not a zero-sum game, already! In addition to what everyone else has pointed out so far, why on earth would a woman have to choose between her partner and her baby?
Agreed. Leaving aside the Rabbi and his views (about which I know little and, I confess, could care less), we have to be careful — in discussing this topic — in distinguishing marriages which fail for two wholly different reasons: the ones where the husband is a baby and resents the natural attention to the child and all the work that that entails, and the ones where the wife pretty much loses interest in the husband as soon as the baby came along. Both exist, and both are pretty nasty things to watch. I handled both kinds of divorce files and what they always had in common was that one parent became wholly oblivious to the fact that the other spouse was a person with needs, desires, feelings and obligations.
seeker6079
I agree. And I agree with what you said at the end about older women not liking sex. It’s not hormones. It’s a generational thing. My mother has never liked sex. My sister and I are both quite fond of it. Well, my mom likes to say that we got it from our dad.
I think it’s just my mom’s brainwashing.
I’ve always said that it’s normal and right for women to like sex. If a particular woman doesn’t, there’s something wrong. Either, she’s been taught not to like it, or she’s having bad experiences, or something.
There’s a new genre of desire dampening that I’ve come across: women being turned off by their partner’s hygiene. This is more problematic than some people would think at first glance.
And I don’t like the idea that it’s women who have to fix any and all libido problems.
And I don’t like the idea that it’s women who have to fix any and all libido problems.
A perfectly valid point. But what are we going to do with those that think that men who have to fix any and all libido problems? Or that men are the source of any and all of those problems?
Interesting article on the same site as the Rabbi’s article that presents an opposing opinion:
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/196/story_19647_1.html
I’m speechless at how insane this all is. Breastfeeding a hungry child is a willful sin? (bangs head on desk) nope this is not a dream. Both of my sisters breastfed, by the way - it didn’t seem to bother their husbands much. Breastfeeding wasn’t always a magical moment however, I remember one once one of them said “time to be the cow” when her daughter started cryingt to be fed.
This whole Dad vs. baby struggle thing is just weird. when I was reading the rabbi’s words I was reminded of an old joke I read somewhere “Well of course your wife is going to bond more to the children than you, they are her flesh and blood, you’re just some guy she picked up at a bar.” That’s a joke - this clown seems to think that’s what really happens.
It’s sort of depressing to think about sex drive going completely to hell after several years of marriage. I really hope that, decades from now, my husband and I will be able to make the bed creak with the best of them.
I can’t help but read this guy’s article and think that he has some extremely twisted Oedipal fear going on here… that the children will usurp the place of the father just like Zeus and the others usurped the place of their forbears. Maybe instead of attributing his insecurities to his wife he should go see a shrink about his own mental issues. Though on a slightly funny note, it’s amusing to think that the world of familial power orbits around a woman’s breasts.
Too bad that’s all we seem to be. Mammary centers of gravity in which our families struggle for power. Does this guy look at his wife and see anything OTHER than boobs?
The rabbi reminds me of this asshole.
Does this guy look at his wife and see anything OTHER than boobs?
Nope. That’s all his mother was to him when he was an infant, and there’s no reason to think he’s progressed emotionally since then.
It’s a generational thing. My mother has never liked sex.
Since my mom, a boomer, only learned she had a clit and was capable of orgasm at the age of 23, I doubt it’s that shocking that many of our mothers never really liked sex. Hell, I had the knowledge of how my body worked, and yet it took a number of years before I could figure out how to make orgasm happen in the course of intimacy with another. And this was with partners who were actively trying to help.
As for the Rabbi… well. I hope he just comes to accept his infantilism fetish and leaves the rest of us the hell alone.
Andrea - My husband and I are still going at it at 10 years, with 2 kids. My only assvice is to make sure that the chores are equitably divided and that you never have sex with your partner while you’re not enjoying being there. I have suffered dips in drive when I was the one expending all the mental energy keeping all our ‘balls’ in the air - the social, financial, and household tasks - and if you have sex while you’re trying to keep everything else afloat, it ends up being another chore. That is a bad thing.
Anyway, we restructured our responisibilities and (not so miraculously), my drive came back full force. We don’t have as much TIME together as we’d like; but that will resolve as the kids get a little older.
responsibilities…
I don’t know what responisibilities are, but I don’t think I’ve got them.
“I’ll also note that the drop in women’s libido goes up dramatically with age, which might be explained by older women not wanting sex because they’re from generations where women’s sexual satisfaction was considered unimportant. ”
You know, people keep promising that my libido will drop, but I’m 50 now and…well…it’s stronger than ever. Finding a man who can keep up has never been easy, and now the men in my age group are starting to suffer from age-related problems.
And, while anecdotal, most of my peers seem to be in the same boat. Men may want us to think they’re insatiable, but it’s women who can have multiple orgasms.
Arwen:
Sage advice. But I would add a bit of my own: once you have cleared away responsibilities, don’t fill the time with more responsibilities. I’ve seen couples go to shit because no matter how cooperative and efficient they are with what they have to do, they just go on and add more stuff to things that they have to do. Junior goes to rep little league instead of just house league, adding travel and time to the burdens, rather than just letting him spend a day at his friend’s, for example. Or taking on new duties at work….
The list goes on. Of course, if people are doing that then we are also obliged to ask whether they want to continue to have sex with their spouse, which is another debate altogether.
Deborah, it all makes sense* according to the Religious Male Chauvinist Logic System** which transcends all denominations.
See, women are Supposed to Be Perfect, where Perfect = never makes a man unhappy or uncomfortable in any way. We know that this is what G-d wants, because He said so right there in Genesis/Bereshit. That is what women were designed for, so any failure in that regard is violation of both divine and natural order.
The fact that the things men want are contradictory - that we must be both chaste and sexy, proper maidens/wives so as not to shame them in the eyes of other men (either by being responsible for slutty women, or by their uncontrollable hard-ons) but also “whores in the bedroom”*** so as to make sure they get the maximum bang for their bride-price buck while not having to worry about cuckoo’s eggs in the nest, see - this is not Their problem, it’s ours b/c of Eve, see. They just want us to be the best, most perfect Women we can be, and they honor that Ideal woman, and they do so most of all by putting down us unsatisfactory real life females, and thereby trying to encourage us to be gentle, submissive, maternal-yet-attractive at all times. That’s true Chivalry, see!
–There is essentially no difference between the traditionalist Catholic view of women and the Haredi (and Orthodox) and Moslem ones, except for the bit about covering hair at all times (traditionalist Catholics only do that in church) and observing the menstruation regulations from the Torah, which we’ve ditched…but even those are held up as showing how Venerated and Sacred women are, just like the Ark of the Covenant!
(* internally, that is.)
(**I can’t use either “conservative” or “orthodox” to describe this, because of the potential for confusion of terms…)
(***this is a bit controversial, though - in fact, I remember reading one of those Moral Stories designed to exhort believers to proper family behavior about an Orthodox rabbi who only found out that his wife had a crippled arm when she was dead, b/c he’d never seen her naked - in spite of the fact that they had a whole bunch of children! And yes, I know (a few) traditionalist Roman Catholics who believe the same way, that it’s “immodest” for husbands and wives to see each other naked. So, lights off and nightgowns on, as well as in the Missionary Position!)
[…] Pandagon […]
Men refuse to see it, and women find it difficult to understand. But one small disfunction of a patriarchal society is the manifold ways our culture panders to men’s lowest instincts, over-sexualizes them, and ridicules them if they don’t buy into it.
Women get messages that encourage and allow them to slow down sexually, while men get viagra commercials. It’s disgusting. Women also get messages that tell them they are worthless if they aren’t young and attractive, so it’s not like men are in any way disenfranchised by all this. But it does make them act in a way that enforces and confirms male privilege. It also makes them act pathetic and stupid.
So of course men, the pathetic fools, refuse to admit or even allow themselves to slow down sexually, while women can allow themselves this one small luxury. And I think it is a luxury to let go of excessive sexual desire, at any age, since the rewards aren’t commensurate with the risks and pains suffered.
All I could do while reading the rabbi’s sage advice about men, babies and boobies was laugh out loud, loudly, and then say: “Wussies”.
Suffice it to say that seeing me breastfeed our children never put him off breasts; in fact, I think he’d have been perfectly happy to be allotted the one that was not at that time occupied by a baby. Mind you, having a baby latched on for much of the day put me off having the things touched for other purposes, but that’s a different story.
He also saw both babies born - he caught the second one, though not the first - and still, oddly enough, seems to want sex.
Anyone notice Boteach’s creepy bit about “taking her breasts away from her husband and giving them to her son”? Not her baby, her son - making the whole process sound weirdly incestuous.
I suspect it is true that some women use their babies as an excuse to ward off unwanted sexual attention, but that’s not a baby problem, it’s a marriage problem.
And, while anecdotal, most of my peers seem to be in the same boat. Men may want us to think they’re insatiable, but it’s women who can have multiple orgasms. - uuuhh… yeah
I know this is dangerously close to one of those “men are from mars, women are from venus” lines of thinking, but it’s been my experience (although I have no doubt that it’s more a function of subtle cues from culture affecting sexuality at even the biological level through brain plasticity than anything genetic) that women are pretty insatiable once they get in the mood, but that men are more often in the mood than women.
As to the multiple orgasms thing: men can have them too, though, at least from my experience, our ability to have them goes down with age. Also, when adolescent men, when they are in their “embarrassingly tumescent at the drop of a hat” stage, have such short refractory periods that even if they can manage to have only one orgasm at a shot, so to speak, for all practical purposes they can have multiples.
It’s my parents contention, given that many women do experience increasing sex-drive with age (although this does not contradict the point made about the decreasing sex drive: the point was not that the sex drive of these women has decreased due to some biological effect but that the women in question were more influenced by society to feel that women, especially with increasing age, have decreased sex drives) and men have more prowess (if less skill) when they are younger, that those societies, e.g. in the South Pacific, where adolescent men were initiated into sex by much older women were onto something.
Rabbi Botech is a treasure for demonstrating how certain (patriarchal) conceptions of women, women’s bodies and women’s sexuality become and remain hegemonic.
Note here that the Rabbi doesn’t even bother to restrict himself to simply implying that women’s bodies exist for men’s sexual gratification, he just comes out and says outright that a woman demonstrating that her breasts exist for any other purpose than those of her husband is wrong.
The most revealing part of this is how the Rabbi simply assumes that “erotic” = sexually appealing to men (let’s not even get into how this constitutes fetishization in the Marxian sense). He does the exact same thing immediately in the next paragraph:
Of course, as the Rabbi seems to have decided he hadn’t made his point explicit enough, he adds:
Hmm. The erotic nature of a wife’s body. So, then, it is the nature of a woman’s body to exist to be sexually attractive to men, while the reverse is apparently not true as the Rabbi doesn’t consider it important that the husband’s body remain eroticized for the wife, or that it might so be eroticized at all.
Notice the disparity of roles he posits in keeping ‘passion’ alive in marriage then. Men must continue to see their wives bodies as existing for their sexual pleasure to remain passionate, while women must ensure their partners continue to see their bodies as existing for their partner’s sexual pleasure.
(Note: I should get bonus points for making this entire comment without using the obvious term for this even once.)
Oh Das, making statements like that means I have to break it to you—because women aren’t in the mood around you isn’t evidence for how women in general feel.
Well, here I was, supremely satisfied with the scalpel I took to the Rabbi’s article when I realized I’d missed the best part and best evidence!
First, be amazed at how the Rabbi defines ‘a loss of erotic desire between husband and wife’ as a loss of erotic desire by the husband for the wife’s body, and then marvel at how he abuses the term ‘alienation’. He means husbands becoming alienated from their wife’s bodies!
It is not the bad thing you do that destroys a marriage, but all the good that you fail to do, preoccupied as you are with a sinful relationship that diverts your attention away from your spouse.
Oh, BULL.
Poly people split their attention just fine. It’s not lack of attention I was angry about when my partner violated the terms of our relationship–he didn’t spend a lot of time doing it, and I would have been okay with the actions had he waited for permission. For a lot of people it’s about broken trust more than lost attention.
I think that life circumstances are the most likely cause of differening sexual desire in a long-term relationship. But if an EvPsych considers the issue, there is one possibility they will never entertain - that women might be less monogamous than men and require a variety of sexual partners to remain interested. This theory completely flies in the face of all EvPsych concepts of human sexuality, firmly entrenched in a mindset that says Patriarchy = Nature.
The whole goddamn patriarchy is built on the neuroses of men who are desperate not to die alone, who are afraid their partners will lose interest in them sexually, who are terrified that they aren’t good enough for women to love them. It’s such a mind-boggling case of projection.
Marcy:
There’s a new genre of desire dampening that I’ve come across: women being turned off by their partner’s hygiene. This is more problematic than some people would think at first glance.
Or, as some Swedish 70ties feminist said, don’t put anything in your pussy that you wouldn’t put in your mouth.
Ladies, I’d really like for you all to know that this kind of male is NOT the majority by a long shot. First, a copy of a post of mine in Alternet:
Such simple answers for a change!
Posted by: Ian MacLeod on Aug 15, 2006 10:24 PM
Jews “dumped” Joe because he’d outed himself as Neocon property and just another greedy power-seeker who’ll do anything for his fix, these Jews are Americans, and most Americans are tired of Neocon lies, etc.
Second, no, a woman who is breastfeeding isn’t sexy, but the sight is beautiful! So basic, and at the same time, two everyday-but-genuine miracles in their own universe - so many things all at once. That’s Life, the future, at least one soul with one foot still in Paradise, and for that person at that time, the world is perfect.
This is not to say that a woman couldn’t decide to turn on the sexy vibes if she wanted, but it would be guilding the lily. I didn’t just look, I delivered our son, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s a piece of the Power of the Creator you ladies have there, which entitles you all to a special respect regardless of age or whatever. As for breat-feeding, it was a beautiful thing to watch. The entire process of making another person and caring for a child leaves me in awe, and always has. A miracle is no less a miracle for happening often (and no, I’m NOT a Christian). A man who’s jealous of it has several screws loose - and likely a few parts fallen out on the road somewhere…
For your courage, your intelligence, your generosity, (and I see a LOT of courage and generosity in having a child!), for the beauty you add to this world in so many ways other than the obvious, but for that too, there are no words of thanks or appreciation that are adequate. My wife is my best friend; I wanted an equal or better, and I got lucky: equal in many ways, better in many ways, a teacher and student, friend, companion, partner - I couldn’t ask for more.
Ian
I had to add this. BTW, please excuse the misspelling above - I’m disabled and typing lying down - awkward at best.
Folks, no matter how you look at it, Christianity, ANYthing based on Judaism (the square root of the Talmud=guilt) and many if not most other religions is going to be “gotcha no matter what you do or fail to do.” It’s based on human imperfection and how pissed God is about it. Personally I’ve always felt that if there’s a flaw, look to the manufacturer…
You ladies can be mothers or anything else and still be sexy. Napleon had the prejudices of his time, that’s all. A woman does smell sexy - if she’s reasonably clean. Warm and sweaty is fine; slightly marinated is okay. Rancid is not. We’ve learned a bit about health since then.
If you are looking for a way to do everything right per religion though, you’re S.O.L., period. It’s designed to be impossible.
For what it’s worth, though, you tend to have a much higher pain tolerance than men, your bodies are smaller in general and more efficient in many ways, the sexual superiority is the LEAST questionable, your brains are smaller, but so are the cells, as well as being more efficient (so is the architecture: left and right brain communication is MUCH better in women), and speaking as a medically trained martial artist, you can be faster than a man. We’re bigger and more massive, so for sheer power we’re usually superior and harder to damage, but proportionately, you can be as strong as or stronger than a man your own size. And I acknowledge that most of you are just flat-out tougher in the long-term. Okay, in the short-term too.
All taken together, men and women make great teams. Just try to keep in mind that in this strange society, men live by their pride, and if you castrate a man even symbolically, have the grace to shoot him immediately. Too many of us are ‘WAY over-sensitive there though, and all you can do is hope to educate him or find someone else.
Ian
[…] New mothers are told that “breast is best,” and that message is reinforced with guilt. (On the flip side, nursing mothers are also given the message that nursing in public is shameful and they should not “whip out” their breasts in public. They’re also told by idiots like Shmuley Boteach that breastfeeding gets in the way of their relationships with their husbands, because God forbid a breast be used for something other than a man’s pleasure. But I digress.) […]
[…] (my sources are, Pandagon, My Blahg archive, a random Christian site, and that oh so popular quote we all hear constantly) […]