Boy, I hope this quote was taken out of context. (Hat tip.)
Some insist it can be explained by basic biology. Feminist author Robin Morgan says men “stow their brains in their crotches. Women do seem to approach work differently. And women tend to regard sex differently. They like to at least like the person.”
There’s nothing about the quote that inclines me to think Morgan was speaking about biological imperatives or any evo psych nonsense that exists to justify “middle-aged professors sleeping with their younger graduate students.” But still, I’m wary of the language that shames sexual desire, or more importantly, credits certain kinds of sexual misbehavior to sexual desire, when I think a lot of it is about power desire. Women are as fully capable as men of letting our lusts overcome our reason, but that’s not what a lot of these scandals are about.
Let me elaborate. The article in question is a Newsweek piece about why female leaders don’t get caught up in sex scandals as often as male leaders. The most likely explanation, albeit the least conducive to essentialist sexist arguments, is that there are simply a lot less female leaders. Women do, after all, cheat almost as much as men, and so if every adultery turned into a sex scandal and representation was 50/50 in the halls of power, we’d see an equal number of women getting outed as adulterers. But I’m not going to dust off my hands and call it a day with that, because I think the Newsweek article does make a good point about the qualitative difference. Women have been outed for garden variety adulteries, but with men, it’s often about sex with prostitutes, interns, grooming the next younger wife while the current one is sick with cancer, etc.
It’s certainly not as exciting as stolen hours at the Days Inn (Paterson), cigars in the Oval Office (Bill Clinton), a stripper nicknamed the “Argentine Firecracker” (Arkansas Rep. Wilbur Mills) or trysts with $4,000-an-hour prostitutes (Spitzer).
It might be a numbers game, but I’m skeptical. As I hammered at during the discussions of prostitution, there’s a real reason that 99.99% of the prostitutes around the world cater to male clients. And it’s not that men think with their crotches so often as they think with their male privilege and their need to assert masculinity, something that’s defined strongly through the ability to use and dominate others. Thanks to Evan for sending me this reactionary “oh poor men” article, because they inadvertently diagnosed the problem with the concept of masculinity.
But the hunter-gatherer role is still a strong male instinct. Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-time (24 per cent).
Around 2,000 men and women were polled on the internet across 10 television regions for a survey commissioned by DMAX, an entertainment television channel from Discovery Networks.
Men said they “felt handcuffed” by political correctness - only 33 per cent felt they could speak freely and say what they thought, whereas two thirds found it safer and to conceal their opinions.
Harvey Mansfield, a Harvard professor and America’s best known political philosopher, who tackles the topic in his book Manliness, says the issue is ignored.
“A man has to be embarrassed about being a man. I am trying to bring back the word manliness. It’s not respected,” he said.
Personally, I feel that if a man has to define his manhood by his ability to control and dominate and use women, then he doesn’t deserve respect and he should be embarrassed. Sorry that it’s such a burden to so many men not to run around hurting and dominating others for shits and giggles. God forbid we have a polite society instead of one that idealizes a masculinity based on brutality, an ideal which, by the way, is a huge burden to many men and doesn’t do them any favors, either.
As I’ve said a million times before, I think garden variety adulteries are not the business of the public. And even when there’s some screwed up situation, like there was in the power imbalance between an intern and the President, I can’t help but think that as long as full consent is in play and everything is above board, then it’s best to treat it like a garden variety adultery. Once you start introducing hypocrisy, though, all bets are off in my book. Or visiting prostitutes, which is so different than regular sex that it’s devious to put it in the same category.
What I think you have in the Spitzer case and a lot of other cases that are much more scandalous than garden variety adulteries is not men letting their lust take hold of them so much as men letting their need to embrace a masculinity defined by brutality and dominance take over. The Telegraph article defines the need to dominate as biological, and I strongly disagree, since I’ve known plenty of men who defy that stereotype, but one thing the Telegraph article and I do agree on is that a lot of men are chafing under the social requirement to act like decent people. Deprived of the privilege to treat women like chattel, a lot of men turn to prostitutes or much younger women to get injected with that opportunity to have sexual experiences where they are lords getting serviced by disempowered women, and that is what I think is the missing ingredient that explains why there’s a certain kind of sex scandals that seem to only involve male politicians.
But by no means does this explain the majority of male adulteries. I think men and women are mostly alike in this regard and cheat at the same rate for the same reasons. Anger at your primary partner. Low self esteem that’s boosted by fresh attention from someone new. A lack of empathy that causes you to run over your partner’s feelings to get a cheap thrill without worrying too much about it. I wish I could say that a lot of it is feeling trapped in a sexless marriage, but I’m afraid that’s mostly a myth we tell ourselves to romanticize adultery, similar to the myth of the Hooker With A Heart Of Gold who fucks the Sad, Unfuckable John somewhat for money, but mostly because she’s a sex worker for altruistic reasons.
58 Responses to “Mostly the same, but for the privilege”
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I think you’re on the money here. Look at one of the extremes. Seems to be the need to be absolute master of the universe.
Quoting Sudhir Venkatesh, via
http://capitalistimperialistpig.blogspot.com/2008/03/one-hell-of-conversation.html
“What high-end clients pay for may surprise you. For example, according to my ongoing interviews of several hundred sex workers, approximately 40 percent of trades in New York’s sex economy fail to include a physical act beyond light petting or kissing. No intercourse, no oral stimulation, etc. That’s one helluva conversation. But it’s what many clients want. Flush with cash, these elite men routinely turn their prostitute into a second partner or spouse. Over the course of a year, they will sometimes persuade the woman to take on a new identity, replete with a fake name, a fake job, a fake life history, and so on. They may want to have sex or they may simply want to be treated like King for a Day.”
A lot of times, people point out that men pay prostitutes a lot of money and then don’t have sex with them (as Arun referenced above), which you’d think would undermine the men-as-irrepressible-horndogs meme, but somehow doesn’t.
To me, that marks it out as being even more about power. You’re not just paying the woman to have sex with you — you’re paying her to sit and listen to you without interruption and still be sexually available. After all, if the sole appeal was to have someone listen to you, they could all get Freudian psychoanalysts who would let them ramble on for an hour. But without the promise that the man can decide whether or not he wants to have sex thrown into the deal, that’s not an option.
Though, while thinking about it more, part of the issue may be the whole idea that men aren’t supposed to have emotions or conflicted feelings, so it’s more socially acceptable for them to see a prostitute than to see a shrink. If they see a prostitute, they can pass it off as being a Real Man who needs lots of sex even if all they do is talk.
Arun, I find it interesting that even women who can charge $10,000 a session were getting abused on average twice a year. Rapists and other assailants target streetwalkers, secure in the knowledge that society doesn’t care about such women. But I’m actually a little surprised to find out they target someone who charges so much.
Or, one could say, that women have girlfriends to talk to, while men have to pay for girlfriends to talk to.
Well, it seems they want more than talking. They want to be waited on. I think most married men probably have wives or girlfriends who listen, but they listen as part of an exchange where the man has to listen, too. It’s all very bizarre. I don’t really claim to get in the heads of men who are attracted to the idea of visiting a prostitute. I’ve never had that kind of privilege, and so while I can fantasize about having a man who is professionally obligated to gaze at me adoringly, service me sexually, and basically treat me like the center of his world with no reciprocity for a couple of hours, the idea is so fantastical to me that I can’t imagine it for very long. If given the option, I’d reject it. It would make me feel very uncomfortable, because I don’t think of men as secondary to me, and so can’t adapt to treating a man like a servant at all.
I’ve heard that some men pay prostitutes, and then want to eat them out and otherwise play like they’re servicing the prostitute, which is baffling to me. Maybe they feel weird and guilty and think this will restore some balance to the situation? Or maybe they enjoy having so much control over someone for a couple of hours that she has to pretend to really be into something she’s not into.
I think there’s another explanation that’s not exactly a subset of the control version: namely that some men are deeply turned on by their (presumed) ability to arouse a woman in give her pleasure. They like being good in bed, and may even have a bunch of their self-worth tied up in it. So they can make believe to themselves that they’re giving the prostitute a really good time while secure in the knowledge that she’s not going to (as a woman unconstrained by job requirements might) act as she’s having anything but.
Then again, it could also be a variant of whatever impulse leads (anecdotally) significant numbers of powerful men to hire doms. What greater power than to hire someone to submit to?
I think the first explanation makes more sense. I think the idea that performing oral sex on a woman is submission is held almost completely by guys who won’t do it. But guys who do don’t seem to think it’s submissive. The opposite, in fact. I’ve definitely heard men brag about leaving women panting messes that have lost control. Which is certainly not a sadistic thing to say, but definitely not a disempowered opinion. I hear women brag in this manner much less often, though I have heard some women bravely suggest giving oral sex is a position of power. Blow jobs are definitely constructed as submissive in our culture, which makes claims that it’s empowering because you’re controlling him ring a bit false. Which isn’t to say that an individual woman can’t find that meaning in it, but you know, she’s got to accept that not every guy she gives head to will agree that she’s the boss of that interaction, or even that it’s equal.
I’m pretty sure they go down on prostitutes because, purely and simply because, it turns them on. It’s not at all about making sure or pretending to make sure she enjoys herself, otherwise they’d say, hey, I’ve paid for the night, now what do you want to do? Crossword puzzles? Law & Order marathon? Cunnilingus? But that’s not how it goes.
The difference between a prostitute and a psychologist, social worker, or life/executive coach is that men don’t feel they have to treat the prostitute with respect. Sure, a psychologist, social worker, or coach will be a listening ear and someone who can connect with you emotionally. But in return, they expect to be treated like peers and professionals - and because these are respected professions, society will back them up. You treat your shrink like dirt, there are consequences. You treat a prostitute like dirt? No problem!
Also, what Amanda noted about men “having” to treat women as peers these days. No more are bright, educated women relegated to teaching, nursing, secretarial work, librarianship or a few other professions; now we have A Female Person running for the highest office in the land, and on a more mundane level, women are doctors, lawyers, executives, scientists, and other professions they used to be barred from. Men have to work alongside them! And having their own paychecks has made teh bitches uppity, demanding things like decent treatment, respect and equality.
No more do we have men and women socializing separately - I’m not talking about “boys night out” or “girl’s night out” that sort of thing, but dinner parties where men would retire to the “smoking room” to discuss things not fit for female ears. The doctrine of the separate spheres is still with us in many ways, BUT, since the second wave of feminism in the 1970’s, is crumbling rapidly. With one of the results being that teh menz have to be on their better behavior.
And some of them don’t like that, so they seek out women whom they don’t have to treat like equals or even pretend to respect - prostitutes. Or, in some cases, they go for much younger women. Not that this is always bad - a couple of my friends are in age-gap relationships, but we’re talking women in their forties with men in their sixties - in other words, two grown-ups. Men who seek out much younger - as in late teens, early twenties - women often do so because they are more malleable, naive, and in awe of their OMG Older Man!!!! So he has the power in the relationship.
And Amanda, I don’t even see what the question about it is, or could be. Why do they pay to go down on women? Er, ‘cause they’re heterosexual and find women’s bodies arousing? Same reason they pay to do anything else with a prostitute. It’s like wondering why they’d touch a prostitute’s breasts, when that’s her erogenous zone, not theirs.
I’m sure some guys like it because they like to play-act that it’s mutual, real sex they’re having, but most of them just do what they enjoy.
I wonder how much female leaders not being caught cheating is because the cost is so much higher to get caught. When your entire success depends on not overstepping certain sexual boundaries (like having a sexuality that isn’t part of the mother-category), what does that really do to a person’s sexuality? I suppose it gets suppressed, and without male privilege, apparently that doesn’t bubble to the surface as much as with male leaders.
Slightly off topic but on the “some guys just want to talk” thing: I worked as a phone sex operator for a while and it was a scam where the guys were told the women lived near them, and we were encouraged to develop relationships with them, have regulars who would call us back, etc. It was surprising to me how often the guys opted for the “relationship” over the quickie phone sex. They would spend so much money just to talk - and listen - to you, and about nothing in particular. It was really interesting.
So, while I agree there are prostitute-visiting men out there who get off on the dominance of it - and certainly the already powerful men in these high profile cases would be in that group - I think there also are guys out there who just really can’t meet women or get laid at all and so they go to prostitutes. Sometimes it’s just plain old loneliness.
Harvey Mansfield doesn’t know anything. Manliness isn’t a word. You can’t bring it back. It sounds stupid. I know MS Word recognizes it as a word, but MS Word also doesn’t recognize the word “racialized” so i don’t trust it.
Meanwhile, wtf? If 33% of men are handcuffed by political correctness and unable to speak their minds, what valuable thing do they have to say? And if the other 67% of men are bashing their heads in to shut them up, why don’t they just cower like the little non-manly men they are and take it?
“But I’m actually a little surprised to find out they target someone who charges so much.”
It makes a certain amount of sense. If you’re charging $10,000 per session, you’re probably going to run into guys who just will not accept the idea that that kind of scratch doesn’t automatically entitle them to whatever the hell they want at least that often.
Some of the most powerful women in history have been rather promiscuous, while others retained their power by being celibate or simply very discreet.
Thinking about Catherine the Great and Elizabeth I here … one yielded great privilege in her affairs, the other maintained her power by not ever being owned.
Thinking about Catherine the Great and Elizabeth I here … one yielded great privilege in her affairs, the other maintained her power by not ever being owned.
Possibly because Catherine was the head of an autocratic tradition, whereas Elizabeth had to deal with competing domestic powers as well as the dynastic politics of the time.
I can understand loneliness driving guys to prostitutes - can’t see the point myself, since intimacy isn’t something you can really pay for.
AndersH:
I think you have a good point here.
Any woman who is caught sleeping with anyone her peer or above is “sleeping her way to the top” and immediately discounted.
Any woman who is caught sleeping with anyone below peer level is a tramp and immediately discounted.
From the Telegraph article:
Big deal.
I’d guess about 80 percent of women “feel handcuffed” by male privilege and dominance in the workplace, and only 20 percent feel they can speak freely and say what they think.
Not only that, but Catherine was a widow while Elizabeth stayed unmarried.
Well, okay, Catherine wasn’t technically a widow when she first became empress, but her widowhood followed very shortly thereafter since she had her husband assassinated so she could ascend to the throne.
Given that even an anointed queen was expected to submit to her husband and hand the whole kingdom over to him to rule as he pleased, it’s no wonder that Elizabeth stayed unmarried. Whether she stayed more than a technical virgin, or a virgin at all, is still an open question.
Don’t forget, anony, that men are still taught from childhood that they’re not allowed to feel any emotions other than anger or lust. Why are we surprised that men find it more acceptable to go to a prostitute to talk about themselves than they are talking to the people in their own lives that they’re convinced will judge them to be weaklings for having emotions?
On the other hand, to say that not all men are alike is an understatement. There is such a thing out there as the “gentleman rapist” who insists that his victim pretend to be in love with him as part of his sick fantasy. At least some of the guys who demand the same thing from a prostitute are probably along the same spectrum.
Re: phone sex and lonliness.
Okay, but if they are lonely and want to talk to women who live nearby and develop relationships, why not try a match.com or such local service like that? It is much less expensive than phone sex (some are free) and you would still get to meat and talk to women and build relationships.
I suspect it is because in a match.com situation, both parties can reject the other party. They both come to it (as much as they can given society as we know it) as equals. There are expectations as to behavior.
Phone sex is still about power, even if the guy is not talking about sex. The phone sex worker has to stay on the line, has to listen to their shit, and has to (if she wants to keep him on the line and keep her job) inflate his ego.
This is obvious to me in regular het relationships where no one is getting paid. I have a sister in law who is smart, funny, and very engaging to talk to when you are one on one with her or with a group of women. Get her around her husband and her IQ drops 30 points. Not only that, she spends much of the conversational energy placating her husband and building his ego. (She also spends a tremendous amount of time with her girlfriends. Not that this is bad, but I always wondered if it was because she got tired of the act and needed lots of breaks.)
So I asked her about it, one time, and she acted like she didn’t know what I meant. And then she laughed and said, oh that. That’s just what we do, isn’t it? It’s just a little foreplay before the foreplay. If he feels good about himself and his ego is in good shape, he gives a little more back. (as in, he is more often “there for her” when she has stroked his ego sufficiently.)
The whole thing icks me out. But she seems to think that is how men are and that is her way of manipulating the situation to her advantage.
Sexual perversion is commonly defined as someone being [i]only[/i] interested in their sexual partner as an object–not human, not someone they reciprocate with or care about as a feeling or equal being, but rather more as something to masturbate into.
“Sexual scandals” are often predicated by this fact: The object, obviously, gets tired of being said object, if they get a half chance. And protests, loudly.
Karma, as always, reins supreme.
I think so. I think that might be a lot of the appeal of paying for sex/companionship — knowing that the other person is not going to reject you.
Why men seem to go for this, or be expected to go for this, more than women is another question. Dr. Laura blamed Eliot Spitzer’s wife for his cheating in similar terms — claimed, based on no evidence, that Spitzer’s wife must not have been stroking his ego enough.
As for your sister-in-law, have you ever read Reflecting Men at Twice Their Natural Size? I mean, wow. I’m a huge fan of ego-stroking within reasonable limits, but that is not reasonable.
“But the hunter-gatherer role is still a strong male instinct. Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-time (24 per cent).
Of course, besides the literalistic bit about how traditional gatherer-hunter societies tend not to have breadwinners (non-farming, you see), they really don’t tend to have sole (non)breadwinners, or even main vs. part-time breadwinners. Out on the metaphorical savannah, every woman is a working woman, every mom is a working mom. (something which holds true in most traditional societies as well, at least until you get pretty far up the social latter).
I’ve seen it claimed that (at least some) hunter-gatherer societies tend to have fairly high levels of male involvement in childrearing, but I’d need to dig up more research on this . . .
I don’t know if it’s as much about power as control, and yes, I do think there’s a difference. Dealing with a prostitute or a phone-sex operator gives the man control over the “relationship”, such as it is, at least in terms of starting or stopping it.
To use a computer gaming analogy, it’s using the cheat codes. You don’t need to spend the time required to get the “good part” (whether or not this is limited to the sex), and you don’t have to deal with the repercussions of ending it.
Power to me in the relationship implies “You will do this and this” and that’s not true for all men who go to prostitutes; many do accept the limits the prostitute puts down.
I’ve mentioned before guys I’ve known who’ve gone to prostitutes and in some cases it was about using the cheat code to be able to get laid without having to deal with the social anxiety about trying to develop a relationship due to their feelings of inadequacy when it came to meeting women.
That’s a good chunk of it. Remember the film The Contender? The big scandal the senator was facing was the story that, while a single woman in university, she’d gotten drunk and gotten laid at a frat party
I think the film took the easy way out when she revealed it hadn’t happened. It preserved the “Oh, it was just the
Republicansbad guys unfairly trying to tarnish her good name” moral instead of calling out the people who considered it a career-ending scandal in the film (and you know, it would happen in real life too) by pointing out that had it been a man who’d gottten drunk and laid at a frat party it would be so under the radar that it wouldn’t even nudge the needle on the Scandle-o-meter.Elinor: for me, that is the entire appeal prostitutes have for me. Rejection is far too much of a risk for me to take, and I’ll avoid it whenever possible.
Forget relationships–this makes LIFE very difficult for me: I get seriously depressed job-hunting, and feel I have to pre-plan things like exactly how much pressure to give people when shaking hands.
I try not to enter ANY social situation without my knowing the outcome beforehand — even chatting with my closest friends.
there is a book of collected magazine article by a fairly famous writer (whose name i have forgotten but i will try to find it… she wrote in NYC and is Jewish and i can’t REMEMBER)
anyway, the point is, she told about a guy friend of hers who said he hated that the women he dates make money, and what it boiled down to was that women are equal to men, it is an emotional RISK for a man to be involved.
because if its just some random dame, she can leave and its no big deal. but if its a WOMAN who is his EQUAL, he has lost something if she leaves.
that make sense?
Cynthia Heimel?
temporis, I can hardly bear job hunting myself. I hope you are able to find help in resolving your self-confidence issues — I know they can be awful.
Temporis, you probably have social anxiety or social phobia.
Several of my female friends have it. They’ve gone to psychiatrists and gotten put on anxiety reducing medicines. Please consider this option. It’s a very sad thing for someone to be crippled by an emotional response they can’t control. I’ve seen people before and after and it makes a huge difference in quality of life.
A professional will not judge you for needing help. And your friends will likely find it easier to understand you after.
On prostitutes as shrinks and hiring dommes,
What everyone else said, but also another aspect. If you go to a shrink, or develop a close friendship with someone, or develop that level of intimacy with a spouse, when you unload your problems, insecurities, frustrations, or the areas of your life where your automatic privilege hasn’t gotten everything you wanted, they have an annoying tendency to expect you to do something about it. They really aren’t likely to stroke your ego, tell you what a wonderful, manly, but misunderstood stud you are and then tell you to lie back while they do you.
It makes perfect sense to me that some of the prostitutes get clients who just want to talk - it is no strings intimacy in the same way no strings sex is. They can unload without having any consequences.
I had an interesting chat with a professional domme once. In her personal life, she also had a male sub full time. She said that there was a huge difference. She had high-powered wealthy clients, and she said that they were paying for the illusion of submission.
Her own sub focused on her, what pleased her, and the point of his submission was to enjoy what she did with him largely because it pleased her (though he certainly enjoyed it in its own right.) Her clients were very clear exactly what they wanted her to do with/to them, exactly the limits it was to take, and in many cases, controlled the entire session throughout (”Now take the paddle and spank me.”)
That isn’t bad or inappropriate BDSM, but it is certainly not “submission” in the same sense, nor is it “looking for a dominant” in the same sense. Again, physical/psychological release without the consequences, and without setting up or dealing with the surrounding relationship to maintain it.
Another thing a psychologist or therapist will do is challenge the patient. A therapist isn’t just a passive listener. He or she won’t just accept everything a patient says and pamper and indulge those thoughts and feelings. They expect some self analysis. Whereas with a prostitute, a man is getting external validation with no threat that they might be challenged. Which is just another way of exerting male privilege and the entitlement to access to a human being who exists only to bolster his ego.
Oh, and I posted my opinion on Feministing, but I have a feeling that Robin Morgan quote is out of context because it simply doesn’t make sense the way it’s placed in the article. If we accept that women prefer to like their partner to have sex with them (whether it’s a result of nature or culture), that doesn’t provide a good reason why women wouldn’t cheat. I’m sure that many women who cheat like their partner very much.
It might be part of a reasoning why women don’t pay for sex, but it doesn’t address cheating at all.
Leora
Okay, but if they are lonely and want to talk to women who live nearby and develop relationships, why not try a match.com or such local service like that? It is much less expensive than phone sex (some are free) and you would still get to meat and talk to women and build relationships.
This was in the early 90s, before online dating took off and was more acceptable. And like I said, the company I worked for was a scam in that it was advertised as phone sex but when the guys called we told them they would be talking to women nearby. When they were connected to the woman it was then up to them how to take the conversation, and I was surprised by how often they chose to skip the phone sex and just talk. And with those guys, for reasons I won’t get into we often told them that we were paying to be on the service as well, which is why this dynamic…
Phone sex is still about power, even if the guy is not talking about sex. The phone sex worker has to stay on the line, has to listen to their shit, and has to (if she wants to keep him on the line and keep her job) inflate his ego.
…didn’t really apply. A lot of the guys I’m talking about thought you could hang up and walk away. Perhaps these types have migrated over to online dating now, I don’t know.
Don’t get me wrong, we certainly had asshole customers who were rude or just wanted attention or to get off or whatever else, but I was just pointing out there are people out there who don’t experience it that way. They really don’t see themselves as having power over women. Obviously the situation is set up so that they do, but they just don’t see it that way, and that’s not what draws them to it.
So your problem with the Robin Morgan quote is apparently that Morgan generalized INCORRECTLY, not that she generalized at all, since that is what you do throughout the post and in comments. Are men and women the same, or different? How many male prostitutes are there that service women? How many women hire male prostitutes?
29 women have served as govenors. 216 women have served in the House of Representatives. 35 women have served in the U.S. Senate. As pointed out in the post the scarcity of women in positions of power would lead to a scarcity of sex scandals. Garden variety adultery would be the most common scandal, so in a limited population that is what you would find. The greater population of men in power lends itself to finding the less garden variety scandals. Obviously the sex trade is strange, highly sexist subculture that caters to men, although it does not follow that it is somehow condoned or a byproduct of the broader culture.
I wish I could say that a lot of it is feeling trapped in a sexless marriage
This does happen, I can assure you. It’s not nearly the myth that the Hooker with a Heart of Gold is.
Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-time not having to deal with the kids.
Fixed!
For some reason (my motivation is not clear to myself, perhaps it comes from reading too much Pandagon
), I’m researching various “dating gurus”, both male and female on the web. On occasion, there is something interesting. E.g., (DeAngelo)
Quote–
“The main reason for this is that most of the
time when a man starts talking to a woman, she is
actually rather nice about the whole affair.
Men aren’t “rejected” very often!
If a woman isn’t interested, she usually just
says “I have a boyfriend” or “No thank you”… or
she’ll just walk away without saying anything at
all. ……..
“Now let’s talk about those rare instances where
a woman actually REJECTS a man.
For the sake of this discussion, I want to
define “rejection” as a woman doing something that
lets you know that she’s upset and offended that
you started talking to her, and she responds in a
mean or vicious way to make you go away.
I do NOT consider a woman walking away without
stopping to talk to you, her saying “No thank
you”, or any other time when a woman just simply
doesn’t engage to be “rejection”.
If you DO consider these things to be
rejection, please stop reading now, call your mom
into your room, and tell her that it’s time you
grew up and moved out… and that she’ll get over
the fact that she can’t choose your clothes for
you and hug you when you have a boo-boo anymore. ”
——–
I’m assuming here that the writer is addressing a common issue among men (or at least among his audience) and this audience has a big problem of not being in control.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting….
“They really don’t see themselves as having power over women. Obviously the situation is set up so that they do, but they just don’t see it that way, and that’s not what draws them to it.”
Oh, I’m sure they didn’t see it that way. That is the crown jewel of privilege, no? Not having to understand or admit your privilege?
Second try to get the formatting right:
Once fatherhood arrives, men say they would prefer
a more traditional role of either being the sole breadwinner with their partner a full-time mother and homemaker (34 per cent), or the main breadwinner with their partner working part-timenot having to deal with the kids.Fixed!
IMO many posts here seem to try too hard to turn an age-old desire for sex into something pathological.
It seems to me that a prostitute would be less about a deep need for power than convenience. I suspect most married man who want to stray have few opportunities to cheat and if they did, many would be fearful of getting caught. (And no, I do not have any experience with this,)
And it’s probably not as easy to get laid for a single guy as many would imagine.
Politicians IMO have more extramarital liaisons than the average person because they have more opportunity. They are rarely at home and are surrounded daily by fawning followers, people who are eager to do them favors or work on their campaigns and get in their good grace. “Senator, I love your bill about blah, blah,” or “Assemblyman, would you please come to my event, we would be honored to see you there,” etc. Few regular people have to deal with this type of temptation.
You might ask the menz why they stray. Some are cut off from intimacy, some want the rush of reliving youth, some are bored with the spouse.
Sorry, the fantasy of being as attractive as a younger female is just that, fantasy. You know it. You see it every day. Our media reinforce this and it is sticky. I would feel angst but I watch teens gloat about their ‘magic’. So, should I tell them it lasts about 10 years, and since theirs started earlier than the lads, it will end earlier? Nope.
As a young spore in a very Catholic area, I can attest to the straying of both partners. The men had their boytoys or side dish. The women did too but there was an expectation of discretion.
Drop the pretense of classlessness of the US and we can see that many marriages are ‘convenient’ for heirs and wealth management. Therefore, once duties are fulfilled, one can be entertained.
I wish I could say that a lot of it is feeling trapped in a sexless marriage, but I’m afraid that’s mostly a myth we tell ourselves to romanticize adultery
Hm, no. Feeling trapped in a sexless marriage seems to be the norm rather than the exception among the group of long-marrieds who I poll about such things. Doesn’t mean everyone cheats, of course. But it’s shockingly common.
Oh, I’m sure they didn’t see it that way. That is the crown jewel of privilege, no? Not having to understand or admit your privilege?
Of course, but that doesn’t change the fact that the guys I’m talking about weren’t there to “embrace a masculinity defined by brutality and dominance,” as Amanda described in the post. Again, I do agree with her post and believe that dynamic exists, but the comment about the talkers made me think of the other dynamics that also exist.
Y’ever notice how women like to shop for shoes … and men like prostitutes?
No, but seriously folks, a funny thing happened on the way to Pandagon today …
Is this a joke? Because I would say that the vast majority of affairs are with non-prostitutes. Getting laid, whether male or female, is not actually as difficult as the defenders of prostitution imply.
Arun–I consider ALL those things ‘rejection’, not just by women but in a social sense from either gender.
A couple notes:
“No more are bright, educated women relegated to teaching, nursing, secretarial work, librarianship or a few other professions…”
While we’re on the subject of librarianship, did you know that, for example, the Bodleian Library got its first female head librarian ever only about a year ago (after 400 years of men doing it)? Yeeeeah… we’re still working on all this stuff even in places that are considered women’s professions.
“And it’s probably not as easy to get laid for a single guy as many would imagine.”
What? As many of the comments around these parts are written by men, or people who have sex with men, this sounds preposterous. Everyone has dry spells, and some folks are late bloomers, but it’s really not that hard to get laid. Now, having good sex with a partner that respects and cares for you and you doing the same for your partner, that’s a different story.
“And it’s not that men think with their crotches so often as they think with their male privilege and their need to assert masculinity, something that’s defined strongly through the ability to use and dominate others.”
I’m sorry, but you are just wrong about this.
Men, from an evolutionary-biological perspective have a much easier time copulating with someone they have never met before and know nothing about. I’m a man, and have thought about having sex with a prostitute out of boredom or loneliness, and it never had anything to do with “power”. This is a construct that you have created in order to try to understand why men would do something which in your own mind would only be for “power”. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t the case.
All too often I see this same pattern in feminist interpretations of male behavior (usually explained as a power struggle), and it’s usually just as wrong as misogynists’ interpretations of female behavior (penis envy, etc…).
““And it’s not that men think with their crotches so often as they think with their male privilege and their need to assert masculinity, something that’s defined strongly through the ability to use and dominate others.”
I’m sorry, but you are just wrong about this.
Men, from an evolutionary-biological perspective have a much easier time copulating with someone they have never met before and know nothing about. I’m a man, and have thought about having sex with a prostitute out of boredom or loneliness, and it never had anything to do with “power”. This is a construct that you have created in order to try to understand why men would do something which in your own mind would only be for “power”. I’m sorry, but it just isn’t the case.
All too often I see this same pattern in feminist interpretations of male behavior (usually explained as a power struggle), and it’s usually just as wrong as misogynists’ interpretations of female behavior (penis envy, etc…).”
Bah. Evolutionary biology my ass. It’s socialized into us. Women don’t go see prostitutes for reasons that have little to do with evolution. First, male prostitutes (cause most women are heterosexual) or female prostitutes who cater to women are harder to find. Also, women and men are socialized to think and feel differently about their sexuality — women are taught that they don’t have much of one, and what they do have isn’t shameful and not worth anything. With sexual expression as only a subset of behavior, women are also taught to be selfless, so that satisfying ourselves first (or sometimes at all) is just about the worst thing we could do. As buying sexual services is about as selfish as it can get, seeking a prostitute is utterly anathema to what women have been socialized to be.
That women are hardwired at birth to never seek prostitutes, and that men are — “I’m sorry, but it just isn’t the case.”
History_mom: “getting laid, whether male or female, is not actually as difficult as the defenders of prostitution imply”
Sorry, getting laid while married (or in any long term relationship) actually is logistically pretty difficult. Firstly, you have to find the time off from the main relationship (and that’s difficult to cover up and maintain over time), and secondly you have to have a pretty good story for the mistress - she’s not going to enter a relationship that has no future.
Most women are very wary of men in relationships, not just for their own self esteem and to prevent pain later, but also because of respect for their ’sister’.
One night stands are also hard because few women are up for sex with a man they only just met, and the man usually exudes desperation and lack of discrimination (”I’m only out-of-town for one night, gotta find someone”)
In fact there is a whole industry (”hostessing”) built on the back of this problem in Japan where men pay *only* for companionship, not sex (yes Japan does have prostitution, but hostessing isn’t prostitution). It is much easier for men to spend a couple of hundred dollars for a couple of hours of conversation and drinks before catching the last train home, than about half that in a fruitless bar crawl trying to strike up conversations - Japan’s bars are expensive. A hostess bar is often pretty good value when you want a night on the town. (Hostessing is however a stupifyingly boring occupation, as most men don’t have good conversational skills. There are also cultural issues as Japanese men are not particularly respectful or open with women. Western customers are preferred.)
Most prostitutes will tell you that about 5% of their customers are complete a%^^les, 5% are very respectful, friendly and all-round great, the remaining 90% are just ordinary joes paying for the convenience and companionship who nonetheless treat them pretty well. It’s the first lot that most of the comments here about power are addressed to. The ones in the second group - the good ones - are the ones who will take time to pleasure the woman because they enjoy doing so, as do many in the large remainder.
Another thing to bear in mind is the pack mentality. Virtually no prostitute on earth will accept two or more clients at a time - that leads to gang rape as the boys egg each other on. And coincidentally, I was talking to a very successful lap-dancer just last night who told me she will not even approach a group of men larger than 2 because they tend to become too nasty for her. In addition, groups of men are apparently bad payers as an individual man is diminished by showing “weakness” in leaving the pack for the dance with the “slut”
Blake had the last word on this: “Brothels are built with the bricks of marriage”.
History_mom: “getting laid, whether male or female, is not actually as difficult as the defenders of prostitution imply”
Sorry, getting laid while married (or in any long term relationship) actually is logistically pretty difficult. Firstly, you have to find the time off from the main relationship (and that’s difficult to cover up and maintain over time), and secondly you have to have a pretty good story for the mistress - she’s not going to enter a relationship that has no future.
Most women are very wary of men in relationships, not just for their own self esteem and to prevent pain later, but also because of respect for their ’sister’.
One night stands are also hard because few women are up for sex with a man they only just met, and the man usually exudes desperation and lack of discrimination (”I’m only out-of-town for one night, gotta find someone”)
In fact there is a whole industry (”hostessing”) built on the back of this problem in Japan where men pay *only* for companionship, not sex (yes Japan does have prostitution, but hostessing isn’t prostitution). It is much easier for men to spend a couple of hundred dollars for a couple of hours of conversation and drinks before catching the last train home, than about half that in a fruitless bar crawl trying to strike up conversations - Japan’s bars are expensive. A hostess bar is often pretty good value when you want a night on the town. (Hostessing is however a stupifyingly boring occupation, as most men don’t have good conversational skills. There are also cultural issues as Japanese men are not particularly respectful or open with women. Western customers are preferred.)
Most prostitutes will tell you that about 5% of their customers are complete a%^^les, 5% are very respectful, friendly and all-round great, the remaining 90% are just ordinary joes paying for the convenience and companionship who nonetheless treat them pretty well. It’s the first lot that most of the comments here about power are addressed to. The ones in the second group - the good ones - are the ones who will take time to pleasure the woman because they enjoy doing so, as do many in the large remainder.
Another thing to bear in mind is the pack mentality. Virtually no prostitute on earth will accept two or more clients at a time - that leads to gang rape as the boys egg each other on. And coincidentally, I was talking to a very successful lap-dancer just last night who told me she will not even approach a group of men larger than 2 because they tend to become too nasty for her. In addition, groups of men are apparently bad payers as an individual man is diminished by showing “weakness” in leaving the pack for the dance with the “slut”
Blake had the last word on this: “Brothels are built with the bricks of marriage”.
“Sorry, getting laid while married (or in any long term relationship) actually is logistically pretty difficult. Firstly, you have to find the time off from the main relationship (and that’s difficult to cover up and maintain over time), and secondly you have to have a pretty good story for the mistress - she’s not going to enter a relationship that has no future.”
Or, you could either, a) not get marries if you plan on cheating, or b) have an open marriage (but that means she gets to see other people too). Either way, it’s a bad thing to do, making contracts/promises (like marriage) you know you are going to break. Just don’t do it.
Not to mention that in Blake’s time (pre even first wave feminism, including such events as the 1848 Seneca Falls convention), the dynamics and power relations in marriage were vastly different than they are today. Like, it’s possible for a woman to mot get married and still be a (more or less) respected and successful member of the community.
More on Blake — he was referring to the institution of marriage as it was in his time. He himself held forward thinking views on the subject vastly different from the ones the culture around him held. if you trust wikipedia, you may want to browse their article on the subject.
To be honest , it looks like AM and a lot of these posters are just projecting their view of why men see prostitutes according to some pre-existing feminist ideology. In fact when you ask the johns, they will tell tell you that its pretty much about sex and companionship.
Generally, feminist type posters say that its pretty easy to get laid, so going to prostitutes CANNOT be about sex - it must be out of some perverted male fantasy. They generally say that if a guy is nice and considerate, he can go to any club and walk out with a willing bedmate.
Well, it may be that easy for a woman - but the average guy knows that’s false. The average guy knows that he can go to a club, make the right moves, buy drinks, be attentive, make small talk, dance- and end up with nothing more than a kiss on the cheek and a (hopefully working) phone number.
Sure, he might ” get lucky”.- but that very phrase indicates that the club/ dating scene is a game of chance, not a sure thing.
Men go to prostitutes for four reasons. The first is certainty. If you put down your money, you WILL get laid.
The second is speed. You can dial up a hooker and get your ashes hauled within the hour. if you play the club game, you may be at it all night for no reward.
The third is anonymity. Prostitutes are usually discreet . They are interested in repeat business, so it profits them to keep their mouths shut.
The fourth is professionalism. With a prostitute, you usually get sex the way you want it, and there’s no worrying about whether she will go down on you or do it doggy style.
All that said, you are really much better off getting a girlfriend. Lets face it, a real man wants a woman to have sex with him because she wants to, not because she is paid to. On the other hand, as Woody Allen says, sex without love may be empty- but as empty things go, its pretty good.
This of course is for the single guy. For the married guy, I think that often marriages after about 15-20 years kind of turn into partnerships/friendships- at least from the woman’s standpoint- and the guys get the message that the regular sex phase of the marriage is over and that they either get used to special occasions sex or that they should do something else. Feminists tend to argue that instead of cheating, you should just get divorced- but hey , maybe the marriage is working well in every other area but the sex area. Why get divorced when you can make it work by getting some side stuff. This is what the men tell themselves and I’m sure it sounds like rationalization. OTOH, I’ve seen situations where women pretty much just don’t want to be bothered to have regular sex with their husbands any more- but they don’t want to get divorced either. They pretty much just expect the men to get used to special occasions sex and yet remain in the marriage. I’m willing to bet thats a fairly common occurrence. In that case, prostitution looms as an option. Prostitutes claim that their typical client is a married man who is looking for variety and more attention than he is getting from his spouse. Make of that what you will .
Clients ranged from 18 to 80 and came from a mix of backgrounds. Many were married, or in long-term relationships.
“It’s men looking for a bit of variety. In some cases we help spark up relationships which have gone a little stale. It’s not our place to judge whether the guys are married or not,” Lacey said.
“That said, there’s definitely some sick puppies out there who request all sorts of bizarre things. You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve seen, or been asked to do.”
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=87&objectid=10475218&pnum=3
I included the sick puppy part because I will concede that this constitutes a part- a small part- of the prostitution business. Its not the the bulk of the trade, however.
rowmyboat: [blake stuff]
Fine, I accept marriage had different attributes pre-feminism, universal sufferage and the pill. I also accept that Blake was an unconventional thinker for his time (he’s probably an unconventional thinker for our time)
But my opening line “Sorry, getting laid while married (or in any long term relationship) actually is logistically pretty difficult.” still stands in modern marriage.
Getting laid still isn’t easy, many married men have limited opportunities to do so, and a multitude of motivations - hence prostitution.
Does not, however, address my point that if one wants to have sex with other people, be they prostitutes or not, for whatever reason, that one should not enter into or maintain agreements or contracts (like most marriages) that prohibit those things.
rowmyboat #57
“one should not enter into or maintain agreements or contracts…”
Obviously this is a standard you apply to your own personal life, but should your standards apply to everyone elses - even people you don’t know or whose personal circumstances you are unfamiliar with?
Isn’t that a little judgemental and outside the normal progressive framework?
What business is it of yours (or mine) the decisions others make?