Monogamy: Made for a woman, like fancy jewelry.
Update: I just want to make sure this post is understood not to be talking about marriages where the sex life has actually dwindled inside the marriage. Both men and women can and do suffer from a spouse who loses all interest in sex, a problem that I think compounds itself over time, because if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it. This article is more another whine from a guy who wants to screw around and wants his wife to “understand”, i.e. tolerate it without demanding her own right to screw around.
Women cheat nearly as much as men. This is not an unknown fact.
Survey takers guessed that twice as many people are having extramarital affairs as really are, estimating that 44 percent of married men and 36 percent of married women are unfaithful. The reality is it’s not as rampant as we think, with 28 percent of married men and 18 percent of married women admitting to having a sexual liaison, the survey found.
I’m always shocked at people who act like adultery is basically a male-only temptation, because who the hell are men cheating with? Prostitutes, sometimes. That might be enough to explain the gap, sadly. But I suspect—especially in our day and age where the older-men-preying-on-younger-women model has had a wrench thrown in it by feminism—that mostly men who cheat do so with peers. Which would probably be mostly equally married women.
I bring it up, because Salon blogged this maudlin “woe is men” story that claims, among other things, that evidence is growing that the need to cheat is hard-wired in men. Interesting, the only “evidence” that is growing that men are hard-wired to cheat, rape, and act like pigs is the number of times a single hack psychologist named David Buss is quoted. Sure enough, the author goes sniveling to Buss to give him “science” to prove to his wife and women of the world that he has to cheat, and Buss complies. Buss admits women cheat, but has to hedge, implying that men just roam around fucking anyone, whereas women just like to keep an extra boyfriend in reserve so they’re never going without should the current husband croak. You’d think the combination of male desire for variety and the supposed oodles of scientific evidence would cause one of the writers who tackles this subject to talk to someone besides Buss, but maybe full-blown hackery of his sort is hard to come by.
To be fair, he quotes a feminist who points out that women pay a higher price for infidelity than men, so are more motivated not to cheat. I’d point out that the price women pay goes down the less financially dependent they are on men, and if we could ever get accurate numbers on cheaters, it would be interesting to see if the already smallish cheating gap closes.
I’ll hand it to Philip Weiss; he employs the usual stereotypes bashing women’s equality with a more subtle hand than most. The quotes he uses from email have to be unwound a little more than usual to see that it’s the same old shit.
Marital passion—and its absence—was a major theme in the responses to my e-mail. “I think that marriages in which both parties are members of the meritocracy seem to be especially vulnerable,” said one friend in Los Angeles. “I see in the [Spitzers] something of what I see in other well-educated power couples—a career trajectory that excludes passion and lust. I know a lot of guys who seem trapped in sexless marriages.”
Stereotype: Education and intelligence in women drain us of our more “feminine” functions. In the past, the concern was that educating women would make them infertile, and now it’s believed that education drains women of our ability to be delightful, open-minded, nubile sex objects. But most sex surveys I’ve seen show that sexual satisfaction goes up with education levels. Education doesn’t make women less sexual, but it seems to impact some of Weiss’s friends ability to find a woman sexual.
“Porn captures these women [its performers] before they get smart,” he said in a hot whisper as we sat in Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side. Porn exploited the sexual desires, and naïveté, of women in their early twenties, he went on, but older women had come to terms with that. “The most one can expect is that women will cede that area, in porn, a period when you can observe us before we have power, because it ain’t going to happen again.”
Is this about physical needs and desires, intimacy in marriage, or about power? You can guess what I think—it’s about power. As women age, they may not be less sexual, but they generally do get more powerful and more threatening. And for men who don’t want that in a wife, marital dissatisfaction probably does grow, and it’s easy to blame sex for it, because it means that wandering around hitting on teenagers is about sexual desire, which is more socially acceptable than telling the truth—that you want to feel power over a woman again. Weiss’s contempt for women shines throughout this story—as Sarah at Broadsheet notes, he points out that he loves his wife in part because she organizes his social calendar.
And then there’s this line that cracked me up.
Sitting in Schiller’s, I explained Squire’s history to my friend and suggested that we could change sexual norms to, say, encourage New York waitresses to look on being mistresses as a cool option.
The mistress, by his definition, is not a peer, but someone younger and broke with relatively little power next to the man. Weiss continually conflates his resentment towards his wife for having power in their relationship with his sexual desires, but it’s clear as a bell that the former is the issue for him. He finds prostitutes appealing, and is disappointed to find out that they don’t, as a general rule, find catering to men for a living to be the best job in the whole world. He talks to some people about polyamory, but keeps dwelling on what he assumes is the European model—men cheat, women understand. I don’t think he’s suited to real polyamory, where women have equal rights to screw around. At least he admits that he’s utterly unwilling to look at the implications of his whine, which is that any system that allows men to screw around should allow women out of fairness.
When I got back from the Kinsey Institute, I told my wife all about the evolutionary data and Erick Janssen’s questionnaire, and she got agitated. “Okay. Let’s have an open marriage. And I have to be out Wednesday night.”
I said, No thanks.
Gosh, those wives who have lost their luster as their paychecks get bigger might seem pretty lustrous to some other man. Whoops. I’m reminded of the great story about the birth of Mormon polygamy in Under the Banner of Heaven. After Joseph Smith started cautiously revealing to his wife that god had revealed to him that he should have multiple wives, she put her foot down. They pushed back and forth, until Emma Smith revealed that god had told her that she should have multiple husbands. At what point, Joseph Smith wrote a screed revelation explaining that his understanding of god trumps hers, and that god wants him to have multiple wives and wants his wife to cleave to him and be faithful.
A story to remember every time you hear sorrowful tales of woe from men who’d like to screw around but can’t imagine what it would be like to be cheated on.
72 Responses to “Service industry adultery”
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Oy. Where does that idea come from? Is it a reality in any way?
“Where does that idea come from?”
Presumably a time when women had very little power in their marriages. They had a lot more to fear from an angry spouse, so if they cheated, they went to greater pains to conceal it, and they had a lot less ability to run with any ire they felt over their husband’s affair(s), so any liaisons of his that came to light were more likely to be tolerated. Viola, a model that’s part illusion and completely dependent on gross social injustice.
At least he didn’t trundle out the shopworn “infidelity as empowerment” argument, one which frankly I find to be abhorrent when applied to either men or women, and is a grotesque of both feminism and the idea of equality in marriage.
It’s actually pretty simple to me: there are a number of reasons why a marriage may begin to fail (as articulated in the post above) and either or both partners may begin to have desires for sex outside the marriage. If, as in a functional poly relationship, this is open and consensual, this is neither an intractable problem, nor cheating/infidelity. If, however, acting on these desires involves deception (of self or others) then it’s a different kettle of fish altogether. I simply can’t abide people who justify simple gratification of desire as empowerment in the context of a situation that requires duplicity and dishonesty, whether it’s a hypocrite like Spitzer or a “desperate housewife” or anything in between.
If you want out of your unsatisfying marriage, get out of your unsatisfying marriage, but don’t try to pass of clandestinely screwing a hooker or your yoga teacher or your co-worker as an act of self-realization. Lying is abuse, of yourself and those lied to.
But hey, at least the New York Mag comments almost unanimously call this guy out for being such a transparent douche. I’m happily surprised that there aren’t more guys adding their agreement.
“In the past, the concern was that educating women would make them infertile, and now it’s believed that education drains women of our ability to be delightful, open-minded, sex objects. But most sex surveys I’ve seen show that sexual satisfaction goes up with education levels.”
In other words: More Harvard, Less Stepford…
Perhaps some helpful French person will come along to correct me, but my understanding was not so much that European women “understand,” but that it’s not seen as something to break up the relationship over. That it’s kind of sad if your spouse is having an affair, and you hope they’ll end the affair and return to you, but it’s not the kind of thing you make a scene about or threaten to leave over. That it’s rather like going through a period where you are not connecting and communicating with your spouse and you hope to get through it and out of it and recover some of the previous marital state. That’s certainly different than the American view but it’s not exactly all butterflies and rainbows about cheating, either.
I would take the MSNBC article with a grain of salt, but it is true that reliable surveys have found that women cheat a lot more than assbags like Weiss or Buss would like to think.
Oh, and on Buss and his ’science’ - when another group of evolutionary biologists published a study casting doubt of some of his conclusions, his response when the NYT called to ask for his take was to rail at them for being “fifth columnists”.
This is a sickening article. You have nerves of steel to have made it all the way through. I predict this guy will be divorced in a year, or less. I couldn’t make it all the way through but he simply fails to grasp that if it were as important as all that for men to have access to all the young girls he thinks they need it would be cheaper and more logical for them to avoid marriage altogether. And, of course, there’s nothing stopping them–unless there’s some kind of huge female cabal of wives forcing them to hitch their peepees to those aging bitches. The idea that theres tons of sex out there for guys, while their wives have renounced it voluntarily, is just bizarre. These guys couldn’t get voluntarily laid without paying for it and they know it. The entire article is like watching a psychiatric patient turn his brain inside out for you while you scream “no, no, this is too ugly” and he insists “look, my perversions are totally normal.” I love the way his self reported sample of lots of anonymous male assholes eagerly reinforce his most pathetic world view.
aimai
After Joseph Smith started cautiously revealing to his wife that god had revealed to him that he should have multiple wives, she put her foot down. They pushed back and forth, until Emma Smith revealed that god had told her that she should have multiple husbands. At what point, Joseph Smith wrote a screed revelation explaining that his understanding of god trumps hers, and that god wants him to have multiple wives and wants his wife to cleave to him and be faithful.
That part of the book stood out most vividly to me. The fact that people believed and still believe that he really heard this from god and wasn’t making it up to serve his own purposes boggles my mind. But anyway, back to the topic.
Buss is full of shit. We studied his “work” in my Philo seminar 101, and we, prof included, tore him to shreds.
Honestly, this doesn’t surprise me. Of course there is a correlation between working 20 hour days and getting laid less, whether that 20 hours is being worked by a husband, wife, or both. But leave it up to choad science to take that to mean cheating is innate rather than the pretty simple insight that we as a society have a fucked up relationship to our work lives. If you want to get laid by your partner, you have to spend time with them.
Also, if you are being called a power couple, you should break up out of basic human decency for the rest of us so we don’t ever have to hear about power couples.
This guy is the kind of douchebag that embraces the FLDS model — once he’s tired of banging his current wife (maybe she’s gotten fat, or boring, or had a kid, or snapped to the fact that he’s got a small peen he can’t wield adequately), he can bring in a newer, younger version — but still have the “more experienced” wife to handle his calendar, cook and do his frigging’ laundry.
Creatures — I refuse to call this diaper stain a man — like this nauseate me. “But two pumps, a tickle and a squirt ought to keep that uppity bitch happy!”
The MSNBC thing was my best bet, because at least they did what you need to do and give two sets of numbers. If you get all the surveys together, you’ll find that the percentage of people who cheat varies wildly, but the one thing that doesn’t is that women always are shown to cheat almost as much as men.
I bet the gap is even smaller than surveys show, because I suspect women are more circumspect about admitting infidelity than men are, because of articles like this that propose that men cheating is natural and women cheating is either weird or beneath discussion.
That part of the book stood out most vividly to me. The fact that people believed and still believe that he really heard this from god and wasn’t making it up to serve his own purposes boggles my mind. But anyway, back to the topic.
Go read Deuteronomy 25:11-12. Think carefully about who may have written it and under what circumstances…
I guess that depends on your definition of “almost”. The actually reliable study quoted in the article finds 22% vs. 17%; other statistics quoted in the article find a similar gap.
And you’d expect to have that gap, given that there are very strong cultural pressures (certainly in the US) to excuse male adultery and punish female adultery, so you’d expect women to both cheat less and report cheating less.
None of which changes the point that “but men are DRIVEN to cheat and women are naturally monogamous” is wishful thinking by a bunch of guys who feel they’re entitled to hot, compliant pussy on demand. But why ignore the sexist environment that creates that gap in women’s and men’s behavior?
Sorry, my blockquote should have ended at “David Buss is quoted.”
Because attributing a product of the sexist environment (which can be changed via social change) to biological innateness is a convenient way of dismissing all negative externalities of the patriarchal system and discouraging revolution while enforcing a toxic status quo.
That article had steam coming out my ears. Women are just objects to be fucked in this man’s world– the reasons they may no longer be interested in sex don’t interest him, the idea of being honest with his partner about his sexual feelings is beyond him (the feelings of objects don’t matter, after all), and women are supposed to find the idea of being a mistress– a fucktoy– flattering?
His absolute refusal to engage with the social reasons why men feel entitled to continue to pursue pussy after marriage, while women remain monogamous demonstrates that all he is interested in is justifying his own infidelities, not changing American sexual mores.
Mezosub, no argument there, but *we* shouldn’t be making that mistake. Adultery is not the one area where the double standard vanishes. It’s the same reason evo-bio arguments about “well if women like sex so much why don’t they hire male hookers?!” are crap.
“And 15 percent of men (though only 7 percent of women) have engaged in online sex or sexual Webcamming, which 66 percent of people consider to be cheating.”
Are these people kidding? Online sex is cheating? Not that I have ever cheated *that* way before, but it seems like having sex with a sock puppet.
I mean, so long as the object of your online affection doesn’t start stalking you or your family, how is this comparable to interacting with someone in a physical way?
Before long, if you even *think* about screwing someone in a grocery store or at the mall, that will also be considered infidelity by the mind police!
So… there are more men cheaters than women cheaters, even if not by all that much? Therefore, the extra dudes must be cheating with other men. Yup, that pretty much confirms what I had thought.
I have a question related to this thread: I’m currently arguing with a choad who believes that “We [men] are, biologically, the sexual pursuers. Our male sexual nature, if the rest of the higher mammals are any indicator, is assertive- proactive.” And then uses that to explain that the patriarchy doesn’t really exist, it’s all just male genetic imperative and hormones and stuff. Date rape, prostitution - everyone knows it’s grounded in instinct, at least in his world.
I’m currently looking for studies that drop his theories on their collective asses, and was wondering if anyone has suggestions on sources to cite. Normally I’d just ignore him and move on, but there are other folk reading the conversation and I’d rather pull the rug out from under him first.
felagund: “So… there are more men cheaters than women cheaters, even if not by all that much? Therefore, the extra dudes must be cheating with other men. Yup, that pretty much confirms what I had thought. ”
I’m pretty sure the idea is that there are more male cheaters, and more female “other women” who are themselves single.
Foucault: “I mean, so long as the object of your online affection doesn’t start stalking you or your family, how is this comparable to interacting with someone in a physical way?”
The fact that two people openly masturbating to each other, intentionally getting each other off - leads to feelings of betrayal in the same way a one-night stand might?
I’m always puzzled by the image that some American commentators (mostly men) have of European — and particularly French — sexual mores. I have the impression that they saw a couple of Truffaut films when they were students and formed a definite and very dated opinion of how French people behave. Seriously, the whole “Men cheat, women understand” model was true, IN THE 50s. (Just like in the US, AFAIK)
The French don’t cheat more, and divorce rates are the same across Western countries, so I don’t think that they’re more accomodating of cheating spouses. They just talk about it differently, but it’s no longer the case that it only benefits men. Hell, when French President Sarkozy’s was dumped (twice) by his wife Cecilia, it was because of his infidelities (well, at least the first time, when she dumped him in 2005 for another man and moved to NY); Yes, INCREDIBLE, the French react the same way as everyone else: when one spouse cheats, the other sometimes forgives. Sometimes, they divorce. Sometimes, the cheated-on spouse retaliates and everyone thinks “fair enough”. The second time, when she left him in 2007 six months after he was elected (and for the same man, who totally took her back, aww), it seemed to be mostly because she couldn’t stand him anymore. The rare times she deigned to appear at public functions, she looked increasingly unhappy, so the majority of the public not only expected a divorce, but ended up wishing it, since she clearly didn’t want to be there. I don’t remember hearing one word of sexist criticism over her leaving him. The criticism was mostly due to the fact that some people thought she’d never intended to come back for good and that the reconciliation was only a political manoeuvre to his benefit.
But the general discourse certainly wasn’t along the lines of “she should stay by his side”, or “It’s okay for men to cheat”. It was more “Yes, cheating happens. Yes, divorce happens. Can we get on with it and deal with the recession and unemployment now?” It was a bit hypocritical, because the whole double dumpage drama was certainly followed with a lot of interest, (hey, we love prurient gossip as much as the next people) but after a while, people got tired of it and one of the reasons for Sarkozy’s rapid slide into unpopularity was precisely that he failed to appreciate that French people actually expect their political leaders to be discreet about their private lives. His whirlwind and very public courtship of Carla Bruni (who is a dead ringer of his former wife) ended up costing him a lot politically, because people really didn’t like the ostentatiousness in a context of economic crisis. And because public pronouncements about one’s private life are seriously considered distasteful here.
So it’s not the French cheat more, or divorce less because of infidelity, or are more cynical. It’s just that when they talk about it, they don’t clutch their pearls and go “Why, I never!” Oh yes, and generally, French older women are still considered sexual (and I remember statistics that showing that more of them had sex later in life than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts), so if the author of that article wanted to have a more “French” relationship (i.e., French seen through the eyes of one deluded American who visited Paris once), he should expect his wife to avail herself of the same freedom, because motherhood and age wouldn’t mean that she’s suddenly asexual.
Now it’s the power couples who have cheating problems? Just last year it was the men with bored stay-at-home wives. Just can’t keep up with the bullshit.
Foucault, why do you think your understanding of the default rule of what “counts” as cheating is better than anyone else’s? Why do you think there should be a default rule? Why isn’t the rule of sexual conduct in a relationship whatever rule the parties work out?
“The fact that two people openly masturbating to each other, intentionally getting each other off - leads to feelings of betrayal in the same way a one-night stand might?”
Oh get a life! Looking at my cat makes me feel dirty!
I really don’t care who cheats more, men or women, and I think that people should just do whatever perverse things they need to do to get them through the day. Then, when they become governors, they can tell us all about it and we will vicariously savor the cheap hotels and the cybersex or whatever pickles they shoved up someone’s ass.
“Foucault, why do you think your understanding of the default rule of what “counts” as cheating is better than anyone else’s? Why do you think there should be a default rule? Why isn’t the rule of sexual conduct in a relationship whatever rule the parties work out?”
I don’t think my definition is better than anyone else’s. I just think it’s sad and twisted that people have to obsess about this kind of crap.
Who’s obsessed? I know what the rules in my relationship are. If you do, then why do you care what other people think is “cheating”? And if you don’t, shouldn’t you work that out before somebody does something that somebody else thinks was not okay?
I feel like we’ve had this conversation already. In case you missed it, I’m a free spirit. I don’t live by the rules of the herd.
I have a question related to this thread: I’m currently arguing with a choad who believes that “We [men] are, biologically, the sexual pursuers. Our male sexual nature, if the rest of the higher mammals are any indicator, is assertive- proactive.”
Personally, I’d introduce him to a female friend of mine called “Spike”.
If that’s true, you don’t have a dog in the fight as to whether the “herd” thinks X, Y or Z is “cheating.”
What it comes down to is this. There are a lot of married men and women in their 30s-40s who don’t have the great sex lives they were promised, and don’t really understand why. I think it is a biological fact that you will get sexually bored of your partner after some period of time, whether you’re a man or a woman. Independent educated women aren’t less sexual than compliant uneducated women, they’re just more likely to express their true feelings and say “no, I don’t feel like it”, and men have a hard time dealing with that. I know from personal experience that an educated independent woman who may be “frigid” to her spouse, and may profess to have lost interest in sex, may have quite a lot of sexual energy to channel to someone else in the right circumstances.
In case you missed it, I’m a free spirit. I don’t live by the rules of the herd.
That’s well nigh on the most pathetic thing i’ve ever read.
Foucault,
Wait, is your point that this whole conversation is pointlessly voyeuristic and obsessed with other people’s sex lives, or also that people are too obsessed with fidelity from their *own* partners?
Great post, Amanda. Yes, it’s bullshit to demand nonmonogamous fuck privileges but expect your spouse to remain monogamous and placid about your extracurriculars. It ain’t a one-way street—either both of you are open or neither of you is. Is it not incredibly obvious? The basic fairness of it? (Yes, it is, but the patriarchy prefers to concoct “it’s in a man’s nature” fairy tales instead.)
Aimai (back in comment #8) questions why the men with such raging libidos are tethering themselves to a wife in the first place. Why, they need someone to clean the house, do their laundry, and bear their children. If they just keep playing the field, they will have to do their own laundry.
That’s well nigh on the most pathetic thing i’ve ever read.
At least if one had the style to finish it with “…man!” one could claim irony.
I only pray it was written under the influence of marijuana.
Is it a Dennis Hopper quote? If it’s an actual quote, that would totally save it!
“Wait, is your point that this whole conversation is pointlessly voyeuristic and obsessed with other people’s sex lives, or also that people are too obsessed with fidelity from their *own* partners?”
Yes!
Go read Deuteronomy 25:11-12. Think carefully about who may have written it and under what circumstances…
Heh. I don’t know if you assumed I’m a believer of the Bible but not the Book of Mormon, but no, I’m not, I think both are made up by people.
I was sort of alluding to that with the lowercase “god.”
The “they do it in France” thing reminds me of American men saying “but ‘cunt’ isn’t a big deal in Britain!”
“If that’s true, you don’t have a dog in the fight as to whether the “herd” thinks X, Y or Z is “cheating.””
Please refrain from using metaphors that condone violence towards animals.
I can see the point about not being overly concerned with other’s sex lives, but I hardly think that wanting to be sexually exclusive to one’s partner while desiring the same from them makes one some sort of sheep, like you’re implying.
Nor does choosing not to be exclusive make one some sort of “free spirit”, it’s just another choice.
Foucault, just like your namesake, you are an idiot.
And sticking forks into puppies is good fun.
Wait a damn minute, I really liked discipline and punish! (The book. I am not stating any position on S&M).
Someone seriously needs to write a self-involved, whiny piece about how women are evolutionarily driven to cheat during ovulation, or somesuch. And how younger men are really more sexually attractive. Anyone? It can be satire. Please?
“Foucault, just like your namesake, you are an idiot.
And sticking forks into puppies is good fun.”
Anyone who uses “Rejector of Memes” as their handle is a bonafide reject. Actually, I hate dogs, but I think that the new fascination with having “no dog in the fight” is either due to herd mentality (just like the craze for monogamy), or due to all the rapper assholes who have been convicted of doing this for real.
“Someone seriously needs to write a self-involved, whiny piece about how women are evolutionarily driven to cheat during ovulation, or somesuch.”
Bonus points if the entire thing ignores the pill operating by suppressing ovulation.
“I can see the point about not being overly concerned with other’s sex lives, but I hardly think that wanting to be sexually exclusive to one’s partner while desiring the same from them makes one some sort of sheep, like you’re implying.”
Hi Brandon: I agree that if you and your partner decide to have the conversation in the first place and agree to be monogamous to each other, then that is great. However, I think some people feel socially pressured into applauding monogamy when they actually don’t feel that way. (Spitzer, Vitter, etc… I wish there were more scandalous women around to identify as role models for the uncommitted.
This is not to say they will run around wrecking homes and sleeping with anything that moves, but I think that this national preoccupation with who cheats more is pointless and stupid. I think both partners should do what they want to do without jeopardizing the health or safety of one another.But as far as feelings go, I don’t know that a pledge to be monogamous does much good if someone has an impulse to be reckless.
People are not property: bottom line. If I decide tomorrow that someone interests me sexually, then I may or may not decide to act on that interest, and I may or may not tell my partner about my decision. Why? Because I am my own person.
“People are not property: bottom line. If I decide tomorrow that someone interests me sexually, then I may or may not decide to act on that interest, and I may or may not tell my partner about my decision. Why? Because I am my own person.”
I don’t think most people *here* would have a problem with that, as long as your partner knew that was your general attitude and that you didn’t expect him/her to be monogamous. The only time it’s an issue is when one makes a monogamous pledge in that situation, either to keep their partner monogamous, or just because it’s the only way to be with that person.
It’s the height of arrogance to call someone an idiot just because you disagree with them. If Michel Foucault was an idiot, it’s a rare person who can claim to be otherwise.
This is akin to saying Ernst Haeckel was an idiot, or Sigmund Freud. Someone can be wrong (and both were, fundamentally and repeatedly) and still brilliant.
“I don’t think most people *here* would have a problem with that, as long as your partner knew that was your general attitude and that you didn’t expect him/her to be monogamous. The only time it’s an issue is when one makes a monogamous pledge in that situation, either to keep their partner monogamous, or just because it’s the only way to be with that person.”
Well, my partner knows my general attitude although I am not sure he accepts it (or even believes it). I’ve told him throughout our marriage–usually when we are fighting–that he is welcome to sleep with other people. I know he won’t do it, which is at once reassuring and frustrating (mostly reassuring).
As I get older, I get less and less interested in other people. I don’t mean this in a misanthropic way, but I simply have no time and no real inclination to have interactive sex. I prefer my hand and internet porn.
So I guess it works out in the end. As for younger men: egad! barf.
The interesting thing about that first quote is that, if the article as right, people actually PERCEIVE there to be greater equity in male and female propensities to cheat than their actually is. For the 44/36 people give when asked about the percent they think cheat, the male number is only 22% greater than the female number; but for the 28/18, the male number is 55% higher. Mythago’s comments suggest there’s something wrong with the 28/18 number, though, and that 22/17 is more reliable, but even in that case, the male number is 29% greater than the female number, higher than the percentage by which people perceive men to be more likely than women to cheat!
As usual, Foucault is convinced the rest of us are fascinated by her sex life and insists on sharing things that we really couldn’t care less about.
And I thought today couldn’t get any more boring.
“As usual, Foucault is convinced the rest of us are fascinated by her sex life and insists on sharing things that we really couldn’t care less about.
And I thought today couldn’t get any more boring.”
I’m just going with the flow of this discussion, which is all about things that we really shouldn’t care less about. It’s not my problem if you just can’t resist commenting!
Ben - the guy you are arguing with is not going to see reason. But instead of digging around for studies, simply ask him how his theory fits in with the observed behavior of bonobos, who, along with chimpanzees, are our closest living relatives.
Actually, if you read late 1800 French literature (Prevost et al.) you will discover that a lot of the having lovers was considered de rigour in the upper classes. Two people got married due to economic reasons, and once the kids were produced, it seemed to be pretty acceptable for women to get something on the side as well, as long as they kept it quiet. (Men got to cheat around from the beginning.)
Actually, Prevost in his stories demonstrates a much more complex and nuanced exploration of love and sex and the riddle of male-female relations than ever happened in the US. Go read The Mauve Decade to discover the warped Puritanism that the US was still wrapping itself in, much to the exasperation of US writers. And we’re still stuck in it.
mythago: thanks for the tip. Much appreciated.
“I see in the [Spitzers] something of what I see in other well-educated power couples—a career trajectory that excludes passion and lust. I know a lot of guys who seem trapped in sexless marriages.”
Stereotype: Education and intelligence in women drain us of our more “feminine” functions.
Now see, I didn’t get that at all.
I was thinking a couple that works 50-80 hours/week, each, is going to be too tired for lust. I read it as the more passion you pour into your high-powered job, the less there is for your partner.
And that’s a basic truism. Every religion tries to harness the sex-drive so they can use that passion for their God.
I know that a 50 hour work-week leaves me too bushed to frolic like I did back when I was a college student.
Granted, he’s suffering rectal-cranial inversion on the rest.
Oh wow, I just love this Buss-bashing. He’s right up there with Steven Pinker in the ev-psych douchebaggery field.
One of my favorite sections of “Adapting Minds, Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature” by David J. Buller is when he calls bullshit on Buss:
Buss and other evpsychs are so convinced that everything can be explained by our biological inclinations that he even manages to claim that a system of virtual female sex slavery is proof of female preferences.
If being fundamentally and repeatedly wrong is not a disqualification for brilance, then how do you determine when someone IS an idiot?
If you ask me, that’s the actual key to the translation of “I know a lot of guys who seem trapped in sexless marriages.” If you know guys, and not just a few guys but a lot of guys, who are trapped in marriages which are in fact sexless, and if you can prove this, why toss in the throwaway term “seem”? Is that just a run-of-the-mill hedge, or does it denotate the presence of code?*
Might not the statement “I know a lot of guys who seem trapped in sexless marriages” turn out to mean something like: “I know a lot of guys who are in marriages that they don’t find as exciting as they originally did. It’s not that they don’t have sex with their wives, but they’ve gotten used to sex with their wives, so it’s no longer as thrilling as it once was. The men kinda wanna stray and at times they kinda wanna exchange the woman they’ve got for a model which is younger or at least newer, but then they’ve got good lives, which they don’t want to disturb, and to which their wives contribute financially. So prudential reasons impel these men to stay married, despite the fact that they feel trapped. In other words, these guys are in a somewhat-similar-though-not-exactly-identical situation to the traditional plight of the desperately bored suburban housewife—the woman who feel stultified by the life she’s got but doesn’t want to trade it in because it’s physically comfortable. But I’m not going to admit that because such admissions siphon the Ichor Of The Gods out of male veins and turn men into mere human beings—just like women. Ewwww.”
*Yes, I know this was supposedly part of an e-mail sent to Weiss by a buddy from Los Angeles. But when I think of all the people who consult advice columnists on behalf of their friends I get suspicious.
That’s exactly it - a defense of male privilege. That’s what all these articles whining about rampant male urges and “post-sexual” females are about. And how amusing that presumably liberal media outlets like Slate and Vanity Fair are the ones publishing such defenses.
We’ll all just have to wait for these baby boomer media men to die off before we’ll get any break from articles defending male privilege and old-school double standards about sex.
“I was thinking a couple that works 50-80 hours/week, each, is going to be too tired for lust. I read it as the more passion you pour into your high-powered job, the less there is for your partner.”
But he’s not talking about couples who are too tired for lust–he’s talking about couples where the guy is still just raring to go, to the point of wanting to bang a whole lot of women who aren’t his wife. The sexlessness isn’t a simple condition resulting from the lifestyle, it’s something with which the husband is burdened and could be free of if only he could be free of his wife, or at least her pesky requirement that he remain faithful to her.
I mean, if neither one of you has the energy or time for romance/sex at the moment, neither of you is exactly trapped by anything but the job. Your non-existent needs on that front aren’t being denied by the married state. People only talk about folks being trapped in sexless marriages when one or both partners want sex that they’re not getting and have come to something of an impasse on the subject.
I’m sorry, Amanda, but I couldn’t get past this bullshit:
“Both men and women can and do suffer from a spouse who loses all interest in sex, a problem that I think compounds itself over time…”
So now I’m a “problem” and something that my partner “suffers from”. You know what? Fuck you. I’m sorry that I’m still working through my PTSD from the longterm sexual abuse that I suffered as a teen, and that at this stage my interest in sex has dwindled to nonexistent thanks to said PTSD. Jesus fucking Christ, I feel enough pressure and guilt from the rest of the goddamn world, who seem to think that anyone who doesn’t want to have sex is just an aberration and don’t give a shit about all the pain that can so often lie behind it, without reading this shit on a fucking FEMINIST BLOG. Fuck you, and fuck anyone who has more sympathy for the “suffering” of my partner, who OMG hasn’t gotten any in a few months!, than for me, whose PTSD MAKES HER WANT TO FUCKING KILL HERSELF EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY. I guess I should have thought of that before I got myself raped over a period of a year, huh? Maybe I should just laugh off the deep-seated despair, the self-loathing, the nightmares, the hallucinations, the engulfing panic that I feel when my partner touches me, so that I’m not such a “problem” to him anymore? …Yeah, fuck you. I did not need to come to a goddamn feminist blog to make myself cry as hard as this.
I’m sorry, Amanda, but I couldn’t get past this bullshit:
“Both men and women can and do suffer from a spouse who loses all interest in sex, a problem that I think compounds itself over time…”
So now I’m a “problem” and something that my partner “suffers from”. You know what? Fuck you. I’m sorry that I’m still working through my PTSD from the longterm sexual abuse that I suffered as a teen, and that at this stage my interest in sex has dwindled to nonexistent thanks to said PTSD. Jesus fucking Christ, I feel enough pressure and guilt from the rest of the goddamn world, who seem to think that anyone who doesn’t want to have sex is just an aberration and don’t give a shit about all the pain that can so often lie behind it, without reading this shit on a fucking FEMINIST BLOG. Fuck you, and fuck anyone who has more sympathy for the “suffering” of my partner, who OMG hasn’t gotten any in a few months!, than for me, whose PTSD MAKES HER WANT TO FUCKING KILL HERSELF EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN DAY. I guess I should have thought of that before I got myself raped over a period of a year, huh? Maybe I should just laugh off the deep-seated despair, the self-loathing, the nightmares, the hallucinations, the engulfing panic that I feel when my partner touches me, so that I’m not such a “problem” to him anymore? …Yeah, fuck you. I did not need to come to a goddamn feminist blog to make myself cry as hard as this.
Chill out, Anna. I never said “you” are a problem. But if you don’t think that you have a problem, then damn. I think you do and should get help. And yes, I feel sorry for you, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also feel sorry for your husband.
@Anna: What Amanda wrote is pretty clearly a trigger for you. It’s unfortunate that even relatively benign references can cause such a powerfully negative response, and my heart goes out to you and the horrors you have gone through. But Amanda, of all people, is not who you should be lashing out against.
Anna, I’m sorry for your situation and I hope your get help. Amanda’s comment is fairly unremarkable. it is not a problem to have a low sex drive if your life partner’s drive is similar. The problem arises when, as she said, one partner “loses” the sex drive. Hell, if both partners lose their drives at the same rate, they’re both content, as long as they have other interests they can share. (Like maybe the rise and fall of the stock market, bleh) The rejected partner’s suffering doesn’t compare with yours, but then your suffering doesn’t compare with some earthquake victims in China or cyclone victims in Myanmar either.
His whirlwind and very public courtship of Carla Bruni (who is a dead ringer of his former wife) ended up costing him a lot politically, because people really didn’t like the ostentatiousness in a context of economic crisis.
I think another factor (certainly everybody around me said it, maybe jokingly and maybe not) was the perception that Sarkozy was using his personal life kind of like Bush uses the terror alerts : to distract from the issues.
Amanda, you think you could have maybe come up with a more compassionate response than “Chill out” to somebody who was triggered by what was admittedly meandering phrasing on your part? Geeziz.
That comment was made about Elliot Spitzer, who wasn’t “too tired for lust” - he was making special overnight trips to have sex with prostitutes. I am genuinely baffled how you reached the conclusion you did. The quote was clearly taking a dig at women who don’t drop everything in their lives, including their jobs, to make sure their husband has sex whenever and however the mood strikes him, lest they be trapped in “sexless” marriages. (The writer doesn’t seem to give two shits about whether the women feel similarly trapped.)
I kind of like Foucault. The philosopher. Of course, from the limited amount I know of him, I have a feeling he would take a dim view of those who claim they don’t follow the ways of the herd.
Anna,
I am really sorry that you are going through a rough time. My partner (male) was sexually abused as a child as well, and I’ve known a few people with PTSD. In Amanda’s defense, I don’t think an aversion to sex based on trauma is the same as simple loss of interest. But I am sorry this was triggering for you. My thoughts are with you!
–Posting anonymously for my partner’s sake