Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Via Latoya Peterson at Jezebel comes a fascinating paragraph from Newsweek’s Jessica Bennett

The mystery of why women have sex, and what they want out of it, has long been an elusive study-something even Sigmund Freud called “the great question.” Researchers have historically theorized that women’s motives lie in love and commitment, while newer studies have shown they do it for pleasure, just like men. But women are complicated creatures: their sexual health is determined as much by their emotions as by their physical state, which might help explain why as many as 50 percent of women have trouble getting aroused. Yet while scientists, in recent years, have labored over the “how” of female desire, no major study, until now, has actually asked women to describe why they have sex in the first place.

She said it here.

Anyway, this is a little tough, what with me not being a woman and thus not being a “complicated creature” and all but… um… women aren’t creatures?

And WTF with the implication that it’s unusual for emotions determining sexual health? This might be because Bennett isn’t a man and thus falls for the notion that we’re simple “creatures” but… um… yeah.

For the record she’s talking about Meston and Buss’s “Why Women Have Sex,” discussed in detail here. And as I mentioned, the book appears to be based on a study the authors did of both women and men in 2007. And as I discussed in the book the top reasons for both men and women looked like this

Source: Arch Sex Behav (2007) 36:477-507, pg. 481 Update: Link to Meston and Buss’s original study (pdf)

Staggeringly different, eh? Oh wait!

We “know” women’s sexuality is complicated, and that men’s isn’t. Which makes Meston and Buss’s decision to exclude from the book their own data on men extraordinarily cynical.

It’ll probably be a best seller.

So I was over at Jill’s I Blame the Patriarchy a couple of minutes ago and she made the point that even BDSM submissive men have privilege.

...whether he likes it or not, when Nigel hoists up his Dockers and saunters out of your dungeon into the public square, he’s enjoying the privileged status he has had the pleasure of internalizing all his life. You are not.

Read the quote in context here.

This is, of course, true in the same sense that her Nigel enjoys privileged status whether he’s sauntering out of a dungeon, sauntering down the aisle of a church, sauntering through the produce section at Whole Foods, or sauntering (or maybe wheeled on a stretcher) out of an alley where he was beaten and robbed.

Anyway, “privilege” is one of those words where I know it’s used in reference to imbalance of privilege — something you’ve got that I don’t, or I’ve got that you don’t. Or we’ve got that they don’t, and so on. And of course one of the fun things about the idea of kyriarchy is that depending on context privilege can be something almost anybody can have next to someone who doesn’t have it.

So what makes my question dumb is that I can’t figure out whether the idea, when the term “privilege” is used to indicate power imbalance, is to extend privilege to those who don’t have it, or take it away from those who do.

Incidentally just because it’s a dumb question doesn’t mean it’s a trivial one. Or a “just semantics” one. In theories of politics there are some pretty strong disagreements about privilege in the context of, say, rights vs. opportunities. For instance to turn an old cliché on its head, even when rich and poor alike have the right to sleep under railroad bridges — or give lap dances in Detroit — it’s generally considered a privilege not to have to do so.

Vanessa Valenti of Feministing says

Our girl Phyllis Schlafly contended at the conservative conference, “How To Take Back America,” this weekend:

I submit to you that the feminist movement is the most dangerous, destructive force in our society today. [...] My analysis is that the gays are about 5% of the attack on marriage in this country, and the feminists are about 95%. [...] I’m talking about drugs, sex, illegitimacy, drop outs, poor grades, run away, suicide, you name it, every social ill comes out of the fatherless home.”

She was later presented with the “American Hero of the Century” award, in which Mike Huckabee stood up and said “God bless you – and God bless Phyllis Schlafly most of all.”

She said it.

You know she’s not talking about “radfems.” Well, actually technically since she’s one of the coiners and propagators of the term she is. What I mean is she’s not talking about the tiny fraction who think Mary Daly — the transphobic, racist, and (worse) gender-essentialist who refused to teach men who enrolled in her college courses — is just the bee’s knees. If you’re still reading four paragraphs into this post then Schlafly’s talking about you.

Rosie of Feministing, discussing a proposed Detroit city council amendment to ban strip-club lap dancing says

many of the women in sexually oriented businesses in Detroit are entering these industries because of economic constraints. This is different from folks who enter into sexually oriented professions having chosen exotic dancing from a variety of economic alternatives. But banning lap dances is an incredibly paternalistic way to show respect for women. If lawmakers are really concerned about women in these industries and increasing agency of these women, they should earmark some of the $18 billion in stimulus funds to create initiatives to provide women with real choices for employment.

She said it here.

That sounds about right. Blogging from Europe Matthew Yglesias notes that in Sweden a Big Mac costs about $8.00 and suggests why this might be (emphasis mine)

Recent blogging about the price of soda reminded me of the Economist’s occasional Big Mac Index feature which purports to offer a quick-and-dirty look at Purchasing Power Parities. Actually looking at the results, however, it seems to me that it’s really telling us more about low-end wages. Big Macs are incredibly expensive in Scandinavia not because the currencies are overvalued but because people in the bottom half of the Scandinavian wage distribution earn more money than people in the bottom half of the US distribution.

He said it here.

There will always be some objections to sex work. But one of the big sticks in the craw involves economic differentials between traditional provider and consumer classes. Whether or not the Detroit city council restricts lap dances is sort of immaterial — I’m not saying they should or shouldn’t and I’m definitely not concern-trolling it — if they’re not also doing something to generate employment alternatives for sex workers they’re effectively endorsing the institutions that make it possible.

If, Detroit, say, had a comprehensive social infrastructure that left men and women on an equal footing it’s possible there might still be sex work (although I suspect there’d not only be less supply but also quite a bit less demand.) And it’s possible some of that sex work would include stripping and lap dancing. But you could be pretty confident that whoever was doing it was doing it as a considered choice rather than economic necessity.

If you just outlaw it then even if there’s no emergence of underground alternatives you’re still painting over rotten wood.

Johnny Wright of Yes But No But Yes says

According to statistics, if there is a girl in your office named Chantelle and you ask her out for drinks, she will let you put your penis in her.

In Britain, 4,000 people were asked what name would be the mostly likely to engage on [the] first date [f]or casual sex. Chantelle was the … uh, winner?

Woman were also asked what would be the name of a chap that would most likely try to [go] for it on the first date. The answer: Dave.

Read the quote in context here.

The study itself is trash. For instance while there’s a Chantelle in a “reality” show popular with the surveyed demographic (ages 18-28) and last year there were press allegations that a 12-year-old boy fathered a child with another minor with the same name there are very, very few women with that name living in Britain. Meanwhile David is allegedly the most common English name in that demographic. Even if you knew nothing else about the survey you… probably wouldn’t need to know anything else about it to dismiss it.

But that out of the way we can take a look at the language: a Chantelle would be the most likely to “engage” in first-date sex, and said designation would make one a scare-quoted “uh, ‘winner’” while Dave would most likely “try” and to “go for it.” Following the link to the Daily Mirror (gosh, then it must be true!) there’s more of the same language: “Men aged from 18 to 28 were asked which names would be most up for it.” Meanwhile “Women were also asked which men would be most likely to try it on.”

And hmm… a bit more Googling suggests it’s an ongoing poll. In 2007 the first women’s name on the list was “Kelly.” The polling company spokesperson’s take back then? “If guys have a good experience with a girl of a certain name, they tend to remember them. It’s bad news if your name is Kelly, though.” Also two years ago men named “Lee” topped this year’s favorite, “Dave,” on the list. The spokesperson opined “Girls said these are names they would avoid at all costs on nights out.”

Since none of this has anything to do with whether men or women actually would or wouldn’t have any of the named characteristics let’s call this meta-stereotyping: without knowing anything else about actual people the results let you know “good girls” avoid men who might be interested in sex, and it’s a catastrophe just to be a woman with a name people would associate with casual sex. And goodness knows you wouldn’t want to demonstrate interest in men with certain first names!

Two Rules of Desire much?

Hmm… My real-life name being David this might explain why first dates were hard to come by when I was single. :-)

(Via tweet from Colorlessblue.)

Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors does something I think should be done more often and… makes the (standard interpretation of the) recent gender happiness research Maureen Dowd, the Huffington Post, and others went on and on about this month. You know, the one that says it shows happiness for women has declined since roughly the beginning of the second wave of feminism back in the 1970s? Bartow performs a bold, daring, even radical demographic maneuver…

Assuming just for the sake of this post that this data and the conclusions drawn from it are true, why is the focus only on those horrible women who don’t seem to appreciate their improving situation? Why isn’t Buckingham also asking why the fact that fewer men are completing high school or college, and that only 41 percent of all the bachelor’s degrees and 39 percent of all the master’s degrees are being earned by men, seems to be making men happier? Is ignorance truly bliss? Once you make women the standard, and then compare men to them, it would certainly seem so.

Read the quote in context here.

Pretty cool! Not the findings so much — they’re controversial, and if they weren’t they actually show a one-point change for men that brings aggregate reported happiness to… exact parity (from 85/86% happiness for men and women to 86/86%.) But uncoupling one’s perspective from assumptions about who’s baseline-normal creates opportunities for really fruitful, really interesting lines if inquiry.

Too bad the study really doesn’t seem to be very reliable. Because as Bartow indicates there really are some interesting takeaways once you stop looking at it as an anti-feminist “gotcha.” The first being what on earth men would be complaining about if the advent of feminism has made them happier? Another would be why all the angst about school boys being “left behind” in education if it makes them so much happier in the long run?

Kudos to Bartow for bringing it up.

—-

p.s. Notice also that happiness graphs from the study that Bartow reprints in her post are suspiciously straight-line.

Since I’m way behind in my reading I read this first via Echidne, but over at Pandagon Amanda Marcotte just answered a question that for some reason started bothering me almost as soon as I was out of WiFi range. See if you can guess what my question might be from the following snippet:

...from my perspective, the implicit argument —- that women who have a lot of sex, or with a lot of men are sluts who deserve humiliation —- is anti-sex. In other words, for all the sex in porn, much of it adheres to the “family values” narrative, where a sexual woman is used up and deserves nothing but abuse. Being truly pro-sex, in my view, means believing that women who have sex, a lot of sex, or a lot of partners do not forfeit a single ounce of their dignity or humanity.

Read Amanda’s text in context here.

And, because it’s a good post too, don’t forget to read Echidne’s take either.

Anyway, it’s an interesting point that a) women who have lots of sex are considered degraded and yet b) industrial porn is almost invariably about women who have lots of sex.

Straight porn is very rarely centered around the actual performance of the male performers and when it is the focus seems to be far more about how much he’s able to get his various partners to “take” than how much he’s willing to, um, er, I guess, “go.” (I’m sure there have to be exceptions but are there ever non-fetish assumptions in porn that the men’s limits are smaller than the women’s?)

Anyway the thought that drifted through my head, the one I mentioned in the opening paragraph, the one that I think complements Amanda’s post rather nicely, is why do you suppose there’s no “gang bang” porn where one man has sex with multiple partners? Heck, there’s not even a word for the comparable situation!

A few years ago there was a raft of stories about one or more videos of well-known or aspiring porn actresses having sex with up to 500 men. (I think it’s telling, by the way, that so many commenters at the time made much of the fact that the numbers were exaggerated… that it wasn’t “really” 500 different men, that organizers got some participants to go back around and get in line, etc.)

And yet, as far as I can tell, even though porn is allegedly about fantasies of male prowess and all that, as far as I can tell from Googling around, and dredging through more Fleshbot posts than I’d ordinarily do in a month year ok, ok, ever there just doesn’t seem to be that much interest in either producing or viewing one man “taking on” what viewers might see as a taxing number of partners. No male “gang bang” porn. No speculation about male “gang bang” porn. No requests for it either.

I think, at least in part, it’s because Amanda and Echidne have a point about the function of mainstream porn. I don’t exactly agree with them that the point of facials, say, or no-preliminaries anal intercourse, or “ass to mouth” exists only to degrade the women doing it in the sense of punishing them for having sex. Instead I still think it’s a “no-sex” class paradigm-driven fascination about what women can “take” either without saying “no” or before finally saying “no.” Which would, of course, finally satisfy the mythical Rule of Desire #1 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.

And meanwhile I think a circumstance showing multiple women sharing the same male partner would violate Rule of Desire #2 — it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

You’d think a male viewer (and this is still assuming not all but a majority of consumers are male) interested in seeing any naked women having sex with a man would be interested in seeing lots of naked women having sex with a man. The grammar doesn’t seem to work that way. Instead to the extent there’s interest (and there does appear to be a lot of interest) it’s pretty much always one naked woman having sex with lots of men.

I’m guessing Rule #2 dominates here — the assumption is that a man with myriad partners is a fluke the average insecure man can’t identify with. Meanwhile I think the logic is that if there’s a woman who’d have sex with 10, 100, 500, or 620(!) men she might let him have sex with her too.

Anyway, I dunno. What’s your take? (And don’t say logistics. Especially if you’ve ever imagined the porn industry rakes in gazillions of dollars. If there was a market for it they’d find a way to do it.)

Aah, nice to be back in WiFi range.

Matthew Yglesias does a great job of distinguishing between what I think might be a right-wing bugaboo — forcing population control — and helping individuals plan to have the size of family they actually want. It’s in the context of a claim that the carbon-reduction benefit of contraception is cost effective compared to other, perhaps more obvious reasons. But the “eugenics” vs. consumer demand argument stands regardless. Here’s Yglesias (emphasis mine.)

Lydia DePillis has a depressing item about the role access to contraceptives is playing (or, rather, not playing) in efforts to forestall catastrophic climate change

... Reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies out there—calculated on the basis of “unmet need,” or women who want contraception but currently don’t have access — is roughly five times as cost-effective as deploying low-carbon technologies like wind, solar, and carbon sequestration.

... That’s not to say we should be engaging in coercive limits on people’s ability to have children, that would be a cure that’s far worse than the disease. But the evidence is pretty clear that in societies where women are empowered and have access to contraception, that on average they want modest-sized families. And what this study is talking about is specifically what could be accomplished by closing the gap between the level of contraception that people want to have and the level of contraception they’re actually able to maintain. There are dozens of good reasons to think closing that gap would be beneficial, the impact on the environment is one of them, and there’s no reason people should refuse to say that.

Read the quote in context here.

This ought to hold true, by the way, even if you’re opposed to abortion. It ought to hold true even if you (mistakenly) believe certain forms of contraception are really secret, closet forms of abortion, because if you really believe that then you’re obliged only to advocate for contraceptives you can’t possibly pretend cause secret, closet abortions.

(That we don’t see contraceptive opponents pressing for safe, effective, affordable, reliable, available, and usable methods that satisfy their concerns about “abortion” suggests they’re insincere. And, to borrow the phrase from Yglesias, there’s no reason people should refuse to say that either.)

As for Maureen Dowd’s rhetorical (and purposfully-negative) question about whether men have benefitted more from feminism than women, one way this man has benefitted from feminism is that I’ve gotten to be a stay-at-home dad since my children were born. And because I’ve been able to be so involved with my children at school I get to take off to carpool and help cook for a three-day school camping trip in the mountains nearby.

There won’t be WiFi (speaking of 1,400 baud modems!) and there may not be cellphone service (speaking of iPhones) so I may be completely out of contact till Friday evening.

Keep the home fires burning.

_This second post is a follow up to The New York Times, searching perhaps for alliteration, picked an unfortunate and/or loaded term in Saturday’s Op/Ed piece:

But the more women have achieved, the more they seem aggrieved. Did the feminist revolution end up benefiting men more than women?

Read the quote in context here.

Except for one big thing, what she’s talking about, and its source, is actually semi-reasonable, as she makes clear when you read further:

When women stepped into male- dominated realms, they put more demands — and stress — on themselves. If they once judged themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens and dinner parties, now they judge themselves on looks, kids, hubbies, gardens, dinner parties — and grad school, work, office deadlines and meshing a two-career marriage.

Well yeah, if you’re just adding expectations to one gender instead of redistributing them across all of them then you’re committing to a lot more effort at the same time your chances of success will diminish at least somewhat. Even when men pick up some of the slack. Even though some women can have it all.

All that can be true and yet…

And yet what a choice of words in Dowd’s first sentence! “Aggrieved” is a wonderfully anti-feminist buzzword.

Here’s how Dictionary.com defines grievance

1. a circumstance thought to be unjust or injurious and ground for complaint or resentment
2. complaint or resentment, or a statement expressing this, against a real or imagined wrong

1. a complaint arising from circumstances or conditions relating to one’s employment

Source

Grievances are not brought by superiors against subordinates. Grievances are not filed against one’s self. And so to say women are “aggrieved” is just one more way of locating women in the traditional role of supplicants, of nagging, whining or complaining. Of that most stereotypical of traditional gendered emotions: disappointment.

More to the point, though, “aggrieved” was Dowd’s choice of words. And if she presented herself as steadfastly progressive, as a revolutionary theorist, as a radical feminist, as a crusader for gender deconstruction, or as anyone else with a clear and frequently-articulated vision of where men and women ought to be going I’d hear her rhetoric of grievance a little differently. But she’s not! I’m not saying she’s not feminist (not at all.) I’m just saying she’s not been very good about articulating how our expectations, for ourselves and others, have shifted since the 1970s when the “baseline” study she compares us to today was made and when, incidentally, she began her own career.

In fact, you wanna know what life was like for women back then? Check it out…

In two paragraphs about California’s first woman state senator and assemblywoman Ariel of Feministing says all you really need to know about where feminism got its reputation for “humorlessness” and confrontation.

When [Rose Ann] Vuich arrived [as the first woman elected to the California State Senate, in 1976], there was no bathroom, and no recreational, social, or other facilities for women legislators. She became so incensed when her colleagues would address the Senate as “Gentlemen” that she rang a bell at her desk each time to remind them women had finally infiltrated the boy’s club.

By 1986, the mostly-female legislative staff members, including schedulers, legislative aides and the like, were still referred to as “girls.” Newly-elected Assemblywoman Bev Hansen was on the Assembly floor with a male colleague. A second Assemblyman approached and said, “Well look at that! I didn’t know they were letting the girls on the floor.” His male colleague replied, “Assemblyman, meet Assemblywoman Hansen.”

She said it here.

If you’re old enough to remember the 1970s at all you probably remember that the idea of “unisex” bathrooms outside the home was such an alien concept that municipal and state lawmakers routinely proposed making them or more accurately keeping them illegal. Which made the lack of women’s restrooms in the Senate more than an inconvenience for Vuich.

Please don’t confuse this with a “hey, women are making progress so what are you complaining about” pitch. I’m sort of kind of mostly sure even Dick Cheney wouldn’t want to go back to a time when state legislatures simply didn’t have women’s rooms in their capitol buildings. In fact I’m kind of sure that if, say, Mary Matalin had walked up to Cheney saying there was no women’s restroom in the undisclosed location he’d have said “that’s dumb, I’ll force some of my detainees build you one.” Point being she wouldn’t have brought it up as a grievance, nor would he have particularly received it as a supplication because that’s now an expectation. (Another expectation, oddly enough, is that right-wing hacks may be willing to roll the clock back for everyone else but they’re perfectly sanguine about paying women enormous amounts of money to help them do so. And those women evidently have high enough expectations about their own identities and career potential that it gives them no qualms to do so.)

Sheesh. I’m packing for a three-day camping trip with one of my children’s classes and it feels like I’m not being very focused here. But what I’m trying to say in the last paragraph is that there are two ways to measure gender progress — one by the actual progress, which is fine and yeah, if that was all there was to it then sure, what are them durn feminimisminists complaining about?

But the more significant way to measure progress is by what are the _expectations! By which standard you should be overjoyed by your Pentium II computer running Windows 3.2 because, geesh they sure didn’t have those in 1972 when the study Dowd is carping about set the baseline standard for men’s and women’s happiness. (Heck, I happen to vaguely remember that in 1974 a 4-function calculator was the size of a desktop computer! By which standard having an original Apple II ought to leave everyone over the moon!)

The point being that with expectations you can actually be making giant strides in progress while still feeling like you’re falling behind because your (perfectly reasonable!) expectations are growing even faster. What’s funny (and part of why I like the analogy) is that’s not even a controversial statement in computer technology!

I mean, yeah, you’ll still find people in computers being “aggrieved,” even legitimately aggrieved! But way, way more often a more accurate term would be “impatient.” Also “exasperated.” Oh, and “frustrated,” mostly by hidebound, foot-dragging, short-sighted, and pound-foolish obstacles to ever increasing, and usually perfectly reasonable expectations. And yet… and yet… you never hear someone in computer technology saying “we’re unhappy with the pace of progress, we were better off back in the days of 1,400 baud modems!”

So why, oh why, are so many people including cultural commentators like Dowd who, seriously, ought to know better working inside the frame that defines feminism as whiny, perpetually no-satisfying-some-women, and “aggrieved?” Instead of the perfectly reasonable, even more accurate, and compatible-with-the-cultural-zeitgeist framing like “impatience,” “enthusiasm,” “exasperation,” “anticipation,” or even “frustrated” by the slowness of the pace change in the face of rising expectations?

In computer terms there’s nobody accusing customers of “pushiness” for waiting impatiently for, say, Apple to release an iPhone-capable tablet computer, nor are customers said to be “aggrieved” by Apple’s incomprehensible partnership with the infuriatingly slow and spottily-connected AT&T Wireless. So why use that kind of language when you’re talking about other fast-moving developments like feminism?