Because Motivation Isn't Enough Without Opportunity and, Especially, Means
Photo by Flickr user fmarq. Used under a Creative Commons license.
The Reverse Cowgirl pithily corrects Philip Weiss's biology-laden male-infidelity apologetic
Men cheat because they can.
Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon expands on *why* those sorts of biological-imperative explanations are so full of shit
Women cheat nearly as much as men. This is not an unknown fact.
...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.
...
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.
The problem for sociobiologists and their evolutionary psychology brethren is that economics-based explanations *really do* explain the behavior of men and women better than genetics do: for instance a genetics solution would have be be more complex to account for differences in gendered behavior in the face of changing social and economic status whereas such an answer is built into an economics-based solution. And please not that's not to say there couldn't be selective pressure for infidelity, just that such a theory would have to account for the fact -- unlike the standard sociobiology narrative -- that both sexes are, in fact, faithful or unfaithful in nearly equal proportion.
Okay, given how much we differ on the Middle East, I'm a bit mortified to be speaking out in favor of Phil Weiss on ANYthing, but I sense that the utopian strain that runs through his Mid-East critique also affects his position on male desire. Weiss seems nostalgic for a past het male unruliness of desire, and the fantasy-wish-fulfillment aspect of his musings and the not-so-sotto-voce withdrawal of the contemplation of an open marriage in the face of his wife's desire ("I get to be 'out' Wednesday.") tend to bear that out. I can't help but think that as a Boomer, he is part of a generation that really can't imagine life without marriage, without his wife, without the long-term partnership his marriage actually is, and he feels a "grass is greener" never-never-land attraction to the supposed freedoms of the Alpha Males of the 50s. FWIW, Antoine de St. Exupéry WAS the quintessential French male (okay, of the 30s, right) and he was deeply in love with his wife and deeply conflicted at his betrayal of her, and was also very cognizant of the fact that he was messing up the lives of very beautiful women, talented in their own right, who loved him deeply. I suppose the Henry Miller/Anaïs Nin coupling is more what Weiss has in mind when he thinks of the French, but he sees himself more as Miller than, well, Mr. Nin. Perhaps François Mitterand, whose funeral was discreetly attended by his and his wife's children and his daughter with his mistress? French society made allowances, sure, but only for the top of the heap, not for mere newspapermen, at least, not since Zola.
I can't help but think this is some kind of disguised mourning for a past form of masculinity and male desire that never belonged to American men anyway, and certainly not to men of Weiss's generation, who have benefited from stable marriages to feminist women (at least those who got and remained married.) However, this form of mourning for the never-was is in fact VERY French, so perhaps PW is more European than he thinks.
reCaptcha "influx George". Shades of Clemenceau's activity with his mistress?
[And the *insane* part is that withdrawal when his partner said he could go out if she could too! What the roll-holy fuck was *that* about? He spends his whole essay constructing all these wishes, and wish fulfillments, and sociobiology, and outright denigrations (gee, wouldn't it be cool if mistresses didn't cost any more than a waitress's income) and he chucks it all up because his partner wants some of that too? In other words it's not *just* his position on male desire, right? Because if it was then he'd have no problem with her desire. But he *does!* And rather than let them both be happy doing what *he spends the whole fucking essay saying he wants worse than anything* he'd rather stay miserable as long as it keeps her miserable too. Fuck him and the horse he rode up on. Sorry to rant like that, Eurosabra, but the man doesn't just want to be miserable for himself, he wants *all* of us, men and women, to be just as miserable. Screw that! --fl]