Sex as a Chore as an Institution

Photo by Flickr user edwardoneill. Used under a Creative Commons license.

In my post about the perversity of sex as a chore a while back I mentioned what a joyless hassle sex can be for couples that are actively *trying* to get pregnant, especially when they're having a hard time. About halfway through writing that post I started an aside about the MRA/anti-feminist relationship model where men are obliged to providing economic security and in return men are obliged to provide sex.

Very conveniently for me, in comments L recounted her experience with voluntary obligatory sex. It didn't sound fun.

My husband and I tried for roughly 6 years to have a child. THis included different combinations of temperature-taking, intercourse-timing, medications both oral and injectable, invasive testing, twilight anaesthesia, tears, frustration, and failure.

It included very little joy, between the aforementioned failure and tears, as well as the mechanization of sex. Reading this post made me remember the online cycle-plotting software I used, wherein you marked every day you had sex. with (your choice) a heart or a smiley face.

That heart or smiley face was pretty much the only choice we were given (in day-to-day terms) in the progression of impregnation attempts. Whe we should or could do it, or when I got to go under anaesthetic for an "egg harvest" or how many days of bedrest was required post-embryo transfer was determined by number-- dates on the calendar, blood tests.

Ah, you've provided a convenient (at least for me, I'm not sure how YOU feel about it, figleaf) forum for me to exorcise a little of the anger I still hold, 3 years on. I guess it's implicit in my rant that I find what Ellie called "statistics-driven sex" to be pretty much repellent. For us, it WAS product-oriented. The fact that we were ultimately cheated out of the desired product isn't really even germane to my reaction... at least I don't think it is.

Anyway, I guess I'm skeptical as to whether numbers-driven sex can ever, in any way, make the numbers-cruncher happy. To me, the delight, the joy of being able to have sex when and only when we want to is something I could never throw away, because I've been on the other side and it sucks.

She said it here.

Hmm. "Anger?" "Repellent?" "Product-oriented?" "Cheated?" Sound familiar? Of course! It sounds like the terms used by both sides in the aftermath of so many "traditional" anti-feminist marriages. (Where "aftermath," sadly, doesn't always mean "divorce." *Especially* in "traditional" marriages.)

Hmm... *funny* about that, eh? And yet that he's-a-wallet/she's-a-receptacle model is the anti-feminist idea? How's *that* been working?