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So whenever I riff off one of Em and Lo’s Daily Bedpost posts I always feel compelled to include a disclaimer that I actually like them a lot but I just disagree with this one thing. When I balk at something it’s usually about some uncharacteristically heteronormatively gendered assumption. This morning I finally noticed that shows up when they link to their Glamour magazine columns and suddenly felt better. All magazines have editorial constraints that favors mating an often-narrow target demographic with an equally narrow-focus advertising revenue stream in a way that, often necessarily, requires favoring the latter even when it’s at the expense of the former. Eh. I get that Glamour won’t hire anyone to write about how men prefer the flavor (flavour?) of bare skin to the flavor of cosmetics. I regret, however, that they insist that writers maintain conventional gender narratives.

For instance, check out the introduction to this post, about how cell-phone logs make it really easy to catch a partner’s infidelity. (Emphasis mine.)

We have an article in December’s Glamour magazine called “Guys’ Weird New Habits: Why? Why?“ One habit we looked into was why guys still insist on cheating when they can so easily get busted in this age of technology.

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Why do men (and, I must add, women) think that they can’t get caught even though they leave an electronic trail more obvious than Hansel & Gretel’s cookie crumbs?

Read the quote in context here.

The three reasons listed in the post hint at but never hit one big, highly gendered reason: men really do have a tendency to assume their partners are technologically clueless. (Hmm… maybe our moms made our dads change lightbulbs not because it’s so technical but because it’s risky to get up on a wicker-bottom chair in even moderate heels. Maybe it was because they wanted to feel like there was some element of housework they could get help with.)

But the real howler for me was the confidence of the assumption that only men cheat. And/or that only women find out. Well, they are writing for Glamour Magazine’s overwhelmingly younger, more single, and female target demographic and presumably that demographic would rather dwell more on insecurity about their own partners than receive tips about evading detection of their definitely lower but only modestly so rates of infidelity.

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That said, if you filter out the gendered bits the list is pretty instructive.

1) Men who cheat with a capital “C” tend to be narcissistic. They lack empathy and think mainly about themselves and their own needs. They also think that every day rules do not apply to them. Since they think they are above everyone else, it stands to reason that they think other people are not as clever as they are.

[and]

3) When men are being deceptive, they spend a lot of mental energy on concealing their actions and words. They are distracted. Because they are distracted, they may forget to do simple things like erase their computer history or email.

Take out the “men who cheat” part, and the circularity that people who cheat don’t follow agreed-upon rules, and item #1 is a great, real-Em-and-Lo insight into infidelity: people who cheat have an extraordinary tendency to create justifications for their infidelities. It’s much easier to say “well, I’m not really like that but he/she’s such a jerk about…” than to say “Even though I genuinely love and respect my partner I still get the hots for other people.” In other words we’re often willing to sacrifice our actual real relationships rather than question what we’re taught to believe about ideal ones.

In item #3 Em and Lo nail the other side of the equation very nicely as well… minus the “men who…” bit. Just like an anti-virus program makes your computer run 10-20% slower, running “anti-detection” processes makes us run slower too! Heck, just maintaining the adversarial “did I slip?” and “does she/he suspect” in every conversation can create enough alienation in a partner to then justify one’s own feelings of distance that… we use as further excuses for our infidelities. Rinse and repeat a few times and you have to start asking yourself whether our ideology about monogamy is worth some large fraction of a 50% divorce rate.

If you’re going to stick with the “pretend I’m strictly monogamous” model item #2 is useful regardless of you or your partner’s gender.

Practically speaking, electronic devices are small and personal. A cell phone is easy to conceal. It’s simple to make calls in the privacy of one’s office or car without being seen. And because they are small, they are relatively easy to lose track of. So the cell phone gets left behind on the foyer table, and the rest is history.

I know at least five people, men and women, who were caught through cell-phone mishaps (phone-bill call records, snooping actual phones, and answering calls on a left-behind phone.) As Glamour’s editors might prefer I spin it, almost half of the five caught were men.

See what I mean, though? Minus what I’m pretty sure are externally imposed editorial filters Em and Lo are as insightful as ever.