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Shorter No-Sex Class Paradigm (a.k.a. Two Rules of Desire)

Fri, 2009-01-30 11:29 — figleaf

I've got hundreds of entries in my "no-sex" class category archives. Here's my latest attempt to boil it all down.

  1. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a woman to have sexual desire.
  2. It is simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for a man to be sexually desired.

---

Discussion:

At least in contemporary western society every gender-related ill derives from some combination of items #1 and #2.

  • Homophobia? #2
  • The "two-sphere" mars/venus model of gender? #1 and #2
  • Stoning your 14-year-old daughter in front of the neighbors for holding hands with a boy? #1
  • Unequal pay for equal work? #1 and #2 (if women aren't kept desperate for money...)
  • Slut shaming? #1 (duh)
  • Psychotically insisting that contraception = abortion when it. just. isn't? #1
  • "Gray area" date rape? #2 and #1
  • Men who initiate are studs, women who initiate are "that bitch was crazy?" #1
  • Purdah, harems, chastity belts, wimples, chadors? #1 and, paradoxically, #2*
  • Prostitution? #1 and #2, and, paradoxically...
  • Anti-prostitution? #1
  • The... peculiar... obsessions of pop sociobiology/evolutionary-psychology? #2 and #1

The minor issue that neither rules #1 nor item #2 are _true about humans_ isn't the flaw in my argument, it's the _point!_ (In particular if the were true society wouldn't perpetually exhaust itself trying either to enact, persuade, enforce, or prove they were.)

[* Sounds weird I know but remember, when each of the big three western-civilization-influencing religions were established women were believed to be tempters -- cloistering, covering, and other forms of impoundment were _not_ designed to protect the virtue of women but the virtue of men. And lest we think we've outgrown all that see also all versions of "she was asking for it" victim blaming. --fl]

Fri, 2009-01-30 19:32 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

Homophobia? #2

Um, and #1, too. Last time I checked, lesbians exist.

[Hi Daisy! Yeah, I wrestled with whether to include examples at all, since I’d said it was “shorter no-sex class.” But then I started and naturally (since I said it explains everything which was only mostly hyperbole) where ever I stopped I’d have been leaving everything else out. :-) But what I meant by that is that the disproportionate prejudice against gay men vs lesbians is explained by #2. Meanwhile, as PattyCake says, “lesbians” are “hawt” because it’s “not really sex without Teh Cock.” And side B of that record is the very real prejudice against real, out, non-fantasy lesbians comes out of #1. Anyway, thanks for the reminder. —fl]

Fri, 2009-01-30 20:05 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

re: Daisy, yes, but THEY’RE HAWWT.

Also, FL: Yum.

Also.

[Yup, the “they’re hawt” remark comes in under #1 (if I hadn’t been trying to make it really shorter the next element, call it #1b, would have been “Women can be sexualized but never sexual.” Also, glad you liked the photo, even more glad to see you breaking rule #1! :-) Thank for your kind words, PattyCake! —fl]

Fri, 2009-01-30 20:09 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

Re-reading my comment, it’s harsher than I intended; overall this is a kick-ass post.

[No, that’s totally fine, Daisy. I’m sure I missed quite a few other quandaries but I bet if you boil them down enough they’ll still fit under #1 or #2 (ok, ok, or maybe the #1b I added after PattyCake’s comment.) Thanks! —fl]

Fri, 2009-01-30 20:52 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

You get an A+ for being so concise. I gotta learn that skill.

But now that I’ve said that … can we stir the pot and complicate things a little? :-) While I totally agree that rules 1 and 2 are entangled with every problem you list, I don’t think the causal relationship is equally straightforward in every case. For instance, unequal pay doesn’t derive solely from your two rules. It also derives from human greed under patriarchal circumstances. The sex/no-sex system helps pin people into roles that reinforce the distribution of material goods, including capital, preferentially to certain men. It also offers certain consolation prizes to the rest of the men who don’t get to be economic or political bigwigs.

In other words, patterns of causation are more complex. But I fully agree that you see some very interesting patterns when you pare down your ideas to this level of abstraction.

Cool post. (And I’m feeling just good enough this evening to be distracted by the photo.)

[First of all Sungold, I’m busily hoping that your MRIs come out well!!! Second, I agree that the two rules don’t account for all exploitation, period, but I do think they account for gendered resistance to equal pay for equal work. Rule #2 says men can’t be desired sexually, for which the conventional alternative is deemed to be economic advantage. Inverting something as benevolent-sounding as “men have been traditionally paid more because they’ve traditionally supported a wife and family” turns up “women have traditionally been underpaid to keep them dependent on men.” Thanks! —fl]

Sun, 2009-02-01 02:24 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

I agree with sungold. Excellent and concise distillation of the issue. But it doesn’t address why we’ve evolved these cultural values. Who benefits anymore by maintaining the two premises you have enumerated?

Hugs,
rg

[Hey RG! Who benefits is an interesting question, one that I think is summed up in the closing line traditional marriage ceremony… at least the English-language ones: “you may now kiss the bride.” First of all that just lives and breathes rule #1 (why wouldn’t she want to kiss the groom?) it also answers best the question “who benefits.” The answer is obviously the family, with quite a bit of backing from church and state. Which in the long tradition of real “p” patriarchy makes sense: families arranged weddings, gave away brides, and did so only after establishing that the groom had value beyond his sexual (or any other kind of) attractiveness to the bride. Of course patriarchy in the industrial and post-industrial eras have lost a huge chunk of the social organization of real patriarchy… which I think is what a) makes rules #1 and #2 even more egregiously obsolete but also b) makes the still very powerful but ultimately empty residue of patriarchy so particularly vicious to women and so reducing of men. Which is why I’d really like to subvert the paradigm in the first place. Thanks! —fl]

Fri, 2009-05-29 07:05 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

Sexual desire is natural. We can never stop to discuss about sex.

dontlookanyfurther.com

Undez

Wed, 2009-06-03 00:11 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

Dang, you look goooooood. drool.

Wed, 2009-06-03 23:17 — 2682 (not verified) #permalink

I think I have another one. Have you noticed that most of the porn, strippers, etc. targeted towards het women has really muscular men, usually without any other body types represented? This is really weird, considering I’ve met very few women who thought “bodybuilder” was the sexiest body type. I’m sure there are lots of them, but if they were trying to hit the “core market”, I’d think they’d mostly hire men who have more realistic body types — most of the women I know prefer something in the range of a bit slim to a bit chubby. But, if society says that being sexually-desired is a feminine trait, and that feminine men are undesirable, then I guess picking men who are hypermasculine could be the employers’ way of compensating. Of course, then all the women who aren’t into gym bunnies, but still like the porns, opt for the written stuff, and society says, “LOOK! WOMEN AREN’T VISUAL! MEN AREN’T GOOD-LOOKING! WOMEN LOVE ROMANCE AND HATE SEX*! LOLOLOL.” And then I smash my head against my desk.

  • According to my local librarians and bookstore owners, anything not classy enough to be erotica is a romance novel, even if it’s all sex and no romance. ‘Cause it’s written for women, you know, and us women love that romance. Circular logic FTW.
Thu, 2010-01-21 11:16 — Nancy (not verified) #permalink

I found this via Pandagon and I want to offer my compliments – this is exactly true and elegantly succinct. Thanks!

Fri, 2010-03-05 06:01 — DanceDreaming (not verified) Love this#permalink

Hello Figleaf,

Love this post, very well stated. One odd note at a commenter above(names seem to have poofed). I’ve personally looked at a certain amount of porn. The guys seem to be actually kinda varied. Or at least, it seems to be a good mix between the ‘gym-bunnies’ and the ‘ordinary blokes’. Though in the latter case there doesn’t seem to be any effort to make the guy seem at all attractive. Which might simply be a continuation of you notion. But I generally think a bigger reason for ‘girls don’t tend to like porn’ is that most porn has a degrading element to women, kinda skips over any actually interesting foreplay, and generally doesn’t look like something that most women would get much enjoyment out of. But this causes the same circular reasoning.

Thu, 2010-03-11 00:37 — Perverse Cowgirl (not verified) #permalink

Admittedly I haven’t seen a whole lot of porn, and what I’ve seen has been mainstream, but I can say that the reason I don’t like porn (so far) is that the women don’t orgasm (or even attempt to fake it). They moan a lot, but at the same pitch the whole way through – no crescendo.

When hetero humans watch hetero porn, I think most of us are identifying with the performer who’s the same sex as us. This is why guys have an obsessive need to see the dude ejaculate and why I get frustrated watching what, to me, amounts to some woman being endlessly teased without ever getting off.

Plus, of course, barely any foreplay, and any cunnilingus I’ve ever seen is just a brief precursor to intercourse. I’ve seen tons of scenes of women-tongue bathing some guys’s cock for 45 minutes at a time, but never of a guy lovingly lavishing oral attention on a woman until she orgasms. At most, dude goes down just until the chick seems like she’s really getting into it, then abruptly switches to p-in-v and gets himself off. If a guy did that to me in real life, I’d want to bitch-slap him. I’m sure as hell not going to watch this asshattery and get off to it.

Maybe stuff with amateur real-life couples is better. I sure hope so.

Sat, 2010-03-13 15:26 — Thaddeus Blanchette (not verified) #permalink

Actually, anti-prostitution is also often an expression of rule #2.

Many of my foreign male client informants here in Rio de Janeiro claim that they like the feeling of being desired that the prostitution scene in this city often creates. Of course, this is ignored by our local antis who speculate that foreignclients are all being motivated by a need to express their power over women…

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