Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Echidne of the Snakes had to dig, and dig, and dig through pop reports all talking about the “biological” inevitability behind a new study that suggests elderly men are more interested in sex than elderly women.

One complicating factor that’s mentioned by the lead investigator but not so much by the breathlessly gender-confident reporting?

One reason why older women are less sexually active than men may be because they don’t have a partner, or because their partner is no longer healthy enough to have sex. “Women outlive their marriages and their relationships,” Dr. Lindau says.

She and her colleagues found that as women aged, they were far less likely than men to be married or living with a partner. In one of the surveys the authors used, just 58% of the women ages 65 to 74 had a partner, compared to 79% of men in the same age bracket. Among 75- to 85-year-olds, 72% of men still had a partner, compared to just 39% of women.

Lindau said it here.

If you’re a woman between maybe 40 and 50, with a male partner over maybe 45-55, raise your hand if your partner’s health, his libido, or both allows him to keep up with your libido? (I’m not saying everybody’s in that boat but… it’s a fairly common lament of partners of older men.)

What makes this particularly funny, in a not-so-funny way, is all the “happy tradeoff” lead sentences Echidne tracks down where in reporters smirk stuff like “Women may live longer, but it appears men are more likely to go out with a smile” and “Men have shorter life spans than women on average, but when it comes to sexual life expectancy, the guys have the advantage.” (Um, “advantage?” fuck you, dudes?!?!)

Oh wait, and look, here’s a nifty, but related “advantage” that’s not going to show up so often in the popular press, again from Dr. Lindau.

When women did have a partner, they were almost as likely as their male counterparts to be sexually active, although they tended to give their sex lives lower marks than men did. In every age group included in the surveys, a smaller percentage of women than men described their sex life as “good” overall.

Read the quote in context here.

As Echidne says “Women tend to have older husbands and the ill health of their husbands could well be one of the reasons for not much sex even in intact relationships.” Yup. Funny how blood-pressure medications, prostate problems, and even bad backs, hips, and knees can take the, um, wind of of a fella’s sails. And, again, funny how demoralized even the most enthusiastically consenting adult can become when sex requires not only candle light and slow dancing but also… repeat trips to the bathroom, penis-pumps, and other erectile interventions.

If you or your partner still have it — and not all men lose it — that’s great. But with even the most attentive partner in the world the disappointment levels are likely to be lower. And while I’m not positive, it might be particularly wearing on both older women and older men if they grew up back when heteros expected that men would take the lead in sex, and do nearly all the work as well.

Another little tidbit Echidne mentions:

I should also tell you that this study defined sex as heterosexual activity with someone else. People not engaged in heterosexual activity were not included (which the researcher would have liked to have changed) and neither was masturbation counted. Only heterosexual activity with someone else. That’s worth repeating, because the quality of that sex does also depend on that “someone else.”

Echidne says it here.

One final thing, something Echidne doesn’t mention but I’ve noticed that pulls the above snippets into a common thread. Even today, but certainly in the past, “interest in sex” was men’s domain. Consequently, as I mentioned in my first real post about the no-sex class paradigm (The limits of “no means no”), men grow up expecting to be interested in sex when they’re interested in sex, with the happy (for them) consequence that when we’re not interested in sex we… pretty much don’t notice. Whereas if our partner isn’t interested in sex we do. Meanwhile women are expected to notice when their partners are interested in sex, yes, but… that pesky no-sex class paradigm, with it’s bogus Two Rules of Desire, leads men to imaging women don’t notice when their partner’s aren’t interested.

See the trick? A man can be interested in sex only once a year. But! If he has sex once a year then… he’s going to mark his sex life as “satisfactory.” Even if his partner mentions it he’s still go the weight of the two rules on his side. Meanwhile his female partner? If he wants sex more often than he she’s going to mark down “dissatisfied.” But! If he wants (or is capable of having) sex less often than she does she’s also going to mark down “dissatisfied.”

Advantage? Men. All over. Although that advantage might be one hidden reason men’s shorter lifespans.

Just a though.

This might sound weird at first but I’ve had more disappointing sexual encounters with long-term partners than with casual friends-with-privileges and/or one-night-stand partners. Chances are actually reasonably good that you have too. Here’s how.

With first-time sex even with casual partners, even when one or both don’t come, you’re both generally highly attentive of each other, highly excited, and pretty darned interested. (If you weren’t both interested and excited one or both of you will tend to put it off till you were enthusiastic about it.) So the odds of dull, off, unpleasant, or just bad hookup/casual sex are relatively low.

In long-term relationships you tend to have sex way more often, and generally under more varied circumstances. And while, especially as you grow familiar with each other’s wants and needs the sex can get better, you’re also going to have more times when one or both of you aren’t in sync, aren’t comfortable, you and/or they are just going through the motions, or otherwise you’re just not so attentive.

Percentage-wise I’d expect sex in non-casual relationships to be better, and percentage-wise it is. But terms of absolute numbers I’ve had fewer overall bad encounters with casual partners than with non-casual ones.

I wouldn’t have expected that.

Obligatory but I hope obvious caveat: I’m obviously talking adult or at least peer partners making competent mutual, and mutually respected, decisions to be sexual with each other. This may not be the case for everyone, whether in long-term or casual relationships and I think it would be a bad idea to try and extrapolate my observation to their situations.

Update See also Amanda Hess and Sady Doyle.

Monica Potts of TAPPED mulls a new, more optimistic study on the non-death of marriage in America. (Emphasis mine.)

Lately, there have been a number of articles on marriage and women, particularly black women, as if the behavior of the American couple were fodder for a Discovery-channel nature show. But people don’t get married because they’re enacting some sort of population plan. They get married and stay married when they’re happy, mature, and meet someone with whom they have something in common. To the extent that policy is aimed at marriage, maybe we should worry about improving everyone’s quality of life first.

She said it here.

Funny about that. It’s also highly contrary to the traditional/conservative (and, I think, traditionally male) notion that marriage ought to be a burden or imposition — something forced on women, say, by economic necessity, forced on men by, say, desire for sex, forced on everybody by unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, etc.

Of course by the same progressive expansive opportunity-enhancing standards, and contrary to conservative coercive opportunity-limiting ones, marriage rights should be accessible and accepted for all relationships.

The bottom line, though, is that marriage is part of a social infrastructure not separate from it. The better the infrastructure the better the prospects for marriage.

Note: Speaking of which, read TAPPED’s A. Sewer on Washington D.C.‘s recently passed and so far not blocked marriage equality act.

Cinnamonsticks of Christian Nymphos tackles a stealth issue in patriarchy, pedestals, and the no-sex class.

We hear from a lot of women who aren’t satisfied in the bedroom. Some have husbands with a low sex drive. Some have husbands who don’t know how to be good lovers to them. Some have a hard time achieving orgasm. For whatever the reason they are not happily enjoying a fulfilled sex life with their husband.

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What I want to do today is take the time to specifically focus on and discuss the importance of not transferring our part of the problem to our husbands. What often happens is that if we perceive that our husband is doing something that is keeping us from being sexually satisfied, we become so focused on his contribution to it that we forget that we are actually the ones who are primarily responsible for making sex what we want and need it to be.

She said it here.

One of the limits of traditional gender relations has been that women are given “gatekeeper” rights over only one thing: to open the gate. Everything else is held to be up to the man. Including her satisfaction. Including her disappointment.

As Barbara Eherenreich and Dierdre English, Rachel P. Maines, and others have meticulously documented, society has sometimes gone to extraordinary lengths to insure that women remain as passively dependent on their partners as humanly possible. Even in the sexually “progressive” 1970s the whole “she comes first” movement (endorsed by 2nd-wave feminism and Playboy progressives alike) held men more accountable for their partners’ enjoyment but… no less responsible for it.

In terms of heterosexuality one of the coolest things about the advent of the so-called “third wave” beginning in the 1980s was the then seriously radical idea that sex wasn’t just something that men had. There had been vibrators, yes, but they were still mostly seen (but not shown to partners) as substitutes when men weren’t around or… to “finish the job” after the man had gone to bed or gone home. But starting somewhere in the 1980s women began actively asserting ownership of their enjoyment rather than expecting their partners to provide it for them.

In many circles, both traditional and (perhaps surprisingly) progressive, this shift from women as audience of men’s performance to women as their own agents has gone over poorly. Resisted in a way that, say, tipping hats, opening doors, paying all expenses for dates, or even men leading in ballroom dancing hasn’t been. But the resistance is still an obstacle to parity.

Bottom line is it’s really (really!) important to take an active interest in our partners’ pleasure during sex. Important for men because historically we haven’t been terrifically attentive, and when even when we’ve been attentive we haven’t necessarily been very realistic. And important for women too because historically, if inaccurately, there’s been that assumption that once a partner says “yes” men can handle the rest themselves. But while it’s important for all of our partners to be actively interested in our enjoyment it’s also important that we not hold our partners responsible for our enjoyment either. So good call by Cinnamonsticks.