Back in April Echidne said of the incontrovertible biological "fact" that women's interest in men is exclusively related to men's wealth, status, or power

As long as women are, on average, poorer than men we are going to observe more female hypergamy than male hypergamy.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

That's even empirically true. But guess what else is true? For some mad, zany, bogus Rules of Desire-defying reason, the vast, vast majority of women still want relationships with men.  Why you'd think it might have something to do with... something besides "golddigging."  Maybe it even has something to do with, you know, heterosexual desire.  Just like, you know, heterosexual men!

And guess what?

Crazy I know but there you have it.

But! In the face of that "fact" of female "hypergamy" have you ever wondered women are inclined to behave when they themselves achieve personal wealth, status, and/or power?

Turns out a Dutch sociologist, Joris Lammers of Tilburg University, has spent a lot of time researching the effects of personal power on individuals' morality, legitimacy, hypocrisy, depersonalization. And it turns out he's just applied the question of how personal power affects women's relationships to fidelity and adultery in a survey of business women with 1,500 respondents.

The upshot? I'm not crazy about the source publication (the Daily Mail) but while their prose and photography is heavily larded with lurid stereotypical examples the gist seems consistent with the sort of things Lammers has said in prior articles. (His current paper is not yet available on line.)

[H]igh-earning, successful women are every bit as willing as men to use their power to attract younger lovers for quick flings.

...

However, a new academic study suggests women are inherently no more virtuous than men. It’s just that, in the past, they have lacked the confidence or opportunity to stray.

...

Like men, women are finding that power is a potent aphrodisiac. And just like men, they are giving in to the thrill of illicit lunchtime assignations and the sheer excitement that accompanies their transgression.

Nor do they feel any more guilty or ashamed about it than a man would — if anything, less so.

Source: The Daily Mail

That tends to bear out Echidne's point. Much of what we "know" about women's "nature" comes from history and tradition. And for most of history, and by near-universal tradition, women have had doodly-squat personal power, status, or wealth. And when one is in a dependent situation one makes other trade-offs in exchange. And when it comes to sexual relationships, especially possibly reproductive ones, the tradeoff evidently is less sexual fulfillment and self-expression in favor of maintaining the trust and interest of the person one depends on.

But!

That means many of the qualities tradition and history assigns to women are artifacts of power, status, and wealth imbalances rather "natural" ones. In other words the behavior we're used to is a product of socially-constructed gender not innate biological sex.

And incidentally I'd just add that whereas one might be tempted to say that power, status, or wealth makes women behave "just like men" that that too is gender construction. For that matter it's also class construction. Because to say "women of independent means are as likely as independent men to be unfaithful" isn't to say that if all women of means aren't unfaithful then the assertion falls apart. And that would be because the assertion also means that non-dependent men are no more likely to commit adultery than comparable women. And in fact, over all, men and women are approximately as inclined to fidelity and monogamy as they're inclined towards adultery and polyfidelity.

There are observed differences but the Daily Mail's reporter, Ruth Sunderland (who unlike many of her colleagues, must not have been drunk or horny), interviewed a Financial Times columnist and novelist, Lucy Kellaway and came away with a likely reason that's also far more social than "natural."

‘There is a double standard,’ she says. ‘A man having an affair might be seen as a bit of a lad, whereas a woman like Stella in my book is likely to be seen as pathetic, or a bitch and a slapper.

‘Because there are so few women executives, the ones that do succeed are put on a pedestal — and they have a lot farther to fall. The message of my book is that affairs end badly for everyone.’

And, while the figures demonstrate very clearly that increasing numbers of successful women are being tempted to stray, can women really divorce sex from commitment in the same way as a man?

Well, no, not if you put it that way. But the reason isn't that women are different from men, it's that society judges women differently from men.

That's not the same thing at all, at all: "held to a different, double-standard" simply isn't a heritable biological trait.

Via Emily Tan and Em and Lo.

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon nails one big problem with big political sex scandals

...one wonders why, when straight Republican politicians are caught with their pants down, anyone thinks they owe the world an apology.  Apologies are hypocritical.  Their stance is clear—-straight men get to have all the sex they want with all the women they want.  It’s not straight male sexuality, in any of its manifestations, that’s bringing down society.  It’s women having sex without being punished repeatedly for it

She said it here.

I occasionally ding Amanda for snarking so snarkily that she makes what she’s mocking sound reasonable and (yikes!) eternally true. In this case, though, it really is true: the flip side of the conservative dictum that “boys will be boys” is that men — us superior bastions of plenary patriarchal pride — have the ethics, morals, and impulse control of four-year-olds. So everything we do “wrong” is women’s fault anyway, thus leaving us utterly blameless and free of any burden of actually growing up.

That doesn’t mean men can’t, won’t, or don’t grow up. It just means there’s absolutely no demand nor expectation that we do so. And given people’s tendency to rise to but rarely beyond what’s expected of us?

—-

And not to go all meta here or anything but one wonders what the natural contours of propriety would be if men weren’t taught we were institutionally blameless and women weren’t taught by example to endlessly scrutinize themselves not only for their own missteps but for everyone elses.

What if we believed our mythology of romance in partnership so thoroughly we had to make up excuses for having affairs?

I mean… y’know how back before there was “no fault” divorce (actually, I hope you don’t... mercifully, at least most places in the U.S. it’s been a while.) Anyway, back before you could just tell a judge “it’s not working” you had to have a reason. One of the big ones back then was “alienation of affection.” And oh the cases people could (and had to!) build to prove just how alienated their affections were. Then along came no-fault divorce and… not so much.

I’m sort of wondering if the same couldn’t be said for the subset of people who seem to have a hard time being monogamous. I mean, if you buy into the idea that true love has to not only be forever but also has to meet all your needs sexual, domestic, economic, social, psychological, etc. then… it’s gotta be hard to admit to yourself that sometimes we just get horny, or lonely, or restless, or bored. Or just curious!

If you’re busy thinking “I’m stronger than that,” or “I’m not that kind of girl,” or “my parents didn’t raise me to be like that” or, especially “he/she’s the love of my life, I want to spend the rest of my life with him/her” then… well, it’s either going to work, in which case great! Case closed. Or it’s not going to work and rather than compromise on what you say about yourself you start cooking up reasons not to be so attached to your partner. They drive you crazy. Or they’re never home. Or there’s that annoying little whistle when he/she laughs through her nose. Or, classically, he/she’s gotten all stodgy/dowdy and settled in his/her ways And son of a gun, after a while you’ve convinced yourself. Whereupon someone you might have enjoyed a casual fling with suddenly starts looking a lot like Christmas.

Problem #2 being that, well, someone who you might have enjoyed a casual fling with is probably not at all an improvement on the person you decided to spend the rest of your life with and then invested a large part of your life with. Which, incidentally, is why such a low, low percentage of people who leave their partners for another person actually wind up staying with that other person.

Point being that we’re so invested in the idea of monogamy (serial or otherwise) we don’t have a lot of narrative for scratching an itch and having it go away after we scratch it. Of having an affair and being really comfortable and happy when we return to our familiar, much-loved regular partners.

Another clue? People who have a fling and then use all that internalized social expectation (“I’m not that kind…” etc.) to alienate themselves from their partners.

If I wasn’t so fond of long-term relationships, and if I wasn’t sort of tired of seeing really good people breaking up with other really good people, often over affairs… if I wasn’t becoming more than a little tired of our explanation that “it’s just that way” ... and if I wasn’t so darned irked at that Ashley Madison ad, I probably wouldn’t keep bringing it up.

Note: I can’t find the link but evidence suggests that, all other things being equal, long-term outcomes for children are no better when parents stay together “for the children” than when they divorce.

Note #2: See another good post and discussion in comments at Dana’s place over at Life Amid Crisis

Photo “Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyck, 1434” by Flickr user geekulr.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

Twisty Faster of I Blame The Patriarchy says

I did watch a few minutes of an old movie on TCM last night, though, and was repelled enough by its Yay Patriarchyness to embark on a series of contemplations on how Western literature would scarcely exist if plots did not so consistently revolve around the purity of the female lead’s vagina, puritanical conceits concerning marriage and divorce, and whose-baby-is-it. Seriously, if you take away bastards, fallen women, and dominion-over-the-uterus as plot devices, nearly the whole canon instantly evaporates. I honestly don’t know how TCM broadcasts this crap with a straight face. “The story of a man who lived a man’s life, the story of a woman who believed in one man.”

She said it here.

Good call.

You know that blogospheric aphorism that insanity is defined as repeatedly trying the same thing expecting a different outcome? Contemplating Twisty’s observation I’m left wondering if the endless repetition she mentions has a similar basis. I mean… sure, if the dominant culture was still a semi-nomadic one that considered women a) one more form of domestic animal that b) nevertheless produced male offspring for men to bequeath their assets to then maybe we could tell the story once and make it stick. Instead we keep trying to watch, or read, listen to, or even re-enact those narratives and…

It’s not really relevant any more — no more than fathers “giving away” their daughters at their weddings.

And by the way, what would bequeath left after evaporating that bulk of the canon there’s still plenty of room for romance, adventure, lust, discovery, betrayal, achievement, loss, joy, and tragedy. In other words it needn’t be reduced to variations on the Travel Channel. Because at this point who one has or hasn’t slept with in the past is, or should be, as relevant to romance as whether they have a dowry, can churn butter, rope a calf, or sharpen a quill pen.

Almost completely-random aside: Speaking of churning butter I made some for the first time last weekend. It’s astonishingly easy. For the record (should I be posting this on Recipe Tuesday?) two pints of heavy whipping cream makes almost exactly one pound of the best-tasting, authentically rich golden-yellow butter I’ve ever eaten. It takes maybe 20 minutes with an electric mixer. I mention this now because with the holidays upon us you can expect to see whipping cream on sale from time to time, and while it’s probably not cost effective to make all your butter yourself it could be a real eye-opener for a holiday dinner, breakfast, or brunch.