It seems to me that one consequence of the widely held but unfounded ideology that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for men to be sexually desired would be that men should feel particularly… (dare I say unreasonably) threatened by a heterosexual partner’s affair. Especially if it’s also still widely held that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for women’s desire to be sexual.

At least compared to the equally irrational relative indifference to men having affairs with heterosexual partners.

Because, it seems to me, if men can have (are expected to have!) sexual desire then coupling with someone else can be written off as just that: disruptive, sure, and unpleasant for his spouse, but not otherwise socially economically problematic. Whereas if women are expected to have no sexual desire then coupling with someone else must be assessed in terms of what the “interloping” man has to “offer” her. Which, by implication, and almost by definition, must have exchange value.

Charming system, eh?

[Sept. 22, 2008: Doh! I found this post in my drafts pile and couldn’t believe I hadn’t posted it. In comments Nightfall reminded me that I already had! Mea Culpa (which isn’t, but ought to be, Latin for dang it all.) Sorry about that. —fl]

Photo “Raspberry Sauce for Goose” by Flickr user newwavegurly. Used under a
Creative Commons license.

Donald Zimmer of AskMen.com manifests the… quirkiness of the “no-sex” class paradigm in “sex health advisor” column

Sexual Surplus

My husband and I have sexual problems. I am a freak; ready and willing to please him in any way, shape or form (with the exception of him being with somebody else). I will let him watch me as I do another female or let him do me while I do another female, but I don’t like to share at all! The question is: How to I spark his interest in sex and keep it?

At one point he couldn’t keep his hands off me. Now I can barely get him to put them on. I would just like to keep him interested, and was wondering if y’all had any advice? I’m not an ugly woman; I have put on some weight but my breasts went from a 36B to a 42DD. When they were smaller I had no feeling in them at all; now it’s a whole different story! Plus I like the benefits that they bring to the bedroom.

[signed] Alexandra

Alexandra,

I think the source of your problem can be best summarized as follows: You can have too much of a good thing. In other words, your husband’s current lack of interest may be the consequence of his having enjoyed free rein in the bedroom for so long. There’s a lot to be said for keeping some forbidden fruit in a relationship; in the absence of taboos, every sexual act can become commonplace.

I’m no therapist, Alexandra, and you may eventually conclude that a therapist is required. But in the meantime, try doing a little withholding. You’ll be surprised at how much more we want what we can’t have.

Donald Zimmer
Read the actual article here.

What’s the name of that website Amanda Marcotte used to reference? The one that reverses genders in any English text you paste into it? (I think as well as handling gendered pronouns and body parts it may have also been able to substitute first names, as in “John” for “Jane” or “Donna” for “Donald.”) Anyway I ask because I’m… pretty sure Zimmer would have had different advise if his correspondent had been named “Alexander” instead of “Alexandra.”

I mean, don’t you think? Although actually our narratives about gender are such that if a man bothered to write in with such a complaint I’m not sure many advice columnists would have bothered answering.

I am sure, however, that a man wouldn’t be advised that “... your problem can be best summarized as follows: You can have too much of a good thing. In other words, your [wife’s] current lack of interest may be the consequence of [her] having enjoyed free rein in the bedroom for so long.”

Funny thing, of course, is that it’s actually excellent relationship advice for any partner who’s sexual appetite is larger than his or her partner’s! What makes it funny though, again, is that no one ever offers that solution to men even though we’re far more likely to express the complaint.

See what I mean? The “natural” answer for a high-libido woman is “play hard to get.” It’s not the “natural” answer for high-libido men (which by convention is usually abbreviated as “men”) because most people recognize that while it’s possible it’s neither fun nor easy…

Nor is “have less sex” exactly the most consistent advice for someone who’s request was…

...how to have more sex.

Double-bind much?

—-

Quick semi-digression: I chose the word “appetite” carefully, by the way, because that same disparity shows up in a lot of places. A few years ago some enterprising young economists studied phone dynamics of couples in long-term relationships. Their finding was that if one member needs to check in every two days and another every three then the first member will do nearly all the calling… with resulting resentment and irritation about “clinginess” and/or “aloofness”... even though given just a little more time the second member would want to check in just as badly as the first! And might even be the “clingy” member with a different partner who needed to check in every four days. The point being that “I’m not lonely yet“ isn’t the same as “I don’t get lonely” or, more significantly, “I’m indifferent to you.” In food the analogy would be “No thanks, I’m still full from our last meal,” not “I never get hungry.” And in sex the analogy would be “I’m not horny yet, not “I have a low or no libido.”

[** Not that Goose or Gander though. :-) —fl]

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

Scott Lemieux of TAPPED says of shirt-starchy speculation around the nation regarding what Eliot Spitzer’s wife Silda Wall Spitzer “ought” to do.

... none of us (unless they knew them) has any idea what Silda Wall knew or what she should do or whether it would be best for their daughters if she took them back to North Carolina. She seems to be an extremely smart person and I trust her to make her own judgments. The idea that people think they can know about the relationships of total strangers is bizarre.

And this has always been a locus of unfair commentary about Hillary Clinton. She’s been frequently attacked — mostly by people who are indifferent or hostile towards feminism — as a betrayer of feminism for staying with her husband. And, of course, had she left she would have been roundly attacked by many of these people as selfish, cold, unforgiving, etc. You can never win, especially if you’re a woman. Which is why minding one’s own business about how consenting adults conduct their own relationships is generally a sound principle.

He says it here. (Emphasis mine.)

So. This is another one of those situations where the conduct is almost always presented as going only one way, agency-wise. Now it’s certainly the case that if most politicians are going to be male, then most in-the-news political sex scandals are going to have a pretty big “how could he…?” component as opposed to a “how could she…?” But one heck of a lot of women also have affairs. Fewer, yes, but only in the sense that one out of four women is fewer than one out of three men — it’s still a heck of a lot of people.

And popular social narratives notwithstanding it’s just not the case that all women who have affairs are all seduced in the definitional sense of “1) To lead away from duty, accepted principles, or proper conduct.”

Now don’t get me wrong. The conditions created by the dominant paradigm of women as the “no-sex” class really does pressure men by linking their sense of self-worth by whether or how often they can “score” with women, just as it pressures women by piling consequence upon consequence for “failure” to do so.

But… seriously? The following The Daily Show with Samantha Bee demonstrates first the unfaltering social script when men cheat on their partners…

[via Echidne of the Snakes. —fl]

... but also demonstrates the one-way absurdity of the script by bringing out a nominal husband figure to stand by her as she admits being unprepared because she’d attended an orgy the previous evening. The skit is funny (really) but also problematic because it illustrates how few social scripts we have for acknowledging, let alone processing women’s infidelity.

I mean, sure, there are plenty of scripts about what one is supposed to claim one would do — “I’d leave,” “I’d get me a rifle / gonna git my .44 / gonna shoot anybody / I don’t like at all” and so on. But in practice most men, like most women, stay with their partners.

And lest the case of women in affairs seem all a bit abstract, Dana Goldstein of points to a highly current-events-oriented case

My god. If I have to write another early morning blog post about a politician’s sex life, I’m just going to have to stay in all day and shower. Now New York’s new governor, David Paterson, has admitted to an extramarital affair that ended in 2001. His wife, Michelle, also says she cheated.

Details here, emphasis mine.

I bring this up not least because as positions of power come further towards parity the question is sort of bound to come up. And come up more often.

Chelsea Girl of Pretty Dumb things has a nice meditation on the difference between stripping, which she once did for a living, and prostitution, which she did not do for a living and felt mostly fairly self-righteous about it…

Which is, I have to say, crazy. I have known a handful of women who have spent time escorting. I like them. They have been, without exception, smart, creative, articulate and interesting. Why would I need so desperately to define myself against them and their one-time profession? What purpose does it serve me? Why, in short, does it make me feel better about myself? I still don’t have a succinct response.

I do know that all of this elliptical solipsism has made me realize this: there is, in fact, nothing at all intrinsically wrong with being a fucking whore. There may be problems attached to it—not everyone can do it without suffering emotional scars, as the College Callgirl has recently written. Not everyone does it free from coercion or drugs or fear or any of the many nefariousnesses that surround prostitution. Few people, I suspect, choose to go into prostitution without pressing financial need, but I could be wrong. That could be the vestiges of my preconceptions talking.

I suspect that there will be a chick-and-egg relationship between whoredom and acceptance of it. Prostitution probably won’t be treated with the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves until people see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore, and people won’t see that there’s not much wrong with being a whore until whoring gets the kind of legal and social understanding it deserves. I realize here that I’m conflating all the flavors of prostitution into one flat pancake, and that this conflation is problematic. We as a culture seem to have more compassion but less tolerance for streetwalkers, while we have less compassion and more tolerance for escorts, for example, and that’s a class thing, and it’s a problem. I am, for brevity’s sake, lumping all prostitution into one indiscreet bundle. Whatever the kind of prostitution, I suspect there’s a catch-22 relationship in effect in terms of public perception. It’s a shame.

I suspect, though, that as the Internet has changed so much, so quickly, it will change this matter too. For it has changed me. Reading the writing of women sex-workers I don’t know, as well as meeting a few of them, has made me confront my own hypocritical attitudes. And that’s a good thing.

No one—whore, or not, or something somewhere in between—wants to be a fucking hypocrite.

The rest of her post is just as well written and just as well reasoned. Click here to read the rest.

Like Chelsea Girl the prostitutes I’ve met socially are no more hearts-of-gold than crack ‘hos than moonlighting stockbrokers of myth and legend. Instead they’ve struck me pretty consistently as people. Other than long or short term career choices they’re just not much different from most other people from their demographic backgrounds. Certainly pleasant enough people, no more or less so than anyone else.

So for me, like she, I think the profession of prostitution is circularly stigmatized — bad because it’s bad because… well… only whores do it. And that’s sort of stupid.

A problem I do have with prostitution is the customers. Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, vivisecting a right-wing tool for whining “How the hell did sex get put on the f—ing left? Really, since when are centerfolds images of cultural and political leftism,” puts the issue front and center.

It’s almost as if women aren’t rights-bearing people worth mentioning, just warm, inviting holes that could be available for purchase if it weren’t for those damn anti-prostitution laws.

Way more context for the quote here.

There was a line in one of the early episodes of the Brit comedy Absolutely Fabulous – Complete Series 1-3 where [mumble mumble] tells her daughter she simply can’t pay attention because “Mommy needs to go to her colonics appointment.” To which the daughter replies “You just don’t go poopie like common people do.” And that summarizes my dismay with prostitution customers as well.

There’s nothing wrong with getting colonic hydrotherapy so you don’t have to poop. Similarly there’s nothing wrong with bolting food out of the pot over the sink and calling it “fuel.” And similarly there’s nothing wrong with hiring someone to increase men’s dopamine and other sex-related neurotransmitters (strippers) or increace the neurotransmitters and extract their semen for them either (prostitutes.) But what’s weird is that a lot of people grow up thinking any of the above examples is not like the other one when, in fact, they’re all of a piece.

Well, except for the part where we have more respect for people who vaccum other people’s anuses with soapy hoses for money than for prostitutes. Or the part where we tend to feel more sorry for men who eat over the sink than for those who hire strippers or prostitutes. Or the part where we balk at women extracting semen for cash but not boxing up food to be eaten over the sink. Ok, ok, perhaps I digress…

My real issue with prostitution, I guess I’m trying to say, is that it just wouldn’t exist, or wouldn’t exist in any recognizable form, if men didn’t have this expectation that women’s sexuality is available only through leverage since they have no innate sexual feelings of their own. Or the daft notion that women who enjoy sex as much as men do aren’t the norm or, worse, aren’t “good girls.”

But inside my objection there’s no room for objecting to women who choose that line of work, nor room for a line distinguishing them from women, or men, who provide any of the other services mentioned above. If there’s a problem, they’re not the problem.