sex roles

Sociobiology and Body Image

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-08-31 19:59

Seems to me that if our beauty standards were purely about reproductive fitness, as pop sociobiologists and pop evolutionary psychologists claim, and if their notion that “primitive” human society was exactly like Ozzie and Harriet’s nuclear family with breadwinner men and stay-at-home women then…

a) The most desirable-looking women would tend to wear size 10-14 (U.S. standard) or a little bit higher and at least look like they’d survived bearing and nurturing a child at least once previously and look able to do so again. And since any outside activity they did do would tend to be gathering, and thus need to be already well-versed in plant ID and habitat they’d probably also be a bit older so they could remember where all the good stuff could be found.

b) The most desirable men would at least look extraordinarily young and incredibly fit in order to appear able to bring down food and defend their families.

That almost the opposites seem to be true suggests sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists suffer from… considerable selection bias. Keep banging the rocks together, guys.

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The Word of the Day is Reciprocity

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-02-16 18:05

Excellent advice from Em of Em & Lo: Sex. Love. And Everything in Between.

If we all followed the golden rule of reciprocity in bed, we think there’d be more sex, more orgasms, less bickering, fewer sex advice columnists (we’d be out of a job!), and possibly even world peace. Remember, if your partner tickles your back, it’s not just because they’re being nice — they want you to tickle their back, too. And anything tactile, whether it’s a back massage or a nipple tweak or oral sex, feels better when you don’t have to ask for it.

I nicked the whole post but you’ll see the original text plus a lovely, erotic but mostly-work-safe photo here.

It’s funny that Em would have to remind us but… we hear over and over… and over and over and over… that the hetero bias towards one-way sex is frustratingly durable.

I don’t want to bring up my, um, universal explanation for everything but it does seem that if people were a bit more willing to acknowledge that women might enjoy sex because it feels good and not just because they like making letting their man feel good in exchange for some other, non-sexual benefit we’d probably all enjoy ourselves a lot more. There’d certainly be more orgasms during sex. And there might be probably be fewer sex advice columnists. I’m actually not sure about world peace or even less bickering since I’m not a big believer in the “...just needs to get laid” theory of conflict resolution. I do think there might be less bickering about sex.

But forget all that! You know what’s really nice about reciprocity? It’s not the “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” that makes it cool. It’s the “doing unto others, period” that’s cool. Because, seriously, scratching or massaging someone else’s back is fun. Tweaking someone’s nipple back is fun. Oral sex? Can I just make the only-seemingly-paradoxical proposal that while it’s not as orgasmic to eat someone it’s just as much fun?

The one caveat? “Reciprocity” isn’t the same as “payback.” If you’re eating your partner, say, only because they won’t eat you if you don’t? Then yeah, resentment’s kind of a buzzkill… but it’s a buzzkill both ways. I’d also point out that reciprocity also isn’t “I’m rubber and you’re glue.” It might be that one of you rocks out over receiving oral and the other only gets of when she or he is on top. If so then great — reciprocity can work that way too.

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And From the Industry That Coined the Acronym "MILF" No Less

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2008-05-17 17:25


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

Lynne Murray of Body Impolitic says of the 2002 documentary entitled Searching for Debra Winger directed by Rosanna Arquette.

Arquette interviewed “older” actresses, who are essentially an endangered species in Hollywood.

...

As the actresses in Searching point out in amusing, though crazy-making examples, getting a part or not getting a part will often depend on whether the male decision maker deems them as “fuckable.”

Daryl Hannah came close to the issue when she talked about how, when she played the mother of a teenager, she was required to wear an ugly brown wig and flour-sack-style, shapeless dress. Her question was, why can’t mothers of teenagers look like the beautiful, blondes at the table? Well, yeah, some do. But the deeper question is why is only blonde and thin is deemed desirable at any age? Whoopi Goldberg addressed this question with total candor. “Aunts are cool. Aunts fuck,” she said. “Grandmas fuck.” To quote Jan and Dean, “Go Granny, go!” It was well worth watching the DVD just to hear Whoopi Goldberg’s comments.

Read the whole post here.

It’s kind of a good question, eh? It’s not even that it’s stupid or short-sighted to pigenhole actresses so narrowly. (Murray’s post quotes from The First Wive’s Club, “There are only three ages for women in Hollywood – Babe, District Attorney, and Driving Miss Daisy.”) It’s also (excuse me for being crass and seemingly single-minded) stupid and short-sighted to pigenhole the definition of “fuckability.” Or even “babe.” (And at least nobody in the article mentioned the risible “cougar,” which seems to mean someone who’s still interested in sex even though she’s old enough to buy her own car and not just drive one.)

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From (Monkey) Shinola™

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2008-04-26 07:14

Oh yeah, and speaking of rhesus monkeys and how the “no-sex” class paradigm — like any paradigm good or bad — makes certain questions very easy to answer and others almost impossible to even ask, here’s another interesting point from Mary Roach’s new book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex.

One question you might not ordinarily associate with the no-sex class paradigm or any other, for that matter, would be “why did 62 married American women smear synthesized rhesus monkey “sex pheromones” onto their chests before getting into bed with their husbands every night for three months back in 1977.”

In fact if not for Mary Roach only a few hundred people might have ever asked, or been asked, that question at all.

The answer? Well…

The short answer is that the researchers paid them. ... The long answer is that monkey-observing scientists used to believe that the reason rhesus monkeys have more sex around the time the females ovulate is not that the female is under the sway of hormones that push her to make a move, but rather than the female has pheromones — chemical triggers of behavior — that prompt the males to make a move.

Source: Bonk, pg 289

Emphasis mine. In other words, yes, scientists were willing to consider that females might have some sort of hormones that triggered sexual interest when they ovulated. But they were so wrapped up in anthropomorphism (which might be even more accurately termed androcentrism) that those female hormones wouldn’t affect the actual female but would instead cue males to (as romance novels so quaintly put it) “take” them.

Roach adds that the turns-out-to-be-unsupported, passive-pheromone-releasing female theory…

...set our understanding of female hormones and female sexual behavior way off down the wrong boulevard. It implied that when it came to sex, the female primate was a passive receptacle with no drive or interest of her own.

And so…

y’see…

...it’s like

Pardon my textual sputtering but look. Y’know what I kept wondering when I read about the old behaviorist B.F. Skinner who claimed people are just big bags of reaction-formation-izing reflexes? I just kept wondering what the hell he thought was going on when he was lying in bed late at night, listening to the breathing of his partner, staring through darkness and contemplating the ecstasy and/or agony of existence.

And so I also wonder what stories we — men and women, or more accurately men and at men’s unconscious-but-enforced insistence women — have been able to tell ourselves for all these generations that could have so blinded us to something so amazingly obvious. And I’m not talking about female monkeys and I’m not talking about anything as B.F. Skinner-y as “behavior.”

Anyway, just to be clear, the idea of the “no-sex” class ideology is pretty clear: men grow up with the idea that women are intrinsically, biologically disinterested in sex and, therefore, that leverage must be used to “get” women to have sex***. Ignoring what’s evidently fairly blatant-once-you-see-it initiating/courtship behaviors of female monkeys in favor of assaying their sweat for aromatic proteins that might get males off the dime is not the biggest consequence either.

[** None of which, Roach points out, ever amounted to anything. Except, I’d point out, yet another bogus product for spammers to hawk along side penis enlargers and herbal viagra. —fl]

[*** Leverage can mean anything from “proper” offers of marriages to trickery or violence… with the only difference being whether one or another form of leverage is polite or rude, fair or unfair, legal or illegal. The only thing that’s never questioned inside the ideology is that one way or another women have no sexual agency and therefore must be prompted or activated by men. —fl]

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Surpassing, Exceeding, and Defying Expectations

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2008-02-09 22:18

Teppycat of The Switch Is Not A Myth, a bit nettled about role expectations in BDSM, raises a set of points that apply to nearly all role-based stereotypes.

But what pisses me off more, what this entry is about, is the assumption that, because I switch roles when it comes to BDSM, I also switch how I interact with the world outside the dungeon. Uh, no. Who I am is who I am.

An example: I was at a meeting of the local BDSM group, and we were splitting into small groups to get some administrative crap done. It was like herding cats, and, because I’m bossy and anal and would have made an excellent dictator of a small island nation, I took charge and directed the groups to where they should sit, made sure everyone had pens and paper, etc.

The president of the group (who happens to be a male dom) snarkily commented, “Well, I see which way you’re switching today!”

Uh, no. My whole life, I’ve been bossy and pushy and anal-retentive and really good at organizing things and people. I’ve never been shy and retiring or too timid to speak up, EVER. Just because I’m being outspoken doesn’t mean that I’m “being toppy.” If I were taciturn, that wouldn’t mean I was “being submissive.”

Read the quote in context here.

And since I don’t think one can ever do enough to encourage readers to visit linked-to sites I’ll just add that a couple paragraphs down from the part I quoted Teppycat has a sharp paragraph about the assumptions that lead people to sneer at submissives who express their opinions in group discussions, and that lead tops to imagine they’re best suited to lead discussions.

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Ass-u-me: Make A Beast of Burden Out of U and Me

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2007-10-27 12:03

Photo by Flickr user Onnufry used under a Creative Commons license.

This post is about gender assumptions. In this case both “assume” in the normal sense of “impose by expectation informed by stereotype” but also “assume” in the sense of “take on titles, offices, duties, responsibilities.”

Emily Bazelon of Slate’s quasi-ghettoized XX-Factor blog raises two good points, one about stereotyping forward, the other about struggling out of self-stereotype.

This morning one of my co-workers was worrying about a conversation he’d had with a mother at his daughter’s school, who’d tried to talk to him about rearranging a playdate for his kid and hers. He hadn’t known anything about the arrangement in the first place, and I said that most moms would know not to try to talk playdate with a dad. Which didn’t exactly give him credit for trying to sort it all out, or encourage him to try again next time. This is why when my husband chides me for referring to “my kitchen,” I say I’m sorry. At least I think I do.

She said it here.

Play dates are easy for women because play dates are easy for the stay at home parent and, still, more often than not, women are the stay at home parent.

As the stay at home dad I’m nominally supposed to do most of the play date arranging. And indeed since I pick up our children from school more often than my partner since she’s often working I do arrange more play dates over all — mostly by being grabbed by this child or that asking “can we have a play date?” If the mom (there are still usually only a few other dads at school) is at hand we negotiate it there. Otherwise it’s out with my cell phone and (since the youngest is in 3rd grade now and, of course, the play date candidates know their parent’s phone number) I let them ask permission of which ever parent they see fit. Sometimes we arrange play dates in advance but those are usually ordered around things like soccer practice or games where I just bring home children to play till practice. Parents usually pick up their own children and often one of them will return mine so I don’t have to make an extra trip. Sometimes you or another child’s parent makes calls and arrange play dates in advance.

That all works fabulously well and it’s extraordinarily easy to keep track of.

If you’re the one making the arrangements.

That all works fabulously well, too, and is extraordinarily easy for one’s partner to keep track of if…

if…

if and only if…
You write it down where the other partner(s) can see it should they need to know! In other words it’s not a testicle thing. It’s not an ovary thing. It’s a calendar/schedule/daytimer/communication thing.

Also a is-this-a-shared-responsibility thing, of course, and that makes a nice segue into Bazelon’s second point: who’s kitchen is it?

I do virtually all the shopping and cooking in our house, from first coffee in the morning to breakfast (something hot and home-made most days like oatmeal, steamed pot-stickers, pancakes or eggs, with cold cereal once or twice) to school lunches (sometimes a sandwich, sometimes freshly steamed veggies with nori seaweed, sometimes left-over soup or fresh-cooked spaghetti or ravioli) to dinner (I won’t even start) to desserts if there are any to late night snacks (if, for instance, ramen or some other kind of soup is requested.) And while I certainly don’t do all the cleanup I do quite a bit.

That’s been the arrangement for roughly as long as our 5th grader has been in school. Every now and then, though, my partner still gets nettled about the way I prioritize kitchen cleanup. Indoctrination runs deep. The funny thing is that any time she goes off that way I initially cringe and start apologizing for… what? Messing up her kitchen? Yes, it’s silly. And yes even though I spend a lot of time there it’s still our kitchen. But we each had that Kool-aid poured for us long before we could speak.

But “poured for us” isn’t the same as “bred into us.” Our children may have their own domestic manias and obsessions when they grow up, but I’ll be surprised if they’re the same as ours.

Photo by Flickr user onnufry used under a Creative Commons license.

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