I need to warn you that there is going to be a little language in this post and if that’s off-putting you can just skip it and join me in rolling your eyes as the language is not just because I’m discussing an article on sex in marriage, its also because I will be swearing at its author, sex therapist and obsessive male apologist Bettina Arndt.
Fuck you, Bettina Arndt. That feels better, so now the article, which is Happily Married Sex from a current copy of The Bulletin, see here. The premise of the article is that Arndt believes there is a sex crisis going on in marriages because women got a little too uppity during the womens’ movement and now they are refusing to put out for their poor husbands unless they themselves feel like having sex. The nerve of some wives.
Reading the article you’re supposed to join her and a bunch of who knows how many silly old buggers in mourning the dawn of enlightenment when the women’s movement allowed us to recognise that women have the right to only have sex willingly (gasp!). In fact I’d go further and remind the old farts that to force your wife to have sex unwillingly is rape and hasn’t that little legal landmark killed the fun of marriage.
Sex in marriage isn’t what it used to be. Gone are the days when sex was simply part of women’s wifely duties. Now most men find themselves on the back foot, feeling very much at the mercy of women’s whim. And that makes for lean pickings given the large numbers of women who go off sex.
There seems to be a universal epidemic of women not wanting to have sex. Or at least not wanting as much sex as their partners.
Yes, marriages were much better in the good old days when women were at the mercy of men’s whims for sex and whatever he demanded of her she had to provide. How restrictive that you’re only supposed to have sex these days with someone who wants to have sex with you. And I’m not sure what the numbers in this universal epidemic are because Arndt is too busy relying on anecdotal evidence to provide any data but I can reveal to you that Arndt is watching a bit of daytime TV because her sources include a guest on Oprah. Might I match her with some anecdotal data of my own and say that I don’t hear of women being turned off sex in their droves from the people in my life, including the women I know in my mother’s generation. In fact maybe men aren’t raving beasts of uncontrollable libido – maybe both men and women are complicated beings with varying libidos and different approaches to sex across the course of their lives.
Speaking of that old stereotype about men wanting sex all the time and women wanting hearts and flowers instead, Arndt also uses some tired old theories about sex and hormones, as in, its all in the hormones. Men have more testosterone on average than women and because testosterone is all there is to libido all men have higher libidos and poor things can’t help that and therefore women have to have sex more often that they’d like to fulfill the biologically-driven needs (not wants) of men. Sadly Arndt’s conversation with Susan Davis (Monash University’s professor of women’s health and a world leader in the study of hormones affecting female drive) doesn’t support this theory. Golly gosh, Davis has found that there’s a huge variation in libido in both genders and very little of it is due to hormones.
Never mind the scientific experts, Arndt has an anecdote to support her theory that men are super-charged sex machines and women are quivvering, virginal types.
Amy continues: “Even if I refused him, I’d be so upset that I’d lie awake at night thinking, ‘Why did I say no?’ I might as well have let him have it because the next day he’d be so grumpy.” “That’s right,” Jim acknowledges ruefully, “I was a great sulker.” Even on days he didn’t approach her, Amy says she was nervous. “He’d be snoring loudly and I’d still lie there worrying that the hand was going to come creeping over.”It’s now almost 30 years since Amy lay rigid in bed, dreading the creeping hand.
Is that lying rigid or frigid in bed? Something about this story sounds so familiar. This anecdote has the ring of days gone by when bad sex lives were assumed to be a result of the wife’s sexual dysfunction. Oh hark the frigid woman who recoils from normal marital gestures! Its hard to imagine why Amy doesn’t feel all sexed up by this emotionally manipulative seduction routine because as Arndt sees it, women should be thankful that men are pestering them for sex and are not repulsed by their undesirable ageing body. And if thought processes like this don’t put you in the mood then you’re clearly frigid.
How reassuring that, despite the sags and bulges of a less-than-perfect body, you are still wanted.
Now that we’re quite sure that the problem in this marriage is Amy’s frigid state we can explore what leads women like Amy to become so frigid. You might guess it was the way sex in Amy’s marriage has become so tied up with obligation and her husband’s and not her own needs? No, its the feminists of course.
But there was another huge stumbling block – in Amy’s head. This was the 1970s, a time when women’s sexual rights had become a rallying cry.
Women were to reclaim their bodies for their own pleasure and that meant having sex only when they felt like it. Female desire must come first, pronounced the famous sex researchers Masters and Johnson.
The recognition that women should only have sex when they want to isn’t prioritising female desire over male desire, its valuing women’s and men’s desire equally. Is it just because it is more difficult to force an unaroused man into heterosexual sex that we don’t bother to entertain the idea that men should have to have sex for the sake of a wife’s higher libido or is it because we don’t in fact prioritise female desire over male desire, far from it? Arndt’s got it nailed, in her simplified world men always have strong libidos and the simple solution to any libido mismatches is that women should always accomodate them.
She’d got it all wrong, Amy now realises. As we all have had it wrong. The assumption that women need to want sex to enjoy it has been a really damaging idea that has wreaked havoc in relationships for the past 40 years.
Yeah, that’s the problem with sex today – women think they should have the same right as men to choose when they want to have sex. Because imagine the compromise involved in considering just one partner’s willingness to have sex and then multiply that by two. Oh the hardship. Now you’ve got a whole lot of concessions and negotiations going on, and you know what that’s called, that’s called a fucking relationship. It can be complicated, it involves some give and take, you might not get to have sex as much as you’d like, but you know what the pay-off is – you get to have sex with someone willingly, you get to have sex with someone who isn’t freaked out about your hand touching them!
Bettina Arndt says in big letters that she has “new research (which) suggests a provocative solution” to the so-called marriage crisis epidemic but what she actually provides is a run-of-the-mill bit of couple negotiation underpinned by a disturbing and destructive rape logic. So here it is.
You know when one of you isn’t seriously in the mood for sex but the other is and the one that isn’t particularly in the mood thinks they might be once you both got going on it? That’s Arndt’s break-through. The fact that it is possible for women (and men, but Arntd thinks men’s libido never wanes) to achieve an orgasm during sex on those occasions is her evidence that women should put out when their partners want sex whether they like it or not. When she says no it really means yes. It seems to escape Arndt that if you have a good sex life, one based equally around both your libidos that you might be more amenable to trying your luck with your own desire when you’re not raring to go and more likely to end up enjoying it. In fact, equal respect for both partners’ libidos is essential for ‘trying your luck’ and without that trust its a dangerous proposition. Arndt also quotes from a survey showing that a majority of women sometimes have sex when they’re not in the mood (half of them believe they will be once they get started), so I ask you just how helpful is her breakthrough marital advice going to be for women who, duh, already do this?
Arndt appreciates the insights of another sex therapist, Michele Weiner-Davis who I’d discount just for her “what kind of vegetable are you” approach but anyway…
Weiner-Davis poses the revolutionary idea that there’s no point worrying about the reasons why women aren’t interested in sex – there’ll always be plenty of them: squalling infants, stress, tiredness, irritation that he won’t help with the housework.
So the logic goes, don’t worry about why women aren’t interested in sex anymore, just pressure them into it by threatening the future happiness of their families and pretty soon their libido will be bouncing right back. Melbourne University’s Professor Lorraine Dennerstein believes there is “no evidence that frequent sexual activity improves a low libido” but don’t let that get in the way. Amy’s been cured of her frigidity, don’t get the wrong impression though, she doesn’t mention loving sex, but she’s putting out and keeping her husband happy, and that is the measure of a successful marriage, right? Now she’s counselling other women at her church and advising them to do the same. You can’t expect love, intimacy, and closeness without giving sex to your husband, that’s her informed advice. You wouldn’t expect feminism to have done its nasty deeds on all the women of the church too would you, but these women think trading sex for affection with your husband is like prostitution. Yeah, trading sex for something is like prostitution, they’re craaaaazy. Bless ’em.
If feminism can taint those lovely church women imagine what its effect has been on households everywhere? Arndt appreciates the thoughts of writer Caitlyn Flanagan.
Flanagan points out this has made life very difficult for the poor married man hoping for a bit of comfort from the wife at the day’s end. “He must somehow seduce a woman who is economically independent of him, bone-tired, philosophically disinclined to have sex unless she is jolly well in the mood, numbingly familiar with his every sexual manoeuvre and still doing a slow burn over his failure to wipe down the worktops and fold the tea-towel after cooking the children’s dinner. He can hardly be blamed for opting instead to check his emails, catch a few minutes of sport on television and call it a night.”
Why must he somehow seduce this woman? Because he feels like sex. So Arndt, he wants to have sex and it is too much to ask of him that he put some effort into engaging with his partner to see if she’d be up for some? When I feel like sex I have to consider my partner and his desires and willingness, that doesn’t feel so onerous. But wait, this husband has it harder than me, he has to attempt not to be boring in bed (if its not too much to ask) and he has to try and cope with his wife’s financial equality. Oh, the hardships. That’s not all, this harpy has him cooking dinner for his own kids and she expects him to not be leaving the kitchen in a big fucking mess afterwards. Oh my god, this is too much, no-one can possibly sustain an erection with those extraordinary demands. This would be super human.
And yet, Arndt argues that women’s libido is a fickle, difficult, easily distracted drive whereas men’s is “resilient, urgent and less dependent on the right conditions”. Well, well, well. I’m wondering if maybe, just maybe, men and women are both complicated beings, not hormonally-driven sex maniacs or hormonally-starved frigid freaks. If that’s the case, it might be worth worrying about the reasons why some women and men aren’t interested in sex anymore (thank you very much Weiner-Davis), especially if its your partner. More than likely, if you could tackle those reasons you might have a happier, more fulfilling, equal relationship with your partner and that relationship is more likely to include good sex. The answer to better sex and happier marriages doesn’t lie with women submitting to sex that they don’t want. We’ve had hundreds of years of that marital idea and it didn’t boast the happiest marriages.
Arndt, you’re so preoccupied with men’s desire but maybe if you valued women’s desire as much you’d find there were even some benefits for those poor married men. The women who aren’t continually analysing and criticizing their bodies, do you think they’re more or less liberated and uninhibited during sex? The women, who with their partners think an everyday, average, run-of-the-mill female body is attractive, do you think they enjoy their bodies more, and do you think that might mean they’re more likely to get more enjoyment from sex too? The women who believe their sexual desire and libido is as important as their partner’s, do you think they might be more comfortable in their sex life? That’s called feminism. So Arndt, consider this. Feminists have better sex.
To the husbands referred to in Arndt’s article, here’s some free sex advice. No-one owes you a fuck; married, partnered, or single, theres not a guarantee in life that your sex quota will be filled. Sex is a participatory act, it is not something that you do to someone else or that someone lies there and tolerates from you, and would you even want it to be? If you want to get off but you don’t care about someone else’s participation, that’s called masturbation, not sex. And masturbation is the answer to those times when you want sex and she doesn’t. If that gets boring then buy yourself a bag of sex toys and work on your imagination. But hear this – Do Not Bully Or Guilt Or Coerce Someone Into Having Sex With You.
Incidentally, Ardnt is seeking more subjects for her sex study.
blue milk 
Whoa, wow, what? If I werent already a Misandrist I would be now.
And the most gruesome aspect of this, is that is was written and condoned by a woman. It’s like gender canabalism. Ick. That article makes me feel dirty.
You, however, rock. This post was completely wonderful.
You’re a misandrist but a woman wrote this…so she gets some slack because she has ovaries. Gotcha.
Whaaat?
please please please send this piece to the Herald and try to put in a bigger forum.You’ve put it beautifully. Arndt is SO out of line here – in effect advocating women give up bodily autonomy. It sickens me that after so many YEARS of feminism we are still arguing the most basic of rights – the right for a woman to make decisions about her own body. If is not people trying to locate the contraception debate in a woman’s body by demanding to ‘their say’ in abortion – its this crap.
Maybe I should join Ardnt’s study though. she can tell me why I had to put up with a MALE partner who had no libido at all for over a year… not as uncommon as she imagines. But of course, that would be about my physical attractiveness, wouldnt it? And I’d be a harpy for ‘exposing him’ that way.
and if you send it? leave in the ‘Fuck Bettina Arndt’. I think you’d probably have a back up chorus.
Call me crazy, but absent any serious issues, I think men who make sex enjoyable for women aren’t going to have serious trouble getting regular sex with their partner. You know, if sex is actually something a women looks forward to, the man’s unlikely to be deprived. That’s been my experience anyway.
Maybe Bettina only talked to couples where the men were duds in bed.
Great. The Bloke read this too and now ‘folding the teatowels’ is a euphemism.
I folded several while he made dinner, but he said he wasn’t putting out anyway.
Yeah, this could be a great op ed – but go for The Australian. I want to know what is Arndt proposing we do about men who sulk? And I think we may have an answer to why she turned out this way.
Brilliant post. Stuff like this makes me crazy with rage. The worst part about articles like these that through the ability to be moderately articulate and play on people’s fears of The Feminists, people like Arndt come out sounding relatively reasonable (to people wanting to believe this rubbish). Did you read Sam de Brito’s ridiculous article justifying his visit to a prostitute, despite the fact that he said she quite clearly did not desire him and was only doing it for the money? Again, an example of someone writing in a reasonable tone of voice for an audience already inclined to believe that The Feminists have destroyed the world.
Personally, I love how some men seem to think that getting you in the mood means reaching over and rubbing your breasts till they hurt, before going down on you for about 3 seconds to make sure you’re wet enough to stick it in. It’s little wonder some of us aren’t ‘in the mood’. Don’t they realise that enticing a woman into bed starts at least an hour before you even hit the bedroom?
Loved these comments, thank you. Will think about trying to re-write this into an article and submitting it.
You really should. I am sickened by her assertions. Your retort is so well done and obviously so fucking necessary.
You made some excellent points! The libido thing is so wrong. More men have issues with libido than they will admit and articles like this one certainly won’t help. If all men have super horny genes than what does that make guys who don’t? I would estimate that more than half of my female friends have been frustrated by lack of sex in long term relationships. It’s probably about the same for my guy friends. But my guy friends seem more accepting of it because I think it’s to be expected in our society whereas my girlfriends can’t understand why their partners don’t want sex. Don’t guys want sex 24/7 (so there must be something wrong with me or him)?
But here’s a beef I would add to the article: Women “withholding” sex is hardly a post-1970s phenomenon. During the Victorian era it was understood that ladies only had sex for procreation and prostitutes were tolerated since of course, men had to have sex no matter what and they couldn’t bug their proper wives about it. Not having sex was a major form of birth control until condoms and other later contraceptives came out. And before that marriages were arranged and it was pretty well-known that husbands and wives BOTH strayed.
What the second wave DID do for sex in marriage: It allowed women to say the word Orgasm in an empowered way making sex much much much more enjoyable for BOTH partners. It’s really important to my husband that I (we) enjoy our sex life. That didn’t happen in the 1950s and when it did, it wasm’t talked about. (The shame!)
Perhaps if we weren’t surrounded by images of naked women selling everythng from beer to shoes, and told that anyone in their 70s with no sex drive is abnormal (hah!), and that if you aren’t having sex with your husband at least once a week your marriage is doomed, we could all just live our lives and not feel that we need to fix something that may not be broken.
Hey, I think I have my own blog. I should head over there sometime. 🙂
you’re probably contracepting – that’s what you’re bitter
Fred, considering that you’re using a word that doesn’t exist in a sentence that doesn’t make grammatical sense I’m not going to waste any more time on you.
I recognised myself and my marriage in Arndt’s article: my weak libido and my partner’s much stronger drive, our mutual desire to better meet each other’s wishes in bed, our dissatisfaction with our solutions so far. Arndt’s article has helped us understand that we are not peculiar and that there is another strategy to explore. The more options the better. If it doesn’t work, nothing’s lost.
My anecdotal evidence goes thusly: after years of thinking that a weak libido was simply a character trait of mine and something that I would have to learn to work around in order to have a happy relationship, it turns out that having a decent partner who is attentive to my needs, never sulky and refuses to to let me apologize for saying no has cured me. Isn’t it funny what a libido-killer fear, obligation and the sensation that you aren’t a real person can be?
As Mr. Angry said: “You know, if sex is actually something a women looks forward to, the man’s unlikely to be deprived.” Isn’t this the logic I try to teach my five year old? “If you want someone to play with you, you need to play nicely with them and respect their feelings or next time, they’ll probably choose to play with someone who’s nicer to them.”
YES!!! Well said. I have gone through a very similar process.
“Thanks Bettina” – are you sure you aren’t Bettina Arndt? Kidding, ok I’m glad someone has gleaned something from Arndt’s wisdom, she’s quite popular so there’s a few of you who find her very helpful and I’m glad to hear you don’t feel alone because you’re right about that being very debilitating.
Megan – I think your anecdotal evidence is a worthy counter-theory to the ideas espoused by Arndt.
bluemilk, I’m somewhere in between Bettina Arndt’s article and your response to it. I really appreciate your aggressive tone and your anger because it’s true that no one owes anyone a fuck, but I also think that when someone clings so fiercely to her individuality out of fear that she isn’t a real person, as Megan says, that she is threatening her own satisfaction as well as her partner’s. My anecdotal evidence also supports Megan’s point.
I see breastfeeding the same way: to cling fiercely to one’s individuality and need for the freedom that formula feeding might bring a mother, she would deny sharing her body with her child out of fear. Her feminism is a response fear. She may think she is in control of her body, assuring the continued superficial beauty of her breasts, or in control of her schedule and her ability to leave the baby with someone else and she may call that feminism. Kitty’s poem The Difference said “eveything has either halved or doubled,” so a mother’s individuality is blurred just as a wife’s individuality is. That’s where the “feminism is the downfall of family values” crowd gets all their ammunition. It is sad that there is that false dichotomy between feminism and family. I like that your blog exposes the falseness.
Thank you for your article. I suspect that the large number of people who are unhappy with their relationship says something isn’t working for many.
As a counsellor and marriage celebrant, I am constantly amazed at the imbalance of power in many relationships. It appears to me that for some women sex is a means for them to ‘control’ and create ‘power’ over their husbands. I have heard many men during marriage preparation counselling say variations of “sex stopped when we got engaged” – what is that all about? Obviously, husbands also have power over their partners in other areas too!
I see relatively young professional couples (under 40 year olds) who sleep in separate bedrooms. They say that the partnership is successful financially and at many practical levels, but the women have no desire for their husbands. I am at a loss to understand what’s in it for the husbands. They tend to be high achieves, and to bury themselves in work. Their wives work part-time in professions, and usually have both a nanny and cleaner. Maybe the husbands see their current arrangement as cheaper that Child Support? I wonder what will happen when the children leave home?
Often people who are successful in their careers and finances have a lot to lose if their marriage falls apart, and they appear to be willing to live in far from rewarding relationships, to avoid the social and financial costs of separating.
I truly don’t get the wives who tell their husbands on the honeymoon that sex is not something that they are interested in doing…. Why did they get married?
Anyhow, whatever the answers – something’s not working for many couples in our society.
Thanks for the comment ‘Whymarriage?’. I agree with your point that there is more often than not an imbalance of power in relationships, and I think this stems from the gross inequality in our society generally, between men and women, between different socio-economic groups, between different races etc.
I think your problem in understanding how these marriage conflicts arise stems from a lack of empathy with the women in these relationships. You see a husband who likes sex and doesn’t get to have it despite his financial and other success. Perhaps from the wife’s point of view she has always been treated as a trophy, not as a real person and she is exerting the only power she has ever been allowed – if she was pursued as nothing more than a trophy then she might behave like one afterwards; perhaps the husband is selfish or boring during sex and there is nothing much in it for her; perhaps the wife is exhausted looking after the children and the house (the cases where wives do absolutely nothing while paid staff do it all in reality are probably as rare as the cases where the husband goes off to work but his underlings are really doing all the work in the office and he is just sitting about flirting with the secretary all day), and the husband fails to do his share around the house and she feels used and unappreciated and that doesn’t make her feel much like sex etc etc.
Your example of the man who found himself on honeymoon with someone confessing that they weren’t really interested in sex.. tells me a little something about the communication between that couple, what kind of trust did they have in each other that they couldn’t talk about these things openly before marriage, and what kind of sex was the man having with this woman who didn’t like sex, was he not sensitive enough to pick up on her disinteres, her feigned arousal? I’m sure it can happen but my mind boggles and it is not just the woman’s motives I am wondering about in an example like this one.
Finally, I’ve never personally been in a relationship with someone who just didn’t like sex, who had a very low libido but I’m sure it is a very upsetting and disheartening experience.. and I’m not sure I would continue the relationship in those circumstances. In the end we have to make choices and if sex is that important to us then ending the relationship might be the answer for us, staying in the relationship while bullying and degrading the other person is NOT the answer. Make your choice and live with it.
‘whymarriage’ – as a female who has been in a relationship with a man who ‘went off’ sex, I was surprised when talking to a women’s health centre doctor to find that my experience wasn’t that uncommon either. A close friend of mine has just nursed a husband through prostate cancer and confided to me recently that her sex life appears to be over – something she is struggling with.
your comment what’s in it for the husbands? would be an interesting one to ask men who have low libidos or health problems that make sex problematic, because it seems to me that they didnt suddenly decide that because they no longer felt like sex that they had no value in their relationship.
sorry, I think bluemilk said it best. nobody owes you a fuck. there’s no guarantee that your sex quota will be filled. we all have the right to be considered as human beings first, sexual partners after.
Love it!
Submitted just now via the email form at Lateline site (they won’t print it, of course)
Re: Bettina Arndt / Australians’ sex lives under the spotlight
Quote
Ms Fullerton, the blogosphere isn’t a homogenous entity, as someone on a different blog just pointed out. The writer’s pen name is Bluemilk and the reference is here. https://bluemilk.wordpress.com/2007/07/28/sex-to-save-the-family/ Why don’t you do her the courtesy of citing her properly?
[…] that post of mine was briefly quoted on ABC’s Lateline. Thanks to Helen and Lauredhel for alerting […]
Helen – thank you!!
Wow, this was a really well-considered polemic on Arndt’s reduction of an incredibly complex issue to such simplistic terms.
Sexless relationships are, as said, an enormously complex issue. I’d also like to raise what I see as another factor (which I wouldn’t for a moment suggest is the only factor!) that might contribute to a dwindling interest in sex from a female partner… And that is that some men with more traditional views are possibly inclined to choose a woman with less interest in sex in the first place as a marital partner due to her perceived ‘good girl’ status. This goes back to another sexual gender stereotype, of that idea that women who are really into sex and are good at it and know what turns them on are probably sluts who must have fucked loads of guys, and therefore not ‘suitable’ to be the mother of someone’s children.
Anyway, as I said I know it wouldn’t be the only factor to influence sexual interest even in marriages where the above was the case, but I wonder if anyone has taken it into consideration…
I also must say, being in a long-term non-marriage with a lovely man, that I completely agree about foreplay beginning a hell of long time before we get into the bedroom. My partner and I speak to each other with respect and consideration, touch each other with affection and tenderness ALL THE TIME and make sure we both know we’re in the others thoughts when we’re apart.
[…] have to. It turns out that you have been peddling this particular piece for nearly two years. Blue milk’s already picked it apart, Bettina Arndt says in big letters that she has “new research (which) suggests a provocative […]
[…] post Sex to save the family which was apparently cited on Lateline as an example of the ’savaging’ Arndt has […]
Oh well done, bluemilk. I grew up in a society which indoctrinated women with the idea that men’s ‘urges’ were so strong that they could not control themselves, and thus it was up to the woman not to give in to male ‘urges’. Men were able to avoid taking any moral or actual responsibility and of course everything was always the fault of the woman. Bettina Arndt has always gone along with this line, and abused feminists – she is quite prurient too, I think – and I certainly would not waste any money in helping to enrich her.
Many women probably suffer from their partner’s inadequate sexual technique. No wonder they don’t always feel like having sex.
[…] So Much Anger. Sometimes it seems like the world is going to hell. Recently I’ve been angry to the point where I’m incoherently yelling at […]
[…] We might discuss how the science she wants to ground her ASTONISHING *truths* about women’s libido in a… […]
[…] I’ve found some better retaliations than mine against this Bettina Arndt […]
I’m newbie in blogworld and this is my first time at your place, having a look around.
I cheered as you took Arndt to pieces, as if women need more to feel guilty and compelled about!? And grimaced as you stacked up the ridiculousness of societal blame placed on women and girls in ‘Don’t get raped’.
Thanks for articulating that.
MS
I just was at your blog and found this article. I wish I had read it sooner. i felt so alone on this one. I too was appalled with the whole concept of the book. You have, however, nailed it.
Thanks.
That was a great critique. Funny, sarcastic and pleasantly vitriolic. Just made my day, particularly the line ‘In fact I’d go further and remind the old farts that to force your wife to have sex unwillingly is rape and hasn’t that little legal landmark killed the fun of marriage.’ Thanks!
Also, saw a recent Janet Albrechtsen article linked from Bettina’s website that supports women complying with sex for their partner when they don’t want to. The same assumptions underly her attack on the ‘rabid lefties’ as prop up Bettina’s ideas expressed in the article you critiqued – women don’t want it but should be giving it out anyway to keep someone else happy. You don’t see her suggesting that for a man – get an erection so your partner can mount up you frigid excuse of a man! Where’s your married spirit? Harden up or your wife will walk out on you for Ready Erection Man!
What I particularly like about your critique is that is steers away from the behaviours that are the subject of Janet’s legitimate point: women attacking women on the basis of such things as appearance, rather than engaging with the issues presented by their thinking. I agree with Janet and Bettina that men need to be part of the dialogue, but I disagree that men are excluded. This is just getting on to the Men’s Rights bandwagon, which vilifies women for wanting equality because apparently equality is emasculating for men.
Also, the forums on Bettina’s site presented some interesting reading if anyone felt like having a look. One in particular – a man who was confused by his wife enjoying pornography with him, made me smile. It was so sweet of him to express such simple pleasure and uncertainty. I guess some people have issues that they feel can be addressed by Bettina because their thinking is heavily entrenched in a culture of gender stereotypes. (Don’t we all struggle against that culture?) People who are just starting out, and who are just opening their thinking to new ideas.
Maybe some of what Bettina says has done people good by at least opening the topic of sex and sexuality for people who haven’t had the opportunity to discuss it or been exposed to the ideas you discuss here of a woman’s sexuality and independent desire.
I hate the sniping between the left and the right, and I don’t understand how people can think that women shouldn’t have a choice in abortion or that they should submit to sex because someone else wants it, but we can at least keep it decent, just like you do here, by discussing ideas and not going for personal attacks (Albrechtsen might say that some lefties had a go at a woman’s haircut, but she did also liken the left to diseased dogs and monkies).
There are tons of things I don’t do particularly like doing as part of my marriage. I do them out of respect for my partner and out of necessity. Yet I constantly hear about women using sex (or the withholding thereof) as a barging point in marriage. The only reason that works at all is because guys have way higher levels of testosterone and are driven by it. The logic is self evident, if it wasn’t true, sex would have no value in bargaining because both parties would have equal interest or apathy toward it. I realize that this will offend some of the more fancyful feminists, but that doesn’t make it untrue. If you don’t believe it, try going on a high dose testosterone therapy for a year or two and see what it does to your drives. I am not apologizing for sex crimes, I am saying that no woman has a friggen clue what it’s like to be a guy and yet feminists constantly speak as if they do. Also if you are one of those, “hormones don’t control us types” then I challenge you to spend 3 days every month with my wife who will quiet happy tell you after the 3 days is over for another month why she ripped your head off. (Just don’t suggest it during the three days if you value your safety.) Our entire bodies are driven by hormones and chemical messengers.. To suggest they don’t effect us all differently just makes you foolish it doesn’t make it untrue.
A woman that only wants sex in marriage once a month doesn’t really have any right to complain if the male goes elsewhere to satisfy his drive. Look at it any way you like, but the reality is that a guy can’t control his desire any more than women can. On the other had I’ve had women get angry and annoyed when I was too tired or sick to perform on command. Apparently its an insult if a guy doesn’t want to at the drop of a hat. There is gray here
My biggest wish is that feminists would stop claiming to understand the male condition because I’ve yet to meet a single one that has a clue about it.
I’ve been in relationships where sex was withheld as a way of getting their way… I got out of those relationships because I think it cheapens the whole relationship to the point where I might as well be single.
Y’know, this is thread necromancy, but I had testosterone (and all other) levels tested recently to see if they could explain my lack of drive. I WANT a sex drive. I was hoping hormone therapy could help me – I’ve done the psyche therapy stuff and it hasn’t done a thing. My testosterone levels came back as twice as high as average for a female – over 140.
Which was really fucking disappointing for me, as my doctors now refuse to consider hormone therapy.
So basically I’ve been on high testosterone my whole life and it really isn’t helping me at all.
Wowwww this is so awesome, thanks for sharing 😀
You wrote so much so eloquently. I wanted to sympathize with you, I really did, but then I remembered something basic about relationships: Relationships are about compassion. That means putting up with shit. That means not forgetting that your partner has stresses, too. This whole blog tells me only that you’re one tightly wound woman in need of a margarita, a resort week, and a really good fuck.
Nothing ever seems to be good enough for you. It’s always griping, it’s always complaining, ‘he does this, so yeah, but why not also y, and z, too while he’s at it’. For example, in the chore war, even though men and women seem to do pretty similar amounts of housework, with men also typically working more hours than women, even accounting for unpaid work, childcare, and so on, your gripe is you don’t feel like men do enough. And now in sex, well, you’re clearly very sexual, and you know your husband has needs, but instead of this being a happy state of affairs, you’d rather demand a guy do a special fucking song and dance routine every time he doesn’t feel like jerking off. And instead of being happy to have a husband who still loves to get it on, you’re lamenting that you don’t get a candlelit dinner and a trail of rose petals before nookie.
Try imagining being your poor husband, working like hell day in and day out. And when he comes home, he has to take care of the kids, housework, and gets reliably chewed out by a shrew. Whatever he’s done right that day, she’s mad about all those things +1. Nothing he does is ever good enough. And at the end of the day, hardly even any respite there. So this is what his manhood has become, a chain binding him to two parasites, an occupation that eats away at his soul in exchange for giving him the means to live, and the woman who used to make him feel like the manliest man among men now has not only made affection a scarce thing, but she makes a point of reminding him of how he is the worst man to ever bear a cock.
Oh, for chrissakes, you’re doing the dishes, anyway, is it such a great deal of trouble to tilt your ass up for 5-10 minutes or so, so I can give you some good news?
Pfft