Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Speaking of book-learning vs. experience, via Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon, who quotes Dan Savage, who quotes David Klinghoffer who in turn cites the ancient Roman Catullus on exactly how homosexuality is supposed to ruin heterosexual marriage.

The social history behind this piece is clear: once they’ve experienced sex with other men, Catullus tells us, men are unsatisfied with what their new wives provide them. Notice that the poet is unconcerned about the husband’s dallying with other women—it’s the other men around that threaten the marital union.

He said it here.

Is Klinghoffer mental? Yes, sex with one’s wife really would be unsatisfactory after homosexual sex if you’re homosexual! Otherwise? Not so much.

Seriously! The other year Jon Stewart asked Mike Huckabee when he decided he was heterosexual. Huckabee waived it off and, very unfortunately I think, Stewart didn’t pursue it further. Which is really, really unfortunate.

One of the problems with assuming heterosexuality is a baseline, an absolute, an anchor point against which all other is measured (and found wanting) is that it’s never itself examined. And so for Huckabee (and perhaps, come to think of it, for Stewart since he didn’t press the question) actually inquiring into whether heterosexuality might be a choice doesn’t make any sense at all.

Which is a shame because, duh, heterosexuality is no more a choice than homosexuality is. And so it would never occur to Catullus, or Huckabee or, evidently, Klinghoffer to reflect on the equal reality that if you’re already straight it’s equally true that “once they’ve experienced sex with women, figleaf tells us, men are just as unsatisfied with what other men provide them.”

That’s why it’s such a good idea to let people get married to the gender they actually want to get married to! If you think about it. Which evidently some people never get around to doing.

Sheesh!

Megan Carpentier of Jezebel raises yet another weekly objection to New York Times opinionist-in-residence Ross Douthat’s weekly… um… possible hypothesizing about women, feminism, sex, and relationships.

Ross Douthat, he of the thesis that feminism is the root of all women’s unhappiness, has a new thesis: it also causes marital unhappiness and infidelity.

...

Ok, so, let’s make sure I understand this correctly. Feminism (and safe sex) make for boring relationships designed only for upward social mobility, which is good for society and bad for relationships; but sexual freedom has empowered the lower class to make poor decisions about marriage and having a bunch of unsafe sex that Douthat doesn’t like in the first place? So, he likes feminism, but he hates it? Is feminism Douthat’s mom and does he have an Oedipal complex?

Douthat’s got a solution to the problem he’s yet to define really well, but which seemingly boils down to the fact that smart, career-oriented women don’t have enough wild sex (possibly with Ross Douthat) and dumb sluts have too much.

She said it here.

I’m not exactly sure what Douthat’s deal is. Prior to moving to the NYT he blogged conservatively about all sorts of issues. Since landing the gig he seems to be putting way more effort into this one topic.

And…

And…

I’m not sure I can agree with Carpentier’s assessment.

I mean, he often sounds the way unmarried people do when speaking authoritatively about marriage, or the way childless women or men talk with assurance about pregnancy and parenting, or… well… the way reluctant virgins or aloof celibates speak with certainty about what sex is like.

So I wanted to ask if anybody knows if the guy’s actually spent a lot of time in any kind of relationships with women. Because so much of what he says sounds more like he’s read a lot about it. More like he knows what to expect from romance, marriage, or reciprocated lust than he actually knows about it.

Anyway, since it sounds like the guy’s not going to stop blathering about it anytime soon it would help me, and maybe others, to know if he’s ever had sex. or been in a relationship. Or even had a girlfriend.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being better read than experienced. It just wouldn’t be very helpful if you planned to continue pPontificating about it on the editorial page of the flipping New York Times.

Update: See also Dana Goldstein’s take.

I’ve been way more out of contact that I thought I’d be. I’ll be home and (finally) back online this afternoon.

Jill Filipovic at Feministe turned up a seriously creepy, seriously morally-flawed debated between William Saletan of Slate and Steven Waldman of Beliefnet

The whole thing is so infuriating I’m having trouble coming up with a coherent response. Steven Waldman from Beliefnet suggests paying women some amount of money to not have an abortion — not just because women who continue pregnancies often undergo tremendous financial strain, but as an incentive for her to give the baby up for adoption. Nowhere does he suggest that maybe we should provide economic support for allwomen, before and after birth, so that they can choose to maintain their pregnancies and raise a child if they wish; the whole idea is to bribe women into giving birth so that they’ll give the baby to a nice family.

She said it here.

If you want to reduce terminations of unplanned, unwanted pregnancies, and you’ve got this idea that you’re willing to pay women saddled with such pregnancies to carry them to term instead of having abortions, well… fine! Given that over and over and over women list economic hardship as the main reason for seeking termination, if your goal in life was to reduce those terminations then it makes sense to propose financial assistance to women for whom finances are an obstacle.

But if you’re going to offer financial assistance the assistance offered ought to be enough so that the woman in question, possibly in combination with her partner the pregnancy, can raise her child herself! Unless she really, really wants to surrender the child for adoption… in fact, unless she proposes it herself, those offering financial assistance should be ethically, morally, and preferably legally forbidden from mentioning it.

There are two reasons: first, if all the anti-abortionists are right about psychological “damage” women face after termination, especially if the reason was (usually temporary) inability to financially support a child then imagine how women feel who’ve been forced by finances to, effectively, sell their infant son or daughter! Oh wait, you don’t have to imagine it at all! Just go ask any modestly financially stable woman who earlier in life had been forced to surrender her child how she feels knowing her son or daughter is alive and being cared for by the strangers who once had money when she did not. (For that matter go ask the male partners from such pregnancies how they feel about it.)

The second reason, perhaps more important reason, though, is that abortion-as-solution is still so heavily tied to the idea that women’s worth is based on her own “resale” value to a prospective husband. With the result that adoption is seen as a way “these girls” can start over. (Note: Shulamith Firestone pointed out back in the 1960s, too often the same considerations influence the abortion and contraception debates. There are other reasons for seeking to avoid pregnancy that don’t involve preserving women’s appearance of minty freshness.)

We notice that very economically stable single women, even those who would never consider terminating an unplanned, unwanted pregnancy, ever “surrender” their children for adoption. Nor, for that matter, do we see them suffering extraordinary approbation or stigma for keeping their “fatherless” children. Nor, for that matter, do we even see them suffering that much for lack of partners.

As Jill points out further on in her post, the pro-choice philosophy focuses on supporting women’s choice, not channeling their options in more politically expedient or, especially, more desirable for financially capable childless couples directions.

If Waldman, Saletan and their abortion abatement colleagues were interested in reducing the number of pregnancy terminations then in addition to their (entirely laudable) support for safer, more effective, more easily used, more affordable, and more available contraception they’d also get solidly behind the idea that unplanned, unwanted pregnancy doesn’t ruin women’s “real” utility as economically dependent “companions” and “helpmeets” for men who don’t want “previously owned” wives.

(Signature: composed on a hand-held — pardon any typos.)

[Still on family vacation till next Tuesday morning. Still next to no time to write even though there’s lots to talk about. —fl]

Susie and Aretha Bright have an occasional advice column at Jezebel and cope nicely with a correspondent who’s having a first-hand collision with a highly recognizable component of the “no-sex” class paradigm.

Dear Aretha & Susie:

I’ve been in a relationship for over three years, and for the past year we’ve been talking about getting married. Since these conversations started, my boyfriend started to expect different things of me sexually. He gets upset if I use “dirty” words like cock, pussy, or fuck. He said, “The mother of my future children doesn’t talk like that.”

We’re having less sex, and the sex we do have is more vanilla. I like vanilla sex, but I would like it more frequently. I’m afraid that he isn’t seeing me as a sexual person anymore. If we do get married, I wonder if this will lead him to cheat. One of the things that I liked about our relationship before, was that we had a great sexual connection- and he told me over and over how important sex is to him. So if he can’t get it from me, will he look elsewhere? Help!

—Unhappy Angel in the House

She said it here.

The standard narrative has it that women are always the ones who lose interest in sex… typically because her partner “wears her down” with endless solicitations caused by his “naturally higher” libido.

That’s the descriptive part of the paradigm — the one of the expectation setting elements whereby men are indoctrinated to believe that, except maybe for that lusty, anomalous single moon after sex begins where honey flows smoothly, women would just never think about sex if their partners weren’t perpetually bringing it up.

And yet here the proscriptive mechanism is pretty clear: side B of the paradigm is that inside it men believe women shouldn’t be interested, shouldn’t be eager, shouldn’t be creative, shouldn’t be ready to say “yes.”

Rule #1 of my unfortunately non-cynical Two Rules of Desire is that it’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable that women should have sexual desire. The descriptive part says it’s inconceivable. The proscriptive part says it’s intolerable.

I say it’s incomprehensible. Not least because it causes so much misery and ill will in both victims and authors of the ideology.

Incidentally, Susie’s advice begins pithily: “I wouldn’t want him to be the father of my children…” Aretha’s conclusion is equally blunt: “Anyone who says “The Mother of My Children Doesn’t …” – Deal breaker.”

My advice, for Unhappy Angel in the House, anyone else who’s had her experience, and for you for when it happens to you is to confront the issue straight up! Say “You know, story has it that 99% of couples wind up with the man wanting more, more adventurous sex than the woman does. I don’t want to be one of those couples but when you say crap like ‘the mother of my children, blah, blah, blah’ I get the strong feeling you do! We need to talk about that because I don’t feel that way, I don’t want to feel that way, I don’t want you trying to make me feel that way, and guess what? I’m actually pretty sure you don’t want me to feel that way.”

I’m pretty sure that conversation doesn’t happen often. If it does I still don’t think it happens often enough.

Why do we assume that we produce so much semen in order to “spread it around?” It seems as likely that “to keep it fresh” would work as well. It’s not like it’s “expensive” for us to produce, right? So why complicate things with mass-paternity imperatives?

Also, not to sound cranky or anything but why assume men don’t naturally want to be complete and not just biological fathers? Is there much evidence that “state of nature” men are any less interested in, say, protoges than women? Any less interested in investing in children?

I mean sure, sufficiently stressed men (and women) exhibit asocial, socially atomized, “militarized,” or othewise “selfish” behavior, but why assume that’s a default instead of a distorted outcome? By that logic prisoners, addicts, and PTSD victims are “ultimate” examples of men rather than damaged outliers.

(Signature: composed on a hand-held — pardon any typos.)

Well, while traveling and living in cramped quarters on family vacation it’s been pretty hard to post anything, let alone find space for Half-Nekkid Thursday photos. But then while reviewing photos taken by one of the younger family members… who hasn’t yet mastered framing… I realized opportunity had already knocked.

Happy HNT (or Half-nekkid Thursday!)

Echidne of the Snakes takes a look at overlooked assumptions about religious codes of dress or conduct…

So you may have read that Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing a debate about banning the burqa in France, by which he appears to mean banning those Islamic methods of veiling which cover the face (the Afghan burqa with a grille in front of the eyes and the niqab, common in Saudi Arabia, which leaves only the eyes visible). I found reading the comments threads attached to posts on this topic at feministing.com and at feministe very interesting: Intersectionality in practice!

Except that this reveals one problem with intersectionality: by focusing on women and Islam we lose sight of the men and Islam, we lose sight of the long tradition of religious interpretation by men, and we lose sight of the question of women’s roles in the three Abrahamic religions. Though intersectionality does help bring into light questions about colonialism and racism or xenophobia.

She said it here.

Later in the post she distinguishes layers of interpretation, the key ones for me being the text of a rule and the decisions about what they should mean in practice.

In Judeo-Christian tradition we read Biblical verses about, say, Sodom or Onan where the text itself is plain… but not necessarily clear... and choose to decide what we should do about it. In those cases we decided the first was about homosexuality instead of impiety and dishonesty or, even more improbably, that the second was about masturbation, about which the Bible is otherwise silent, instead of insuring patrilinearity, about which it’s obsessed. (And about Onan — it’s odd ‘wingers don’t beat on that passage as being about contraception instead. It’s possibly a good thing — better to have them wigging out looking for hairy palms than condoms or the pill. But I digress…)

Anyway, just as Judeo-Christians have our interpretations that are flavored by (non-textual) culture, surely interpretation of texts of Islam must be subject to the culture of those who interpret it.

And if that interpretation is permitted only of one sex in a gender-constructing culture then even if your texts condone oppression of sub-groups such as unbelievers, foreigners, or women there remains a deep, deep risk that the dominant interpreters for their unexamined convenience will unjustly burden those they subjugate.

For instance to oblige women to cover themselves rather than to oblige men to chill with the coveting business.

The conclusion then is that even for “traditional” women-domineering faiths such as Judaism, Christianity,and Islam it is a responsibility of the pious to engage with, absorb, and genuinely practice, say, feminism to the fullest possible extent or risk straying from their faith and sinking into apostasy.

And if even unreconstructed patriarchs ought to incorporate feminism…

(Signature: composed on a hand-held — pardon any typos.)

[Note: I’ll be traveling today. I’ll check in later this evening —fl]

According to Em & Lo of Sex. Love. And Everything in Between it looks like the little-red-Corvette/midlife-crisis meme is no longer what its cracked up to be. Assuming it ever was.

Apparently one of the “biggest surprises” of the study was that the classic MG Roadster car turned women’s heads when it was empty, but failed to impress if a dude was driving it. Well, that’s only surprising if it has never occurred to you that women are more likely to fantasize about driving a classic sports car than they are about dating a man who owns one.

They said it here.

Makes sense to me. This is not to say that there’s no virtue in “signaling.” Nor that, as Matthew Yglesias says, signaling as a drive doesn’t motivate people to do actual virtuous things. It’s just that past a certain point (for instance wedding extravagance, SUV horsepower, PETA ads, almost any opinions expressed on cable news, redness of cars, maximization or minimization of one’s “number”) the symbols stop signaling what you want them to.

Via Amanda Marcotte and others, a nice breakdown on romantic perceptions vs. realities of real “danger man” relationships.

P.S. No, the alternative is not to be a NiceGuy™. It’s not an either-or choice.