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Also from 2008, Svutlana on rebranding monogamy (emphasis mine.)

But maybe monogamy just have problem with position. Word monogamy sound like same game that couple play over and over and over. Maybe need for change name for something little bit more excite so that more peoples want for do. Maybe rename monogamy fucktomonamy (say fuck-toe-moan-a-me). Fucktomonamy sound fun for do and little bit pervert at same time. And fucktomonamous sound good too! If no want for be fucktomonamous forever, for sure there is something terrible wrong with you.

She said it here.

First you smile a little and then you start thinking “O.M.G. you really would be something wrong if you didn’t want to be fucktomanamous forever!”

(She gets points for some good digs at the utter predictability of evo-psych earlier in her post.)

So. When my partner and I first got together she was still recovering from the lingering effects of some sort of gastrointestinal amoeba she’d picked up while trekking through Nepal, Thailand, and Burma.

Ezra Klein explains both why arguments in favor of hetero-only marriage no longer hold up… and why that’s a good thing.

...Ross Douthat, as humane and thoughtful a supporter of traditional marriage as you’ll find, is not able to present one.

...

The closest Douthat comes to an answer is to quote Eve Tushnet saying that “marriage exists in large part to structure how you behave before you marry.” The obvious response to this is that marriage does not obviously transform the way the unmarried behave, and the state does not enforced a behavior code as a precondition for marriage. No matter, Tushnet says, “in order for men and women to have sex with one another, to avoid causing a lot of disruption and wrong action in society, they have to do a lot of difficult things. The fact that a lot of them don’t want to do those things now and don’t even see those things as related to marriage is part of the problem, not an excuse to further move away from the idea of marriage as the structure.”

In other words, America does not currently conceive of marriage in the way that Douthat and Tushnet would like it to conceive of marriage, and in the way it would need to conceive of marriage in order for there to be a good reason the institution can’t accommodate gays.

He said it here.

In other words the tradition that Eve Tushnet values would first unnaturally constrain men and women into unnatural social and economic relationship to each other in order to make them seek what Douthat seems to feel is merely a differently unnatural social and economic relationship in marriage.

And the point of that would be?

Here’s the funny part.

The part that just sort of generally invalidates Tushnet and Douthat’s peculiar foundation for marriage.

Same-sex people don’t seem to have needed that peculiar double bind to be perfectly willing, able to have durable, long-term, committed, loving relationships with their partners. They haven’t needed that pressure to stand by each other. They haven’t needed it to raise healthy families. They haven’t needed it to be productive and integrated members of their communities.

And so, by extension, neither have straight people.

This is not an argument against marriage, obviously. It is an argument against the traditional notion of marriage as a tool of social control. And it is an argument against the exclusion of participants based on the sex, gender, identity, orientation, or bodily configuration.

So by and large, and in roughly equal numbers, both men and women report they enjoy receiving oral sex. It’s not universal — some people think it’s nasty, some people freak out at the idea of receiving that much erotic attention, some people it just plain doesn’t do anything for, etc. But then of course nothing about human behavior appears to be universal. But it’s pretty generally true: even if it doesn’t get you off, when done with good will and intention it it generally feels very nice.

So as I was drifting to sleep, thinking about, of all unrelated things, the economics of gendered microlending, it popped into my head that it seemed odd that cultural narratives assume that, when spontaneously offered, men are generally expected to enthusiastically accept offers of blowjobs whereas women are generally expected to decline.

I totally get that in terms of accepting such offers the distributions of rewards and consequences, of assumptions about reputation, of physical and social vulnerability, and all that are heavily skewed in favor of men and to the detriment of women. So this isn’t, at all, about whether it’s right or wrong, good or bad, or even (I think, importantly) true or false that men are more likely to spontaneously say yes than women. I even understand, very well, that men are generally expected to pretend to be enthusiastic even if they’re not comfortable or not interested, and vice versa for women. And it’s definitely not that I think all women should say yes or all men should say no. Nothing like that.

I’m just wondering if that would be a good index of just how out of balance we are when it comes to social expectations for men and women.

Thoughts?

Jay, guest posting at Feministe, just cross-posted something she wrote on her home blog, Two Women Blogging, back in 2007. It was good then, it’s good now. It begins (emphasis hers)...

“Aren’t you lucky! He helps around the house!”

Yup. He helps. Because picking up his laundry, cooking his meals, paying his bills, and raising his child is by rights my job. Of course, my laundry and bills and meals are my job, too. Along with the playdates and the grocery shopping and scheduling babysitters. But he helps! Wow!

“You must have trained him well”.

That’s it. Exactly. I held a chocolate chip cookie in front of his nose, and every time he washed a dish or put away a T-shirt I gave him the cookie, patted him on the head and said “good husband! Good boy!” until he wagged his, um, tail.

She said it here.

It gets better from there so go ahead and read the whole thing.

And here’s the tricky bit. For all the years I’ve been a stay-at-home dad, and for all the years I’ve heard people say similar things to my partner, I’ve never heard a man say them.

In fact in all these years I think the only man who wasn’t also a stay-at-home dad who’s really said anything about it that’s registered was my father who told me his biggest regret was that he didn’t have more time to spend with us when my siblings and I were little… that the courses for he and my mom had seemed foreordained… that I might never know how lucky I was. But I digress…

I don’t think there’s anything laudable about men never commenting on my “helping around the house.” Surveys suggest men either think they’re doing their part by bringing home the bacon, or else they think they’re contributing something closer to 50% of domestic tasks… even though the actual figures are closer to 25-33%.

But boy have I heard those “you’re so lucky” remarks from other women. And those “you must have trained him well.”

I don’t even think there’s anything particularly ominous about that either. Women, even professional women, even women who themselves have never done a day of housework but instead hire out housecleaners and nannies, perceive other women as primarily responsible for the domestic sphere. Even when their partners don’t hold them responsible for it other women do.

The point being that patriarchy is a co-ed affair. The point being that the establishment of privilege is too. The point being that it’s not enough to fighting stereotypes of women.

Jay concluded her post with

If [her partner] Sam were writing this, he’d rant about the people who think he’s “babysitting” when he takes care of his own child. He’d tell you that men who can’t be left alone with their infants should be ashamed of their incompetence. He’d repeat the story about our first post-adoption visit with the social worker, the one who asked him what parts of parenting he didn’t participate in. He always says that at first he didn’t even understand the question, and then he got angry at the suggestion that he wouldn’t be a full part of parenting our child. And he’s sincere about all of it. He accepts housework as part of his responsibility, just like it’s part of mine, and he loves to cook as much as he enjoys building fences. He’d also point out the flip side of this assumption – that he’s somehow less a man because he “helps”.

But all of that serious talk might make male privilege visible. It might make women actually think that they don’t have to do all the housework, that their male partners could participate and the world wouldn’t come to an end. And we can’t have that. No making the patriarchy uncomfortable; wouldn’t be prudent. Besides, I have to go set the table now. Sam made dinner, and emptied the dishwasher, and fed the dogs while I was writing this. And he went to the grocery store this afternoon so I could stay home and watch the baseball game. I am lucky; he’s kind and generous and he’s a damn good cook. But don’t tell me he’s helping.

It’s not just women who are “lucky” to have partners like Sam who’ll share the burden. First of all, it’s hard to even call it a burden when it’s shared — then it’s not about being a woman or being a man, it’s just about being alive in a world with entropy in it. Second, though, is that, as my father, said Sam’s lucky. I’m lucky. We get to do what we are good at, instead of what fairy tales say we’re supposed to be. Same with our partners.

The trick is that, sure, a lot of men don’t get that. But a lot of women, even women who ought to know better, don’t get it either.

That’s part of the work too.