"Not Tonight Honey, And Who Knows Why?"
Rheality Check: Not Tonight Honey, And Who Knows Why?
[...] The New York Times Magazine recently devoted a lengthy feature story to the "mystery" of what women want, a feature that at least took the step forward of involving women in the answer to the question, when tradition dictates that men ask each other this question and continue to be baffled that they can't come up with the answer. ("Mad Men" took on the issue humorously, portraying a roomful of bright men who can't figure out how to find out what women want, with not a single one coming up with, "Let's ask them," as a solution.) But despite going on for several pages on the issue, Daniel Bergner managed to avoid even entertaining the notion the our sexist society turns women off, preferring instead to dwell on portraying women as inherently perverse, narcissistic, and even masochistic. After all, the weirder women seem, the easier it is to shrug off the responsibility of really understanding women, since it seems like an impossible task.
Ignoring the differences in how men and women's sexualities are regarded in our society is an interesting omission, considering how obvious and pervasive these differences are. And by "interesting," I mean, "somewhere between annoying and offensive." The double standard between straight men and women hasn't gone anywhere, but in fact has barely been eroded by an intensive, multi-decade onslaught from feminists. It's still women who are instructed to worry about their "number" being too high. It's still women who have to hear that having prior sexual experience makes us legitimate targets to rape. The words "whore" and "slut" describe women, not men. Sexual mores have loosened somewhat, but we still live in a world where Good Girls Don't.
[....]
Add to that the well-known housework and child care gap. A recent Parenting Magazine survey found a lot of women suffer a great deal of resentment towards their male partners, who they view as refusing to take on their fair share of child care and housework responsibilities. Add it all together--the stigma against desire, the overwork, the feeling of being underappreciated, and the lack of provocation--and the mystery is not that women watch their libidos sink under the waters, but why anyone wants to chalk this up to inherent biological sex differences first.
[....]
It's an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don't seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it's merely the symptom of a larger problem--that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I'm sure. But in order to do that, we'd have to treat male domination like a problem to be solved, and since few people really want to do that, instead we're left with articles that note women's lack of libido, but carefully resist asking why.
That parenting magazine actually highlights one of the (admittedly many and it's lower on the list than others) reasons I don't want kids. It's easy enough to fall into societal gender norms as it is, particularly within a heterosexual relationship. Adding a kid to the mix is just asking for trouble. Not my bag, baby.
I think responsibilities about birth control should be thrown into this mix too. The idea of pregnancy is a libido crusher. (O.K. maybe not for all women at all times, but I digress.) And hormonal birth control can certainly be a libido destroyer...and you might not even realize how much until you've gotten off of it. (Speaking from personal experience. I had a libido before I started birth control, but after a year or two on the Pill, I actually began to wonder if I imagined it...)
And birth control is still, largely, seen as a woman's problem and a woman's responsibility.
I'm rambling now.
I'd like to be more coherent and analytic but I just don't have the brain energy for it.
My head is still swimming with damned metadata from that course I'm working on at work. (Hello repetitive words...) I actually freaking dreamed about metadata during my nap earlier. How sad is that?
And then I dreamed about drugging myself so I could sleep...which was very weird because part of my brain knew I was sleeping, so it's like the drugged effect in-dream was doubled.
And...I'm still rambling.
I'm going to shut up now and go shower. And maybe scribble.
Looks like the Indianapolis trip will come up in the next week or so...
I'm going to be one moody, tired Bitch by the time this course is over with. I can see it now. There are too many parts to the development tool that could be fucked up...
[...] The New York Times Magazine recently devoted a lengthy feature story to the "mystery" of what women want, a feature that at least took the step forward of involving women in the answer to the question, when tradition dictates that men ask each other this question and continue to be baffled that they can't come up with the answer. ("Mad Men" took on the issue humorously, portraying a roomful of bright men who can't figure out how to find out what women want, with not a single one coming up with, "Let's ask them," as a solution.) But despite going on for several pages on the issue, Daniel Bergner managed to avoid even entertaining the notion the our sexist society turns women off, preferring instead to dwell on portraying women as inherently perverse, narcissistic, and even masochistic. After all, the weirder women seem, the easier it is to shrug off the responsibility of really understanding women, since it seems like an impossible task.
Ignoring the differences in how men and women's sexualities are regarded in our society is an interesting omission, considering how obvious and pervasive these differences are. And by "interesting," I mean, "somewhere between annoying and offensive." The double standard between straight men and women hasn't gone anywhere, but in fact has barely been eroded by an intensive, multi-decade onslaught from feminists. It's still women who are instructed to worry about their "number" being too high. It's still women who have to hear that having prior sexual experience makes us legitimate targets to rape. The words "whore" and "slut" describe women, not men. Sexual mores have loosened somewhat, but we still live in a world where Good Girls Don't.
[....]
Add to that the well-known housework and child care gap. A recent Parenting Magazine survey found a lot of women suffer a great deal of resentment towards their male partners, who they view as refusing to take on their fair share of child care and housework responsibilities. Add it all together--the stigma against desire, the overwork, the feeling of being underappreciated, and the lack of provocation--and the mystery is not that women watch their libidos sink under the waters, but why anyone wants to chalk this up to inherent biological sex differences first.
[....]
It's an indicator of how male-dominated our society is that the fact that women have diminishing libidos and don't seem to care that much about it is treated as the problem, when in fact it's merely the symptom of a larger problem--that women feel overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, understimulated, and shamed about their bodies. If we treated the actual problems that women face, higher libidos would be the happy result, I'm sure. But in order to do that, we'd have to treat male domination like a problem to be solved, and since few people really want to do that, instead we're left with articles that note women's lack of libido, but carefully resist asking why.
That parenting magazine actually highlights one of the (admittedly many and it's lower on the list than others) reasons I don't want kids. It's easy enough to fall into societal gender norms as it is, particularly within a heterosexual relationship. Adding a kid to the mix is just asking for trouble. Not my bag, baby.
I think responsibilities about birth control should be thrown into this mix too. The idea of pregnancy is a libido crusher. (O.K. maybe not for all women at all times, but I digress.) And hormonal birth control can certainly be a libido destroyer...and you might not even realize how much until you've gotten off of it. (Speaking from personal experience. I had a libido before I started birth control, but after a year or two on the Pill, I actually began to wonder if I imagined it...)
And birth control is still, largely, seen as a woman's problem and a woman's responsibility.
I'm rambling now.
I'd like to be more coherent and analytic but I just don't have the brain energy for it.
My head is still swimming with damned metadata from that course I'm working on at work. (Hello repetitive words...) I actually freaking dreamed about metadata during my nap earlier. How sad is that?
And then I dreamed about drugging myself so I could sleep...which was very weird because part of my brain knew I was sleeping, so it's like the drugged effect in-dream was doubled.
And...I'm still rambling.
I'm going to shut up now and go shower. And maybe scribble.
Looks like the Indianapolis trip will come up in the next week or so...
I'm going to be one moody, tired Bitch by the time this course is over with. I can see it now. There are too many parts to the development tool that could be fucked up...