Thoughts on Monogamy

I really think that after the hysteria of the late nineties regarding divorce rates and single-parent families, and with gay marriage being much on people's minds (go California!), there is something of a cultural moment currently happening around marriage - what it means, why people marry, and what constitutes a good marriage all seem to be open to discussion, both privately among couples, and publicly in the media.

Which is good, I believe, but then I read articles like this piece in New York Magazine, and wonder how we can possibly have a productive marriage moment, culturally, without first having a productive feminist moment. Because while the article purports to be a bit of a fearless examination of "the troubles with sex and marriage" doesn't seem to amount to much, in the end, beyond an unexamined assertion of male privilege.

Start, for instance, with the title: "The Affairs of Men". Immediately, the article has committed itself to telling the traditional story. Men cheat. Specifically, men cheat either because their wives don't provide the sex they need or because, as men, they simply crave variety. Men have needs, but women just aren't that into sex. When the author is pushed by a therapist to question this paradigm - to consider the "sexless" woman as something other than a natural inevitability - the author immediately shuts down this line of inquiry because it makes him feel guilty.

Braverman was impatient with the idea that the marriage couldn’t fulfill this man’s needs. “What does it mean that she’s not interested? How long has she not been interested? We know that age does not end sexual arousal or interest, we know that’s a myth. Was there some argument about something else, feelings hurt? What happened? Did one person feel abandoned?”

I felt that Braverman was missing the point, and making me feel guilty to boot. It was the old male-female morality play.

By "old male-female morality play" I think the author means that men assert needs and then women try to block them from acting upon them. Which is ironic, because what's actually going on here is that women are asserting needs, and a man is denying any responsibility to consider them, let alone try to meet them. The word I'd use is patriarchy, but I suppose that would probably make the author feel guilty as well.

What follows is what you'd expect for such an article...some evolutionary psychology, some musings on porn, a long, fanboyesque meditation on prostitutes, and some insistence that no, really, men are actually the weaker sex.

He and I love our wives and depend on them. In each of our cases, they make our homes, manage our social calendar, bind up our wounds and finish our thoughts, and are stitched into our extended families more intimately than we are. They seem emotionally better equipped than we are. If my marriage broke up, my wife could easily move in with a sister. I’d be as lost as plankton.

The author seems to see this as an example of female power. If that's the case, please can I be powerless like the men the author encounters? I want a wife to cook and clean and take care of my children, be my social secretary, provide endless emotional support, and take care of all those pesky family obligations for me. Cause really...I'll totally let any man in my life have that "power".

And while on the the subject of power, well, I'll just quote the article:

One man told me that when his wife wasn’t available, he snuck out to massage parlors in a “primal state” or watched porn. He felt no compunction about this; it was part of the never-ending battle of the sexes.

“Porn captures these women [its performers] before they get smart,” he said in a hot whisper as we sat in Schiller’s Liquor Bar on the Lower East Side. Porn exploited the sexual desires, and naïveté, of women in their early twenties, he went on, but older women had come to terms with that. “The most one can expect is that women will cede that area, in porn, a period when you can observe us before we have power, because it ain’t going to happen again.”

And men wonder why women mistrust porn?

What makes this a particularly frustrating article is that the author makes a series of tantalizing feints towards a more complex picture of marriage and cheating. For example, he recognizes that female infidelity is viewed differently than male infidelity, but then fails to consider the effects that those social pressures might have on marriage. He admits that male infidelity is not actually biologically hardwired, but nevertheless still views it as fixed. He acknowledges the existence of polyamorous relationships, but consigns them to the purview of those with abnormally high sex drives. He recognizes that the "European" model of marriage carries its own flaws, acknowledges that many people have actually spent a great deal of time considering the question of marriage and sexual passion (but then dismisses their work as "chick lit").

After all his research, the author describes a conversation with his wife.

When I got back from the Kinsey Institute, I told my wife all about the evolutionary data and Erick Janssen’s questionnaire, and she got agitated. “Okay. Let’s have an open marriage. And I have to be out Wednesday night.”

I said, No thanks.

This picture of marriage reminds me of nothing more than the cold-war nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union, where nuclear holocaust is replaced by the threat of infidelity. What's dreamed of is not so much a new paradigm of marriage, but a return to an older one, when men cheated with impunity and women accepted this as their lot in life. But since that's unlikely to happen, the best that can be achieved is this uneasy truce...I won't so you won't.

God, how depressing.

I Have No Words

Article Title: Media Charged With Sexism in Clinton Coverage

Picture accompanying article:

Last Spitzer Post, I Promise

So I was going to write something about how despite all the online discussions about whether Silda Wall Spitzer is hot or not, nobody seems to find it relevant that Eliot Spitzer is balding and has features kind of like a gargoyle. Then I came across this New York Times article which is just...well...here:

The latest model is the familial crisis facing Silda Wall Spitzer, corporate lawyer, mother of three daughters and, most pointedly, wife of Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned after revelations that he had been paying for prostitutes. In conversations and throughout the blogosphere, wives at great remove have imagined what they would do if they were in her shoes, even as they hastened to add that those shoes would never, ever fit.

Except, of course, for those rueful, former Cinderellas who know better.

I love the way that Eliot Spitzer's infidelity turns into Silda Spitzer's familial crisis. It's one of those framings that masquerades as choice and empowerment (now she gets to choose if she stays or leaves) but is really about work. The Times article goes on to describe various strategies for dealing with infidelty, but the common theme is that it's the wife's job to figure out where the marriage is going to go from there. Husbands, the article seems to say, are like kids who break a glass to get out of washing the dishes. "Oops! I broke our vows here, honey. You better take care of the marriage from now on."

Throughout the article, it's the woman who does the forgiving, initiates counseling, explains to the kids what's happening, starts divorce proceedings, and of course, is left caring for the kids alone when the marriage goes belly-up. Which is, of course, only reflecting the division of labor society still universally enforces. Even those outlets with enough reticence to avoid saying it's her fault for failing to keep him satisfied, it's still unquestioningly her mess to clean up.

(And, gotta love the extra dose of fearmongering the Times throws in to the whole brew as well. You may think you man would never cheat, but how can you ever be sure, huh?)

Boys, boys, boys

This thread on Feministe about ways to deal with lingering sexism in otherwise rational men is absolutely fantastic any woman who sleeps with, works with, or even occasionally talks with men. My advice, gleaned from trial and (lots and lots of) error with my generally fantastic but occasionally jaw-droppingly outrageous boyfriend, is below.

1. Nobody (especially men) wants to lose an argument, admit they're wrong, or change their mind. But learning something new, discovering a different perspective, or having a great insight are all things everyone likes to do. I tend to want to go in to a discussion guns blazing and call him out on his shit, but this tends to make my boyfriend, at least, more likely to defend his position. Anything that can avoid framing what we're doing as arguing makes him more receptive to what I'm saying. Especially jokes. Jokes are fantastic because he can "jokingly" acknowledge a mistake without it becoming a big deal.

2. Once you've started your not-argument, listen to how he responds. And take what he says seriously. A lot of the really sexist bullshit men spew is coming from real fears and anxieties, albeit ones that are often stroked by the media and society all out of proportion. (For instance, I know men who are legitimately afraid that they'll be falsely accused of sexual harassment or rape, and have their lives ruined by the accusation.) Suggest ways that these anxieties can be addressed without trivializing women's needs and women's experiences.

3. Patriarchy hurts men too. I've made lots of progress with my boyfriend by pointing out things like poor paternity leave policies, or male-on-male bullying and how they're part of the patriarchy as well.

4. Patriarchy hurts men part II. I recognize that some of the sexist crap my boyfriend spews is the male equivalent of lipstick - what he does to get along in a patriarchal society (like sexist remarks with his buddies) and tend to be inclined to either let that pass, or call him on it privately. His anxieties about his masculinity and his place in the patriarchal hierarchy are real and have real consequences, and suck in their own way as much as ones about femininity.

5. Always remember that while he may occasionally say sexist things, he's not a sexist person. The line "That sounds really sexist, but I don't think you meant it that way. Can you explain further?" helps to start a discussion, not an argument (see point 1).