feminist blogs in english

Please welcome Guest Blogger, Caroline Heldman, PhD.  Heldman is an Associate Professor of Politics at Occidental College.  Her research addresses the American presidency, race, gender, and the media.  She co-edited the popular book, Rethinking Madame President: Is the US Ready for a Woman in the White House?   Dr. Heldman is also a regular political commentator for Fox News, Fox Business News, and Al Jazeera English.  She blogs at FemmePolitical.

The week after Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Helman drove to New Orleans to assist with rescue and relief efforts. She later co-founded the New Orleans Women’s Shelter and continues to work on rebuilding efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward. 

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(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Is there such a thing as a negative IQ? The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck goes for the gold standard. Via The Advocate:

The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck says she knows why lesbians come out later in life: there are simply no available men.

Her theory is that older men tend to date younger women, “leaving older women with no one,” she said.

My question - someone willing to say something so asinine on the air cannot possibly have any close gay or lesbian friends. She needs to invest in rent-a-lez or some such before opening her piehole.

Robin E. sent us to a downright fascinating set of survey results.   Administered by a Christian website, the survey questions were submitted by “Christian girls” who wanted to know what “Christian guys” think is modest.  1,600 guys then answered the survey, offering both quantitative and qualitative answers.   Why would girls care what guys, as opposed to God, think?  Because Christian guys, their future husbands, are judging them on their modesty.  Ninety-five percent of them say that modesty is an important quality in their future wife (see the question in the upper left corner):

So, how do these “guys” define immodesty?  The most common theme was dressing to draw attention to the body instead of the heart or spirit.

Something that is immodest is something that is designed to arouse lust within me (male, age 24).

Something that is immodest is something that is unnaturally revealing (male, age 20).

Something immodest draws attention to a girl’s body (male, age 28).

Many of the guys stressed that they really wanted to interact with girls as people.  Borrowing language from feminism, they expressed a desire to think of a girl as a whole person, not just a hot body.

Something attractive draws you toward them. It makes you respect the person. Something immodest is usually unattractive. It makes you think less of that person, thinking of them as an object… (male, age 16).

My responsibility is to not treat women as objects for my satisfaction, even if they dress and act like it. It devalues them, and makes me a user of people… (male, age 26).

In a move that is in contrast to (most) feminist values, however, girls are supposed to help men treat them like people by not dressing like an object.  That is, by not dressing immodestly.

So what rules for girls did guys identify?

Well, first, guys largely agreed that revealing clothes were immodest (again, see the question in the upper left corner):

Halter tops and mini skirts, I suppose, are obvious candidates for immodesty.  There were lots more subtle rules, too, though with less agreement.

Forty-four percent of guys think that designs on the back pockets of jeans are immodest (19% aren’t sure):

A minority, 19 percent, think that shirts with pockets are immodest (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-eight percent think that purses should not be worn across the body (19% aren’t sure):

Thirty-nine percent oppose tights with designs (25% aren’t sure):

Forty-seven think that t-shirts with messages across the front improperly draw attention to breasts:

But being modest wasn’t simply a matter of clothes.  Guys defined immodesty, also, as an “attitude” or a “carelessness.”  Attaining modesty was also about how you use your body and the way you act, “sexually or otherwise.”

An immodest lady is loud, proud, and dresses in a way that communicates such an attitude (male, age 24).

Something becomes immodest when the person wearing it has an attitude of carelessness (male, age 17).

As one guy said:

If you are dressing to get attention from a guy, then anything you wear can be immodest (male, age 13; my emphasis).

Some examples of behavior the guys mostly agreed was immodest:

Immodesty, then, is not simply about being vigilant about your clothing (don’t wear a purse that falls diagonally across your body, don’t show your arms or your thighs), it’s a constant vigilance about how you display your body (don’t stretch, bend, or bounce).  “Clothing plays a part in modesty, but it is only a part,” an 18 year old male explains, “Any item of clothing can be immodest” (his emphasis).

In addition, these rules are potentially changing all the time.  A “technically modest” outfit, such as a school uniform, can suddenly have immodest connotations (so watch MTV, girls, to stay on top of these shifting meanings):

This is a great deal of self-monitoring for girls.  Not just when they shop, but when they get dressed, and all day as they move, and with constant re-evaluation of their clothes and how they fit.  But, the rationale is, they must be vigilant and obey these rules in order to protect guys from the power of all bodies (both their own sexiness, and men’s biological response to it).  Guys are burdened with lust, they insist.

A lot of the guys in this survey talked about temptation.  In some cases, the men would use very powerful words, such as this guy defining immodest:

Immodest:  Screams that her body is different than mine. Attempts to manipulate me. Forcefully offers to trade what I want (in the flesh) for what she wants: attention (male, age 30).

This language — suggesting that women’s bodies “scream” at him, attempt to control him, and “forcefully” tempt him — is reminiscent of Tim Beneke’s interviews with men about sexual violence in Men on Rape.  Michael Kimmel (summarizing Beneke in Guyland) discusses how lots of the terms used to describe a beautiful, sexy woman are metaphors for danger and violence: “ravishing,” “stunning,” bombshell,” “knockout,” “dressed to kill,” and  “femme fatale.”  “Women’s beauty,” Kimmel surmises, “is perceived as violence to men” (p. 229).

This is very much like the rationale for the burqa.  Women’s bodies incite men’s sexual desires, sometimes to violence; they must be kept hidden.

These Christian guys, however, did claim responsibility for their own thoughts, feelings, and actions.  When asked about their role in avoiding lust, many were adamant that it was their own responsibility.  Many felt that innocent, shameless, platonic interaction between men and women was a team effort:

Sisters in Christ, you really have no concept of the struggles that guys face on a daily basis. Please, please, please take a higher standard in the ways you dress. True, we men are responsible for our thoughts and actions before the Lord, but it is such a blessing when we know that we can spend time with our sisters in Christ, enjoying their fellowship without having to constantly be on guard against ungodly thoughts brought about by the inappropriate ways they sometimes dress. In 1 Corinthians 12 the apostle Paul presents believers as the members of one body – we have to work together. Every Christian has a special role to play in the body of Christ. That goal is to bring glory to the Savior through an obedient, unified body of believers – please don’t hurt that unity by dressing in ways that may tempt your brothers in Christ to stumble (male, age 24).

The asymmetry of this project, however, is striking.  The lust is men’s; the bodies are women’s.  It’s an asymmetry built right into the survey design. Modesty is something pertains to only girls and immodesty is something that guys get to define.  This may be even more pernicious than women’s constant self-monitoring.  It erases women’s own desires and the sex appeal of men’s bodies, leading women to spend all of their time thinking about what men want.  By the time they do have sex, and most of them will, they may be so alienated from their own sexual feelings that they won’t even be able to recognize them.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Last summer, I suffered the breakup of a relationship that I had thought would be permanent. Now, I’ve been through my share of break-ups, even of quite serious relationships, but nothing ever broke me like this one.

Since then, I’ve had sexual interactions of the orgasmic kind with 9 different people, none of which I was at any time in a committed relationship with.

I’m not telling you this to shock (though I am specifying the number because we all need to get over the whole “OMG! Be ashamed of your NUMBER! It’s either too big or too small!” thing). I’m telling you this because of something else that’s also true about me: I’d really like to be in a long-term, probably monogamous relationship. That’s right, folks, I’m a slut who craves a stable, loving, committed relationship. File me under “Lookin’ fer luv: ur doin it wrong.”

That’s the story we get sold, right? That women who sleep around are destroying their chances at True Love. Something to do with bonding hormones getting all used up? Or is it that we have so little self-esteem that no one could love us? Or maybe it’s that we’re all used candy wrappers or dirty masking tape. I can never remember.

Thing is: I’ve done it the other way. Until my mid-30s, I was largely a serial monogamist. Not for any grand ethical or philosophical reasons – it was just what felt comfortable to me. That’s not to say that I didn’t have some wild adventures in college, or never went to bed with someone on a first date – I did on occasion. It’s just that when I did, I’d often wake up the next day in a relationship. Let me tell you: not the best recipe for partnership bliss.

I’m thinking of one particular instance in which I had what was for me a very painful dry spell: a year and a half in which I barely got to kiss anyone, and didn’t get to do anything other than that at all, sexually speaking, with anyone. It… yeah. Didn’t feel too good. Made me feel like I would never be touched or loved again. Made me feel, in a word, desperate. You know what’s not a great emotional state for making important life decisions? Desperation.

To wit: after this year and a half of nothing, I went to bed with a woman I barely knew on our first date. Nothing wrong with that, we had a great time, and seriously, did I mention a year and a half? The problem came the next morning, when it became obvious that she was much more into me emotionally than I was at that point. Did I tell her that? And potentially get exiled back to my affectionless desert? I bet you know the answer. What followed was a two-year relationship in which we were unhappy for about the last year and a half.

Fast forward through a few more relationships to last fall. As I crawled out of the acute grief stage of my breakup and into the Land of Reboundia, I launched myself somewhat full-throttle into dating. It was comforting to me to find that there were other people I found appealing who felt similarly about me. But each person I’d meet, if there was any kind of a click at all, I’d throw myself at them whole-hog, wanting so badly for them to be The One that proved I wouldn’t have to do die alone with a shriveled-up vagina and no cats. (I’m allergic.) And then (sing this with me if you know the tune), when something would inevitably go wrong, however silly or minor, however nascent the connection was, it would feel overwhelming. Like I was dying. Like I was broken all over again.

And then a miracle occurred. Via the unlikeliest source of miracles ever: Craigslist Casual Encounters.

I had never thought of my self as a Casual Encounters kind of girl. I’d read them on occasion, sure, out of fascination, horror, horniness. I’d even, once in a long while, in lonely desperate moments, posted an ad, not with the intention of actually meeting anyone, but because sometimes knowing you have a bunch of bad options that you’re rejecting feels better than feeling like you have no options at all. And it was that exact state I found myself in one Friday night last fall, after having been blown apart yet again by some minor rejection that felt so huge it sent me to my bed. I hadn’t showered or shaved or left the house in days. And so, glass of wine in hand, wearing a robe and dirty sweatpants, I posted an ad just so I could watch the replies come in and feel like I had some kind of choice in the world. That somebody wanted me, even if they were gross and I’d never want them back.

And then B. responded. He was smart and charming. His picture looked cute. He seemed like a grown-up, and not like a psycho. He knew how to banter. He made a funny joke about punctuation. And, after a few emails were exchanged, he wanted to know if I’d like to meet him for a drink. That night. Then. And, to my great shock and terror and excitement, I found that I did. (What writer can resist a good punctuation joke?)

The next hour was a blur of furious grooming, during which I kept up the following internal monologue: I’m going to get axe murdered. I’m going to get axe murdered. You don’t have to do this, you can call it off. No, I want to. I can handle myself, I have good instincts and great training. Oh, god, I’m going to get axe murdered…

I’m telling you this because sluthood is scary. Because we’ve been taught to fear it all our lives, and that training doesn’t just go away because we understand the agenda behind it. And because there are real risks involved. Society likes to punish slutty women. And so do a lot of individual men, some of whom frequent Craigslist Casual Encounters.

I left my roommate a note telling her what I’d done and where I was going and to call me at 11 and if I didn’t answer to call the police. (What they were going to do about the fact that her 30-something roommate had gone on a CE date and wasn’t home after two hours I mercifully didn’t wonder at the time.) And then I went down to the local bar and met him.

You’ve probably already guessed that I didn’t get axe murdered. Instead, we spent a lovely hour chatting over a couple of glasses of wine, he used the phrase “male hegemony” critically in a sentence (entirely unprompted by me), and then he asked me if I wanted to go back to his place, which was nearby. And once again, to my shock and terror and excitement, I found that I did. Though not before asking him for his address, calling my roommate with it in front of him, and letting him know I had extensive self-defense training.

Reader, I fucked him. Three rounds worth that night. And it was awesome.

Driving home late that night, I was overcome with an uneasy feeling. What had I just done? What did it mean? What would my friends think? Was this who I wanted to be? I sat in my parked car, paralyzed, for ten minutes that felt like an hour. And then I climbed upstairs, slid into bed, and fell into a troubled sleep.

So much of what changes us in life is accidental. The split-second decision. The whim indulged or squelched. I woke up the next morning feeling unmoored. Like something inside me had been knocked loose, but I didn’t yet know if it was a part I needed, or something that had been in the way. At brunch with friends that day, I nervously let slip about my little adventure, and exhaled as they cheered and pumped me for details. Emboldened by their lack of judgment, I told a few more friends, found more wicked delight.

I’m telling you this because sluthood requires support. Because any woman who indulges these urges carries with her a lifetime of censure and threat. That’s a loud chorus to overcome. A slut needs a posse who finds her exploits almost as delicious as she finds them herself, who cares about her safety and her stories and her happiness but not one whit about her virtue. A slut alone is a slut in difficulty, possibly in danger.

Slowly, I realized. A picture came in to focus. I had the fierce love of my friends. I now knew how to find a lover. And knowing those, I admitted what everyone around me already knew: I wasn’t ready for a new relationship. I couldn’t handle the vulnerability required. It was hurting me too much, too often. But suddenly, it was OK. Suddenly I saw that I didn’t have to keep trying. There were other options.

Of course, things are never as simple as you want them to be. I went back to the CL well trying to find more men like B. with little success. He was, perhaps, a needle in a haystack that I never thought would contain a needle in the first place. There were bushels of disgusting replies, some other flirty email exchanges, a few dates that didn’t make it past the first cocktail, and a scant handful of sexual encounters, only one of which, aside from B., was worth repeating. And even that one fizzled out after a while.

But it didn’t really matter. Because sluthood isn’t an action, it’s a state of mind.

I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me. Sluthood gave me the time and space to nurse a shattered heart. It gave me a place where I could exist in pieces, some of me craving touch, some of me still too tender to even expose to the light. Sluthood healed the part of me that felt my body and my desires were grotesque after two years in a libido-mismatched partnership. Now I felt hot, wanted, powerful. My desire and enthusiasm was an asset, not an unintended weapon. Even now, with more time passed, now, when I am actually ready for and wanting a more emotional connection, sluthood keeps me centered. It keeps me from confusing desire and affection with something deeper. It means I have another choice besides celibacy and settling. It means I won’t enter another committed relationship just to satisfy my basic need for sex and affection. It gives me more choices, it makes room for relationships to evolve organically, to take the shape they will before anyone defines them.

I’m telling you this because, as scary and dangerous as my sluthood is, it’s built on privilege. My paid work will never be in jeopardy because my sluthood is exposed. My work also means I have a lot of practice with direct sexual communication. I’m old enough to be fluent in my own desires and limits, and also old enough that no one expects me to be virginal anyhow, so the risk of stigma is less. I’m cisgender and able-bodied and relatively mentally heathly for now, which makes these assignations a lot easier to mange on multiple levels, I would imagine. I have extensive self-defense training, which assures me I can stay in control of my own safety even in most situations. As a survivor of sexual violence, I’ve been privileged to have access to good long-term therapy and other resources that helped me heal at a deep level. I’m also white, which means that no one expects my behavior to represent my entire race.

I’ve also had some obstacles to overcome. Fat girls don’t have the same pick of partners that smaller women seem to, though I’ve been pleasantly surprised and moved that there are more people out there who are attracted to me than I’d thought. Being a woman who’s “pushing 40” doesn’t exactly expand the pool either. My trauma history means I still have triggers to manage, so I’m a stickler for people who respond respectfully and immediately to direct communication – that rules out many more people than I wish it did, and my instincts on that front are quite good, but not perfect.

In other ways, too, sluthood isn’t always pretty, and I’m not always good at it. Whether from years of habit or something more intrinsic to my personality, my heart seems to want to attach, and after a couple months of playing together casually, and having long, rangey talks naked in bed together between rolls in the hay, it started to with B. Neither of us handled it particularly well. There were tears; there were accusations. But even that was an education: somehow, the conflict that erupted demonstrated so clearly the ways we wouldn’t work together in a more serious arrangement, leaving us free to pick up where we’d left off as lovers. A thread in a needle in a haystack, I suppose.

Meanwhile, via CL and other sources, I’ve had emails and dates and crushes and flings, and one thing that looked like it might get serious and then quite abruptly disappeared. I’ve explored some sexual experiences I’d only fantasized about, and learned which ones are better as fantasies and which ones I want to explore even more. I’ve remembered how much I like pleasure, and how much of it there is in the world. I’ve had to learn how to reject people nicely but clearly, and learn how to appreciate a generous rejection when it’s aimed at me. I’m building my emotional muscles again, and I’m starting to think I could eventually wind up stronger than ever. At the moment, I’ve got another connection simmering over a low flame; not sure yet what it’ll boil down to.

And yes, I still want love. Make that Love. The brass ring. The whole enchilada. A partner in crime, a permanent teammate. A mutual admiration society of two. Someone who feels like home, and who feels the same about me. Someone to catalogue my wrinkles as they form. Whatever you want to call it. When I think about it, it involves monogamy, but who knows. Maybe I’ll find it with someone. Maybe I won’t. I can’t pretend I don’t care. But most days, sluthood helps me be patient. It keeps desperation at bay. It reminds me to enjoy the life I have now, instead of waiting for someone to come start it. It helps me know my heart better, and my libido. It makes me better at communicating about both of them, and much less likely to confuse the two. To my mind, far from ruining me for real love, sluthood is preparing me for it.

I’m not telling you because I think I’ve discovered something new – countless women have certainly known this before me. I’m telling you this because so many people still don’t seem to understand. I’m not telling you this because I think you’re a slut, or should be a slut. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you need, or what you have access to. I’m surely not telling you this out of a desire to expose my private life to the internet. Writing this here means facing the judgment of some members of my family, some colleagues, and other people whose opinion of me matters. It means my ex will probably read this. It means I’ve left this out here for people to find in the future, possibly hurting my life in ways I can’t predict. Surely some of you reading this now will mock me, or criticize me, or give me uninvited advice because you feel like you now know me, or take this as an invitation to hit on me. (Hint: IT’S NOT.)

I’m telling you this because juries still think women who even look like they might possibly be sluts are “asking for it.” I’m telling you this because some people still think it’s OK to drive a teenage girl to suicide because she was probably a slut. I’m telling you this because our policymakers would rather girls get sometimes-fatal diseases than be perceived as condoning sluthood. I’m telling you this because it’s important for everyone to understand: Sluthood isn’t a disease, or a wrong path, or a trend that’s ruining our youth. It isn’t just for detached, unemotional women who “fuck like men,” (as if that actually meant something), consequences be damned. It isn’t ever inevitable that sluthood should inspire violence or shame. Sluthood isn’t just a choice we should let women make because women should be free to make even “bad” choices. It’s a choice we should all have access to because it has the potential to be liberating. Healing. Soul-fulfilling. I’m telling you this because sluthood saved me, in a small but life-altering way, and I want it to be available to you if you ever think it could save you, too. Or if you want it for any other reason at all. And because even if you don’t ever want sluthood for yourself, you’re going to be called upon to support a slut. I’m telling you this because when that happens, I want you to say yes.

(Cross-posted at Yes Means Yes.)

David Mayeda, at The Grumpy Sociologist, posted a 12-minute video on the debate over state-provided birth control in The Philippines. The Philippines is a largely Catholic society. Accordingly, it’s a good example of the way that individual lives are shaped by state policy, policy that is often influenced by powerful institutions.

And — lest we condemn The Philippines as particularly problematic in this area — let’s not forget the many ways in which religion has influenced family planning in the U.S.: “abstinence only” sex education, the increasing rarity of abortion services, the “conscience clause” that allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control, and many more examples…

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For more examples of pro- and anti-natal policy and ideology, see our posts on Hitler’s “mother’s cross”, sterilizing poor women, God’s stimulus package, Spanish vs. English versions of a pamphlet for new moms, abortion as racial genocide, and pro-natal Prop. 8.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

[Crossposted on "Alas" and on "TADA." If you want to argue against same-sex marriage, or against homosexuality, please take it to TADA.]

This post, from conservative law prof Eugene Volokh, is three years old but very worth quoting in full, in light of some of the discussions we’ve seen on “Alas” recently:

A commenter on the Usage and Marriage thread perfectly illustrated what I see as the One True Inherent Meaning error as applied to sexual practices. Someone else had written, “I think that gay sex is in fact natural for gay people. Therefore, I think that gay sex, and gay marriage, would not violate natural law.” The commenter responded, “You are simply wrong based on human biology. Tab P goes into slot V not slot B.”

Well, tab P goes into slot V, except when it doesn’t. My guess is that, as a purely descriptive matter, tab P goes into the P-owner’s hand many more times, on average, than it goes into slot V. If the most common use (i.e., the norm) defines the One True Inherent Use, then any sex other than masturbation is unnatural.

Ah, the commenter might respond, but that’s not the purpose of the penis. The purpose of the penis, either in the sense of what its biological function is, or in the sense of how God designed it (I don’t know the commenter’s philosophy, so I’m not sure which he’d focus on), is to be inserted into a vagina so as to procreate.

But biology doesn’t have “purposes,” except in a metaphorical sense. Biology has developed the penis into a multi-functioned organ — it can be used for urination, for sexual pleasure, for emotional bonding, and for reproduction (I list these in what I guess to be decreasing order of actual frequency of use). Likewise for the multi-functioned vagina, though replacing urination with delivery of babies. More broadly, the sexual act is likewise a multi-functioned act. Likewise, biology has developed the mouth into a stunningly multi-functioned organ: It can be used for (among other things) breathing, communicating, consuming sustenance-producing substances, tasting substances to see whether they are wholesome, expelling vomit, kissing, licking stamps, and at least four different kinds of production of pleasure in oneself and others — singing, eating tasty food, stimulating others’ nongenital erogenous zones, and stimulating others’ genitals.

The anus is a less multi-functioned organ. Still, it can be used not just for elimination of wastes, but also for prostate exams, for gynecological exams, for the administration of medicine to people (often babies) who can’t easily keep it down when the medicine is administered orally, and for the relatively accurate determination of body temperature. The latter four functions are of course artifacts of modern medicine, but I doubt that any of us would condemn them as violations of natural law, especially since learning, thinking, and developing new processes is natural for humans. Likewise, the anus can be used for sexual pleasure, and has been used that way by humans for millennia (and is used that way by some animals). Why then treat the anus, the mouth, or the penis as having One True Inherent Purpose rather than recognizing that they can be used in multiple ways, each of which is fully consistent with our biology.

Likewise if one sees the human being as part of God’s design, and tries to deduce proper conduct from such design. (I set aside the separate argument that proper conduct should be deduced from supposedly authoritative religious works, such as the Bible — that’s not the argument I’m responding to here.) God seems to have designed the human body in such a way that the penis, the mouth, and the anus can be used in lots of different ways; why should we infer, simply from the fact that one use (penile-vaginal sex leading to reproduction) is so important, that it’s the One True Proper Use of genitalia? Likewise, God has designed humans in a way that allows some of them to be attracted to members of their own sex; even if you believe that this preference isn’t innate, but is caused in part by upbringing or by personal choice, it’s clear that the possibility of this preference is indeed present in humans (and, as I said, other animals). This too casts doubt on the theory that penises or the sexual act have One True Inherent Purpose or One True Inherent Mode Of Employment.

Words can have many functions (in the sense of many meanings). Institutions, like marriage, can have many functions. Parts of the body can have many functions. Human practices can have many functions. One can certainly argue that some functions are beneficial and some are harmful. But I see little reason to assume that there can only be one true inherent metaphysical natural function, or to infer that just because one function is very important, all other possible functions are improper or violations of natural (or linguistic) law.

I like the connection Volokh makes in the last paragraph; that just as it’s ridiculous to claim that a penis has a One True Function, it’s ridiculous to claim that marriage has only One True Function. Indeed, if you read a book like Maggie Gallagher’s The Case For Marriage, clearly marriage benefits individuals and society in a myriad of ways. The notion that the penis, or the vagina, or marriage, has only One True Function is a desperate post hoc rationalization with virtually no connection to reality.

I’m a huge advocate for the principle and practice of enthusiastic consent. In fact, it’s one of the main things I talk about whenever I open my mouth. For a whole range of reasons, I firmly believe that some baseline “willingness” is not enough: you should only interact with someone sexually if they’re actively psyched about what’s happening.

Which is why this new post on AlterNet by Greta Christina is giving me pause. She’s writing about libidinally mismatched couples – you know, when you’re in a long-term relationship and either you or your partner wants sex waaaaaaaaayyyyy more than the other partner does. It’s a tough spot when you love someone, as I know from first-hand experience. You don’t want to break up over it, because there’s so much other good stuff happening in the relationship. But it can get pretty awful for both parties. In the relationship I’m thinking of, I felt constantly rejected, like I wasn’t sexually desirable (which played into a lot of body image and performance issues for me), and like my desire was a problem. Like every time I felt sexual want, I felt an immediate internal response: oh, no! Please go away. It’s not the most healthy way to relate to your sexuality, let me tell you.

On the other hand, my partner told me he felt constantly pressured, which made him want sex even less. Which? I totally get. If you don’t feel like you can freely decide, if you feel like someone else’s desire is more important or more overwhelming than your own, it’s not a very sexy feeling, is it?

Needless to say, I felt terrible. Given all my activism for healthy sexuality, the last thing I wanted to do was make my own partner feel pressured and bad. It was a vicious downward spiral.

So, I totally appreciate where Christina is coming from in writing the piece. Couples with this problem are desperate for help. And some of her suggestions are good: Re-defining sex. Re-thinking the circumstances in which you have sex. Considering non-monogamy. Trying couples counseling. These are all great, creative approaches that could, depending on the individuals involved, release some of the pressure that builds up in sexually mismatched pairs and make room for a healthier, happier sex life for everyone involved.

It’s these two that worry me:

1. Scheduling sex. I’ve written about this before. Many, many, many times, in fact. But I’m not sure I’ve ever written about it as a solution to this particular problem. So here goes: Scheduling sex isn’t just a solution for tired or stressed or over-scheduled couples. It can also be a solution for couples with mis-matched libidos. Oftentimes, in mis-matched- libido couples, the partner who wants sex more frequently will feel rejected and unwanted: if you’re the one who always makes the first move, and if you’re getting shot down more often than not, it can be very demoralizing. And the partner who wants sex less frequently can often feel pressured and inadequate. (All of which can lead to some nasty vicious circles/ self-fulfilling prophecies: nothing kills a libido faster than feeling like sex is an obligation.) But if you schedule at least some of your sex life ahead of time, instead of relying on spur- of- the- moment impulses and advances, it can cut through a lot of these unfortunate dynamics. Sex becomes something you’re planning together, something you’re partnering in… rather than something one person is always asking for and the other is either accepting or shooting down. (It also makes some of the other solutions I’m proposing — like compromising, and re-thinking the circumstances under which you have sex — a whole lot more feasible.)

4. Compromising. If you like sex twice a week, and your partner likes twice a month… maybe you can compromise. Have sex every week so. It won’t be perfect for either of you… but being involved with someone who’s unhappy about sex is pretty darned far from perfect, too. Having sex somewhat less often than you’d really like — or somewhat more often — may not be what you’d pick if you could pick your perfect sex life. But presumably, if you love someone, you want them to be happy too, and you want them to have a sex life that’s good for them. Almost as much as you want a sex life that’s good for you. And even from a purely selfish perspective, being involved with a sad, disgruntled, sexually frustrated partner is ten pounds of suck in a five pound bag. So while a compromise, by definition, isn’t going to be perfect, it may well be a whole better than a dissatisfying sex life. For both of you.

Do you see what I see? I just… where is the enthusiasm here? How does it ever help for the partner who wants it less to have it more anyhow? What if you schedule it and one or more person isn’t in the mood when the time comes? How is hitting a quota sexy? And how does this approach not create a situation in which the less-libidinous partner is “doing it” out of obligation, not enthusiasm? Over time, won’t this cause resentment and send both partners dangerous messages about sex: that it’s owed?

Relationships are hard and complex and, being single in my late 30’s, I certainly don’t claim to have mastered them. Maybe I’m missing something here. But I can’t let go of feeling this advice flies in the face of the principle of enthusiastic consent, and therefore can only lead to dangerous sexual dynamics. What do you think?

(cross-posted at Yes Means Yes)

I may not have found the love of my life on OkCupid, but I did fall in love… with their data analysis!

Their latest super-fun post by Christan Rudder, sent along by Rob Walker, Sara P. and an Anonymous Reader, looks at the lies people tell in their profiles.  They do this not by catching any given individual in a lie, but by comparing data on their users to data on the general U.S. population.  (It’s unclear what percentage of OkCupid users are American and they don’t specify if they are only looking at U.S. users, so I can’t verify that this is a fair comparison but… if they do restrict the analysis to Americans then…)  Since they have 1.51 million active users, we should expect that any distributions should more or less overlap.

But they don’t…

1.  Men lie about their height, reporting, on average, that they are about two inches taller than they are.  In the figure below, the solid purple line represents the U.S. population, the dashed line represents the reported height of OkCupid users:

2. Women lie about their height too.  Here’s the same figure for women (but with a dark purple implied best fit line; you can just ignore it):

3. People exaggerate their income, on average inflating it by about 20 percent (for this data, they controlled for regional differences in income).  The figure below, however, shows that the amount of exaggeration is related to age.  Both men (blue) and women (red) increasingly inflate their income up until around age 40.  After that, they just keep inflating it at about the same rate.

Rudder quips:

A woman may earn 76 cents on the dollar for the same work as a man, but she can fabricate, like, 85 cents no problem.

Oh and, yeah, there’s a reason why the men are lying (no word from Rudder on the women). Income is highly correlated with how many messages a man gets (red = fewer messages; green = more):

4. It also turns out that not all of the “recent pics” are actually recent. This is especially true for pictures rated “hot.” Rudder says that “hot” photos are more than twice as likely as “average” photos to be over three years old (12% and 5% respectively).

And the older a person is, the more likely they are to upload an older photo:

Fun!

———————–

Also from OkCupid: the racial politics of dating, what women want, how attractiveness matters, age, gender, and the shape of the dating pool, and older women want more sex.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

Courtesy of Talking Points Memo (via Comics with Problems), I have for you a link to the entire graphic novel (comic book? I’m not sure what to call this thing) Dignity & Respect: A Training Guide on Homosexual Conduct Policy. Here’s the cover:

If the cover hasn’t clued you in yet, this is a book meant to educate soldiers about the U.S. Army’s 1993 Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy (which applies to other branches of the military as well). It covers what the policy means, what to do if you have “credible evidence” that someone is engaging in homosexual activities (being gay is ok, you just can’t do anything), the Army’s anti-harassment policy (you know, you can turn someone in for being gay and ruin their military career, but you can’t be rude), and provides scenarios of situations that might occur and how a soldier should react.

Among other things you can learn that it’s not ok to imply a male soldier would go on a date with another man, but apparently it’s ok to say that no man on earth would ever go out with a female soldier in your unit:

I’m not going to put up every page here, since you can easily get them all at the links above, but it’s worth at least skimming. It’s…something. I cannot imagine that any soldier, even ones who cared about the issue a lot one way or the other, took this book seriously.

I will give them credit, though: the characters are extremely diverse in terms of race/ethnicity and gender.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

A few links relevant to some recent posts:

I posted a compare-and-contrast between a feminist and feminist-critical view of checking for consent during sex. Sometimes “Alas” guest poster — and writer of one of the examples from my post — Clarisse Thorn posted an example of a “hot vanilla sex scene” including check-ins from the novel The Russian Concubine. Crank up the AC and go check it out.

Figleaf, another of my favorite sex bloggers, kindly links to my post and discusses the issues it brought up. If you’re not reading Figleaf’s blog, you really should be.

And in the comments of his/her blog Vagabond Scholar, Batocchio writes a great rebuttal to Davi’s “The 24 Types of Authoritarian” remix of my “24 Libertarians” cartoon. I hope Batocchio will forgive my quoting at length:

Like I said, it’s not bad, but judging it also depends on how seriously one takes the original and the revamp. It’s not really a “rebuttal,” since as Tristero’s put it, pretty much everything good about libertarianism already exists in liberalism, and liberals oppose both authoritarianism and the more idiotic strains of libertarianism. Many of the revamped panels express views already satirized in the original – and the revamped panels often don’t address the issues raised in the original. For instance, what is the libertarian solution for unsafe or poisonous food, products, pollution, etc.? (Raised by the “Caveat Emptor” panel in the original.) The “Nanny Stater” revamp attacks an outright ban on smoking, which doesn’t exist in America, while not addressing warning labels or secondhand smoke. What is the libertarian solution for exploitation and/or discrimination by “private” entities – or is there none? (Raised in part by the “Whitey” panel in the original, and the question Rand Paul didn’t want to answer.) Do you believe that taxation is theft, as the revamp suggests in several panels, or only taxation that relates to social spending, basic prosperity and public goods/works? (Raised by “The Island” in the original, among others.)

Some self-described libertarians, such as Glenn Reynolds, are authoritarians, and many others are pretty garden variety conservatives who like to be seen as independents, and independent thinkers. Others exist who are more sincere. Many adore Ayn Rand, some accept part of her views, and a small number reject her. (Then there’s the breakdown on Glenn Beck and Jonah Goldberg.) The more thoughtful view Hayek as a useful gadfly in small doses, even he got many important issues “stunningly wrong” (but was nonetheless more liberal than many of his devotees). If you have an essay/post describing your world view/political philosophy, feel free to link it and I’ll try to check it out. But Michael Tomasky does a pretty good job of explaining the limited value - and the extreme limitations - of libertarianism as it’s usually practiced. There’s also Belle Waring’s classic “If Wishes Were Horses, Beggars Would Ride — A Pony!” and “Libertarian Paradise” video. Thanks for stopping by.