Cornelius Walker wants us to stop treating women’s bodies and sex as something to be bartered for political gain.
What is going on in the comments on Joanna’s post Would You Fall For A Sex Strike? When I first heard of this strike, I immediately put it into the “gimmick” bin in my mental filing cabinet. Also filed there is the story of the pastor who spent 24 hours with his wife in bed, on the roof of his church, and every other “story” about sex that turns out to be a sell-job.
For some reason — typical mind fallacy? — I thought other commenters would see the absurdity in the proposal, nodding their heads in agreement that the entire stunt is premised on gender role essentialism and an allusion to Aristophanes’s play.
Boy was I wrong.
First, let’s all just agree that Rick Santorum is not going to be president. However “on fire” evangelicals are about him, campaigning for an interventionist military and against sex and college is not the way to win the youth vote. Why are we taking his assault against contraception seriously? Didn’t Monty Python, author the definitive sendup of this idea, do this nearly thirty years ago?
It saddens me that these issues have fallen prey to the same old stereotypes I thought we were working against. First is the idea that men are ruled by their lust, and women should play their strongest hand against them: access to their genitals. Instead of rejecting that narrative, some apparently have embraced it, suggesting that their wives and girlfriends were fungible commodities, ready to be swapped at the drop of a dime should they ever pull such a stunt. And then there are women who support this idea that the quickest way to a man’s brain is through his penis.
Next we have the idea that it’s only conservative men who take this anti-contraception stance. There’s an old joke that I think applies here:
Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Son of God.
Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as head of the Church.
Baptists don’t recognize each other in a liquor store.
If you’ve ever driven through the Bible Belt you’ll notice two things. One, there’s a heck of a lot of churches. Small, ramshackle churches, churches in homes, churches in strip malls, gigantic stadium-sized churches. The other thing you’ll notice is that not far from those churches you’ll often find just as many liquor and sex stores. Location, location, location.
It’s not just men supporting this type of legislation, it’s women too. It’s not only conservatives, even though the evangelicals behind this legislation usually vote Republican. Women are not in lockstep agreement when it comes to the proper care of the female reproductive system. Both men and women have signed on to the legislation in Texas, in Virginia, in Arizona, and twenty other states. Men and women who are using or have used contraception. This entire issue is shot through with hypocrisy.
The irony of the reference to Lysistrata is that everyone knows the gimmick — women denying sex to their men to stop a war — but no one seems to know the play. In it the women are the ones who are considered hedonistic and driven by their passions. It is the women who need to be policed so as not to break the strike. The very premise of the play contradicts our current assumption of women as prudes and men as being ruled by their burdens, even as we rely on its setup.
As someone who has genitals, I don’t understand why anyone else cares how often I use them, in what manner, and with whom. (Except for my wife, that is, I’m sure she cares an awful lot.) If everyone is consenting — and old enough to consent — that’s good enough for me. Perhaps I am falling to the typical mind fallacy again, but I think this is because how you use your genitals never crosses my mind. Ever. Unless you’re a potential sex partner, I’m just not that interested in them.
Can’t we just stop? Stop trying to police each other’s sex lives. Stop trying to enforce on others a morality we don’t even follow ourselves. Stop portraying sex — procreational, recreational and otherwise — as something shameful or sinful, something to be bartered, something to be withheld. And if I might send Rick Santorum a personal message: If Jesus is truly concerned about whether I’m making enough babies or what position I like, I trust He’ll let me know. And I’m fairly certain it won’t be you that he chooses to send the message.
Photo by iamtheo
About Cornelius Walker
Dear Lord. You must be sane or something.
Agreed.
Agreed x 290,000,000. Is the other 10,000,000 that cause all the problems.
I love this kind of sanity.
I love this post. So much. It is soothing the deep rage within me from all this War on Contraceptives bullshit.
You’re absolutely right. Unfortunately, that’s not how society raised us. For some people (both men and women) sex is a source of power that they exploit to control others.
I’m curious how you see men controlling women through sex.
This is an honest question.
…through the legislature -or other overt power.
That would be a religions or political organisation, not men. Female sexuality appears to be suppressed mainly by women and mainly in order to control men.
So, yes women have used sex to extract favors from men either from financial desperation or greed. But also sometimes because their own arousal and romantic engagement is a function of how much a pursuing lover is willing to sacrifice for her. Regardless, this form of ‘control’ is at the personal level and generally innocuous in a larger social context.
But let’s not confuse this with a more insidious form of control that is exercised by religious, political and commercial interests. It’s these institutions that systematically limit and/or control female sexuality to control men. As a group, women are no more culpable for this exploitation than the men who remain its target.
Random stranger.
“religious, political and commercial interests” are not men as a group working for the benefit of men as a group, they are political organisations that use it for their own ends.
And religious suppression of female sexuality was found to be female in origin, not male. http://www.femininebeauty.info/suppression.pdf
“through the legislature -or other overt power.”
How many male-bodied individuals have access to power through the legislature? And do these male-bodied individuals in power actually identify as male or do they identify with their ideologies over their gender?
Well, its not that men are of these orgs than these orgs (political, religious, commercial) are of men (at least historically). The power center in these groups have certainly sought to limit female sexuality and maintain its scarcity (often through threat of violence or ostracism) ultimately to control the terms of other men’s reproductive opportunities and so, cajole them into whatever risky activity the org needs.
“Stop portraying sex — procreational, recreational and otherwise — as something shameful or sinful, something to be bartered, something to be withheld.”
Sex trade, sex trafficking, and child porn and pedophilia are bartered in some form or other. Sinful is in the eye of the beholder these days; moral relativism is encouraged. That’s why people don’t have to think anymore…anything goes.
Rick Santorum is looking to ban pornography too, as it encourages all of the above sins and lead people away from societal and family values. In an ideal world, Rick Santorum would get his wishes. (I don’t like doctors lying to mothers on unborn, deformed babies.) Santorum’s morals are stigmatized by his faith; otherwise, a lot of his policies make a lot of sense for the betterment of society. Look, there are still condoms; that’s effective contraception and cheaper than birth control.
I’m not sure who you think is encouraging moral relativism, but somehow I doubt you understand what it means anyway. Particularly when you say “anything goes” because that’s not moral relativism, that’s amorality.
It’s interesting that an atheist might call these things “sins,” but less interesting when you suggest that pornography leads to them. We have very good data that shows quite the opposite, so I’m going to presume your atheism to be just as unstudied as some Christians are.
Look, I don’t mean to pry, but have you actually had sex? I’m pro-condom, but I’m not going to lie and say it’s just as good or better than bareback. Aside from the failure rate being higher, the idea that everyone should choose between condoms or having more babies is insulting. People should avail themselves of the best birth control options available for them. If they are in a long-term committed relationship I don’t see why condoms should be the only choice. And let’s be clear here: Santorum is against all forms of birth control because he is against all non-procreative sex.
I suppose whether or not condoms are cheaper depends on how much sex you’re having. How much does a 30-pack go for these days? I’m guessing in the range of $25-$35, or about three to four months of hormonal birth control at Target if the generic works for you.
Or free from a student center or birth control clinic. Well known brand condoms are pretty pricey, but there’s plenty of cheaper brand condoms out there that still pass all the tests.
Yeah, a lot of people frown on the idea of a committed married couple using condoms, but in our case, we have no choice, and it gets expensive due to our needs. Hormones are off the table completely for me, owing to my health record, and my gyno says my small pelvis holds an even smaller uterus which can’t fit an IUD. That leaves condoms, but he’s a bit bigger than is safe for Magnums, and rather than risk breakage, we wind up with the fancypants condoms from specialty sex shops. They feel better, since they’re thinner and sized right for him, but they cost a pretty penny. Even buying in bulk, on the rare occasions when the “jumbo packs” are in stock, doesn’t cut costs. Add to that the fact that I need special lube, since the drugstore brands irritate me, and we’re looking at $100 for each contraception buying trip.
As I got older and my periods got more regular, I started looking into Natural Family Planning, and we eventually added this method to our contraception repertoire to add variety and cut costs. It’s often touted for women who want to get pregnant, but if you use it wisely, it’s just as good for avoiding pregnancy. The trick is to use condoms during the woman’s fertile window, and then go bareback (with withdrawal prior to ejaculation) the rest of the month. It is definitely NOT a smart idea for teens and many 20somethings, guys with slow reflexes, and ladies with erratic cycles, but for committed couples in their 30s and 40s, the efficacy rate is very high. As a bonus, I know exactly where I am in my cycle every day of the month, so I’m seldom surprised by the arrival of my period, and it’s handy for scheduling parties and trips around my monthly “friend.”
Where do people get the idea that atheists should be without morals or should be liberal, or for that matter be a homogeneous bunch like those with a religion? Now who’s the unstudied one?
Moral relativism varies between individuals and cultures and so there is no objective right and wrong. In other words, really, anything goes!
No worries about women’s birth control, because men’s birth control will become available in the near future — thus giving men can more control over reproduction and avert pregnancies.
So we get down to the really key issues for men on why they support women’s rights to have access to INSURED birth control (sounds pretty self-centered to me):
1. Condoms are not pleasurable for men; they prefer going bare
2. Condoms can cost more than birth control
It seems to me, there are other underlying motives for men to support women’s INSURED birth control:
Men like the idea of contraception as a women’s issue and responsibility, because they think this removes responsibility from men entirely (so some can pin females as s!uts, if they conceive — for proof, see Jerry Springer and Maury Povich!). As well men can benefit having several sexual partners at any given time (well this goes for women too).
My observation is that couples in committed relationships don’t bother with condoms, and don’t need birth control because they note and follow a woman’s ovulation cycle; thus avoid pregnancy with that natural method but okay if pregnancy happens unplanned. This is a true committed relationship, not for convenience.
People forget that there are side effects for some women taking birth control — like weight gain and reduced sex drive. And with someone I know, prolong use of it — caused infertility. I don’t think condom use causes any of this. Men should be so lucky and not complain so much.
“This is a true committed relationship, not for convenience”
A true committed relationship? So are those of us who use the pill not in true committed relationships because we use the birth control pill to prevent pregnancy? Just curious.
Where do people get the idea that atheists should be without morals or should be liberal, or for that matter be a homogeneous bunch like those with a religion? Now who’s the unstudied one?
I didn’t say they should be without morals or liberal. However, I would comment on two things here. First, like Christians atheists probably should study up to understand basic theories of morality. Second, given the GOP’s current entanglement with the Christian Right and their willingness to see atheists as immoral people, I’m not sure why any would join that group. Most — no, make that all — conservative atheists I know are libertarians precisely because they don’t want their moral choices to be beholden to a book they don’t privilege in any way.
Again, you fail to understand the crux of moral relativism. And because moral relativism is often used as a pejorative, you attempt to ignorantly put it to the same use.
The idea behind moral relativism is that moral absolutes are likely unknowable, what we consider moral truths are shaped by our culture, and generally speaking when we can not rationally resolve a moral disagreement our default position should be that of tolerance. That’s not the same as “anything goes” by a long stretch. “Anything goes” has a name, and we call it “amorality.”
I believe there are objective moral truths, that they can be known, but that our brains are ill-equipped to determine them, particularly in the moment of making a moral judgement. Additionally, our fallible brains are easily influenced by a hot or cold beverage, having to identify a number on a screen, and even magnets.
I don’t know about the “no worries” part, but this is probably the most sensible thing you’ve said thus far. Men do need greater control over contraception, but this doesn’t mean women then need less control. I’m hopeful that the trials will prove productive.
Well, considering that methods other than condoms are available only by prescription, why not insured?
Both men AND women typically prefer going bare. I have yet to meet a person, man or woman, who prefers condoms just for the feel of it. Perhaps they exist, but I imagine they are quite rare.
Maybe condoms cost more, maybe they don’t (again, it probably depends on how much sexing you do). But they shouldn’t be the only option available.
Because you have special insight into the minds and motivations of men?
This explains so much.
If I have multiple partners (particularly partners I’m not in a long-term relationship with) I’m probably going to insist on condoms.
You aren’t very observant. NFP only accounts for 1-3% of those using contraception in the US. And just who are you to define what a true committed relationship is and to suggest that unless you’re open to making babies, you’re not in one?
Yes, that’s why some women can’t use the pill, or can’t use the generics. Some women use an IUD or the Nuvaring or implants. Whatever she uses, that decision is between her and her doctor and you and I and the fine men and women in our legislatures would do well to remember that.
An unwanted pregnancy isn’t a walk in the park either.
Lucky for what exactly? No, don’t answer that, I don’t actually want to know.
Condoms
CHEAP: 20 per condom, taking one a day for a year = $73
EXPENSIVE: 2.50 per condom, taking one a day for a year = 912.50
Female Birth Control
CHEAP: .40 per pill, taking one a day for a year = $146
EXPENSIVE: 2.28 per pill, taking one a day for a year = $ 832.20
OR you could use
The Patch costing 429.96 per year or The Ring costing 693.33 per year.
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:
Since Women can’t drive to the gas station to pick up their birth control they have to spend yet some more money on a Dr. visit in order to obtain said birth control.
The average cost of a gyno visit without insurance?
$400 which is require YEARLY in order to stay on the birth control..
So let’s say you have enough sex to need one condom a day, you could be looking at spending an average of $492 a year on your birth control
BUT GUESS WHAT!
Birth control has to be taken daily whether you’re having sex that day or not.
So after paying the doctor and the pharmacy to get the birth control, you are looking at an average of $489 a year PLUS $400 for Prescription.
Boys are “good at math” right??
Hmmm…
$889 per year on average it would cost a woman without insurance to obtain Birth control.
$492 per year on average it would cost a man without insurance to obtain birth control.
The ONLY reason that a female’s birth control MAY cost less is when they are INSURED because of the very FACT that female birth control cost on average TWICE as much as mens.
yea, poor men, condoms don’t feel as good.
ovarian cancer caused by prolonged birth control usage doesn’t FEEL GOOD EITHER
I couldn’t agree with you more about men not wanting the responsibility of birth conrol and to push it on the woman as her responsibility (I assume because she’d be the one getting pregnant)
I”m luck enough to be in a relationship with a GROWN ASS MAN who takes pride in owning his responsibilites in the relationship and even offered to pay half of the bill before I was even on the birth control.
His reasoning…
“I’m the one having sex with you, and if you got pregnant, that would be MY child and MY responsibility too, so why wouldn’t I be JUST AS RESPONSIBLE for keeping that from happening.”
How refreshing… a man with real logic.
“BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE:
Since Women can’t drive to the gas station to pick up their birth control they have to spend yet some more money on a Dr. visit in order to obtain said birth control.”
Dishonesty won’t help your argument. If the woman doesn’t have health, then health insurance paying for the pill or not makes no difference. So claiming without health insurance costs is dishonest. Once we do look at those with health insurance, we will see that at no point in the current debate is women’s check-up/doctors visit costs being objected to, so that doctors visit once per year is still covered. Take that out of the equation and suddenly the current costs are the same.
Why does it always have to be all or nothing with you feminists? Why the need for extremes? You need to get everything you want or it’s suddenly a war on women, and “controlling women’s sexuality” (not that not paying for the pill in any ways says what a woman can or can’t do, with her own money OR with her own body, but acknowledging that wouldn’t help the agenda, and “controlling women’s sexuality” sounds so much more shameful that it has a better chance of shaming opposition into silence.)
“I”m luck enough to be in a relationship with a GROWN ASS MAN who takes pride in owning his responsibilites in the relationship and even offered to pay half of the bill before I was even on the birth control….”
You’re a very lucky woman! Your man is a keeper. I think the sex strike is silly, but I’m all for men understanding everything that goes into birth control and how it affects THEIR sex lives too. You mention ovarian cancer, but there are so many other things that go into it as well–from not so serious side effects (leg pains, gall bladder issues, weight fluctuations, sex drive problems, headaches, nausea) to the practical issues (money, trips to the doctor, pharmacy visits, intrusive exams and insertions). There are many good men who do understand, but it’s worth it for women to not be embarrassed to talk about it with their men or feel like all of the burden is on them. And it’s worth it for men to give a f***, like your wonderful boyfriend.
I mostly agreed with your post, but I don’t understand the pairing of 1 & 2 as both embracing the narrative. I sure wouldn’t describe my wife as an interchangeable, easily replaced commodity, but I did comment in the other thread that I would divorce her if she engaged in sex strikes. It wouldn’t be over a sex strike that’s about BC legislation; it would be over the very act of embracing sex strikes as a negotiating tool in our marriage. In other words, my divorce threat (which is only theoretical, because my wife doesn’t do this) is not about thinking she’s a fungible commodity, but about how strongly I reject the narrative that you summed up in #2, and rejected yourself in every other part of the post. I would not tolerate being married to a woman who embraced the idea of controlling my brain through my penis. 1 & 2 are in opposition, not two examples of people embracing the same idea.
I’m not sure #1 is a fair characterization of what many guys said in the other thread, but even if someone was a big enough a-hole to mean it and say it exactly like that, it would still seem to me to spring from a rejection of the sex strike narrative, not from embracing it. Embracing it would have to entail approving of some part of it on some level. If you wanted to include an example of that besides 2, you could have pointed to the people who thought it was stupid and gimmicky for American women, but a good idea for third-world women without Internet. No one quite said why, but I’m assuming the Internet must convey a special ability to resist phallic thought control. Yay, Internet.
I think, and speak very publicly when I can, that withholding sex— which is NOT the same as just not having the desire for sex at any given time and refusing for genuine reasons—is manipulative bullshit.
Withholding sex, withholding love, withholding communication, is emotional abuse.
You phrased it much better and more concisely than I did, but yeah, that’s what I was getting at. Thanks for saying it better.
Hear hear.
I didn’t mean to suggest they were embracing the sex strike narrative so much as the assumptions about sexuality underlying them.
That said, the idea of withholding sex being a DTMFA offense was not always couched in terms of the overall relationship. Quite frankly, it sometimes had the sound of “if she cut me off for a week then we’re through,” as if the injustice were how he was being manipulated, not that he was being manipulated. Would the same be true if she was pissed and bought Coors Light instead of Guinness to show her displeasure? This seems no better than someone who thought that men could be manipulated in such a manner, and felt no qualms about doing so.
Perhaps my imagination is defective, but I was curious that people would consider their partner’s participation to be manipulation. If my partner were to do this, I would presume it to be an act of solidarity, or as an awareness exercise, rather than an attempt to manipulate my viewpoint or spur me to action. I simply can’t imagine her thinking that attempting to manipulate me in such a manner was a good idea. But perhaps we are saying the same thing: I wouldn’t be with a person who was manipulative like that, so if she were I’d assume it was for some other reason.
I also find it curious that someone would divorce over their spouse doing such a thing. It suggests to me that the relationship isn’t worth having anyway. In a class on divorce, a rabbi was asked when it was appropriate to present the get. The rabbi responded, “when she burns the peas.” As he explained, when the relationship has turned so sour that burning the peas becomes a major issue, it’s time to move on. That’s exactly how I see this situation — if your communication and understanding of each other is such that you would try this/this would bother the heck out of you, it’s obviously past time to move on.
As for those who thought it appropriate for third world countries but not the West, I just don’t even know where to begin, so I didn’t.
I dislike the idea of a strike, but this “If my partner were to do this, I would presume it to be an act of solidarity, or as an awareness exercise, rather than an attempt to manipulate my viewpoint or spur me to action.” to me speaks volumes. I love your example from the Rabbi, and yes, in a case like this, a singular week is not a “manipulation of the husband” but a defiance of the State. In any case, I like my Sex In better.
Thank you, Nick, for refusing to respond to and dignify the suggested appropriateness of penis control only for third world women.
Evidently, even the “Yay! Internet” has not been able to make a dent in the strong prejudices of some white, and therefore privileged and somehow better-than-third-world, men.
But that’s not how the sex strike has been described in it’s purposes and aims. What you’re describing is more like some sort of abstinence-as-solidarity campaign, which I don’t really understand, but it’s the sort of thing women and men who did could mutually choose to engage in or respect while the other person did. In other words, you’re describing something like a fast, but a one-sided sex strike is more analogous to withholding food from someone to manipulate through hunger. The whole point of it being a “strike” is the stereotype-based assumption that women control whether men have sex (not needing it themselves) and can leverage that control to get men to do what they want. As I’ve seen it described, it sounds like deliberate manipulation, not solidarity or awareness.
The first sentence there satisfies the curiosity expressed by the one you immediately followed it with to start the next paragraph. That is, if you wouldn’t be with a person who would manipulate you like that, then it appears you’re the type of person who would end a relationship with someone for manipulating you like that. The “such a thing” is the manipulation through sex, not the absence of sex for a week.
If you still think it’s a solidarity/awareness thing, not manipulation, then I’m curious why you think it’s being framed as a “sex strike” for women to engage in. Why couldn’t men join in? Regardless of who’s joining in, what’s the perceived benefit of abstaining from sex as a way of raising awareness about reproductive rights? What kind of sense does it make, other than as a manipulation tactic?
Let me clarify.
Given the person I am married to, that I think I know, it would be out of character for her to attempt to manipulate me through withholding sex.
Therefore, if she were to tell me she was participating in this stunt, I would not assume she was trying to manipulate me through withholding sex. Instead, I would assume her participation was for some other reason: as an awareness exercise she wanted me to participate in with her, or in solidarity with other women who might have discovered through the recent debates that they didn’t know their spouses as well as they thought.
Does that clarify things?
Okay, assuming it does… if you have a good relationship with your spouse, and you wouldn’t be married to someone who behaves in such a manner…
If your spouse decided to participate in this, would you assume her participation to be because:
a) you didn’t really know her, she’s actually a manipulative asshole, and you’re well rid of her
b) you think manipulation is out of character for her, and she must be doing it for some other reason
c) some reason I’m sure the commentariat will supply
What I’m saying is that I would always assume (b) for anyone I’m married to; it’s the only choice consistent with my being happily married to them.
It sounds like you and your wife have a mutually shared view toward sex and its role in your marriage. I think that’s terrific, and commend you both. I’m not even remotely trying to say your relationship is flawed. Your logic, on the other hand, doesn’t make sense to me.
But “this stunt” according to the organizers’s FAQ page is intended to “…[urge] our abstinent partners to raise their voices and their votes in support of the women they love and the love-making they’ve taken for granted until now.” I’m not seeing what other reason you could conceive in for participating in “this stunt” other than to support as a means of activism, the withholding of sex to manipulate a partner into supporting a position they otherwise would not support. A participant who embraces the stated purpose of the strike also embraces the notion that their partner has taken their love and love-making for granted. That’s what it says it’s about, and I think it’s pretty obviously implied even for people who don’t go to the trouble of reading the FAQ.
If your partner already agrees with your position, as you and your very compatible wife appear to, there’s no effect whatsoever of going on “sex strike”, because it doesn’t change each other’s minds, and has no bearing on other people since no one else relies on you for sex. If you and your partner (in this case, your wife, but the strike invites participations from more than just married couples) do not agree, then the whole point of abstaining is for the witholding partner to convince the horndog partner through sexual deprivation. There is no solidarity angle to it, or at least, I haven’t seen anyone describe what that would mean other than “there must be one” because it would just be too hard to believe a sex strike was really a sex strike.
It sounds to me like ultimately, we’re in agreement that neither of us would want to be married to a woman who would go on sex strike. You’re so sure your wife isn’t that kind of woman that if she were to do it, you would resolve the cognitive dissonance by turning the whole idea of the sex strike into something it isn’t, rather than face the implications of what it would mean for her to embrace its official rationale and goals. Or perhaps you’d carve out some exception to accomodate your wife so it wouldn’t *really* be a sex strike if she did it, or frame it as some sort of mutual abstinence pledge you could both join in. However, there’s no reason to expect that it was anything other than sexual manipulation for the vast majority of participants, so when you describe some other purpose that you wouldn’t find threatening, you are describing something other than the sex strike. It sounds like if your wife actually participated in a sex strike, you would have a serious problem with it, just like me. Lucky for both of us, our wives have no intention of doing that, and lucky for all of us, we are not at odds with each other over the issues that prompted this sex strike in the first place.
The assumption you make, that I do not, is that people do things for the official reasons.
One year my wife and I fasted for Ramadan. The purpose of abstaining from food, drink, and sex during the day is to teach Muslims about patience, spirituality, humility and submissiveness to God. Except we’re not Muslim, and we weren’t doing anything for spirituality, humility, or Allah.
I know someone who is a Republican strictly because of his belief in fiscal conservatism; he repudiates the culture war social agenda of Santorum and his ilk. He’ll likely vote for Romney, in part because he doesn’t believe Romney is as socially conservative as he’s been making himself out to be. Were Santorum to win the nomination he would either hold his nose and vote Obama or, more likely, abstain.
People sign onto all sorts of things without agreeing with all of the statements of purpose. So whatever the statement of purpose on their website, whatever motivation is listed in their FAQ, I’m not going to assume that my wife agrees with all of it simply because she is interested in doing part of it. Rather, I’d assume she has her own reasons, reasons I’d inquire about before making a decision.
And if I didn’t know her, if she were in fact a manipulative jerk, well then I’d have a lot of reassessing to do.
The irony here is that I think we’re in agreement on all the substantive points, and only differ on the logic involved. If someone tells me they’re doing something for Reason X, I believe them, whether it’s a sex strike to “make me support their reproductive rights” (even if I already do), or that they’re fasting for Ramadan *because* they’re a Muslim. I would believe such a person that they really are “sex striking for reproductive rights” or “fasting for Ramadan”. What you’re describing as the reasons you’d assume or be okay with are just pretending for…well, I don’t know why, but it’s not the real thing. If your wife “had her reasons” for sex striking that were different from the stated purpose, she wouldn’t really be sex striking, any more than she and you were really Muslims when you fasted during Ramadan for non-Muslim reasons.
We appear to agree that if it were the real thing, and our wives were revealed as manipulative jerks by a bona fide sex strike, no pretendsies, we’d have a problem with that. For you, it would involve reassessment. In all likelihood, I wouldn’t sprint to the nearest lawyer if it really happened, either, but as I sit here thinking about it hypothetically, I can’t imagine wanting to remain in a marriage with a woman who would use sex as coercion.
These people today who claim to lead the ‘Conservative movement” are frauds! The conservatives I knew as a young man believed in smaller less intrusive government. Barry Goldwater, who was a leader of Conservatism when I was young , basically said that the mission of government should be to deliver the mail, pick up the trash, pave the streets and keep them safe, protect the shores and stay the hell out of my bedroom! I guess I’ll have to change my affiliation to Jeffersonian Liberitian!
Conservatives still want small government. As Dan Savage is fond of saying, they just want to shrink government small enough to fit inside a woman’s vagina.
And I find this totally creepy and repulsive! Like a grown man who likes watching young girls get sweaty while excercising in Gym class creepy!
I hadn’t heard that Dan Savage quote, but it’s awesome!
“Maxims” like Savage’s are harmful because they allow people to ignore men’s issues. Do you really think conservatives are proponent’s of men’s rights? Conservatives are almost always against legalizing drugs. Drugs laws overwhelmingly harm men.
You’re aware that he is a humorist, right? He tosses off lines like a high school girl does a prom dress. (There, that was another joke) But humor is used to shine light on uncomfortable truths.
The truth is that women and men aren’t equal in this birth control debate because women have to carry the “horrible gift from God” for nine months. The pill is something women take, IUDs are inserted into women. If there were a pill for men, I’d take it. But there isn’t, and until there is this debate will always be asymmetric.
This isn’t a discussion about family court, or child support, or anything else. Those things have their own asymmetries and disparate impacts. This is to say nothing about conservatives and men’s rights. The War On Drugs™ — yeah, stupid beyond belief, but that’s not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about is birth control, and when we do we’re almost always going to be talking about women’s bodies because they do the birthing that is in want of control.
So I think the Savage jibe is appropriate, because the legislation around contraception and abortion is necessarily about women (even though the legislators pushing it are not exclusively men). When they throw condoms and vasectomies into the mix, then perhaps we can say the discussion is not gendered. That’s not to say the issue doesn’t affect men or that men don’t have any skin in this game; if it were just lesbians on the pill we wouldn’t call it contraception, would we?
“The truth is that women and men aren’t equal in this birth control debate because women have to carry the “horrible gift from God” for nine months. The pill is something women take, IUDs are inserted into women. If there were a pill for men, I’d take it. But there isn’t, and until there is this debate will always be asymmetric.”
This is true, but this isn’t to say that men aren’t affected by this area: Women have to carry the kid for nine months, men have to pay for her decision for two decades. And the only reason there’s no male pill is because women’s advocacy groups aren’t pushing for it. If feminists got behind RISUG (and they really should) it would enter human trials in the US next year.
Um, yeah, that’s what I said. Like here:
and here:
Peter, with all due respect, I have yet to see a women’s interest site that hasn’t advocated for a male pill. In fact, many of us ladies are advocating for better contraceptive choices for all of us, and we’re shouted down by an equal number of women and men alike for “not being grateful enough.” In truth, our choices are lousy, male and female alike. As couples, we have three methods only:
1. We have hormones, which are limited to use in women for right now, and women like me who are migraine and depression patients, those are no-gos. For other women, at any given time, about half those on birth-control hormones hate the side effects or lose their sex drives, but the challenge and expense of finding the right hormone combination and delivery method often trumps the increased quality of life that “right-fit” hormonal contraception can bring.
2. We have IUDs, but in America, only two types/sizes are available, which limits the pool of women able to use them, and most doctors won’t insert them in childless women even today. Our European sisters have over a dozen to choose from, and since IUDs were never taboo over there – the Dalkon Shield, c. 1970s, which came with it septic infections and death was a US-only phenomenon – many women can get them easily, and all are assured a size that fits them.
3. We have barrier methods, like condoms, cervical caps, dental dams, and diaphragms, which are widely regarded as ineffective and prone to failure, and tend to be viewed in a less-than-enthusiastic fashion outside of the GLBT community. (With perfect use, condoms have a 98-99 percent efficacy rate, but few people adhere to perfect-use guidelines, save for couples where one party is HIV-positive and the other isn’t. I’m an 80s kid, and I vividly remember the days when HIV was a death sentence, so they’ve consistently remained my “birth control” of choice, but I’m in the vast minority on that matter, particularly among married women.)
My understanding is that political and market forces in the United States have colluded to prevent men’s contraceptive choices from evolving past the condom – and, for the committed-to-childlessness, the vasectomy. We ladies can advocate for you, but you fellows also must make your interest in improved contraception options widely known. And you must be MUCH more vocal than you currently are, because if you aren’t adamant about what you want in large enough numbers, the drug companies will assume, based on long-held stereotypes that men don’t want to get involved in contraception, that product development is a fruitless pursuit because it’s not profitable.
Inaccurate and unfair as it is, drug researchers abide by common stereotypes about men’s desires and needs, including, “Men don’t want doctors touching their balls,” which holds up the reversible vasectomy, and “Men wouldn’t take a pill out of fear of the feminizing effects of the hormones,” which holds up the male Pill. We ladies cannot make a convincing case on your behalf that these stereotypes are fallacy alone, because we’re not men, and our hearsay or conjecture is not compelling enough in an industry with billions of bucks on the line. Only a large-scale protest from “the horse’s mouth” will work here.
On a related note, Dan Savage has a mixed record in advocating for men. In the “positives” column, he’s made it clear that men married to women who withhold sex have the right to seek it elsewhere. (Ditto for ANYONE in that position, as he’s said, after publishing letters written by women with male or female partners who withhold.) In the “negatives” column, he’s loaned a loud voice to the anti-bisexual/bisexual erasure movement, which disproportionately affects men. Though he finally admitted the error of his ways and reversed his position, plenty of damage was done during those years when he questioned the existence (and honesty!) of men who love men AND women. I’m the pansexual wife of a bisexual man, and I have a bit of a chip on my shoulder toward Savage for this reason. My husband is more forgiving than I am, but I’ve been out more vocally than he has, so I’ve encountered more bisexual erasure over the course of my life so far.
Oh, and the political forces holding up the male pill have to do with the fact that unlike the female pill, which can aid in treating endometriosis, pelvic pain, menorrhagia, and PCOS, the male pill would only work as contraception. Absent the “compelling medical need,” the female pill would be severely restricted or held up here in America too, thanks to the political lobbying power of the moral majority, which collectively frowns on the idea of sex outside of male-female marriage for reproductive purposes only.
We’re all fighting together to keep religion out of politics, but it’s been an uphill battle, and in the 80s and 2000s, the idea of separating church and state lost big. It will take the Republican party returning to its Nixon-Goldwater “golden era” before the political landscape is safe enough to develop men’s contraception. I’m not at all pleased with the idea of voting straight-ticket Dem. to ensure more of my rights aren’t taken away, but that’s where we are currently.
“You’re aware that he is a humorist, right? He tosses off lines like a high school girl does a prom dress. (There, that was another joke) But humor is used to shine light on uncomfortable truths.”
You contradict yourself. If a joke, because of its need to be funny, has to exaggerate and generalize to the point that the idiotic masses can get a chuckle out of it, then it does not shed light on the truth, but muddles it instead. One reason why comedians should never be relied upon to make sense of difficult topics.
“If there were a pill for men, I’d take it. But there isn’t, and until there is this debate will always be asymmetric.”
You’re proving that your position makes no sense. So if men had the option of a pill based birth control, then Savage’s position would not longer be relevant? So when men are in a worse position (no pill based birth control) than it makes sense to joke about how conservatives only want to control women’s bodies, but when men are in a better position (pill based birth control exists) then we would joke about how conservatives want to control the bodies of both genders? Do you see how moronic that is?
“This isn’t a discussion about family court, or child support, or anything else.”
Which means making jokes about how conservatives only want to control women’s bodies would be a gross generalization and not illuminating, right?
“So I think the Savage jibe is appropriate…”
Nope.
Hahaha!
Ah for all the crap Savage says…sometimes he comes up with some pretty funny stuff.
We can’t stop policing sex because somehow, in 2012, it is the most taboo act in America. Just look at how we critique and rate movies. Gore is awesome, but any more than modest nudity is enough to earn a film an X-rating.
In their most extreme, respectively:
• The far left can’t stop policing sex because they find it threatening, subversive, and by most accounts, to be an act worse than many types of criminal violence. They view women as children incapable of making their own choices, who need to be protected from the big, bad men who all want to “hurt” them and who all think with their dicks.
• The far right can’t stop policing sex because they find the idea of anyone other than a member of a heterosexual cisgender married couple performing an act for reproduction purposes to be morally repugnant and a means of facilitating widespread societal decay. They view women as sluts incapable of controlling themselves unless every act of sex introduces the potential of pregnancy as “punishment,” and the GLBT community a group of disgusting brutes who spread disease and are one step away from pedophilia and bestiality at all times.
The greatest irony of all is, despite how much members of each extreme profess to hate each other, their views often coincide in lockstep. For example, Andrea Dworkin and Rick Santorum would be bedfellows, bosom buddies, allies in all but title and label on the question of porn. At their core, each side distrusts human beings so deeply that they want to strip us of any sexual agency whatsoever.
Even in the most sexually liberal sub cultures, there are rules that are policed by the members. I cannot see us functioning beyond savagery without rules pertaining to sex and reproduction tbh.
Here is an interesting study on the cultural suppression of female sexuality, the evidence points to it being of female design. http://www.femininebeauty.info/suppression.pdf
Political movements attach themselves to our sexuality to exert control too via it. Big religion and feminism have been good at that.
What I find interesting about the backlash against acceptance that there exist rules for sexual exchange is that it is the act of speaking about those rules, making them come to life, which creates the tension and backlash. Part of the suppression of speaking about the rules is the not wanting to acknowledge the less than romantic mechanics of the rules, in the same way a cook does not want to provide the ingredients of their mysterious and superb culinary concoction. The irony is that the mystery obfuscates and enforces the practice. Santorum uses religion and dogma to obfuscate and enforce a non-local contract negotiation (government control). What is required is more local control and negotiations and a less starry-eyed approach that inflates the importance, moving it more out of the reach of individual/local decision making.
Infidelity to a partner is a very common rule for breaking the sexual exchange contract. What seems to be at mental odds with our understanding is that there can exist a whole other slew of seemingly less important rules that can also trigger a break in contract. To deceive ourselves into believing that these lesser slights are not part of the negotiation, we introduce much more vague arbiters we then associated to desire. We all have a bit of Santorum in our butts, and just because our version does not sport a sweater vest does not make it vanish. The general dislike for pornography and prostitution is a Santorum sweater vest. The argument is not that rules of exchange exist, but rather who controls the rules of exchange.
“As someone who has genitals, I don’t understand why anyone else cares how often I use them, in what manner, and with whom. (Except for my wife, that is, I’m sure she cares an awful lot.) If everyone is consenting — and old enough to consent — that’s good enough for me”
We obviously have some regulation regarding sex no matter what society we live in. The above sentence points to two. Marriage as a massive regulator of sex and age of consent as a less important regulator. There are many many others. I would argue that sex in the West is massively regulated. In Canada doctors cannot have sex with their patients. Hugo says professors shouldn’t with their students? How about relationships between co-workers? Boss and intern for instance. What about a 40 year old with a 14 year old, same sex or otherwise. Sex for money? One hundred years ago did any of these restrictions exist? Nope.
And of course the largest regulator of sex is….marriage. An society where sex was not policed what look very very very different than what we have now. I don’t think people comprehend how different it would look.
There aren’t any societies that do not regulate sex in some way or other and usually quite heavily.
I wouldn’t say it is specifically marriage, in my case or in general. Rather in most relationships we enter into sexual agreements with each other, usually monogamous, which gives the other person an interest in whether or not you’re upholding the agreement. In my case I’ve made a monogamous agreement that I choose to honor, which is why I privilege the opinion of my spouse as concerns whether or not I’m using my genitals with someone else.
Aside from that, you bring up some interesting points. The line for me is always consent, and in the interest of brevity I might have inadvertently given the impression that age was the only other important factor. To be more general, I believe in “good consent” which I define as consent freely given by someone capable of consenting. A twelve year old may have sexual desire, but I’m not going to excuse his twenty-five year old sitter if she has sex with him.
As far as workplace romance is concerned, I’m of two minds here. On one hand, I don’t believe my boss has any business regulating who my romantic partners are. On the other, I am sympathetic to the need of employers to run their businesses without the distractions attendant to a romance gone horribly wrong. Perhaps the more appropriate angle to take then is not a prohibition on relationships but rather a policy that says bringing drama into the workplace is a dismissible offense. I haven’t thought about it enough though to endorse it as an idea.
Student/teacher, patient/therapist and other such relationships bring up another dimension, particularly as we are dealing with adults who we believe are able to give good consent. I’ll take on student/teacher, as that is one I’m familiar with (having been in both roles). A teacher’s behavior reflects directly upon the institution he represents. To the extent that a degree is worth something, it is because we believe our teachers to be fair arbiters of the quality of the work we submit. A sexual relationship with a student calls that fairness into question, and threatens the credibility of the institution. As such, I think reasonable restrictions are appropriate – such as don’t sex someone you teach. That gives you two options: don’t sex the person you’re teaching, or don’t teach the person you’re sexing.
Prostitution is too large to unpack here – I could probably write an entire series on it. Suffice it to say, it proliferates in part because of a scarcity model that is reinforced by the policing of sexual behavior.
There are many many many other ways in which we police sex including sexual attitudes and culture. Examing the Polynesians provides a good point of reference to how different a society can look in regards to sexuality. Here are some things the polynesians had no problem with:
1. Sex play between children including public sex play
2. Public masturbation, public sex, nudity in public
3. Sex in religious places
4. Multiple partners, extra-marital sex, sex in public
5. Sex between old men and women and young teenagers…lets say 40 year men/women with 14 year olds. This includes multiple partners….a chief was known to always be in the company of a number of young girls who he had sex with. This wasn’t controversial.
6. Requesting sex from strangers and the normal answer is yes. Feminists call this street harrassment.
7. Sex clubs
8. Statues of penises and vaginas….one was the last time you saw a statue of a massive erect penis or vagina. There was a large outcry when college students tried to build penises in the snow by…..wait for it….campus feminists.
9. Sex in front of children…not porn in front of children which commentors on this blog have a big problem with…but actual sex in front of children. This is how children learnt about sex.
And of course they had little rape or prostitution.
We do not have a sex positive society. In a sex positive society, sex is considered an inherently good thing. Yoga good…sex + yoga Better! Education good … education + sex better. Religion good…religion + sex better. Work sucks…work + sex a little better. In our society sex is guitly until proven innocent. It is inherently suspect. And feminists are the ones doing most of the policing.
In a truly sex positive society, sex is like chocolate. You add it to anything and it makes everything better.
If you want to get some idea of what a sexually positive and differently regulated (less regulated?) society than our looks like then read about the polynesians:
http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/IES/frenchpolynesia.html
The use of the term “sex strike” is itself derogatory. It implies that wives are sex workers employed by their husbands. They would withhold their services (sex) that benefits their employers (husbands) to obtain better remuneration.
I will give you an example of using the age of consent as a controller of sex.
In my country , a female of ANY AGE can get an abortion for ANY REASON at ANY STAGE of pregnancy.
Now think about that, a 12 year old girl can get an elective surgical procedure without her parents consent or permission right up to the moment of birth, have it paid for by the government BUT that some girl is too young to have sex to begin with and the person who has had sex with her, if he is more than 5 years old , iow 18+ is a criminal.
Is it that she’s too young to have sex, or that her paramours need to be of a similar age for it to be considered consensual sex?
I’ve seen three styles of law around age and consent. The first is an absolute prohibition against sex by a minor, regardless of the age of their partner. The second is an allowance that minors can have sex with each other, but not with someone who has reached the age of majority. I prefer the third, a sliding model for minors: ±3 years, or ±5 in your example, until you reach the age of consent. There probably should be a lower bound there as well (i.e. no 9 year olds, period). Is that what the law is where you are located?
Yeah, I agree that the third model, sliding-age scale, is best, and many states in the US are surprisingly restrictive about it. Ours allows for modest age gaps in teen relationships, but even with the age of consent set at 16, partners over 18 can wind up with “corruption of a minor” charges, even when the two parties involved are 17 1/2 and 18! My husband’s first relationship in college at age 18 was with a high-school senior girl who was just 10 months younger, but he was concerned about her dad retaliating against him for sullying his daughter, and getting slapped with a “corruption of minors” charge. As he tells it, he didn’t relax until her 18th birthday. The law disproportionately affects men, who are more likely to be the older party, and I think it needs to go.
I also think too much fuss is made over the age gap in teen relationships generally. Barring drastic gaps in maturity – like dating a 12 year-old middle-schooler who’s just hit puberty when you’re 17 and physically an adult – older teens are old enough to handle modest age gaps without issue. Hell, once I turned 18, most of my partners, male and female, were between 6 and 15 years my senior. My husband, born only 8 months before I was, is one of very, very few same-age partners I’ve had in my life.
Janet, you’re a Canuck aren’t you? I say this based on the fact (or I believe it’s a fact) that Canada is one of the few (if not the only) countries in the world with no abortion laws. That’s not the case almost anywhere else in the Western world (if not the entire world).
Am I correct?
Wonderful piece, addressing all the troubling aspects of the strike itself as well as many of the men’s reaction to it. I can’t believe no one has referenced the Monty Python song yet… As for taking Santorum seriously. It’s not that I believe that he has a chance, it’s that a vein instinctively pops out of my head when I realize that there are people in 2012 who actually support his views–and, yes, that a lot of them are women.
“Stop trying to police each other’s sex lives.”
Is that what the republican’s are trying to do? Their stance on abortion doesn’t say don’t have sex. It isn’t trying to enforce anything in regards to sex. It is trying to enforce some degree of accountability for failing to consider the consequences… you know, just as men are legally enforced to do with child support obligations and the ever touted “if you don’t want that responsibility, keep it in your pants”. Why is it a war on women to hold women to that same standard men are being held to? Does that suggest there is/was a war on men too, that forces them to take responsability for choices they never had a say in beyond having sex in the first place (a choice that apparently isn’t good enough for women, a choice that, when left as the primary option, is “policing women’s sexuality”).
“Stop trying to enforce on others a morality we don’t even follow ourselves”
You mean like forcing the casual sex lifestyle morality onto religious organizations that don’t follow that themselves? Or did you forget this is all a response to Obama forcing his morality onto others? Saying “I don’t want to pay for your birth control” is not forcing anything onto someone else, it is merely refusing to be held accountable for your own actions, leaving you to take responsibility for your own lifestyle choices. The Leftist stance that this is somehow all the evil republican’s war on women is ridiculous, not to mention rather misandric, to presume it is about a man’s need to control women, ignoring that it’s actually about a woman’s ability to provide for herself (isn’t the ability to provide for themselves a big part of feminist’s drive to get women into the workplace?)..
Yes proper exercises and methods can help cure premature ejaculation problem.I have my own free course called ‘Bret’s 30 night challenge’ to help men last longer in bed and overcome premature ejaculation.But there are also a lot of misleading information available in internet that spoils the chances of men overcomming this PE problem.