This comment was from That Guy, in response to Joanna Schroeder, on the post “Does Masturbation End When You Move in Together?“
There’s something to the idea that women don’t really have as many messages about being sexy once they’re married and have children. If pop culture is any indication, there are very few women in movies or on TV who are married and have children and are having great sex with their husbands. Maybe having sex with other men, but never within a marriage. (Same with men – not a lot of steamy sex scenes between married people either way.) In fact, you are probably more likely to see a love scene between two people who are married to OTHER people than see sweet lovin’ between people married to each other. I do quite a bit of bookstore browsing, and it’s the same with novels, especially romance novels. If there’s hot sex and marriage involved, the book and the sex usually ends with the wedding.
It’s very telling that even when we fantasize about what could be, even when we can make characters do anything we want them to, they still don’t get to have sex once they’re married!
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photo: arhadetruit / flickr
Do I get to say I’m a GMP contributing author now? If I had known this I would have been more careful about what I wrote. Now I feel guilty about using a fake e-mail address…. I was just thinking about this, and thinking that the lack of marital sex in pop culture could be good news for married couples. At least theoretically. Hear me out. Possibly, there’s no reason for marital sex in our cultural fantasies because married people are already quite sexually fulfilled. Maybe our society doesn’t fantasize much about things that are very common. Maybe the absence… Read more »
Taboo has something to do with it, but that can’t be the full explanation. If it were just the intrigue sparked by “the forbidden,” then you would expect a lot more sexual fantasies involving bigamy, or a man cheating on his wife with another woman who’s also his wife. Or, there would be more married sex out there between characters who are otherwise outlaws. Or more sex between people who thought they were married but really weren’t. The closest we get is a married couple in which one has amnesia, so it’s sort of like cheating but not. I think… Read more »
I don’t think this is a commentary on marriage as much as it is about the eroticization of the forbidden, created by shaming sexuality.
I love it when people talk about “shaming sexuality”. Sure there is nothing shameful about sex, just like there is nothing shameful about taking a crap. Either way, though, I don’t want anybody to watch me do it, and I don’t want to see anybody else doing it. Maybe just my opinion, but, while not shameful, definitely still private. Besides, sexuality in our society is far from shameful. Shame would imply something secretive, something to be hidden. I take a look at just about every form of modern entertainment, and people are practically bombarded with sex, from video games to… Read more »
Well, cultures that are the most conservative tend to be the most oversexed in terms of what the media portrays. Look at Japan. We know their culture is one of stoicism, but if you look at their porn market, it can be downright terrifying.
Oh it’s a commentary on Marriage alright. That’s why those parental scenes in Transformers stick out so much. Being single is packaged as youthful, fun, sexy, free and independent where as having a husband….
Shame has little to do with the absence.