{"id":7505,"date":"2014-07-28T15:12:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-28T20:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/?p=7505"},"modified":"2014-07-28T21:17:10","modified_gmt":"2014-07-29T02:17:10","slug":"whats-all-the-fuss-pissed-off-people-talk-about-consumerism-sex-and-sexism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/2014\/07\/28\/whats-all-the-fuss-pissed-off-people-talk-about-consumerism-sex-and-sexism\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s all the fuss? Pissed off people on consumerism, sex, and sexism"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is weird. The evidence from psychology, sociology, economics, neuroscience and history point in the same direction: there\u2019s just not much to the claims of a war between love and lust or that equality in relationships\u2014or even housework\u2014damages sexual desire. Such clarity begs the question, why all the hype and misinformation about sexual disappointments in marriage or committed relationships?<\/p>\n

\"Anxiety<\/a>
Anxiety about how we are doing sexually is not new! But still creepy after all these years. (1926 Ad from WikiCommons)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There\u2019s a quick, cynical answer, and I heard it from most people I spoke to when writing my recent article in Psychology Today <\/em>on Love and Lust<\/a>. The sex hype is instrumental in fueling anxiety with \u201cHow I\u2019m doing?\u201d \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with me?\u201d \u201cAm I keeping up with the Jones\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

Why do we keep seeing these claims that long-term relationships mean you aren\u2019t having the \u201cbest possible sex\u201d? I discussed this with Vanderbilt University sex researcher Laura Carpenter: She speculated, \u201cIs it some version of late modern capitalism gone crazy? Think about it: We are not good capitalists or good consumers anymore if we are committed to our car, house, brand of yogurt, clothes, shoes\u2014and in a culture all about consumerism and desire\u2014why would you not extend that idea\u2014have that expectation about relationships and sex?\u201d Carpenter continued, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what normal is. We really don\u2019t–even if merely in statistical sense, much less in the sense of what is good for you or what people desire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Who cares what normal is? People hate the imposition of \u201cnormal\u201d\u2014but it definitely absorbs attention. When it is in the air they notice it and respond to it. It is irritating to the mind, the heart, the ego.<\/p>\n

One (non-sociologist) friend I talked to\u2014a straight married guy with three kids–rolled his eyes about the recent series of sex-can\u2019t-last-in-marriage articles. \u201cPart of the premise is that ‘happiness\u2019\u00a0is a never-ending quest for peak experiences–sexually and romantically. Our society conditions us to believe we can achieve and maintain a state of bliss, to have a peak marriage and a peak sexual relationship for decades. That isn\u2019t the way it is, and if that\u2019s how you set your expectations for a relationship then you\u2019re guaranteed to be disappointed. There are valleys and plateaus, and they are based on other things in your life\u2014career, children.\u201d<\/p>\n

A D.C. colleague I met during her busy work day\u2014it started early because it was her day to drive her kids to school\u2014was just pissed off by the claim that career couples don\u2019t have sex. That\u2019s not her<\/em> normal. \u201cYou might be fighting or upset or low, for us it has nothing to do with what\u2019s happening in our sex life. I find that is much safer, there\u2019s no keeping score. Some people would say that\u2019s so unemotional\u2014but I think that is what makes it fun!\u201d<\/p>\n

The even more cynical answer\u2014given that stories about disappointments with married sex focus on women\u2019s sexual desire or on women\u2019s careers\u2014is that it fuels anxiety about \u201cwhat\u2019s wrong with women?\u201d It works like a dog whistle: an argument using code that, in this case, signals that women just can\u2019t get have it all\u2014but they are on the hook for it.<\/p>\n

One economist pondered, \u201cAre articles like this<\/a> a way of telling women \u2018don’t expect too much from your husband; settle for what you can get; if you’re accommodating and don’t push on the chores you’ll get rewarded\u2019?\u201d She was making reference in particular to coverage of the ASR study<\/a> on egalitarianism and housework–you know, the study where sexual frequency was associated with whether the housework you did was gender normative. My PT article<\/a> takes a few steps to putting the ASR study into perspective–including useful comments from study co-author Julie Brines. But here’s how the dog whistle works: the study doesn’t<\/em> say that couples have lower sexual satisfaction depending on housework, just a tiny bit of difference on sexual frequency. There is no disappointment. Well, that is sort of not true. I’ve been disappointed that we are still talking about this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is weird. The evidence from psychology, sociology, economics, neuroscience and history point in the same direction: there\u2019s just not much to the claims of a war between love and lust or that equality in relationships\u2014or even housework\u2014damages sexual desire. Such clarity begs the question, why all the hype and misinformation about sexual disappointments in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21108,1],"tags":[1528,176],"class_list":["post-7505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nice-work","category-uncategorized","tag-sexism","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7505"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7513,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7505\/revisions\/7513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/girlwpen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}