{"id":52812,"date":"2012-12-06T10:31:25","date_gmt":"2012-12-06T15:31:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=52812"},"modified":"2012-12-06T15:52:51","modified_gmt":"2012-12-06T20:52:51","slug":"liberals-cant-get-no-satisfaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/12\/06\/liberals-cant-get-no-satisfaction\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals: Can&#8217;t Get No Satisfaction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/2012\/11\/no-satisfaction.html\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Liberal women want more sex.<\/p>\n<p>Controversial sociologist Mark Regnerus has been\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/blackwhiteandgray\/2012\/11\/liberal-women-and-sex\/#comments\">fooling around with<\/a>\u00a0the New Family Structures Survey. \u00a0Back in June, Regnerus used the NFSS data to conclude that gay parents are bad for children.\u00a0 Now, he runs the regressions and finds that liberalism leaves women sexually dissatisfied.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Question:\u201cAre you content with the amount of sex you\u2019re having?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The possible answers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes<\/li>\n<li>No, I\u2019d prefer more<\/li>\n<li>No, I\u2019d prefer less<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The differences were clear.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/127.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-52813\" title=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/127-500x347.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"243\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/127-500x347.jpg 500w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2012\/11\/127.jpg 633w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Those liberal women, they try and they try and they try; they can\u2019t get no&#8230; satisfaction. Hey, hey, hey &#8212; that\u2019s what they say.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The differences held even with controls for how much sex the woman had had recently.\u00a0 Nor did adding other possible explanatory variables dampen the effect:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>[T]he measure of political liberalism remains significantly associated with the odds of wanting more sex even after controlling for the frequency of actual intercourse over the past two weeks, their age, marital status, education level, whether they\u2019ve masturbated recently, their anxiety level, sexual orientation, race\/ethnicity, depressive symptoms, and porn use.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Regnerus says he was puzzled and asked an economist friend for her explanation.\u00a0 She, like Regnerus, is a serious Christian, and saw it as a matter of seeking \u201ctranscendence.\u201d\u00a0 Liberal women want to have more sex because they feel the lack of sufficient transcendence in life and seek it in sex.\u00a0 Conservative women find transcendence in the seemingly mundane &#8212; \u201csanctifying daily life\u201d &#8212; so they do not need sex for transcendence.\u00a0 Or as Regnerus puts it, \u201cBasically, liberal women substitute sex for religion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To test this idea, Regnerus controlled for religious attendance.\u00a0 When he did,\u00a0 \u201cpolitical liberalism finally went silent as a predictor.\u201d\u00a0 Churchgoing liberals were no more insatiable than were their sexually content conservative co-worshipers.<\/p>\n<p>So here\u2019s the scenario.\u00a0 All women want transcendence.\u00a0 Since liberal women are not religious, they seek transcendence in sex and don\u2019t find it.\u00a0 They\u2019re dissatisfied, but they cling to the idea that sex will bring them transcendence if only they have more of it.\u00a0\u00a0 So they keep looking for transcendence in all the wrong places.\u00a0 Conservative women seek transcendence in religion and in everyday activities.\u00a0 And that works.<\/p>\n<p>Conclusion: Religion is deeply satisfying; sex, not so much.<\/p>\n<p>This explanation, with its attribution of psychological-spiritual longing, makes some huge assumptions about what\u2019s going on inside women\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n<p>I can offer a contrasting sociological explanation for Regnerus&#8217; findings.\u00a0 It looks not to deep inner longings for transcendence but to social norms, beliefs, and values.\u00a0 It rests on the assumption that people\u2019s desires are shaped by external forces, especially the culture of the social world they live in.\u00a0 In some groups, sex for women is good, so it\u2019s OK for them to want more sex.\u00a0 In other social worlds, sex for women has a lower place on the scale of values.\u00a0 It is less of a \u201cfocal concern.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>These differences make for differences in who is content with what &#8212; a liberal, East Coast man and a WASP woman from the Midwest, for example:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O7nPkpdFAic\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"420\" height=\"315\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Can we really say that the difference here is about spiritual transcendence?<\/p>\n<p>In some social worlds, a woman can never be too thin or too rich.\u00a0 In those worlds, women diet and exercise in a way we might find obsessive.\u00a0 But that\u2019s what their culture rewards.\u00a0 Some cultures hold that sex is a good thing &#8212; certainly more pleasurable than dieting and exercising &#8212; therefore,\u00a0 more is better.\u00a0 In some social worlds, that\u2019s the way some people feel about money.\u00a0 Are these desires really about transcendence, or they about cultural values?<\/p>\n<p>Oh, and on the sexual discontent matter, there are two other possibilities that may not to have occurred to Regnerus: (1) maybe conservative men are better lovers; they satisfy their conservative bedmates in ways liberals can only dream of.\u00a0\u00a0 Or (2) conservative men are so bad at sex that when you ask their partners if they want more, the answer is, \u201cNo thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n<p>Jay Livingston is\u00a0the\u00a0chair of the Sociology Department at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair State University<\/a>. \u00a0You can follow him at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a>\u00a0or on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"> Jay Livingston is the chair of the Sociology Department at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.montclair.edu\/profilepages\/view_profile.php?username=livingstonj\">Montclair State University<\/a>.  You can follow him at <a href=\"http:\/\/montclairsoci.blogspot.com\/\">Montclair SocioBlog<\/a> or on <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/#!\/JayLivingston\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cross-posted at Montclair SocioBlog. Liberal women want more sex. Controversial sociologist Mark Regnerus has been\u00a0fooling around with\u00a0the New Family Structures Survey. \u00a0Back in June, Regnerus used the NFSS data to conclude that gay parents are bad for children.\u00a0 Now, he runs the regressions and finds that liberalism leaves women sexually dissatisfied. Question:\u201cAre you content with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":258,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15,329,55,85,120],"class_list":["post-52812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture","tag-emotion","tag-gender","tag-politics","tag-sex"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52812"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52816,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52812\/revisions\/52816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}