sex
4 Mar 2009
A Wife's Guide To Marital Harmony
Bettina Arndt's endorsement of wifely duty in her new book about sex in marriage blurs the lines of consent too much for Helen Pringle
In preparation for writing her new book, Sex Diaries: Why Women Go Off Sex and Other Bedroom Battles, Bettina Arndt commissioned 98 couples to keep records of their intimate lives for a few months. Arndt's book presents itself as a collection of authentic voices on the topic of sex, an impression she is eager to foster.
She told Tony Jones on Lateline this week: "Well, I think men don't usually talk about this, and when I gave them the opportunity to do so, it all just poured out of them; their frustration, their anger, their depression about the fact that their needs are being so totally ignored, and it was intriguing to see how willing they were to really talk at length about this when you actually gave them a chance to do so."
The familiar trope of "breaking the silence" on sexuality is one which Arndt recycles gleefully. Throughout her long career as a sex therapist, she has clung to the idea that everywhere there exists a sexuality that is silenced by a social Puritanism; specifically, a male sexuality that is simply waiting to be invited to express itself in openness and without fear.
However, you don't need to be Michel Foucault to sense that "the confession of the flesh" has become a global injunction, invariably accompanied by a ritual recitation that society is doing its best to silence the confession. As Catharine MacKinnon phrased it in her 1989 essay "Pleasure, Pornography, and Method": "Male sexuality is expressed and expressed and expressed, with a righteousness driven by the notion that something is trying to keep it from expressing itself ."
Bettina Arndt maintains that she is letting the voices of the silenced be heard, telling Jones that unfulfilled male desire "is the problem that's filling the waiting rooms of sex therapists not only across Australia but in many western countries". But the men and women who confess in Sex Diaries do so at Arndt's behest and unsurprisingly, their reports support her conclusions. Indeed, in announcing her findings, Arndt admits that she discovered exactly what she expected to find: "As I expected, women rationing sex took centre stage."
To understand Arndt's thinking on the so-called feminist orthodoxy about sex in marriage, it is illuminating to examine her relationship to her subjects. In Sex Diaries, she tells us that the diaries were "brimming with intense erotic adventures, so very, very sexy to read".
And as she confided to Jones on Lateline: "But — I mean, I was — what I was interested in was to be the fly on the wall and see what it's actually like to be part of that negotiation. What he's thinking, what she's thinking. And it was the most extraordinary thing. I used to leap out of bed every day and go look at my emails and people would have sent an email at 2:00 o'clock in the morning."
Not content with her position as voyeuristic insect, Arndt also encouraged her subjects to have more sex — in the interests of research. In her call for "sex supply" diaries, Arndt announced that she was seeking, inter alia, people in a category entitled "Just Do It!".
Following her interview with Richard Aedy on Radio National's Life Matters, the call for participants on the ABC's website reads: "Bettina has some people, mainly women, who are experimenting with having sex without desire to see whether 'just doing it' improves their sex lives. She needs to recruit more women, and men, willing to try this."
The thinking behind the "Just Do It!" experiment goes something like this: "The assumption that women need to want sex to enjoy it has proved a really damaging sexual idea, one that has wrought havoc in relationships for the past 40 years.... It is quite possible for women and indeed for men to enjoy sex without desire.... Once the canoe is in the water, everyone starts happily paddling. For couples to experience regular, pleasurable sex and sustain loving relationships women must get over that ideological roadblock of assumptions about desire and 'just do it'. The result will be both men and women will enjoy more, better sex."
It is not exactly clear what's in it for Bettina Arndt if there are more happy paddlers in the world. She gets very excited when people talk to her who are, as she puts it, "getting enough". For example, Arndt writes, "From the time that I first started talking about sex on television and radio, the couples who really love sex have reached out to me. I remember buying a ticket at an airport when a 50-ish saleswoman looked left and right, leaned over to me and whispered, 'Isn't sex wonderful!'"
However, Arndt is not particular enough about how all this happy paddling comes to pass. In Sex Diaries, Arndt defends Justice Derek Bollen, notorious for using the phrase "rougher than usual handling" in a 1992 case of marital assault and rape. When quizzed by Tony Jones about her defence of Bollen, Arndt missed the opportunity to back down and instead forged ahead. The interview is worth quoting at length.
Arndt: Well, I made the point that rougher — I'm not talking about forcing people to have sex, and I think that's abhorrent. But I'm saying that even if he had left out that unfortunate phrase and talked about persuading people to have sex, I think in that climate, in the 1960s, he'd have got into trouble. Because totally shut down the notion that...
Jones: That was the 1990s, I think, actually.
Arndt: 1990s, sorry, whenever it was, I mean, just this idea that we've got to the point where your "no" always means "no", where we actually don't discuss the nuances of this negotiation that goes on between couples.
Arndt has long defended the position that "no" does not always mean "no". In 1993, for example, Arndt produced a program about rape reform for Four Corners entitled "Yes, no, maybe", for which she found a small number of women who supported her contention that women use "no" as a come-on. In her view, initial refusal by a woman can be taken as an invitation to her partner to escalate to more persistent or aggressive seduction
In regard to Bollen's use of the term "rougher than usual handling", Arndt told Tony Jones that "if you read his whole judgment, he actually had some sensible things to say there, and that particular phrase, of course, meant that everything else was coloured by that."
But if Arndt had looked more closely at the transcript of Justice Bollen's direction to the jury, she would have recalled that the charges at issue included assault occasioning actual bodily harm, to which the accused pleaded guilty, as well as charges of rape and attempted rape involving penetration of the vagina by a bottle, penile penetration of the vagina, penile penetration of the anus, and attempted fellatio. Possibly then, not the best case around which to make an argument about the nuances in intimate negotiations between a man and his wife.
Justice Bollen directed the jury in these terms: "There is, of course, nothing wrong with a husband, faced with his wife's initial refusal to engage in intercourse, in attempting, in an acceptable way, to persuade her to change her mind, and that may involve a measure of rougher than usual handling. It may be, in the end, that handling and persuasion will persuade the wife to agree. Sometimes it is a fine line between not agreeing, then changing of the mind, and consenting."
By Justice Bollen's standards, the husband of the woman concerned could not be guilty of rape because she had agreed to the act when she said, "I suppose you won't stop until you have it, so get it over with." Justice Bollen summed up, "That would be a consent, a reluctant consent." After all, Justice Bollen noted, the woman had "hang-ups".
For the rightly-criticised Justice Bollen in 1993, it was legitimate for a man to press his "needs" aggressively against a woman who says no. Bettina Arndt in 2009 actually goes further. For Arndt, it is a "wifely duty" for a woman to yield to her husband's "needs".
Me, I find it difficult to understand what pleasure there could be in having unwanted sex with a reluctant partner, no matter how much joy it might give to the fly on the bedroom wall.
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You’ve successfully changed her argument that women should have engage in sex more often by saying yes to one that justifies rape in marriage.
Well done.
sorry that should read
You’ve successfully changed her argument that women should engage in sex more often by saying yes, to one that justifies rape in marriage.
Well done.
Yes the problem with the world is that men can’t express their sexuality…excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.
One wonders if Ms Arndt has ever considered that perhaps women might not "ration" sex if they weren’t doing the bulk of the housework and childcare on top of their paid work.
Maybe women would be happier to fulfill their "husbands needs" (hand me the chuck bucket) if just OCCASIONALLY theirs were being met also.
I can understand this crap coming from teenaged girls who think by identifying with men they’ll be more attractive than their evil feminazi counterparts but surely Arndt is WAY beyond that stage (at least chronologically)
""The assumption that women need to want sex to enjoy it has proved a really damaging sexual idea""
Essentially men not being able to rape their wives without legal sanction is dangerous?
Women preferring to enjoy sex when and with whom they want it is damaging?
Seems like a classic case of being controversial because one’s personal relevance has died and one needs to sell a book.
Bettina might want to lie back and think of England, personally I prefer to enjoy sex with people who give a shit about MY needs as well as their own, so do all my female friends and it hasn’t appeared to have done our men any harm.
"Me, I find it difficult to understand what pleasure there could be in having unwanted sex with a reluctant partner"
Bingo - what sort of a sad act doesn’t want their partner to ALSO enjoy themselves?
boxhead69 - Arndt’s argument is that women should accept their husbands will over and above their own - maybe doesn’t fit the definition of rape but is sure fits the definition of caveman arsehole who’ll never get any decent sex.
Would you REALLY prefer your partner to be lying there thinking "oh god get it over with"
Wouldn’t you prefer a woman to actually WANT to have sex with you?
I’d have thought that was a no brainer for any man who has ever experienced mutually desired sex…maybe that’s the problem?
As a male who is generally pretty interested in sex I have to say I agree with MissnOmar. I can’t think of anything more deflating than the knowledge that my partner has been talked or manipulated into sex. Men who badger, wheedle or harange for sex have no pride.
That being said there are also many women who treat sex as some sort of currency. This is equally repugnant to me and I for one would never stay with a woman who tried it on.
Frankly I worry about the whole negotiation thing. Hopefully my application is made with the lightest of touches, and permission given with a sigh, or denied with a regretful kiss.
If a couple has to have a meeting about it I would guess there is much more for them to talk about than the sex.
In terms of ‘rough handling’ Arndt is clearly mad. Even those that favour rougher sex establish that after the permission phase, not before.
Her argument is not that she should accept her husbands will. Its that she should say yes more often…well perhaps she should have said that they both have to say yes more often. Sexless marriages require both partners to say yes more often about a lot of things..yes?. I just think bringing rape into the argument is a little over the top and counterproductive.
I find it repugnant that such a private matter between couples needs to be analysed anyway.
One partner’s desires should not supercede the other. Mutual consent is mutual consent, one is in the mood, the other isn’t or both are in the mood so you go for it.
The ‘wifely duty’ crap went out with the troglodytes and neanderthals. I’m not married but if I were, sex is not a business and no way no how do I follow any hint that I am obligated because hubby is in the mood and I’m not.
What is this woman on about, a wife should say ‘yes’ more often?! Unlike animals, who only have sex to procreate, we do it for pleasure and not because it is expected.
I would prefer to hear more about bringing romance back into marriage and then see the difference that makes when husband and wife appreciate the simplicity of making love.
Not sex, making love.
Keep the clinicality out of it.
Bring back the romance in marriage and watch the sparks fly.
Old-fashioned love and romance and respecting the other’s needs and individual space.
Now there’s a novel idea.
couldn’t agree more - whether it’s sex when you aren’t 100% committed, going to a movie you don’t particularly like, or eating food that isn’t your favourite every single meal - any sort of compromise is death to a relationship.
presumably you’re being sarcastic nanks, I don’t think anyone who’s disputed Arndt’s attention seeking sexism has suggested NO compromise.
Clearly there’s times when one partner is a little more keen for some action than the other (whether male or female) BUT and it’s a rather large BUT compromise is just that - and it’s clearly NOT what Arndt is saying.
boxhead you’re trying WAY too hard.
"well perhaps she should have said that they both have to say yes more often"
except that’s NOT what she said NOR what she meant. She seems to be under the impression that men’s sexuality has been suppressed - can you look around the world you live in and NOT see that that statement is 100% pure unadulterated SHITE
Arndt has not suggested that men make ANY compromises, nor has she EVER.
She has form in making pathetic (and as Jacqueline rightly describes neanderthal) statements in order to sell books.
If she had said anything like "couples should fuck more often" then I wouldn’t have an issue with it - I’d still think she was full of it but just not sexist as well.
I can’t believe Bettina Arndt’s logic.She’s saying that sex between married couples is what connects them, but how can it, if one is yay, and the other nay? Over time, that could induce a feeling of resentment for one partner, and power for the other.
Marriage is all about sharing. The work load, the kids, the fun, the problems. It’s about respecting one another, and BOTH partners being happy. Not keeping one happy at the others expense.
If she were any sort of expert on the subject, then she should know that many wives have had sex when they didn’t really want to. All she has achieved with this book, is stirring people up. But that was probably her intention as usual.
I think it is time Bettina retired to her 1940’s time capsule myself.
shakira
arndt’s suggestion that women should stop saying "no" to sex - they’d enjoy it if they just gave it a go -is entirely consistent with her defence of a judge who said that when they do say no, they don’t really mean it - they’ll enjoy it once they get going. And if they don’t - well, you can’t really expect the boys to just go take a cold shower, can you?
While she might not like him anymore before “just do it”, she is surely going to hate herself after. If that leads to tragedy, Bettina should pay.
Wasn’t the point the SUGGESTION that women should "experimentally" try having sex although they may not be torn up with desire at the time?..to see if the results were satisfactory. Fair enough to disagree/disparage the suggestion, but it is a far cry from suggesting women degrade themselves with a repugnant act/partner.Put simply, sometimes initially not being "in the mood" can be compensated for by a pleausurable experience which PRESUPPOSES mutual affection/respect for the partner.
Equally if women don’t want to experiment in this way, then that is their right (and maybe their loss..who knows)
jellybeans
Bettina Arndt has been making an ass of herself for more years than I care to remember; a pox on the ABC for giving her air time. Thanks however for the thoughtful article by Helen Pringle. I suppose even sexist idiots like Arndt should be held to account to counteract the puerile nonsense she espouses.
missnOmar puts sex between couples into a social context, citing the extra load that most women carry with housework and childcare as well as paid work, as being a possible factor that could make them less keen to engage with their partners.
Arndt is incapable of such contemporary thinking, having made a damned good living for years listening to the gripes of blokes with enough money to pay her. She is a traitor to her gender. Off with her head to shut her up!
Silver Rebel
She has also written about how single mothers are inadequate parents.
I’ve always thought she is an apologist for male sexism.
Bettina seems to be living in fairyland. At least.
This blanket recommendation of hers is off-beam. In my experience of marriage, lack of interest in sex occurred in the context of resentment built up over time, to do with my perception of partner not pulling his weight at home and my feeling powerless to convince him to change. To me this boiled down to partner not understanding and/or caring about my needs, which had nothing to do with sex in that instance. It was not deliberate withholding of sex - just an unconscious self-protective withdrawal of trust. But it took a while for me to figure this out. At first I put my lack of interest purely down to fatigue and being distracted. It was those as well.
Once I worked all that out, we talked about the whole situation and things eventually improved. It was not easy and it took a while and a lot of commitment. If people try to take Bettina’s advice cold, they could miss the real issues and it’s unlikely to work.
Now having read the stats on how women even full-time salaried still do the majority of housework and family caring, I reckon my situation was common. Lots of married women probably feel resentful. Even mild resentment can be a passion-killer.
I agree Bettina’s simple advice might help break the deadlock if there was nothing else going on. But how often is that in a long-term relationship? Or in any relationship for that matter. And why focus on the woman as the only one responsible for sorting it?
Concentrating only on sex therapy for decades probably gives you a one-dimensional view of the world. Also I believe Bettina eventually married a merchant banker or some such, so has probably had a housekeeper all along, removing or reducing her experience of a common marital irritant.
I used to read Forum Magazine when Bettina ran it back in the 70s. I think she was a bit different then. She did pioneer the open discussion of sexual issues in those days, and it was a breath of fresh air. But now I think she has lost the plot.
She may have been like a breath of fresh air a generation ago, now she is nothing but a stench up the nostrils!
It’s because Arndt has this terrible way about her, where she always assumes it is the woman’s fault, and their job to keep everything just sweet in the marriage, that bothers me!
She would endorse ‘how to be a doormat’, givven half a chance.
Missnamed
you may get equal rights but you may end up enjoying them alone.
Men and women are different with different needs. Hetro women, especially with or wanting children EXPECT certain things from their man and by and large men enjoy providing these things - however they are not optional - they must be provided…eventually! Apparently men are not able to feel the same way about just one thing.
Unfortunately for women, men have also become liberated and they are learning to leave relationships where there is entrenched inequality in this regard.
Congratulations to Arndt for considering the possibility that the power dynamic created by gender/role difference may require compromise on both sides. Men generally, despite Justice Bollen et al, do not want to demand or coerce sex from their partner. they wish to be loved in the same way but with different focus to the way they love.
So go ahead, stick to your ideology, but a woman who knows how to keep a man happy (and how simple that task is!) is more likely to find and keep a man who knows how to keep a woman happy (and how simple that task is not!)
PS
and in our home I do over half the cooking, half of the shopping, all of the maintenence, half of the childcare transport, half of housework (not done by the cleaner!) all my own washing/ironing and earn 2/3 of the combined income. As for sex, well I do over half of that myself too! Ah, equality!
Pinkbits (I assume the elementary changing of names was fair enough on both sides - by the way why Missnamed? or was it just the best you could come up with)
I couldn’t give a stuff how much cleaning you do, that’s your business but good luck with that tired old "how to keep a man" crap, it’s been used for a very long time to insult women and it doesn’t fly anymore.
I’ve never found "keeping" a man all that hard but then again I don’t date neanderthal jerk offs who’d want sex from a reluctant (or merely grudgingly obliging) partner. I tend to pick men who want a PARTNER not a blow up doll.
Good luck with your sex life - if it’s based on you feeling you MUST provide your partner with something that is not optional and in return she MUST provide you with sex I’m assuming it’s a dull missionary position one - again enjoy that
BTW Pinkbits did it ever occur to you that women ALSO want sex - at least with people who are half way decent at it - maybe that’s the issue with the men who agree with Arndt - you’re not getting any because you suck at it.
Men who know what they’re doing get PLENTY, maybe you just need some tips if you really believe (as you seem to) that women don’t want sex - p’raps they just aren’t overly enthusiastic about doing it with you
I agree that men who know how to please a woman physically in bed, and share the housework and childcare burden whilst appreciating a woman’s emotional needs get more and better sex.
I am lucky my man is in this category! Maybe he has a rare genetic defect that makes him a good catch.
Seems most men need training in pleasing a woman as it doesn’t seem to come naturally and they certainly won’t learn it from porn. Men could read any women’s magazine and find the ‘secret’ to pleasing women - its not so secret but most don’t seem to care to learn.
Men seem to want women to instantly evolve into their perfect idea of a cross between a supermodel pornstar and their mother. Wake up guys, its not gonna happen.
I have offered my partner ‘mateship’ sex in the past when he has been in the mood and I have not, and he has not been interested if I am only doing it for him. These days I am more interested than he is! Sounds like I have a rare problem…
Much as I think Ms Ardnt and that stupid judge are dangerously close to advocating rape, I also fail to understand how women expect their men to stay in the marriage when the woman decides not to have sex anymore. Weird. I have several male friends in this situation who want to stay married and silently agonise over the rejection whilst taking solace in solo activities and soulsearching over whether its OK for them to have an affair. I tell them I think no sex is grounds for a divorce.
Robyn of Adelaide
Diana
I remember a very different Bettina Arndt from the 1970’s, when she ran Forum magazine. Back then if Bettina said ‘Just Do It’ she usually meant do it with as many people in as many ways as you can manage. I distinctly remember her publishing a letter from a woman who had managed to make herself lactate because her husband wanted to be breastfed and who was asking if it was OK to go along with his next demand that he should wear a nappy. Bettina’s advice? Pretty much ‘Just do It’.
Since those days Ms Arndt has found religion and boy have her views changed. All the way back from the 1970’s to the 1470’s. From advocating group sex to telling wives to satisfy their husbands’ needs regardless of their own feelings.
Since her return from New York back in the 1990’s Ms Arndt’s pronunciations have been extremely hypocritical and extremely fundamentalist Christian. She has even criticised single mums, (never single dads, though). Apparently she forgot that she once made a big deal of her own single mum status. Until she managed to marry again, that is, when she promptly forgot all about the problems involved in raising a child on your own.
Why the media gives this fraud so much attention is something I will never understand. Maybe Hillsong church would like to adopt her as rheir in-house sexual guidance counsellor. She should fit right in.
You think Ms Arndt’s bad? Me too, but be thankful you’re not having to suffer the US version with added evangelical Christianity! See the piece on "The Purpose-Driven Wife; Teaching women to submit to their husbands, for the love of Christ" at Mother Jones - and the comments following it. Makes Bettina seem almost benign by comparison.
The Age of Coquettes has long passed, along with that tireless, tiresome and demeaning subject of female submission to a male merely for the sake that he is male and that is his right to prove it by beating his chest like the Missing Link. Back then they didn’t know any better, they just followed their instincts, as all good animals do.
Fortunately when Hominis learned how to walk upright, develop logic and lateral thinking, somewhere in there came the thought that women have other purposes than to serve the pre-occupation of some males with fornication for the sake of it once they are married.
tts, I just left a comment on Mother Jones in reply to a character named Sleep - you’re right, it does make Arndt’s (arndt she wrong) rather tame:
"Piggy heaven for misanthropists
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on March 7, 2009 - 1:55pm.
It’s attitudes like yours, Sleep, that give decent men the foul stench of chauvinism like yours.
You want obedience, train an animal.
You want a wife, treat her like an individual with validating, self-respecting thought.
Learn how to respect the institution of womanhood and not worship the pseudomachoism of neanderthals like you.
Keeping in mind that even animals only have sex to procreate…males like you only do it to promote their own fragile egos.
Having an external appendage between your legs does not make you a man, any man can have sex. The true test of man is what lies in his brain and how he uses it.
I’ve seen what lies in yours.
A woman being submissive for the sake of the Lord? Just another excuse for more power play over women".
MissnOmar, your comments are right on the button ;)
"It is not exactly clear what’s in it for Bettina Arndt if there are more happy paddlers in the world."
She is a compassionate person who cares about the happiness of strangers, both women & men. Through her work she is helping to improve the quality of life and relationships to those fortunate enough to have an open mind.
Focusing on the Bollen stuff instead of the book’s actual messages is very misleading.
As for all the posters criticising Arndt - if you actually read the book (which is brilliant by the way) you would realise that she is not advocating women ‘lie back & think of england’ at all. Quite the contrary. She is talking about how men & women can achieve greater personal pleasure & a more loving relationship.
I have watched this woman being interviewed, and the only message she put across, was, "forget your needs ladies, lie down and just do it."
I don’t understand people who try and read something different in her comments - Her message is clear!
It’s time she shut her smug, sexist mouth. Also time for people who are experiencing sexual problems in their marriages to seek help from a fair and impartial therapist, when and if they can’t solve it between themselves first.
Missy-missed
Good for you - sounds like you give as good as you take. May never be married but probably will be happy except for that eternal maternal regret. Go girl (person)!
As for me - well what can I say to all that bile? Perhaps this, I have remained faithful for 5 years now despite both opportunity and direct advances from members of the sisterhood (what is it about religious and feminist women that make them both so horny?).
Maybe you and I could toy with agreeing that ideology chokes if not kills the soul?
Anyway, Robyn of Adelaide about women expecting men to stay faithful in a marriage without sex. She channels Luther’s "no sex is grounds for a divorce". Of course these days, divorce is equitable, unlike in Luther’s when it was something of a death sentence for the woman.
But divorce and a passing parade of partners discarded at the libido impasse is what we’ve come to if women refuse to understand men for who they are.
I think women should sometimes try and satisfy their husbands/boyfriends even if they’re not turned on.. and guys should do the same… some of each gender already do…
and ive often found that after a few minutes of going down on a girl i do feel like, putting in *cough*, a bit more effort.
I mean even if the guy just finishes first and then goes down on the girl so she has an orgasm too.. that kind of qualifies… doesnt it?
Would his rights be being horribly violated?
and it’s not a matter of one being manipulated into doing something for the other… its a matter of them both enjoying the others happiness…
That’s on the issue of sex without desire… keep the ones you love happy… seems like good advice to me… then again ive never been in a relationship were both parties didnt want to fuck the others brains out pretty much constantly…
That said, Arndt’s comments about the 1993 case seem like an appauling dislay of some one faking knowledge on a subject and in the process putting themselves in an untenable position…
that said… I think this whole discusion is a bit like the blind man and the elephant…
It’s a lot bigger than what we have our hands on.. we just can’t see it…
i mean.. there are substantial numbers of women with fantasies in which they’re powerless and dominated… a mild manifestation of this cn be her saying no.. to her boyfriend or whoever.. when she does actually want it, but wants him toget more assertive and pushy first… she wants him to be Horny for her and demand it…
and.. i like to argue.. we’re only just att he begining of a sexual revolution… one kicked off with the wide-spread deployment of contraception and which will unfold over many generations… transforming sexual modes codes and symbols as it does..
Does that come into Arndt’s book? or is it all juts about women closing their eyes and thinking of England?
oh the horror… i really wish i hadn’t read this
Jane E
First point: the spelling and syntax errors are mostly in contributions from the males.
Second point: ease off the Neanderthals. I’ve heard that they were peaceable folk who were overrun by the more aggressive Cro-Magnons and / or Homo Sapiens. Isn’t that a beautiful(ly arrogant) name to give one’s own species?
Third point: Many species (k-strategists) have some "down time" with regard to breeding. The ones which don’t (r-strategists), tend to breed lots. Which tends to put pressure on the resources in their environments. Which leads to "boom - bust" cycles of population. Examples include: rats, rabbits, locusts, humans….
Fourth point: only one species seems to be trying to achieve "world domination". The same species is the only one to have invented marriage, and inheritance of property, and taxes.
Fifth point: IMHO, the rise of the patriarchy is the strongest evidence against the assertion that "natural selection" fosters "survival of the fittest". Unless your definition of "fittest" extols bullying and war. Because patriarchy is the triumph of the crippled little Y chromosome.
robynofadelaide you state that Quote:I also fail to understand how women expect their men to stay in the marriage when the woman decides not to have sex anymore. Weird. I have several male friends in this situation who want to stay married and silently agonise over the rejection whilst taking solace in solo activities and soulsearching over whether its OK for them to have an affair. I tell them I think no sex is grounds for a divorce.
If someone is in a sexless marriage because one partner has a hang up about sex. If this is a long term marriage where both love each other Should they negotiate their sex like described by Bettina Arndt by having rationed sex, or become another failed relationship stat,
who must yet again rebuild their life, whilst forever aging and becoming much more difficult to do so. Mysticlion61
""May never be married but probably will be happy except for that eternal maternal regret. Go girl (person)!"""
Pinkwhateveritwas - what on earth are you on about? No I will probably never marry because I see no point in an official sanction of who I love, and am not at all religious, have however been in a monogamous relationship for some time.
Your "maternal regret" line shows, once again, your misogyny. Not all women pine for rugrats, I’ve never had any desire for children whatsoever, neither has my partner yet people like YOU never consider that he has paternal regret.
Perhaps you need to realise that it’s not 1955 anymore
I sincerely wish Bettina Arndt would take a course in the pitfalls of clinical research (because her findings are based on flawed method through and through), as well as update her training. She certainly needs training in couples counselling.
If sex isn’t happening in a marriage it’s usually because something is very wrong, and simply laying back out of duty is only a recipe for yet more pain and resentment, on both sides!
How dare Ms Arndt suggest such a harmful and simplistic answer to the lack of love/sex/intimacy in a marriage! Men and women who are truly committed to one another deserve much more than fake, coerced or duty sex!
Ms Arndt has been called a “rape cheerleader” for her views on sex in marriage, and is an apologist for infidelity, even advising how to hide one’s indescretions from one’s wife. Ms Arndt clearly has no interest in repairing or resolving marriages which are struggling, but instead prefers to stick on some pretty ugly bandaids that rob people of their potential for a truly wonderful partnership.
People can and do work through libido differences, and when this is done in an honest and healthy way, the result is a deeply enriched relationship which benefits not only the partners, but the entire community.
The book "Passionate Marriage" by David Schnarch, though naturally sprinkled with the male perspective, nevertheless plots a useful map through the territory of unhappy marriage. I thought his description of "wall socket sex" an apt one for the renewed lust that usually erupts when the marriage is put back on track.
And never once did he suggest duty sex.
Bettina Arndt is ripping off men and women alike with her simplistic band-aid solutions to serious problems.
Girls, just listen to yourself! Why do you want to be in a relationship with a man if after marriage you cringe at his touch and you no longer want to be physical with him. Wish I had listen to a friend of mine when I was 25. He told me a joke: How do you paralyse your girlfriend below the waist? Give her some wedding cake! How prophetic.
I’ve always considered myself a very sexual woman, and that’s why Arndt’s insistence that a woman yield to her husband/boyfriends needs, when said husband or boyfriend refuses (despite repeated requests) to perform certin - standard - sex acts on her, repulses me.
A lot of women out there get no oral sex. None, zip, nought! But their partners will insist on their giving it to them. Such blatent disregard for a partners sexual experience appalls me. I’m not saying that this experience is consistent amongst the majority of relationships, but please .. sexual satisfaction is a two way street, it’s not a take-take situation.
If you don’t want to have sex, no one should agressively make you - where’s the fun in that? If you want your partner to pleasure and excite you, what are you doing for them in return?
Interesting how Arndt tries to position herself as some kind of sex ‘radical’ (whilst characterising feminists as prudish etc) and yet she’s always reinforcing gender stereotypes. I seem to recall that she came down on the side of accused men in the "false memory" controversy of the 1990s as well.
No matter what the subject, it seems that Arndt’s sympathies always lie with men over and above the needs of women and children.