Free sex and feminist marriage can make young men feckless

    by: Bettina Arndt
    From: The Australian
    November 16, 2012 12:00AM

IT seems crazy to remove one of the main motivations inspiring men to succeed in life. But that's just what has happened, according to a thought-provoking article to be published on Sunday in Society. The paper - Sexual Economics, Culture, Men and Modern Sexual Trends - discusses the driving, civilising role traditionally played by sex in prompting men to put their nose to the grindstone to win women and gain access to sexual favours. The sex carrot no longer exists, so what now?

The authors, social psychologists Roy Baumeister and Kathleen Vohs, are experts in gender differences in sexual drive and behaviour. Their argument starts by assuming men want more sex than women do. A lot more. These researchers have spent years making that case, showing not only do men think more about sex than women do, they also desire sex more often and will expend more resources and make more sacrifices for sex. Remember the classic psychology experiment where attractive female research assistants approached male students at Florida State University and asked if they wanted to have sex that night? Seventy-five per cent of the men said yes (and those who couldn't make it often proposed a rain check). With genders reversed, not one woman took up the offer. The lesson is that while women love sex too, men have a greater and far less discriminating appetite for carnal pleasures.

Back in the 1960s, it was difficult to get sex without being married so men married early. Yet to qualify as good husband material, men had to have a job, or at least the prospect of getting one, had to show they were willing to work hard and be willing to commit to family life. So a man's overarching goal of getting sex motivated him to become a respectable stakeholder contributing to society, suggest the psychologists.

"The fact that men became useful members of society as a result of their efforts to obtain sex is not trivial," declare Baumeister and Vohs, pointing out how much that has changed. Many young men nowadays can "skip the wearying detour of getting education and career prospects to qualify for sex". They have easy access to abundant sexual satisfaction, facing an early sex life that, according to Baumeister, probably would have exceeded the most optimistic imagination of most men throughout history. So men learn early that they don't need to buy the cow to get milk.

And as for marriage, all men are well aware that these days most cows are far from generous in allowing access to their milk supply. Baumeister and Vohs point out that the traditional notion of a sexually accommodating wife "has been eroded if not demolished by feminist ideology that has encouraged wives to expect husbands to wait patiently until the wife actually desires sex, with the result that marriage is a prolonged episode of sexual starvation for the husband".

The result is marriage offers grim prospects for hot-blooded young men: "To sustain a marriage across multiple decades, most husbands must accommodate to the reality of having to contribute work and other resources to a wife whose contribution of sex dwindles sharply in both quantity and quality - and who also may disapprove sharply of him seeking satisfaction in alternative outlets such as prostitution, pornography and extramarital dalliance," say the psychologists.

My own research has revealed just that - many, perhaps a majority of married men spend their lives grovelling for sexual favours from their wives, who also fiercely disapprove of them seeking other outlets for their frustrations, such as using porn, harmless images of naked women and couples having sex, to reduce the loneliness of solitary sexual pleasure. And woe betide the man caught straying from his marriage, let alone paying for sex. It's hard to imagine any other period of history that compares to the sexual straitjacket being offered to men in today's version of matrimony.

Baumeister and Voh's conclusion about the perplexing state of modern sexual economics will resonate strongly for many men: "Today's young men spend their young adulthood having abundant sex with multiple partners and that seems to us to be an exceptionally poor preparation for a lifetime of sexual starvation."

There's much else in this controversial article - such as the authors' contention that despite the fact men still create and run most institutions, the workplace is becoming progressively rigged against them because of anti-discrimination measures favouring women. They ask how it is that men have acquiesced so readily in giving women the upper hand in gaining access to these institutions, suggesting it may be due to the fact success isn't as important as it once was for men, when it was a prerequisite for sex. That's hardly the whole story but it raises interesting issues.

Bettina Arndt is a dating coach www.bettinaarndt.com.au.

Annie Anthrax wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 5:02pm:


maybe ... but there's a lot that seems to hit pretty close to the mark !!!!

Annie Anthrax wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 5:09pm:



The alternative is turn wives down when they want sex. 

Annie Anthrax wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 5:31pm:

Maybe if the guys getting some elsewhere

Women are difficult to work out, I have known a number who were proud to tell you that sex isn't important to them.

Invariably these women eventually found that their partners were getting it elsewhere, funny how important it suddenly became.

Older single men still need to rely upon having as much status wealth and power in order to attract sex partners, particularly younger ones.

Its still a worthy goal for young men to strive for. Look at the number of older, high powered, men who have extra-marital affairs. In some circumstances its enough to buy the wife into turning a blind eye (Kerry Packer and his wife for example).

Annie Anthrax wrote on Nov 17^th, 2012 at 5:31pm:



Happens all the time.
There are a lot of frustrated women out there.

Wifely duties spark a firestorm

The sex therapist Bettina Arndt's latest book The Sex Diaries has been selling like hottie-cakes, with 10,000 off the shelves in the first three weeks. But it's not just book sales that are up. There may be an Arndt-led recovery of bedroom hanky panky if wives heed her message that their poor deprived husbands deserve more sex.

Based on the bedroom revelations of 98 Australian couples over six to nine months, it has lifted the lid on the unspoken topic of men and women's biologically mismatched sexual desire.

From the Hindustan Times to the E Yugoslavia website, Arndt's exhortation to women to do their "wifely duty" and beef up the sex supply, has certainly been a headline grabber.

"It simply hasn't worked to have a couple's sex life hinge on the fragile, feeble female libido," says Arndt. "The right to say 'no' needs to give way to saying 'yes' more often."

Of course she has been excoriated by feminists for saying that much marital disharmony might be overcome if women just "put the canoe in the water" and start paddling, even if they don't feel like it.

"Bettina Arndt rape cheerleader" was one furious blog response. "F--- you, Bettina Arndt," was another. Eva Cox of the Women's Electoral Lobby launched a counterattack, claiming that it's men's own fault they aren't getting enough sex, because they don't do their fair share of housework.

"After an evening of organising kids, dinner, the shopping, the washing, the homework, etc, maybe [women] are too tired to want sex."

It's an old excuse. As Arndt says, any time men complain about something, even in the anonymity of a sex therapist's book, feminists hit back with the housework furphy. The fact is, when you add up in-home and out-of-home duties, men work just as many hours as women, and sex has very little to do with it.

The latest ABS social trends survey, released last week, found that women do almost twice as much housework as men - 33 hours and 45 minutes a week.

But while men might not do as much vacuuming and ironing, they spend a lot more time than women working outside the house in paid jobs - an average of 31 hours and 50 minutes a week, compared with women's 16 hours and 25 minutes.

In other words, men and women do about the same amount of work in total - about 50 hours a week each. It's called division of labour and it has long been the negotiated settlement of marriage.

Men have tried to up their share of housework - by 8 per cent - since 1992. But it doesn't seem to have increased their share of sex, judging by The Sex Diaries.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/04/01/1238261644882.html