Saturday, March 30, 2013

A Stirring in Her Loins


Have you ever wondered what turns on Naomi Wolf? Have you ever whiled away an afternoon trying to imagine what sets her loins aquiver?

OK… you haven’t.

Then again, have you ever tried to imagine what turns on Sheryl Sandberg?

If she is to be taken at her word, Sandberg, like Wolf before her becomes transported with lust at the sight of a man doing the dishes.

Sandberg draws erotic sustenance from the visions compiled by the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Cooperative—yes, there is such a thing. Among those visions are: “hunky guys vacuuming, dusting, and cleaning the kitty litter.”

Actually, the CWPC has put out a series of books filled with images that are supposed to excite women. On the cover of one we see a man vacuuming. Are the members of the CWPC excited by the nondescript male or by the oversize hose?

This leads to a more salient question. Since Sandberg is married to a corporate executive, what makes you think that he does the dishes? What makes you think that he has ever done the dishes? And besides, can’t these people afford to buy a dishwasher?

We are led to the regrettable conclusion that “dish washer” is a euphemism for what used to be called the “pool boy.”

For all I know these ladies are telling the truth about their own sexual arousal mechanism. As the saying goes, de gustibus non est disputandum—that is, there’s no arguing with taste.
                                                                                                       
But they are not telling the truth about female sexual response. They are merely trying to trick men into becoming feminist enablers.

You know it’s a subterfuge because you know that female erotic response has little to do with images. How do you know this? You know it because you know that women consume a relatively miniscule quantity of porn. In the porn world, the male gaze rules.

Speaking of the marketplace, women seem far more aroused by fictions like Fifty Shades of Gray than in feministically correct porn. For women, imagination trumps graphic images. The book has sold 70,000,000 copies. Could that many women be wrong?

In fact, the CWPC’s version of erotica,-- visions of hunky guys doing household chores—really belongs in the domain of gay male porn.

Remember the inscription on the portal of Apollo’s temple at Delphi: Know thyself!

Now, that wasn’t so difficult, was it?

Anyway, for those who will not accept this on my say-so, a couple of sociologists have done a study. Christina Hoff Sommers reported on it for Slate’s XX blog.

The truth of the matter is that men who do more housework get less sex than men who do less housework. Specifically, men who do what are traditionally considered women’s chores—dishes, laundry, vacuuming—are more often rejected in the bedroom.

Sommers explains:

In marriages where women performed all the typically female tasks (cleaning, cooking, shopping—called “core work” by the researchers), couples had sex 1.6 times more per month than couples where men carried out all these traditionally female chores. In marriages where men helped out but stuck to stereotypical male tasks (“non-core” work such automobile maintenance, yard work, bill-paying, and snow shoveling), couples had sex 0.7 times more than those where women performed the traditional male tasks. But, as the researchers point out, even in marriages where men did 40 percent of the "female" chores, couples experience "substantially lower sexual frequency than households in which women perform all the core [typically female] chores." Put simply: There appears to be an inverse relationship between husbands doing traditionally female tasks and sexual frequency.

Obviously, men need to do their fair share. But if they want to get more sex they should be doing tasks that are traditionally performed by men.

I don't want to speculate any more than I have about what turns on feminists, but when it comes to women, it appears that manly men are high on the list.

Even in our time when gender neuterdom is becoming the law of the land, the traditional sexual division of labor still rules.

8 comments:

Sam L. said...

I'm not convinced that feminists get turned on by anything other than their own anger.

Lastango said...

As strategically-minded feminists discover they need access to men's financial resources to gain top positions of power, "tricking men into becoming feminist enablers" has become an industry. Elements include:

- redefining masculinity from "provider" to a new concept of "resiliency": a man is a truly masculine guardian of his family when he embraces the flexibility to help his family thrive in all circumstances. If he's willing to move in and out of the workforce, and be a SAHD, his wife can soar to the heights.

- Telling men that feminism wants to free them from patriarchy, which oppresses men by confining them to traditional roles. They should be able to chose to functionally become women... so women can be free to take power-roles away from men.

- Avoiding feminist language (i.e. "empowerment" and "equality") when describing the new masculinity, and substituting other phrasing. This helps feminists hide behind the curtain so it doesn't appear they are serving their own ends.

- Relabeling Women's Studies courses as Gender Studies and as Men's Studies, to lure undergrad men to these feminism-by-other-means venues.

- Recruiting and promoting men as the public face of the effort to redefine masculinity. (That smarmy sonofabitch teaching Men's Studies is there for a reason.)

- Celebrating and promoting fatherly caregiving as the ultimate manly act.

- recasting the outreach to men in terms of "fairness". It's not fair to exclude men from the conversation about what's best for the family and for children. Let men speak with their own voices about how they can claim their natural right to be caregiving fathers.

- Proclaim that feminists don't hate men, they hate the system. Strategic feminists have long said that feminism's greatest failing was alienating men. Now that the MRM is gathering steam, and women need men for the the next phase of gyno-supremicist feminism, it's good tactics to turn down the the anti-male agitprop.

- reframe the contribution men make to women so that giving a woman emotional support is a sufficient and manly act. There's no reason for him to be disturbed that he contributes little or nothing to the family's annual income.

- Don't lecture men directly. Instead, hold up a mirror to men, and invite them to reflect on how they're failing to actualize their potential and responsibility to fully become New Men.

- Posture as peacemakers. Let's all stop fighting, and come to the table together to talk about how men can become what women want them to be.

- Make gender a fluid concept. Part of this involves breaking down the distinctions between gay men and straight men.

- Make it seem cool to be a New Man.

- Tacitly support quotas for admitting men to colleges. The campus is the laboratory for feminism, and it's important to get me to a place where they can be assisted to seek out new masculinities. Perhaps even more importantly, men need degrees in order to become the best possible supporters of women so that the women in their lives can advance. A poor, uneducated man can contribute little to the feminist agenda.

To close, here's a quote from Chally Kacelnik:

"The thing is, it's patriarchy that says men are stupid and monolithic and unchanging and incapable. It's patriarchy that says men have animalistic instincts and just can't stop themselves from harassing and assaulting. It's patriarchy that says men can only be attracted by certain qualities, and only have particular kinds of responses, and only experience the world in narrow ways. Feminism holds that men are capable of more - are more than that."

See? It was never about women hating and fighting men. Men were their own enemies. Feminists are on our side. We'd be wise and brave to sit down with them and learn from them.

Sam L. said...

Man, there's a LOT of feminist NewThink in that, Lastango. Trlul progressives, they are.

J.R. said...

Lastango, insightful list. It made me think about how subtle and pervasive (and wildly unfocused) feminist ideals have gotten. Please, please...make it stop!

J.R. said...

And, as always, thank you Stu, for providing these past few posts. Hilarious!

Anonymous said...

Uptwinkles

Dennis said...

Well stated Lastango. The only reason feminists started changing their tactics was that they were alienating a large number of women who could not relate to all this name calling and outright hostility aimed at their fathers, grandfathers, sons, husbands, et al.
I hope you don't think that they changed to bring men in on the wonders of feminism? Given that there is a large element of misandry contained in feminism they could care less about men as a whole. You can see that in how they use the term patriarchy. One cannot hold with "A fish needs a bicycle like a woman needs a man" and really make other than superficial changes.
Question, does what they are doing to young boys, preying on them and alienating them from learning as a goal,in public schools actually denote any real change in tactics? Does anyone really believe that males all of a sudden cannot do well in public schools?
Again, whatever seeming change is driven by trying to fool large numbers of women not men. Much as the Left does to minorities.

Lastango said...

Dennis,
I was elaborating only on Stuart's accurate point about feminists working to trick men into becomming their enablers.

You are quite right that feminists are also concerned they may be losing their grip on young women. From the feminist perspective, that's one of the problems with the lopsided M/F ratio at colleges -- it encourages young women to start to worry about where they are going to find an eligible man to marry. That, I think, is one reason why they are going ape on Susan Patton's remarks at Princeton. Feminism will not withstand very much daylight; it's important to shield young women from the world's realities until they have a chance to absorb the full progressivist dogma.