In a recent interview at Salon, Cacilda Jetha and Christopher Ryan, authors of the new book Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
First of all, they’re both men, so they both know what it’s like to be a man. They both know from experience that love and sex are two very different things, and it seems that for women the experience of sexuality is much more embedded in narrative, in emotion, in emotional intimacy. But also it’s really hard to judge what women would be like if they hadn’t been persecuted for the last five or six thousand or ten thousand years for any hint of infidelity.
Nothing wrong with reversing the usual assumption that heterosexual couples are the norm and all other combinations deviant. This can help normalize same-sex relations, as well as shining a new light on heterosexuality. But Jetha and Ryan’s statement doesn’t do this. Instead, it’s swimming in oppositional sexism – the idea that men and women are opposites. It’s also traditionally sexist, in that it sets up a norm rooted in male experience, “know[ing] from experience that love and sex are two very different things.” Note that this compartmentalization is presented as knowledge, not as emotion, opinion, or preference.
It may well be true than on average, more men than women can easily separate love and sex. What to make, then, of the many women I’ve known who quite handily compartmentalize them? I know it’s possible, because I’ve done it (though I also couldn’t do it easily at this stage of my life). How are we to understand the men for whom sex is unthinkable, or at least quite hollow, ouside a context of caring and intimacy? I’ve known quite a few of those, too – more than enough to explode the dichotomy that Jetha and Ryan describe.
There’s a whiff of traditional sexism, too, in their last sentence, which positions men as a biological norm and women as different only due to the distortions of society. Yes, women have been persecuted and their sexuality brutally controlled by patriarchal forces. However, men’s sexuality is also molded by social and cultural forces, some of them highly repressive and cruel (see for instance the latest post in Richard Jeffrey Newman’s series on men’s bodies). It’s just silly to imply that men’s sexual desires and behavior simply reflect their biological drives, while women’s have been warped by culture.
At least in this interview (I can’t speak to the book), Jetha and Ryan appear to think that infidelity is mainly a male behavior. But how much do we really know about women’s capacity and propensity to be unfaithful? As I’ve argued here in the past, all those cheatin’ men have to be doing it with someone. Unless you accept the theory that there’s a huge pool of single women just panting after married dudes, it’s more logical to conclude that married/committed women systematically underreport their infidelity. In other words, women already engage in plenty of infidelity. By now, the impact of millennia of persecution is much reduced, in the Western world, anyway. We don’t stone women anymore for adultery. History casts a shadow of greater stigma on women who cheat, compared to men – and thus greater pressure to lie about it, even to researchers. Infidelity is no longer the province of men.
Regardless of whether monogamy is hard (it is), and regardless of whether women are naturally angels (we aren’t): Do we really want to work toward a new norm of keeping sex and love separate? Jetha and Ryan appear to be saying that since humans aren’t hard-wired for monogamy, the desire for sex-with-intimacy is not only confined to women, it’s also somehow aberrant. I’m not convinced. While I see nothing morally wrong with casual sex between two honest, enthusiastic partners, I recognize that getting to know a partner can enable wider arcs of pleasure. I’ve observed that casual sex with even a semi-regular partner tends to become less casual over time. Non-committed sex also has some built-in pitfalls that Lynn Gazis-Sax evocatively describes:
I also think that there are some drawbacks to having sex with people you don’t know well, that are worth talking about, and not brushing aside with “anything is fine as long as your both consenting.” Anything is not good if your consenting, and it’s fair to talk about why some initially consenting experiences turn out badly, as well as some turning out splendidly. Sometimes, the reasons those experiences turn out badly involve not knowing things about your lover that you might have found out if you’d waited a bit, or not realizing just how badly the two of you communicated, or overestimating your ability to be happy with more casual connections.
On the other hand … Sometimes it’s the relationship itself that’s bad, and those aren’t problems that are improved by making the sex more committed.
In other words, sex can be toxic inside or outside of relationships. If “love” signifies manipulation, emotional indifference, or just a joyless shell of a marriage, of course sex won’t be any good either. And yet, we lose an awful lot if we assume that love always decays. Jetha and Ryan may well be correct that monogamy and decades-long love are not “natural,” but how much of our sexuality is merely “natural”? Isn’t it always shaped deeply by our culture? And even though we’re all creatures of biology and culture, don’t we all make choices – to be faithful, to tend the fires of lust over time, to value love – or not?
We lose even more if we replace the old imperative of sex-with-love with a new rule that’s simply its opposite. Because even if there’s nothing ethically wrong in principle with casual sex, in practice sex has the potential to be more rewarding with a partner who cares. If we don’t let it become humdrum, the rewards needn’t just be emotional either. Sex with a loving partner can be hotter – sexier – when we dare to be to be our most naked selves. That’s not just a girly thing.
(Just because any post about sex and love deserves a flower. This one was blooming in my garden a few weeks ago. Photo by me, Sungold.)
Patron cat of Kittywampus (1985-2001)
I think it is all about Testosteron. It regulates the Libido for men and women, but men have much more (about 20 x) of it.
I wrote something about it, but in German:
“Libido und Geschlecht: Zur Wirkung von Testosteron etc. beim Sex”
Hi Christian. Yes, T is a big driver of libido. But women can have a very lively libido with much lower levels of T than men have. So the sheer level of it (as measured in the blood) doesn’t completely predict sex drive. A man who is clinically low on T is likely to have a depressed or nonexistent libido, yes. A woman with values lower than his might still have quite a strong libido.
I have never seen a scientific explanation for this, but my interpretation as an interested, informed layperson would be: Women’s bodies (in this case, especially brains and sex organs) are responsive to lower levels of testosterone than are men’s bodies. Otherwise, no woman would really be interested in sex. And a good many of us really, really are!
I do read German well, so I read your post. I don’t dispute your basic argument that hormones and neurotransmitter have a great deal to do with our libidos and sexual response, but I’d say it’s too reductive. For instance, both men’s and women’s are awash with dopamine when they have a new sexual partner. It’s the neurotransmitter that spikes with excitement. Oxytocin is also not simply a “female” chemical. (I’ve got an oldie-but-goodie post on men and oxytocin that may interest you.)
As for feminism denying the importance of biology: This happens sometimes. In part it’s due to the general science-phobia that afflicts the U.S. – people are fascinated by new technology but they tend not to be very scientifically literate. In part it’s due to feminists wanting to imagine a world that can be changed, which is harder if everything is rooted in biology. (Second-wave radical feminist Shulamith Firestone traced women’s oppression back to our biology, which made liberation very difficult without test-tube babies and artificial wombs!) But it’s an overgeneralization to say that feminists rarely deal with biology or science. Of the well-known American feminist bloggers, Lindsay Beyerstein of Big Think, Echnidne of the Snakes, and Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon all write intelligently on various aspects of science. My friend Knitting Clio is an expert on the history of medicine, and Mom’s Tinfoil Hat is written by a medical student. Figleaf often tackles scientific issues from a male feminist-ally perspective. And those are just a few people from my blogroll. (I need to update my blogroll, because it also ought to include The Sexademic, Our Bodies Our Blog, and a few more).
While it would be hyperbole to say that this is literally true, there is — somewhat unfortunately — evidence that this is, in fact, somewhat true: in a recent survey, women were much more likely to rate a man in a picture as attractive if they were told he was married than if they were told he was single. (I wish I could provide a cite for this but it was a survey mentioned on some CBC podcast, and I didn’t note which one.) This goes to the highly problematic phenomenon of feminine hypergamy, which underlies a lot of our gender dynamics.
Anyway, overall I agree with your post. I don’t think casual sex should be condemned, but I think an argument could be made that it isn’t something that should be encouraged, either.
I very much agree with you that the notion that “men separate sex and love” is something of a cultural myth. I don’t think it’s something that should be accepted as man’s ‘natural state’ without noting the strong cultural pressures (from both men and women, as noted above) on men to be perceived as sexually active. (Women are looked down upon for having too many sexual partners, men are looked down upon for having too few.)
The flower is beautiful. Is it a lilly? I was in Ohio recently, and I saw that there were literally thousands of daylillies blooming by utility poles along a road outside of Cleveland, and I thought of you.
Yeah, this is a daylily. Not sure which one. There are thousands of varieties.
And thanks for thinking of me. That’s really nice.
Found a link to a news article about single women preferring attached men. (The actual study can be downloaded as a pdf from here.)
Excerpt:
Thanks for the link, ballgame. I agree that attraction to men who are attached is a fairly widespread phenomenon. One theory I’ve heard for this is that showing one’s ability to commit adds to one’s attractiveness. It could also just be plain old hypergamy, as you suggest. Stephanie Coontz has recently argued pretty persuasively (in the NYT, I don’t have a link at hand) that hypergamy is in decline, but I don’t think it’s dead by any means.
But there’s a difference between being attracted to an attached person, and actually acting on that attraction. Most single women realize that this is folly, if what they want is a committed relationship. (Of course, some kid themselves, too.) Most of the cheating that goes on involves two married people, as far as I’ve observed. My larger point is that men haven’t got a monopoly on infidelity, by any means.
I agree that both men and women are subject to intense social and cultural pressures when it comes to sexuality. But until fairly recently, there’s been a lot more attention devoted to pressures on women. If we want sex and relationships to be better for both men *and* women, it’s really important to understand the pressures on men equally well.