So What Are the Secret Lives of Married Men? - Has anyone sat down yet with New York's cover story, a long essay entitled "The Affairs of Men: The Trouble with Sex and Marriage," pegged to the Eliot Spitzer scandal? Inside, however, is not an outré confession but a fiftysomething baby boomer's long-winded attempt to rationalize his desire to screw a variety of women despite being married. Though it presents itself as provocative and edgy, the piece is inflected with the naïve, wishful rhetoric of 1970s thinking about sex.
Philip Weiss, the author, explains that men "hunger for sexual variety" and determines that this hunger is "a basic and natural and more or less irresistible impulse." He comments on Ashley Dupre's "luscious body." He reports that men are using more porn than ever and quotes Mark Penn wondering what will happen when women "realize it." He notes that sexless marriages among power couples are endemic. He harps on his own desire for "some strange." Yet when his exasperated wife proposes an open marriage in response to all his bellyaching, he flinches at the thought that she might avail herself of the new rules, too: "No thanks." Throughout, he presents a view of men as virile, prowling predators and of women as gentle, jealous keepers of social calendars who simply don't feel monogamy to be as much of a challenge as men do. (His wife tells him that the women she knows aren't that interested in sex.) And thus he frets over a "never-ending battle of the sexes," which might be boiled down to: "Men Like To Spread Seed, Women Get Jealous." My god, the man has put his finger on it! And only how many decades after Charles Darwin did it better?
The piece has myriad problems. But the main problem is that it offers nothing new. Weiss is deeply enamored of what he takes to be his own willingness to challenge cultural mores about sex, yet the piece could have as easily been written in 1978 as today. Weiss' cultural references are antiquated—Yoko and John, Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife—and so are his attitudes. (Prime example: He fantasizes about persuading waitresses in New York that it would be "cool" to have an affair.) There's certainly plenty still to be said about the complexities of monogamy in married life, but at this point the starting point for the conversation should be a lot more advanced than Weiss'. It certainly would have to include the fact that women may well find monogamy to be almost as difficult as men do. One 2007 study found that among married couples with children, some 37 percent of women and 40 percent of men cheated. That's not a huge discrepancy. I pressed to the end hoping for some, any, fresh insight (For example: Has feminism changed women's relationship to sex and marriage? Do couples raised in the post-feminist age deal with their sexual appetites with more clarity than boomer couples do?)—but I kept finding only the same "truth" you find in Philip Roth novels of late: a rather fuzzy picture of the darkness of sexual desire.
To put it plainly, it's tiresome to read men dilate at length on their own hemmed-in libidos while refusing to seriously examine three things: 1) the possibility that unfettered sexual freedom might not actually solve all their emotional problems or satisfy their fantasies, 2) the possibility that their wives might feel the same complicated desire for sexual novelty, and 3) that one consequence of sexual freedom is jealousy. Weiss coyly refers to his desire to have a threesome with a blogger named Debauchette and waxes enthusiastic about breaking down sexual taboos and setting up free-loving polyamorous compounds. (Been there, done that, circa 1971, no?) He goes on and on about sexual variety but doesn't characterize just what it is about variety that's appealing to him and his anonymous peers: the possibility of a brutal, depersonalized sexual encounter? The sheer bounty of potential partners? Novelty itself? All of the above? I'd love to read some, well, probing writing about this.
Basically, the piece lost me as soon as it became clear that Weiss wanted to have zipless fucks while his wife was home planning his social calendar. (Talk about presenting yourself in an anti-erotic light.) It lost me again when I reached the end and found that he never paused to complicate his assumption that having sex with more women would make him happier—and be as mysterious and thrilling as his fantasies. Sex is rarely frictionless. Let's assume that—and then ask what it might be like to be more honest about it. ( slate.com )
Philip Weiss, the author, explains that men "hunger for sexual variety" and determines that this hunger is "a basic and natural and more or less irresistible impulse." He comments on Ashley Dupre's "luscious body." He reports that men are using more porn than ever and quotes Mark Penn wondering what will happen when women "realize it." He notes that sexless marriages among power couples are endemic. He harps on his own desire for "some strange." Yet when his exasperated wife proposes an open marriage in response to all his bellyaching, he flinches at the thought that she might avail herself of the new rules, too: "No thanks." Throughout, he presents a view of men as virile, prowling predators and of women as gentle, jealous keepers of social calendars who simply don't feel monogamy to be as much of a challenge as men do. (His wife tells him that the women she knows aren't that interested in sex.) And thus he frets over a "never-ending battle of the sexes," which might be boiled down to: "Men Like To Spread Seed, Women Get Jealous." My god, the man has put his finger on it! And only how many decades after Charles Darwin did it better?
The piece has myriad problems. But the main problem is that it offers nothing new. Weiss is deeply enamored of what he takes to be his own willingness to challenge cultural mores about sex, yet the piece could have as easily been written in 1978 as today. Weiss' cultural references are antiquated—Yoko and John, Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife—and so are his attitudes. (Prime example: He fantasizes about persuading waitresses in New York that it would be "cool" to have an affair.) There's certainly plenty still to be said about the complexities of monogamy in married life, but at this point the starting point for the conversation should be a lot more advanced than Weiss'. It certainly would have to include the fact that women may well find monogamy to be almost as difficult as men do. One 2007 study found that among married couples with children, some 37 percent of women and 40 percent of men cheated. That's not a huge discrepancy. I pressed to the end hoping for some, any, fresh insight (For example: Has feminism changed women's relationship to sex and marriage? Do couples raised in the post-feminist age deal with their sexual appetites with more clarity than boomer couples do?)—but I kept finding only the same "truth" you find in Philip Roth novels of late: a rather fuzzy picture of the darkness of sexual desire.
To put it plainly, it's tiresome to read men dilate at length on their own hemmed-in libidos while refusing to seriously examine three things: 1) the possibility that unfettered sexual freedom might not actually solve all their emotional problems or satisfy their fantasies, 2) the possibility that their wives might feel the same complicated desire for sexual novelty, and 3) that one consequence of sexual freedom is jealousy. Weiss coyly refers to his desire to have a threesome with a blogger named Debauchette and waxes enthusiastic about breaking down sexual taboos and setting up free-loving polyamorous compounds. (Been there, done that, circa 1971, no?) He goes on and on about sexual variety but doesn't characterize just what it is about variety that's appealing to him and his anonymous peers: the possibility of a brutal, depersonalized sexual encounter? The sheer bounty of potential partners? Novelty itself? All of the above? I'd love to read some, well, probing writing about this.
Basically, the piece lost me as soon as it became clear that Weiss wanted to have zipless fucks while his wife was home planning his social calendar. (Talk about presenting yourself in an anti-erotic light.) It lost me again when I reached the end and found that he never paused to complicate his assumption that having sex with more women would make him happier—and be as mysterious and thrilling as his fantasies. Sex is rarely frictionless. Let's assume that—and then ask what it might be like to be more honest about it. ( slate.com )
No comments:
Post a Comment