Poor Bettina Arndt! After all those years of promoting s-x to women, we stubbornly sometimes don’t want to know. She blames it all on the concept of women’s liberation, in particular the vital bit of liberation that told women they had a right to say no to unwanted s-x! This astounding claim comes from her analysis of the responses to some s-x diaries that people volunteered to fill in.
Let’s leave out questions of methodology, such as how typical are the s-x lives of men and women who were prepared to keep such diaries. Or maybe how many men would ever tell a female researcher that they didn’t want more s-x than they were getting versus women who thought they may be getting a sisterly ear. There are, however, some basics of research analysis that need to be thought through. Correlation is not cause. Just because there has been a second wave feminist movement for nearly five decades, does that affect s-x lives and frequency? Were men really getting much more in the 50s? And is it feminism that causes women to say NO!
I have another option to put up to explain this somewhat dodgy data. There have been changes over this time including an increased number of
wives/mothers combining paid work with other more traditional duties. What comes through in most time use surveys is that household chores are not spread evenly between most household partners. Women still do most of it. A 2006 survey (ABS 4153.0) on How Australians Use Their Time shows clearly that women still do much more housework, care and other chores than men. After an evening of organising kids, dinner, the shopping, the washing, the homework, etc, maybe they are too tired to want s-x.
For all the complaints we have about paid work, it is generally easier to contain and leave behind when you head home than getting a break from the never-ending chores. Men do spend more time with their children, but this is rarely doing the grotty bits of care work, and related household chores, like finding and mending the sports uniform for tomorrow. Bed is therefore often refuge from constant demands and not the place to deal with further demands. And maybe under it all is also resentment that the man didn’t take on his share of the boring bits of households.
Therefore, I propose an experiment for all partnered men who feel their needs for s-x are not being met. Spend the next year taking on a genuine 50% of all household tasks, which are randomly allocated to ensure both partners get the grotty bits. Then some sociologist could get a
representative sample to fill in a diary. I suspect that the men would be more tired and want less s-x after the household chores are done. On the other hand, their female partners may feel s-xier because they too had some time with their feet up before going to bed.
Maybe equal shares of domestic responsibilities may have more to do with libido changes than feminism per se. Or maybe Arndt is suggesting that women should withdraw from the paid workforce and therefore buy their financial support by meeting male needs! Happy International Women’s Day!
Good one Eva, you’re hot!
Like a competent scientific thinker you can see through the well paid simplicity.
Thanks from the thinking women I know whom agree with you.
I also have done a study on this topic. I have used a longitudinal case study method with a random sample of one. In 23 years I have found that imploring my wife to close her eyes and spread em in the interests of domestic harmony is negatively related to s-xual frequency. The more I implore the less frequent the s-x. On the other hand the level of my contributions to the housework is positively linked to the frequency of sexual activity. A very high correlation. Thank you Eva .. at last some bloody sense on the topic of this absurd headline grabbing ‘study’.
yes, yes, yeees, yeeeeees, YES! And see Liz Conor’s moment-by-moment account too, in today’s crikey.
Bettina Andt is so predictable in her quest for book sales. Her championing of the male must have resulted in many books being bought by a man and put on a woman’s pillow. Many years ago my grandmother who was born long before the feminists told me to my surprise that she was very pleased when sex was no longer part of her life. The advice to women to lie back and think of England very much predated feminism.
Eva is right of course. A woman has so little time to meet her own needs that further demands on her time by a husband who is prepared to let her do all the planning, all the work and earn a living as well means that his demands are heaped on a great deal of resentment over his laziness and leisure time. No turn on at all especially if a man’s idea of sex is wham, bam, thank you maam, which leaves a woman feeling used. This is what Bettina is advocating. Seems there will be arise in the divorce rate if her advice is followed with even more men saying “What did I do wrong?”
The proposition by Bettina that a woman has to satisfy her husband’s needs and not expect to have any of her own needs met is disappointing because it has gained so much publicity. All the better to make her rich. Bettina may devote a chapter of her book to the need for a man to think of his partner and her workload but that wasn’t what she discussed on Lateline. Bettina is happy to ride to wealth on her sister’s backs which is the worst aspect of her “research”.
trish ! You’re right on all 3
In my youth the girls would be instantly popular and liked by boys if they fluttered their eyelashes and talked to the boy’s about their sex (the boy’s sex). The mother stroke.