Sydney Morning Herald: “Women should say yes, yes, yes more”
Forty years after liberated women felt able to say “no” to their partners’ demands for sex, they have been urged to say “yes” more often to keep their men happy.
Sex therapist and psychologist Bettina Arndt said different libidos were creating a generation of men who were “miserable, angry and really disappointed” that their need for sex was “being totally disregarded in their relationship”. [...]
“The notion that women have to want sex to enjoy it has been a really misguided idea that has caused havoc in relationships over the last 40 years.”
With the right approach from a loving partner, if women were willing to be receptive “and allow themselves to relax … they would enjoy it”, she said.
SRSLY.
Similar Posts:
- Responses to Bettina by Mindy
- University colleges: nurturing a rape culture by Mary
- It’s not “sex”, it’s rape. by Lauredhel
- Rape myths, rape myth acceptance, and community perceptions of victims of sexual violence by tigtog
- “I will…NOT” by tigtog
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No sex please…we’re women.
I love the smell of FAIL at lunchtime – to the commentor in the moderation queue, you appear to have mistaken the author of this post!
A bunch of us who commented on this thread got quoted in the SMH today.
Oh God, by de Brito! This:
The thing I think a lot of Arndt’s critics missed is there’s a huge difference between being forced or guilted into having sex with your partner and working together to have a happy marriage.
No, I don’t in fact think Arndt’s critics have *missed* this point, it is ENTIRELY their point! That Arndt’s ‘just do it’ is guilting women, and that working on your marriage together is about more than just putting out more.
Hi Garry, Garry from over at the thread derail at Deborah’s? Mmm…you DO like to comment before you read properly don’t you.
@ Beppie:
Ah, that explains it.
Crispy, orange-haired FAIL. Mmmm.
Beppie: And once again, it’s “responses from the blogosphere”. One giant amorphous mass, no names, no locations. Just a big pile of stuff to be mined and left citeless. The MSM is an arse, and Sam de Brito is its dingleberry-crusted centre.
Yeah, FP, isn’t it funny that for so many women, “working together” seems to equate to “feeling guiltly for not being a sexbot”. *sigh*
I also just love how Arndt’s comments, which were very pointedly made towards women, are now being reinterpreted by so many as, “she was just saying that men AND women need to be nice to each other.”
I know. Not so. Let’s not forget that her MAIN PREMISE (that men’s libidos are always high and women’s always low and it’s HORMONES is UNSUPPORTED BY SCIENCE – thanks to Bluemilk for this info) is horseshit, then to ’solve’ the bullshit ‘problem’ caused by hormones her radical suggestion is for women to lie back and think of England, or at MOST ‘buy her sommat pretty boys’. HOW is that the ‘ok, marriage is about love and mutual respect and support and working together for a stronger relationship’ that it’s now purported to be??
Beppie, I wonder if there is a lot of people making the argument they really wish she had made, on her behalf.
You know, the one that people here have been making sideways all the way along – that sex is an important part of a relationship, that being nice to each other matters, that using sex as a weapon is BAD whether it’s coercion or punitive withholding, and that ultimately both partners need to work at getting sex right, both together and separately.
I think perhaps there are a lot of people wanting someone to say publicly that if libidos don’t match as things are, there are things that one can choose to do to put yourself in the mood more often. And things that the other can do to satisfy themselves on the occasions when matching ain’t gonna happen. Plenty of other specific advice can be given, none of which involves just doing it when you don’t want to.
Sadly, she didn’t say that. She said do it whether you are in the mood or not. Do it because you should. Interesting version of a straw man argument.
Ariane’s last blog post..Josh Pyke
@ Ariane
Got it in one. If she had said “if your partner wants sex, and you could go either way, why not say ok more often” then that would have been fine. But she didn’t. She said it as if a man’s sexual desire was the most important thing and women should have sex even if they don’t want to, and IMHO that’s wrong.
Lauredhel: “And once again, it’s “responses from the blogosphere”. One giant amorphous mass, no names, no locations. Just a big pile of stuff to be mined and left citeless. The MSM is an arse, and Sam de Brito is its dingleberry-crusted centre.”
And no link back here to allow readers to investigate the criticisms here for themselves, just the accusations that we’ve missed Arndt’s point. I was wondering how long before the menz starting chest thumping and plugging Arndt’s book.
Ariane – seconded.
You know, I’m glad in some ways that there was no link back, simply because of the onslaught of trolls that would have followed (even if they almost always end up in moderation) — it’s not like most of the people commenting over there would care about seeing where we’re coming from, they’d just want to tell us how wrong we are, particularly those who don’t get the links between what Arndt is saying and the rape culture that allows narratives like Arndt’s to be used to coerce women into sex.
Ariane, I definitely see what you’re saying there — I think a lot of it comes from this assumption that “we’re all equal now” — when some people come up against something that challenges this assumption, instead of recognising that inequality exists, they try to explain that inequality away.
Quote who? Blog handles? Jesus – put your names to your opinions ya sooks and you might get your names in the big bad newspaper.
So I suppose your real name is BevvyNom (one word, two capitals) you condescending twit?
Yes, ideally with a link to the blog in the online version. This is absolutely routine in the blogosphere, and not even slightly difficult.
For a rare example of the mainstream media citing online sources, check out these articles:
news.com.au “Power restored to Sydney CBD and eastern suburbs following huge blackout”
Telegraph.co.uk: “Sydney hit by massive blackout”
And Miranda Devine finally weighs in — she mentions this post, but of course she attributes it to “one blog”.
More of the same, really — poor sex-deprived men, biologically pre-determined libido mismatches (women NEVER want sex when their male partners don’t, apparently), women shouldn’t use housework as an excuse because men do more paid work outside the home, which means that everything is equal, actually, and of course it would be wrong for men to force women into sex — but guilting them into doing so is nothing like that. And, as always, the implicit assumption that men’s sexual satisfaction > women’s sexual satisfaction (except that it’s not, apparently, because according to Arndt, if we’d just let ourselves be guilted into sex, we’d end up enjoying it anyway, and she knows this because EVERY WOMAN IS EXACTLY THE SAME IN THIS REGARD).
The thing that really gets me is the assertion that women are “changing the rules” a few years into the marriage. As I was saying over on FP’s blog last week, we women are the ones who have the rules changing on us all the time. If we have a high sex drive when we’re younger — if we want to have sex outside the context of a monogamous heterosexual relationship — then we’re unnatural sluts. The rules are that we should be the gatekeepers of sex, that unless we withhold sex, we don’t value ourselves, we’re asking to be treated with disrespect. Yet after marriage/monogamous relationship, we’re suddenly supposed to put all of that social conditioning aside and provide Sex-on-Tap, and if we don’t then we’re evil selfish prudes who have no respect for men’s NATURAL BIOLOGICAL URGES. Meanwhile, “the rules” for men don’t change at all — regardless of their marital/relationship status, it’s just “get it where you can”. I know this is just another reiteration of the old women are sluts/men are studs double-standard, but, damn, it PISSES ME OFF.
Oh hey Beppie, just finished an absolute shit attack over this back at mine, so was glad to find some solidarity here. GOD it’s so infuriating! Devine’s just so SMUG about it! Shit. NO one bothers engaging in historical/institutional examinations of marriage, or mistreatment of women. NOPE – just put out more biatches and ALL will be well.
fuckpoliteness’s last blog post..What’s good for the gander…
Oh – and the Devine Bitch stopped recieving comments at about 2pm – just as I was about to post a furious lengthy retort. Shes a coward – and she certainly did a hit-n-run today. Why do the smh news blog mods close the comments down after only a few hours? No doubt, fear of starting a war in which they know the feminists will win, because the male apologists like Bettina and Miranda haven’t got a leg to stand on ideologically.
All the bimbos over at the smh (Miranda, and that breathtakingly vacous samantha brett of the “ask sam’ blog, are just milking this topic for all its worth… without showing any interest in actually exploring the issue in a balanced, educated way. It just is a vehicle for page hits (they must be paid a commission on the number of page-hits)
Blogaddict, please don’t use gendered insults here.
I’m sick of listening to ‘if only he’d do more housework’ argument as a reason why women refuse sex.
some jerk has written this into the Herald today.
Personally, I think more housework is great, but a completely different issue. I’m over the whole thing being seen as a trade off/transaction.
what is really creepy is that this whole argument has very quickly become about ‘rights of access’ to a woman’s body, rather than any interest in sex where women are willing and happy to participate.
I can’t believe it needs to be pointed out, but I’d like Bettina to realise that my vagina is actually part of my body, connected to my nerves, connected to my reproductive organs. It’s not detachable, it’s not like a cricket bat that you can borrow to play without me, it’s not replaceable, it’s actually inside me so it’s not something I share or show to just anyone, and it’s a part of my body I feel is important, intimate, special.
and while I can’t and don’t speak for other women, having someone put their penis inside it affects my whole body, including how I feel.
I really don’t understand why she thinks that someone ELSE should feel entitled to penetrate my body, if I’m not willing or interested.
‘he just wants more sex’ is a euphemism, because no one is advocating men stop masturbating. What Bettina, and all her supporters are saying is he wants more access to a vagina. And women should give it to him, because it will make him happy?
this is MY body. And in the wonderful words of Blue Milk, sex is a participatory activity.
comment after comment says the same thing. That either I ’spread’em’ or I’m ‘withholding.’ I am so depressed that person after person in mainstream fora equate a woman’s right to decide who can touch/hold/view/penetrate her OWN body with ‘hurting men.’ !!!!!!!!! Hurting men!!!!
I think that this attitude has possibly been the biggest libido killer I’ve experienced in ten years. Right now I’m so repelled by this great wave of entitlement I’m planning on staying single and celibate for the rest of my life.
Is there ANY way to explain bodily autonomy to men who feel like this?
I know, I KNOW, I need to just not read Miranda Devine, but I keep being sucked in because I wonder what the reactionaries are being given to prop up their skewed world view. Anyway, I’ve heard the “women do more unpaid work but men do more paid work, so they actually do the same amount of work” line somewhere before but, even putting aside the crudity of that summary in not allowing for any of the power differentials within “work”, it sounds specious to me. I’m pretty sure that most assessments conclude that women do significantly more hours. Does anyone know what the study she’s refering to is, and whether it’s contradicted by others, or if there is some other quick answer to the “see, it all evens out” camp?
She’s probably twisting the fact that men get *paid* more for the work they do. Just because they’re *at* work and getting paid more doesn’t mean they’re performing more labour.
Most of the labour on this planet is performed by women. Sociological fact.
This whole argument reminds me again why the institution of “marriage” as one the the main heteronormative units of patriarchy, just has to go.
She’s also assuming that women are staying at home or only working part time and men are going out to work full time too I think. Which, as a full time worker, and a full on mum I find particularly insulting. I know, as does my husband, who works the longer hours in my family. He does his bit, and he does his best and I’m not blaming him because the kids yell “Muuuuummmm” first, but I still come out ahead in the hours worked, as I suspect do a lot of Mums.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/lifeandstyle/lifematters/men-putting-women-off-sex/2009/04/03/1238261768398.html
Yay for Wendy Frew.
The only way I can figure they got those numbers is that parenting work was excluded, or they only surveyed those with live-in nannies. Seriously- how many mothers do you know with NINE hours of waking leisure time every single day? Fifty hours a week of work total? Really? Even if you took the small subset of SAHMs with all children at school, are we to postulate that they did absolutely nothing house- or child-related for the six hours of school, then had all the kids asleep by 7:30 and did no domestic work of any kind between then and their own bedtime, then had, say, one entire weekend day completely off both parenting and housework (including shopping)? And the kids were never sick during school time, and never had doctor’s appointments, and the mothers never volunteered at school or anywhere else? It doesn’t add up.
She says the data comes from the ABS social trends survey, which is here. Unfortunately, the wording of the questions are not made clear. I’m just not buying it. There’s a methodology problem, either in the data collection, the sample selection, or something else. My suspicions are in that women vastly underestimated either the hours they did housework, or their definition of housework was not the same as the ABS is saying. For example, women tend to underestimate how much time they put into what is sometimes called the “emotional” work of maintaining relationships with both sides of extended family, they tend to not count bits of cleaning up done between other things, etc. “Housework” is when you settle in with gloves on and scrub the bathroom, not when you just tidy up and put things away, and swipe the benches down and supervise the homework and prep tomorrow’s school bags and… and… and…
I think a clue to definitions might be buried in the “A CASE OF MEN’S WORK AND WOMEN’S WORK?” section – when childcare was tallied as a “secondary activity”, mothers’ childcare hours were 55 hours a week. That’s still low, I reckon, but getting slightly more plausible.
Now, how about if they included sleeping hours as “on-call time” instead of leisure, just as they do for doctors and firefighters and such? I wonder how the numbers would change then.
The survey was reported in the ABC news, in a way that seemed to imply everything is Ok as men’s paid work + unpaid work and women’s paid work + unpaid work is about equal. (Sarcasm ahead) Oh breathe a sigh of relief, so that’s unproblematic, its all even, let’s not worry that it means that financially women are still pretty dependent on their male partners and will rarely have security in the form of a lifetime of accumulated superranuation, etc etc. Plus yeah the data doesn’t seem to quite add up, and what Lauredhel said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/03/25/2525756.htm
Ugh, Mindy, I think that Frew article is awful. It’s all about Teh Fat and “drooping body parts”? Uh, no.
Thank you for the detailed response Lauredhel, that’s really useful.
Blogaddict, please don’t use gendered insults here.
Ok, sorry – I will have to invent a gender neutral form of bimbo , but until then I’ll just use ‘uneducated, mindless twat’ if thats ok.
aelo 04.03.09 at 1:25 am
Yes- I’ve actually put some thought into how best to get across men the big deal it is for women to have sex, -this bodily autonomy concept, and the best I’ve been able to come up with is to get a guy to imagine he’s gay, and his partner has a really high libido and is always wanting it; in this way a guy might be made to feel like an orifice which someone feels entitled to use. I think the experience os sex is just so different for hetero men and women, guys actually have no concept of how invasive (physically, psychologically) penetrative sex actually is… their sexual unwelt is just so different to ours, that I think its impossible for them to think about sex in the same way (hetero) women do. I cannot speak for lesbians so i’m focusing on hetero sex.
Are you now taking the piss? Because no, that’s not acceptable either, obviously.
“I’ll just use ‘uneducated, mindless twat’ if thats ok.”
Uneducated=classist
Mindless=ableist
Twat=gendered
How about just plain “asshole”? Just to be safe.
“Twat=gendered”
I know that’s true, but I had to think hard about it. In my mind it is the next step up the scale from “git”, and has absolutely no connection to its origin.
I’m not sure what my point is – I think I just prefer words being re-appropriated rather than eradicated. Mainly because it is more effective.
And I’ve not ever thought of mindless as ableist before. I can’t think of a disability that would routinely be described as “mindlessness”. It seems to me to have an intent to it, along the lines of willful ignorance.
But yeah, uneducated as an insult? Not ideal.
Ariane’s last blog post..Sadly, this is why we need politicians
Ariane: “Uneducated” I’m on the fence about, “mindless” I don’t care, it’s “twat” I don’t like. Twat means the same as cunt – maybe it has become detached from that for you, but it’s not even slightly unconnected for me, and I’ve heard it used in the literal “female genitalia” meaning plenty of times – it’s not an archaic usage in my dialect at all.
It’s not reclamation to use “cunt” or “twat” as an insult, so I’m not seeing how that applies? (elaboration: here.)
Can’t reclaim what was never your’s to begin with.
Ariane, I say ableist because “mindless” to me has the same meaning as “loony” “batshit crazy” etc.
Fair enough Lauredhel, I wasn’t meaning to argue with your right to request it not to be used, just defending the possibility that someone might not think of it as a gendered insult.
I don’t think of mindless as meaning loony. It means unthinking.
P.P. 04.03.09 at 8:41 pm
Uneducated=classist
Mindless=ableist
Twat=gendered
I dispute that ‘uneducated’ is classist in Australia. I had a friend who lived in Minto, was an immigrant, parents didn’t speak much english when they arrived. He’s now got his masters and earning 6 figures…doing way better than I am despite being poles apart “socioeconomically”. Actually I have several friends like this, all with masters or PhDs, all came from the lowest socioeconomic rung of society. So I don’t agree with you on this point.
According to my dictionary, ‘mindless’ means acting without concern for the consequences, and doesn’t imply not having a mind, but not using the one you have! – or are we not going by standard dictionary definitions?
But you got me on twat – I only used it in terms of the meaning of ‘a person who is stupid or obnoxious’ and I was unware of its meaning as a vulgar slang for a womans genitals. So, as i don’t approve of the word cunt (which I saw used on a feminist bloggers website the other day), I won’t use it from now on.
And in Australia, I believe its ‘arsehole’ (?). As for Samantha Brett and Miranda, I will just refer to them as intellectually lazy, which is an apt yet pallid description, which is what I originally meant.
Miranda and Sam? Colour them colonised.
“And in Australia, I believe its ‘arsehole’ (?).”
Lol, true, but language isn’t concrete. It’s fluid and always changing. Lol and google wouldn’t have meant anything to me fifteen years ago. I use both versions of that particular non-gendered insult, but I do think “asshole” looks more obnoxious, has more of an impact, besides, Devine is american (and has a degree from Columbia).
I know that social and class mobility does occur, although not as much as we’re led to believe, and it depends a lot on the the class division a person was in in their country of origin too, immigrant, no english does not always equal poor (neither does living in Minto for that matter).
But class mobility or no, I still think it is inherently classist (and intellectually snobbish) to accuse a person of being uneducated, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.
As for mindless, well again, language being fluid, to me sounds the same as “he’s out of his mind” or “have you lost your mind?” which is defo ableist. The dictionary meaning doesn’t really help much because the way the word or the expression is understood or used in pop culture is what counts.
Ableist language that refers to mental illness is just so common in our culture, we don’t even notice it most of the time.
I think refering to people like the sams and the devines as stoopid or uneducated or mentally ill, kind of lets them off the hook a bit too. I think they know exactly what they’re doing when they write such hideous bile. They’re deliberately upholding the views of the dominant class.
Could we leave this subthread here, please? Further discussions on the nitty-gritty of various insults could go to the nearest Otterday Open Thread, or questions on moderation decisions directly to me by email. Thanks.
P.P. – no worries regarding all your points. But
“I think they know exactly what they’re doing when they write such hideous bile. They’re deliberately upholding the views of the dominant class.”
See- I once thought so too – that it was deliberate, at least definately in the case of M.D., but I don’t know about S.B. I just cannot decide if she’s deliberately imitating a ‘cosmo/cleo’ type approach to gender issues, or if she gets paid to write the most outrageously divisive bile, OR if she just basically grew up on a diet of these types of magazines and any sort of informed (deconstruction) analysis is beyond her. Its a pity because theres a real opportunity to inform the public and promote intelligent debate that would reach a a large audience (like the Gaurdians CiF blogs do – they have great writers, and generally much better informed debate than does the SMH).
Anyhoo, I shall be more mindful of the insults I use on this blog in the future.
‘Sex Diaries’ a vicious assault on women’ is a great article about Betina Arndt and the womens lib movements past gains n stuff…id urge all interested in womens rights to read it!
http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1948&Itemid=125
Ugh, There’s a vomitous 3 page article on ‘What men really want and why they’re not getting it’ in The Sunday Times magazine, full of the same old – ‘women should just get over it and spread their legs’ hideousness. There are THREE WHOLE PARAGRAPHS about SOME women who disagree – and one paragraph is quotes from the comments here at Hoyden!
Billie: Kudos to the author Shelley Gare for actually mentioning the blog name! (Even though there’s no link.)
Text of the article can be found here at AdelaideNow: “What men want (is more complex than you think)”
Money quote:
This diarist from Arndt’s collection is especially endearing:
You don’t want to fuck him? Why on earth not?
Thanks for the link to the Adelaide article Lauredhel.
It is so very disappointing that neither Arndt nor the author of the Adelaide article stop to wonder why women may not want sex with their men. It is very disappointing that women’s supposed fickleness, hunger for power and ‘feeble’ (!) libido is being blamed for hordes of sexually frustrated and angry men.
It sounds so poignant when it is implied that a man just wants to be intimate with his mate and only wants a woman who feels ‘positively’ about him and here he is being rejected. If only it where so. Because that is exactly what a woman wants from her mate too.
Where did the notion arise that penetration of a penis in a vagina with subsequent male ejaculation equates in intimacy and therefore a happy man who think that his woman thinks ‘positively’ about him?
The whole argument is so irrational.
If men reflect honestly on their courting days, if things have changed after marriage, they must admit that they showed interest (were positive about their woman) and that they expressed intimacy in other ways than just with penetrative sex. After marriage it is somehow no longer deemed necessary. ‘What’s for dinner’ is the level of interest and a grope in bed is the hint for ‘let’s get intimate for the next 2 minutes before I roll over and go to sleep’.
Don’t any of these ‘rejected’ men ever have adult conversations with their women? Or do they all just have over developed child psyches that makes them stomp around having temper tantrums because they’re not getting their way because they have to consider somebody else?
They’re not men, they’re little boys in men’s bodies.
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