The Sexual Double Standard: Elusive and Ever-Present

Illustration by Hayley Lim via

"She just keeps going over there because she wants his attention because she likes him.  That's disgusting.  That to me, if you want to talk about slutty, that to me is whoring yourself out.  And, I mean, I hate to say that because she is one of my best friends, but good God, it's like how stupid can you be?" (female college student at a Midwestern American university from Armstrong et al., 2014, p. 108)

The sexual double standard reflects a pattern of women being judged more negatively than men for similar sexual behaviors (Jonason & Marks, 2009).  If a man engaging in causal sex is hailed as a "stud" or "player", but a women with the same sexual history is tarred as a "slut" or "whore", it reflects the sexual double standard.  In many societies, women are held to stricter sexual standards than men are, where it is more acceptable for men to engage in premarital or extramarital sex, for example, than it is for women to do the same (Baumeister & Twenge, 2002).

Is there a sexual double standard in the United States today?  Most people would probably say yes (Marks & Fraley, 2005; Milhausen & Herold, 1999, 2001).  Certainly young women worry about being stigmatized as a slut (Armstrong et al., 2014).  

Interestingly, though, research on the sexual double standard has been mixed.  This topic has been researched fairly extensively, but the results are inconsistent:  Some studies find evidence of the sexual double standard, while other studies do not find such evidence (Crawford & Popp, 2003; Fugère et al, 2008).

View image | gettyimages.com

For example, let's look at perceptions of contraceptive use:  Is a woman judged more negatively than a man when providing a condom in a sexual encounter?  Having a condom indicates sexual readiness and possibly experience, so the sexual double standard would suggest that a woman with a condom would be seen as "slutty" while a man with a condom would be seen as "responsible."   Suppose we give people scenarios in which a woman and a man are having a casual sexual encounter, but some of the people read a scenario in which the woman provides a condom, while others read one in which the man provides a condom or a third version where no condom is used.  What would we find?

• In Hynie and Lydon (1995), female undergraduates judged the woman's behavior more negatively and as more inappropriate when she provided a condom than when her male partner did so (or when no condom was used): evidence of the sexual double standard.  They also assumed her male partner would feel more negatively about her when she provided a condom than when he provided the condom. 
• On the other hand, Kelly and Bazzini (2002) conducted the same study with both male and female undergraduates and found no evidence of the sexual double standard.  In fact, female participants (and to some extent, male participants) judged the woman more positively when she provided a condom than when no condom was used.  Although again, female students (but not male students) thought her male partner would feel more negatively about her when she provided the condom.  (This belief is important and I'll come back to it later on.)
• In Young, Penhollow, and Bailey (2010), men, but not women, exhibited the sexual double standard, rating the woman more negatively when she provided a condom (compared to the same scenario when no condom was mentioned), while the man was rated more positively when he provided a condom.  Male participants rated the female character most positively when she didn't have casual sex and least positively when she had casual sex and provided the condom, but the male character was rated least positively in the "no sex" condition and most positively when he had casual sex and provided the condom -- a classic example of the sexual double standard.   

Such conflicting results may tempt us to throw up our hands in exasperation and mutter about the deficiencies of psychological science.  But wait!  There are really only three basic explanations of this kind of mixed research evidence:

1. The effect does not exist
2. The effect exists but is very small
3. The effect exists but only under certain circumstances

We Who Believe in Freedom

This semester I've been sitting in on classes in Photoshop, television production, and video editing.  It's been interesting to be working so much on visual skills, particularly since I am typically so immersed in the world of words.  In my teaching, in my scholarship, and even blogging, I'm very verbally oriented.  To be sure, I have my visual side, as well, in my textile and photography work, but I am generally less well-versed in visual storytelling than in verbal storytelling.  So it's been a terrific opportunity to grow and develop some new skills (although quite a steep learning curve, as well!).

Our most recent video editing project involved creating a music video using still photographs using Adobe Premiere Pro.  I struggled for a while to develop an idea for the project.  I knew that I wanted to do something around the history of social activism movements, but I couldn't identify the right music.  I spent some time researching songs until I rediscovered a song I used to listen to years ago.  At that point, the vision for the video really came together.  Then I spent endless hours looking for suitable photos online (they had to be topically relevant, visually compelling, and sized large enough).  Thank goodness for the Library of Congress online database!  That was a rich trove of terrific images.  Of course, then I had to make choices about which photos to use (I gathered more than I needed) and in what order, as well as creating movement through the piece.  My first draft was good, but Q noted that the movement across photos was less continuous and smooth.  So I tweaked it to create more consistency in the movement across photos, which I think improved the flow of the video.  I spent another day looking for the source information for the photos (trying to find the name of the photographer, etc.), so I could give appropriate credit.  (Have you noticed how often websites use a photo without any information on its source?)

So it took about two weeks of work, but I learned a lot from the project, both in terms of working within Adobe Premiere Pro and visual storytelling more broadly.  I'm also fairly pleased with the final product.  Enjoy!

Living in Limbo

As I mentioned in my last post, we are in the midst of a home renovation project.  That means that the house is in chaos, since everything needed to be packed up and moved out of the rear parlor (some of the furniture from the dining room needed to be moved, as well).  The remaining rooms are crammed with towering piles of boxes and furniture and stuff.  Watering the plants in the sunroom has become a challenging exercise of tiptoing carefully around the electronics on the floor and stretching over piles of boxes to reach the various plants. I feel as though I'm doing some bizarre yoga-parkour mix.  The living room calls to mind one of those unpleasantly overcrowded antique stores, where one fears to even wander amongst the eclectic mix of vintage items for fear of dislodging a china shepherdess or stumbling over a wooden settee.  The remodeling zone is framed in translucent plastic, its cloudy film creating a sense of distance and unreality.  I stand in the kitchen, looking through the plastic sheeting, and it feels as though I am encased in a bubble, ungrounded from my real life.

Linguistic Lacunae: What Our Sexual Language is (not) Saying

“Language and culture cannot be separated. Language is vital to understanding our unique cultural perspectives. Language is a tool that is used to explore and experience our cultures and the perspectives that are embedded in our cultures.”  -- Buffy Sainte-Marie

Language reflects and recreates culture.  Cultural attitudes become crystallized in language, which then serves to reinforce those cultural attitudes.  It behooves us to carefully examine our language, to interrogate the meanings lurking within our everyday speech. 

Take our sexual language, for example.¹ The way we talk about sex speaks volumes about our cultural attitudes towards sex.  I don't just mean the pervasive sexism of our sexual slang that reveals itself through the construction of women's bodies as dirty and the continued presence of the sexual double standard (Braun & Kitzinger, 2001; Schultz, 1975).  I don't even mean the negative view of sex that becomes obvious whenever sexual terms are used as crude insults.  Of course these themes are revealing and deeply troubling.  But our cultural attitudes are also evinced through what is missing from our sexual lexicon.

Take a moment to think about the sexual words and phrases you know -- terms for parts of the body, sexual acts, all of it.  (Go ahead; I'll wait.)  Then think about what is *not* present in this sexual language.  There are several important aspects of sexuality that get short shrift in our sexual lexicon.

[Note:  Sexual terminology will be mentioned after the jump, so if you are offended by crude or explicit language, you may not wish to read further.]

Death and the Salesman: The Use of Morbid Sexism in Advertising

As I was reviewing magazine and newspaper ads in preparation for class this week, I was struck by this ad:

Ad in Elle for Louis Vuitton;
from the Ms. Magazine No Comment archive (Summer 2010)

Why on earth would any company want to advertise its product by displaying it with a dead woman?  I couldn't understand the motivation here -- what were the advertisers thinking?  On the face of it, associating your product with death just seems like a bad idea.  I can just imagine the conversation in the marketing department --  I know, Bob, we'll show our bag with a dead woman, so everyone will think that our accessories can kill you!  Ok, maybe this ad is just a fluke, one of those advertisements that miss the mark.  But then I found more.

She *really* likes it: Eroticizing women's labor

I definitely do not look this happy when I am scrubbing the tub.
Image from Deviantly Domesticated (with funny commentary on lots of vintage ads)

Image from wonderfriend

Have you ever noticed how happy the women are in ads for cleaning products?  These advertisements  often glamorize domestic labor and imply that women are positively euphoric while cleaning (at least with the right product in hand).  You too can love cleaning and be floor-happy . . . with our product!  But some of the ads go further, implying that cleaning is an erotic experience for women.  In the Hoover ad below, for example, the woman is in a prone position, touching the vacuum lightly -- there is something intimate, almost romantic about the way they are situated (as well as putting her in a submissive position).   

I bet she'd be happier if
you promised to do the cleaning.
Image from SA_Steve on Flickr

This Pine-Sol ad, on the other hand, presents the woman in an orgiastic glow, presumably due to the stimulating qualities of the cleaning solution.  Who needs foreplay when you have Pine-Sol?

Pine-Sol -- with new aphrodisiac action!
Image from ThoughtCatalogue, who provides an
interesting retrospective of the Pine-Sol lady.

Janitors and Maids

Prompted by a Facebook discussion of my last post:

All this talk about professional cleaners got me to thinking about the distinction between janitors and maids.  Janitors tend to be men, while maids tend to be women.  According to the United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics, women make up 30.3% of janitors and building cleaners, while they make up 88.6% of maids and housekeeping cleaners.  Why? What is the key difference that makes one more male-dominated and one more female-dominated?

Let's start with the job descriptions.  The job description for janitors in the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that "[j]anitors and building cleaners keep many types of buildings clean, orderly, and in good condition," while the job description for maids indicates that "[m]aids and housekeeping cleaners do general cleaning tasks, including making beds and vacuuming halls, in private homes and commercial establishments."  These sound like very similar jobs to me.  Both involve cleaning buildings, although maids also work in private homes and janitors are involved in keeping buildings in good condition, as well as clean.  I'm still not quite getting the critical distinction that accounts for the gender disparity.  

Maid: Unpacking Ambivalence

Sometimes, while I am engaged in some unpleasant cleaning task, I think about how nice it would be to hire someone to do some of these cleaning jobs.  I'm not talking about a weekly whole-house cleaning (I can't envision that, somehow), just having someone in occasionally to clean the kitchen and bathrooms.  When I'm on my hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor, the vision of a professional service sweeping in and leaving behind clean, gleaming surfaces beckons to me.  And yet, apart from the time we hired a cleaning service when we moved out of our rental house (it seemed a good investment to make sure we got our deposit back), I haven't succumbed to the temptation of professional house cleaners.  In part, this is due to entropy (the irony of doing hours of scrubbing because I'm too lazy to call and arrange the service does not escape me) and being worried about the quality of their work (will things get broken or damaged?  I know I can do this safely and carefully -- will they?), but I also have a strong discomfort with the prospect of handing off my cleaning to professionals.  It seems the epitome of bourgeois privilege to not have to do one's own cleaning.  Let's face it, even with all my careful talk about cleaning professionals, the term that comes to mind is . . . maid.  And I'm not ready to have a maid.

What same-sex marriage represents

It's the end of June, and LGBTQ Pride Month is coming to a close.  Last week, I was pleased to attend the opening of the new exhibit at Montgomery College, Portraits of Life: LGBT Stories of Being as well as a day-long consortium organized by MC Pride and Allies entitled How Do You Do It?, bringing together students, faculty, staff, and administrators from a number of local colleges and universities to discuss best practices for creating a welcoming campus for LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff.  Both were wonderful events and I am proud that we are making a visible commitment to support the LGBTQ members of our community.  In doing so, we take a stand for a more equal society that does not discriminate based on sexuality or gender expression.


In many ways, we have made tremendous strides toward that equal society, but that progress is mixed with strong backlash, as well.  The recent Pride image of a rainbow Oreo posted by Kraft Foods on Facebook reveals the mainstream corporate support for the LGBTQ community, but it also elicited a stream of anti-gay commentary.  This year has seen similar conflict over same-sex marriage in the United States.  In a historic first, President Obama and Vice-President Biden both came out in support of legal recognition for same-sex marriage (the first sitting president of the U.S. to do so).  However, this endorsement followed the passage of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, civil unions, and domestic partnerships in North Carolina, the 30th state in the U.S. to pass such an amendment. 

In his keynote speech at How Do You Do It?, Luke Jensen (University of Maryland) shared his lifetime of experiences in the trenches as an LGBTQ advocate.  As he marked various components of the struggle (HIV/AIDS, hate crimes, bullying, invisibility), I was struck by how far we have come over the years . . . and how far we still have to go.  For example, attitudes towards same-sex marriage have clearly changed in recent years.  While only 35% of Americans favored legalizing same-sex marriage in 2001, 47% indicated support in 2012, according to Pew research polls.  A recent ABC poll (April 2012) found that 53% of Americans favored legalizing same-sex marriage.  In short, polls indicate increasing support for legalizing same-sex marriage, but the country is still split on the issue, with strong feelings on both sides.   

23 years and counting

Q and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday -- we've been together 23 years.  It feels like just yesterday we met, and yet I can't imagine life without him.  I could say that our relationship works because of how wonderful Q is.  I could describe my initial attraction to him, and how kind and supportive he was to me, a total stranger.  I could then enumerate his many fine qualities (and a very long post it would be!).  This would be a tale of how I met my perfect partner and now we are living happily ever after.  We see that story so often in movies, but it is only part of the truth.  The real story of any successful relationship is how the two people involved built a strong and satisfying relationship that stands the test of time.  I am fortunate because Q and I have worked together to create just such a relationship.

Teaching toward a better world

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
          -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Today we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose tireless dedication to a world free of bigotry, poverty, and hatred helped bring us the civil rights movement.  I cannot do justice to the man or the movement, nor can I improve upon the many wise and profound words that have been said by and about him, so I will not try.  I want, instead, to take a moment to reflect on my own commitment to social change.

I sang for social change from 1989-1994.
(I'm in the middle in the back row.)

Patriarchy does not equal Pleasure: Sexism Makes for Bad Sex (Pt. 1)

Courtesy of www.archives.gov

I'm in the midst of preparing for my upcoming Psychology Brown Bag discussion this Wednesday at Montgomery College, and I thought I would put some of the research together for those of you who can't attend. I'm starting with the claim that patriarchy (cultural systems that give men greater power than women) is likely to result in decreased sexual satisfaction, as compared to cultures in which men and women have greater equality. A bold claim? Perhaps so, but I've got the data to back it up.

In a survey of older men and women (40-80 years of age) from twenty-nine different nations, Laumann et al. (2006) found that men and women in countries with more gender equality (such as Western countries) reported greater sexual satisfaction than those in male-dominant countries (such as those in East Asia and the Middle East). In the Western nations, two-thirds of men and women reported that their sexual relationships were satisfying. In Middle Eastern countries, fifty percent of men and thirty-eight percent of women stated that they were satisfied with their sex lives (although there was some variability among the nations in this cluster), and in East Asian nations, approximately one-quarter of men and women reported positive sexual satisfaction. In other words, older adults living in more patriarchal nations reported lower sexual satisfaction than those in countries with greater gender equality, and this was true for both women and men. In other words, patriarchy doesn't just diminish women's sexual satisfaction, it makes sex worse for men, as well.

It is also worth noting that in all three of the cultural clusters, men reported greater sexual satisfaction than women, although the survey found greater gender differences in the male-dominant countries than in those with greater gender equality. "This pattern suggests that the type of gender regime is important for gender differences in sexual well-being, but true parity remains an ideal even in countries where beliefs about gender equality are more widespread." (Laumann et al., 2006, p. 158). Western nations may be more egalitarian, but they haven't reached true sexual equity yet. (We already knew that, right?)

Within any one country, some hold more patriarchal beliefs than others. If male dominance is bad for sex, then we would predict that feminists would have better sex lives. Of course, this flies in the face of widely held stereotypes that feminists are ugly, undesirable, and anti-sex. To the extent that feminism is viewed as anti-male, some might believe that feminists would have trouble in heterosexual relationships (Rudman & Phelan, 2007). However, Schick, Zucker, and Bay-Cheng (2008) found that female college students who more strongly endorsed feminist beliefs had a greater sense of their own sexual feelings (sexual subjectivity) and enhanced sexual motivation, both of which produced increased sexual satisfaction. In both college students and a non-student sample, Rudman and Phelan (2007) found that heterosexual women reported greater relationship health and sexual satisfaction when they perceived their male partner to be feminist, and men reported greater sexual satisfaction to the extent that they perceived their female partner to be feminist. Rather than impeding sexual satisfaction, these studies indicate that feminism enhances sexual satisfaction. (Of course, we need to replicate these studies and have more diverse samples and measures to be sure of their results, but still, the data are encouraging.)

So there you have it. Patriarchy is bad for sex and gender equality is good for sex. Now, to the interesting question -- why? I have my own ideas, which I'll be discussing on Wednesday, 1-2pm at Montgomery College in Rockville, MD. I'd love to hear your thoughts, though, so feel free to post a comment.

References:

Laumann, E. O., Paik, A., Glasser, D. B., Kang, J-H., Wang, T., Levinson, B., Moreira, E. D., Nicolosi, A., Gingell, C. (2006). A cross-national study of subjective sexual well-being among older women and men: Findings from the Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 35, p.145-161.

Rudman, L. A., Phelan, J. E. (2007). The interpersonal power of feminism: Is feminism good for romantic relationships? Sex Roles, 57, 787-799.

Schick, V. R., Zucker, A. N., Bay-Cheng, L. Y. (2008). Safer, better sex through feminism: The role of feminist ideology in women’s sexual well-being. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 32, 225-232.

Stripping for PETA

This is just gratuitous and inappropriate. I don't know what is more disturbing, the stripping itself, the fact that she's dressed like a schoolgirl, or the overly sexual narration. In response to protest letters, PETA justifies this by saying that their provocative actions (like naked marches) bring more attention to these important issues. They don't get the distinction between nudity and the stereotypic objectification going on in this striptease quiz (trust me, I have no problems with stripping, but this use of it is unnecessary and insulting). There is also an "end justifies the means" thread to their argument that I find very troubling.

I sent this quiz to a colleague in Women's Studies and her response was that sometimes it seems like we are "swimming backwards through thick sludge."

Hmmm . . .

My favorite line from my classes this week was one I came up with. We were talking about women's and men's attire in my Psychology of Women class, and one of the students talked about how she likes to wear "wifebeater" shirts. I stopped the class and asked them to think about that term, and whether they were comfortable with such a casual use of the term "wifebeater." I asked if they would wear a garment that got called a "child molester" or "pedophile" -- I think I'll wear the green pedophile today.

They cracked up at that, and told me I should consider a career in comedy. But they also admitted it was a good point, and that they'd never thought about it that way before.

I love teaching.

Be the man!

Wouldn't you like to be the man in bed?

Pills, politics, and puzzlement

I'm listening to an NPR story on the controversy in Connecticut about a bill requiring hospitals to offer emergency contraception to rape victims. The debate centered, not surprisingly, on the four Catholic hospitals in the state, who did not want to be required to provide EC, as they are morally opposed to it. Their policy is to test female rape victims to see if they are near ovulation, and if they are, to tell them where they can obtain EC.

Wait a minute. If Catholics are morally opposed to the use of emergency contraception and they are trying to be consistent with this moral opposition, why would they tell the women where to go to get emergency contraception? If you're opposed to some action, you don't help people commit that action. It's like saying, "I think armed robbery is wrong, but the liquor store next door has a lot of cash, and here's where you can buy a gun." This is a cop-out. If you believe that EC is morally wrong for all women in all circumstances, then you wouldn't tell rape victims where to get it. If you believe it is an acceptable choice for some women in certain contexts (e.g., rape), then you offer it to women in your hospital and leave it up to their conscience to decide. The current policy is just moral hand-waving -- Oh, we didn't give them the EC, so our conscience is clean.

It reminds me of the inconsistencies in policies which ostensibly claim abortion is murder.

End of the story: The bill wasn't passed . . . lawmakers declined to vote on it.

Choices, choices

Check out the cartoon at Minimum Security : Second from the bottom, about salad dressing. Very on-target!

Flanagan and the motherhood mystique

After reading this post on Pandagon about Caitlin Flanagan's rhetoric regarding motherhood, I was intrigued enough to go read the article in Elle about Flanagan and some of Flanagan's articles. She talks about how mothers should stay home and care for their children full-time, that children are harmed by their mother's working outside of the home.

In other words, she's completely immersed in the motherhood mystique, which claims that:

• motherhood is a full-time (and more than full-time) job
  
• it is supremely fulfilling to women to be immersed in the task of mothering (indeed this is constructed as the ultimate fulfillment for all women -- a woman who does not want to mother or doesn't enjoy it is seen as psychologically disturbed)
  
• the best thing for children is the full-time, intense devotion of their mother (and only their mother)
  
• Women are naturally good at caregiving and should be responsible for all nurturance (husband, children, elders, etc.)
  
• Mothers have infinite patience and the willingness (nay, eagerness) to engage in self-sacrifice for her children (and other family members) -- she should put her own needs last. Flanagan mentions that when her children were young, "I was a mother virtuously willing to sacrifice her own happiness for the sake of her children," ("How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," Atlantic Monthly, p109).

Let's put this in context: This construction of motherhood is a modern, Western construction which emerged out of the industrial revolution, changing family and work patterns, gendered beliefs, and a healthy dose of patriarchy. Prior to the industrial revolution, most women and men were engaged in agricultural labor, and this involved productive labor for both men and women -- women made many of the items for home use (cloth, garments, candles), as well as participating in farming and animal husbandry, in addition to engaging in care of infants. Children were cared for by fathers, mothers, and older siblings (a pattern replicated around the world -- many cultures have an older sibling caring for the younger child). The Industrial Revolution hit, many men became wage slaves, and families became structured around one or more members of the family working for pay in an urban center. In poor families, men, women, and even children were wage laborers (until child labor laws went into effect); in middle-class families, men were wage laborers and women were in charge of domestic labor (housework and child care), for which they were not paid. But how to keep women busy with domestic labor, now that so many of their tasks had been relegated to mass-production in factories? I know! We'll tell them that raising children is a full-time job, which requires the skills of teacher, nurse, psychologist, and nutritionist, and that domestic labor is a labor of love for their families. Cook for your family and show them you love them! Decorate the home to be a haven of rest for your husband. So the domestic and child care tasks that remained were inflated in importance (the development of the cult of domesticity), and the belief that children needed full-time, devoted attention from their mothers was a device to keep women at home (instead of out agitating for the vote).

This construction emerged in the late 1800s and then again in force in the 1950s in the U.S., and Flanagan has got the rhetoric down pat. From her insistence that having a hot meal ready for her husband shows how much she loves him (and her critique of mothers who do not provide hot meals for the family) to her insistence that women are naturally skilled at, and are drawn to, domestic tasks, to her strongly-worded claims about the harms to children which stem from their mothers working outside of the home, she is the mouthpiece for the motherhood mystique and the cult of domesticity.

So why does her argument bother me? For many reasons:

• Natural and universal? Flanagan relies heavily on the notion that "woman in the home" is a natural and universal role: Women are naturally good a child rearing, naturally want to engage in domestic tasks, and that there is a natural "maternal bond" between mothers and their children. But it is clear that childrearing and domestic tasks are taken on by men and women, boys and girls, in many different arrangements in cultures around the world. Certainly, mothers are often involved in breastfeeding infants, but other types of care vary considerably. It is also clear that women and men vary in their enjoyment of, and desire for, childrearing and domestic labor. Flanagan herself seems to have little affinity for cleaning, cooking, or laundry, and she relates real ambivalence in her experiences of childrearing.
  
• Harm to children? The claim that children will be harmed by not receiving the full-time devotion of their mothers has been a cultural trope since the Victorian era, but there is little scientific support for this notion. Infants and children clearly need care, and it helps to have a consistent set of caregivers for infants so that they can develop secure attachment patterns. Beyond that, however, children do as well when they are in high-quality day care as when they are raised by full-time mothers or fathers or some combination of parent and paid caregiver. In fact, children generally do better when in high-quality child care if they come from a home environment which provides less cognitive and linguistic stimulation. Flanagan even admits that children who went to day care seemed to be "a little more on the ball" ("To Hell With All That", New Yorker, 80(18), 2004).
  
• What about fathers? It ticks me off to no end that women get castigated for combining paid work with child rearing, when fathers are almost never held to the same standards. Where is the concern for children of working fathers? Where is the criticism of inadequate fathering? It seems that the only thing a father can do to engage similar critique is to stop being the breadwinner and become a "deadbeat dad." We praise men for their contributions toward child rearing, but we rarely hold them accountable for their children's care to the same extent that we do women.
  
• She's a hypocrite She says women should be full-time mothers, but she has a writing career. She snubs women who take their children to day care, but she employed a nanny for many years. She exhorts women to cook, clean, and create lovely homes for their families, and she herself does little of this work (she employs cleaning services, etc.). Classic Flanagan from "To Hell With All That" (New Yorker, 80(18), 2004) -- she relates a story of being at a nursery school event:
  
  

  It was a dinner dance with an auction, and the signal items up for bid were chairs hand-painted by the members of each class, a project that had been laboriously created and supervised by an exceedingly earnest and energetic athome mother. . . Leaning against a far column watching her, with drinks in their hands and sardonic half-smiles on their faces, were two of my friends: a lawyer and a movie producer. . . We looked at the woman --- think of all she'd sacrificed to stay home with her children, think of the time she'd spent dipping our own children's hands in paint so that they could press their little prints on the miniature Adirondack chairs. "Get a life," one of us said, and we all laughed and drank some more. And then we turned our backs on the auction and talked about work. But I'm craven enough to change colors if the occasion calls for it. "Is that poor child's mother ever at school?" someone hissed when a (perfectly happy) little girl marched off with her nanny one recent afternoon. "I've never seen her," I clucked back, feeling guilty about knifing the absent mother and glad as hell that I hadn't sent my own nanny to pick up the boys that day."

  
  
  This is a woman who is opportunistic and hypocritical -- she will say whatever will sell best at the moment. And yet she has the hubris to criticize Laura Schlessinger for being a hypocrite for not living by the standards she advocates("Do As I Say", Atlantic, 293(1))!
  
  You know what? I've given this woman far too much of my time already. She needs to be ignored, because she has nothing important to say; she contributes nothing to our understanding of women's or men's lives or how to make them better. She needs to stop writing until she can figure out what she really wants to say, other than to claim a superior status to which she has no legitimate right and get paid for the privilege.

Abstinence only sex ed: biased, inaccurate AND sexist

It's old news that abstinence-only sex education is chock-full of scientific and medical inaccuracy. In a report prepared at the request of Rep. Henry Waxman (a champion of science) in Dec. 2004, over 80% of the abstinence-only curricula in the study contained "false, misleading, or distorted information about reproductive health." These programs, which are heavily funded by the federal government, imply that condoms are ineffective at preventing STDs/STIs and pregnancy (in contradiction to actual scientific data), include false information about the sequelae of abortion, and blur religion and science.

I knew about that part of the report.

What I hadn't heard about until reading articles in Salon and Harper's is how incredibly SEXIST these programs are. They are purveyors not only of conservative sexual morals, but also of gender stereotypes. Here is one of the parables that is provided to our youth:

Deep inside every man is a knight in shining armor, ready to rescue a maiden and slay a dragon. When a man feels trusted, he is free to be the strong, protecting man he longs to be.

Imagine a knight traveling through the countryside. He hears a princess in distress and rushes gallantly to slay the dragon. The princess calls out, “I think this noose will work better!” and throws him a rope. As she tells him how to use the noose, the knight obliges her and kills the dragon. Everyone is happy, except the knight, who doesn’t feel like a hero. He is depressed and feels unsure of himself. He would have preferred to use his own sword.

The knight goes on another trip. The princess reminds him to take the noose. The knight hears another maiden in distress. He remembers how he used to feel before he met the princess; with a surge of confidence, he slays the dragon with his sword. All the townspeople rejoice, and the knight is a hero. He never returned to the princess. Instead, he lived happily ever after in the village, and eventually married the maiden—but only after making sure she knew nothing about nooses.

Moral of the story: Occasional assistance may be all right, but too much will lessen a man’s confidence or even turn him away from his princess.

What? I don't even think I understand what the point of this is, particularly in a sex ed curriculum. I guess we need to restate that men need to be in charge and to seem more knowledgeable than women. Women, hide your wisdom! Men need to know more, or at least think that they know more, so if you want your knight in shining armor, play dumb.

Oh, yeah, that's a good message to give young people. That furthers gender equality and sexual health. Ladies, don't tell your man how to please you or suggest he wear a condom, because that will lessen his confidence. Hey, what about *her* confidence, huh? It's sure to be bolstered by the reminder that she isn't as bright as he is.

Here's another gem:

While a man needs little or no preparation for sex, a woman often needs hours of emotional and mental preparation.

5 Major Needs of Women: Affection, Conversation, Honesty and Openness, Financial Support, Family Commitment

5 Major Needs of Men: Sexual Fulfillment, Recreational Companionship, Physical Attractiveness, Admiration, Domestic Support

So, women don't need sexual fulfillment and men don't need affection or honesty? I'll remember to lie to my sweetie as I'm admiring his big muscles and draining his wallet dry. That's the ideal relationship for me!

[Sarcasm mode disengaged.]

The really depressing part is that some people believe this *is* the right message to give the next generation, and it's being given out on a massive scale.

Marriage: (E)Quality matters

From the Washington Post today...

Poor Marriages, Poor Health
By William Raspberry
Monday, October 24, 2005; A19
Black women are sick of marriage.
Well, lots of them, anyway.
I've just looked at "The Consequences of Marriage for African Americans," a comprehensive review of the most recent literature (since about 1990) on the subject, and the conclusions are generally what you'd expect:
Marriage promotes the economic, social, familial and psychological well-being of black men and women -- as it does for men and women generally. Marriage is wonderful for children, who turn out to be less trouble-prone than their peers from single-parent-households.
The economic benefits of marriage are more pronounced for black couples than for whites, more often keeping their families from slipping below the poverty line.
But when it comes to physical health, marriage is worse than neutral for black women. Listen to the report, newly published by the New York-based Institute for American Values:
"Our research finds that marriage brings small health benefits to black men -- and none to black women. In fact, married black women are significantly less likely to report having excellent health than are unmarried black women."
. . .
"Overall, the study shows the smallest benefit to black women -- but it's still an important benefit," said Malone-Colon, a psychologist who is director of the Washington-based National Healthy Marriage Resource Center, a clearinghouse for resources for strengthening marriages.
But a negative consequence for the health of black women?
"I know. There are some dynamics we haven't given a lot of attention to, though one could hypothesize. It probably has to do with the quality of marriage -- self-reported levels of satisfaction with the marriage.
"In a number of surveys, African Americans report that they are less satisfied. They also report higher levels of conflict -- even violence. Then there's the matter of domestic justice -- sharing household responsibilities. And infidelity rates are higher among African American men."
. . .
As the report itself notes: "There is every reason to believe that increased marriage rates, and especially higher numbers of good marriages, would bring significant improvements to black people's lives. To take one example, we have seen in this review that higher marriage rates among African Americans would almost certainly reduce the risks of juvenile delinquency facing young African American males."
Moreover, the scholars conclude, strengthening marriage in black America might be as effective as "any other strategy" in addressing the crisis of black males.
But the implied caveat is that they'd better be good marriages -- non-conflictual, nonviolent and fair.
Black women have seen the other kind of marriage and they are, quite literally, sick of it.

First of all, the entire premise is flawed: I'm always annoyed by the social science which purports to find that marriage improves the quality of life, whether that is health, mental health, child development, etc. What these studies actually find is that people who are married have higher (or lower or the same) average health, mental health, etc. This is at best a correlation between marriage and health (well-being, etc.) (and even that is not consistently found, as noted above). But now the important part (and this is Psychology 101, people): CORRELATION DOES NOT ESTABLISH CAUSATION. Just because two variables are associated does NOT mean that one of them causes the other. If every time a phone rings in the U.S., there is a baby born in India, does that prove that one causes the other? Not in the least. In this case, it may well be that those who get married are already more likely to be socially skilled, more mentally healthy, etc. than those who do not get married, and that the marriage itself plays no part in improving these qualities. So we can never assume that marriage has any causal impact until we do studies in which people are randomly assigned to get married or not...and I don't think I can get the human subjects board to agree to that one.

(Side note: Even if marriage does have some positive causal effect on people's lives, what would it be about marriage that would have the effect? Is it the legal recognition? Access to partner's health insurance? Social recognition? Different treatment from friends and family? Cohabitation? Commitment? Long-term partnering? Great gifts from the wedding? Without a clear model of what aspect of marriage has the beneficial effect, I'm loath to create marriage incentives, as we are working blind.)

Second of all, note the over-generalization: Even if there is some effect of marriage, it is unlikely to be the same for all people -- no relationship or social context will be universally beneficial to all people. Marriage, like any relationship, is enormously variable, and its effects will undoubtedly vary considerably, as the reporter notes. It's good relationships that have the potential to positively benefit people's lives: An unhappy, abusive, conflictual relationship will be more likely to decrease well-being than increase it.

Third of all, note the gendering: Marriage has generally been found to be much more consistently associated with good health and well-being for men than for women, and yet the social scientists promoting marriage continue to advocate incentives for marriage, as though this will improve everyone's lives. But, as the reporter notes, the report indicates that marriage will improve black men's lives -- to solve the crisis of black males, to reduce the juvenile delinquency among black males. Why is it women's job to improve men's lives? Isn't this just a variant on the Victorian trope that women's purity and moral goodness would save men from their bestial natures? Patriarchy raises its ugly head again.

And now the kicker...why does marriage benefit men more than women? Because of persistent inequalities in labor: Women do more household labor and more emotional/relationship labor than men on average in cross-sex couples. Because of continuing risks of domestic violence: Women are more likely to suffer significant physical injury (and risk of death) from domestic violence than are men. What does it all boil down to? Power. Men still hold more power than women on average, and as long as that imbalance persists, men will benefit more from couplehood than will women. The solution? Egalitarian relationships, which are consistently found to be more satisfying for both men and women. As the reporter notes, women (and men) need "non-conflictual, nonviolent, and fair" relationships.

The big question: How do we achieve this in a society still infused with traditions of patriarchy? When men still earn more than women (women earn $0.77 for each $1 a man earns on average), when positions of power are still dominated by men (seen a woman U.S. president yet?), when models of marriage still promote male dominance (albeit more subtly than in the past)...how do we create a movement of truly egalitarian relationships?

I know it is possible...I have it in my own life. It's fabulous. I want it for everyone.