How Feminism Ruined My Sex Life.

[–]wiccaninthebiblebelt 4 points5 points6 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]Faryshta 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 1 point2 points3 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

My current bf is about as close as it gets to that perfect guy. And yes, we have a safe word. He's exactly what I want when the lights are on--almost like a best buddy I want to hang with all the time, affectionate, playful, smart, funny, interesting, engaging, sweet, teasing and relaxed.

When it comes to sex, it's different. By mutual agreement, there's an implicit, default state of consent on my part to anything he might want to do. My response is always assumed to be yes, and if it's no I let him know with our safe-word. The arrangement works so well for me, the response is almost never no.

It's win-win. I get the guy I want during daylight hours, and I don't have to give up the knuckle-dragging caveman in bed that I need if I'm going to keep wanting sex. If I had to choose between them, I'd definitely opt for someone I get along with over great sex. But it's really nice that I don't have to. :)

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points5 points 15 years ago* (32 children) | Copy Link

[–]carchamp1 2 points3 points4 points 15 years ago (24 children) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 1 point2 points3 points 15 years ago (16 children) | Copy Link

[–]carchamp1 2 points3 points4 points 15 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

Depends on your definition of monogamy, doesn't it? I'd agree that male sexual fidelity is not natural. Neither is female sexual fidelity. A natural, monogamous pair bond is not necessarily something that precludes a natural tendency toward sexual non-monogamy.

Just because a man goes on AshleyMadison.com doesn't mean he's going to leave his wife or girlfriend, does it? Just because a woman marries a good provider who happens to be less than alpha doesn't mean she won't dupe him into raising her personal trainer's kids, either. Those are both reproductive strategies that help humans pass on their genes. Just because a man tends his favorite garden well doesn't mean he's not going to cast some seeds into the wind on the chance some of those will take. And human females don't display when they're fertile for a reason--so she can go hump that stud who's probably not going to stick around but will give her kids strong genes, and pass her kids off as those of the guy who will stick around until the kid's old enough to not eat the "never wake up" berries.

We can argue gender roles and the basis of pair bonding until the cows come home, but it's always going to be a chicken and egg argument. Some--including pretty much all feminists--insist that gender roles were somehow "forced" on us by the patriarchy. I prefer to believe that gender roles have always existed (in general), and society simply formalized them, and coerced pretty much everyone to pair up for life instead of 3-7 years (which is NOT a natural state, for sure), even if they had to settle in order to do it.

[–]carchamp1 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

I've had flings with a few paired-up guys, and had no illusions that they'd ever have chosen to leave their women/families for me.

Two of them really loved their girlfriends and agonized before and after hooking up with me over the possibility of getting caught and it ruining the relationship. The one used to start drinking whenever he got the itch, then he'd call and basically try to get me to talk him out of doing what he damn well knew he was going to do--with me or with someone else. He hated that part of himself, because it had fucked up every relationship he'd ever had.

I eventually asked him why he'd never been honest with any of these women--"Listen, baby, I love you. I'm not going anywhere, I'm always coming home because I love you and I'm committed to you. But shit, sometimes I see another woman and I can't help myself. This is me. It's who I am. And it doesn't mean I'm not going to devote myself to you, or leave you for anything." I don't know how many women would be able to handle that--but it sure would have avoided a lot of feelings of betrayal and anger over investing time and effort in something that turned out to be not what was promised.

The other, a married man with two sons, was miserable in his marriage and hadn't slept in the same bed as his wife for over a year, but was reluctant to walk away from his boys. I knew he wasn't going to leave her for me...but I did realize eventually that he was using me as a bridge to walk across to leave her--he got more and more brazen until I finally told him, "Dude, you're trying to get caught so she'll make the decision for you and you won't have to be the one to be responsible for breaking up your family. But I don't need any bricks thrown through my window. We're done."

I don't think he even cared how or if he'd get reamed in family court. He just didn't want to change the nature of his relationship with his boys--didn't want to be a weekend dad. He did finally leave her, though. I can't imagine he's any happier now, but at least he doesn't have to pretend everything is fine anymore.

[–]carchamp1 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

Well this is where the rubber meets the road. No matter what religious dogma, shaming tactics, Disney movies, marriage rules (ball-and-chaining), etc. we create, in the end, we are all human. And many will follow their natural inclination to roam. That your friend "hated" this part of himself, which so many do, is tragic.

Honestly, honesty is not a strategy for men, especially those with children. Trust me, the certainty of losing your child through our "family" courts is terrifying for many men. I'm not using the word "terrifying" here loosely. I'm writing as someone who has lived this fear for a decade. I've stayed in my "marriage" for the last 10 years just so I could be my daughter's full-time dad and she could be my full-time daughter. I won't bore you with the details, but I'm sure you can imagine that the cost (both $ and quality of life) to me for doing this is pretty incomprehensible. Living in marriage with someone you despise for 10 years is EXTREMELY difficult. I am in "pretend" mode a lot.

Getting back to my main point, "marriage" as commonly understood is an illusion. The expectation of lifelong, romantic, monogamous coupling is just not realistic for most people. It's an absurd ideal. Yet, despite this, we continue on as if nothing is wrong. Marriage is "hard", but we must "work at it". It's just all BS.

Thanks for the discussion.

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Oh, you don't have to convince me that living with someone you despise for 10 years is hard, because I did it too.

At first, I did it out of honor--I'd made a promise and I'd meant it.

When honor no longer concerned me, I did it out of a sense of responsibility--for all that I hated him, he was part of my family. I knew if I left him he'd let me have the kids (kids are work), and I could support them on my own, but he'd crash and burn (and he did, spectacularly). The thought of leaving him felt like abandoning a child.

I stayed out of complacency--things got worse so gradually, I convinced myself at every incremental little downhill slide that it wasn't that much worse than last week or last month or last year.

Once I hated him enough not to care about either of those things, I did it for my kids--as long as there was any value at all in their relationship with their dad that him not living with us would destroy, I wasn't going to throw that in the trash.

And I stayed the last year because I knew if I left, he'd make me regret it--and he did. 12 months of legal separation with me holding the bag for both the kids and the debts (I ended up paying for HIS car to save my credit rating), followed by 14 months of trying to get him to let me divorce him without handing him our kids' entire future. By the end of that, I'd spent almost $15 000 in legal fees to get him to finally agree to a settlement that was $25 000 WORSE for him than the one I first proposed to him, but was still the equivalent of him walking away with no debt and no responsibility for anything, and cash in his pocket.

Marriage shouldn't be "hard", but it is work, especially if you have kids. Fuck, LIFE is work, right? But if there's anything I've learned, if you ever have to say the words "We need to work on our marriage," it's probably already too late to do anything. The work should be a given, and no two people can expect to get along all the time (except maybe me and Wabi-sabi, even when we're at odds, which is an amazing thing), but getting along shouldn't involve changing your personality. No one can do that to any meaningful degree. People can sometimes change a behavior, but the underlying motivations and insecurities behind those behaviors are still there, and they manifest in other ways.

So I know. I wasn't in "pretend mode" that much. I was mostly in "put my head down and shovel gravel" mode. In my experience, marriage kind of sucks. But I know mine isn't the only experience of it out there. There's the odd exception that proves the rule--like my parents. :)

[–]luciansolaris 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (8 children) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

1) Humans don't function on the "scatter the seed" principle." Family structure is something that has more or less been around since archaic-homosapiens. Since then, depending on culture the family structure changes, but it is a part of us. Two parents present increases the likelihood that a child would survive in the wild. The anthropologist I'm drawing on for this is named Parks. 2) All that aside, in this day and age it is still recklessly irresponsible to abandon your children. If you don't want kids, wrap it up, but don't just expect someone to take care of them for you. Thats completely avoiding responsibility for your actions. 3) We no longer live in the African Brush. We have a gross overpopulation rate. Its time we stop acting on instinct and consider what we are doing before hand. Are we still talking about the different types of sexualities or this a whole different topic now?

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

Some men do function on the scatter the seed principle. It goes part and parcel with cuckolding behaviors that are a strategy for some (not all) women: pair-bond with the caveman equivalent of the cubicle slave, and dupe him into raising your personal trainer's kids. Not every woman is going to employ that strategy, but some do. Not every guy is going to pair up, but some do. It's largely a matter of what's been successful over a particular lineage.

Think about this--many women respond sexually and even orgasm while being raped, but not every woman does. I'd think that women who respond that way probably had a lot of rape-survivors in their genetic lineage. Women who didn't lubricate were more likely to get injured. Women who didn't take it were more likely to get injured. Women who were injured faced a greater risk of sterility or death from infection, thus not passing on their genes. In early pre-societies where rape was more common, more women would pass on those traits, wouldn't they? But that doesn't mean it's a universal phenomenon, by a long shot.

It's overly simplistic to assume that there is only one reproductive strategy/instinctive drive at work in everyone across the board. Yeah, there's a strong general urge for people to pair up (at least for a while), but that urge is stronger in some than in others. There's a general instinct toward hypergamy in both sexes, but that instinct can play out in a variety of ways--it isn't always a function of social status, aggressiveness, physical attractiveness, tits and ass, money, celebrity, etc.

And whether you "wrap it up or not", whether you even want kids or not, the kinds of hardwired instinctive drives around heterosexual sex are about reproducing, even when we're actively taking steps to NOT reproduce. If scattering seeds was successful for some men, why wouldn't it be a strategy that's still around, even if it's not based on the pairing up most people do?

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

Yup, you've totally convinced me now. Only one model of reproductive success exists for humans, that of the (sometimes temporary but always lauded) pair-bond. You can totally tell, because it clearly works for everyone--just witness its universal success now that barriers to sexual choice for women have been removed! Everyone's voluntarily choosing complete monogamy, aren't they? Nary a cheater to be seen on either side of the gender divide, because pair-bonding is the only strategy that's ever worked.

Also, all men like big tits and all women are attracted to rich men who look like Brad Pitt.

Never mind that "I think" and "probably" are qualifiers I put in there for a reason--because I have no direct citation for my conclusion. Just an assortment of new findings such as this http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/030613075252.htm, coupled with suggested interpretations of the findings by experts (many of which conflict), some extrapolative thinking, and the understanding that evolution favors variety of survival traits over sameness.

And if you'll go back and read, I never claimed rape was more common in pre-societies--just the risk of infection, sterility and death as a result of rape. (Although my wording was tricky--I was trying to say that in some pre-societies, rape would be more common than in others. So I'll forgive your umbrage. If I'd been trying to say what you inferred, I'd have written "In pre-societies[comma] where rape was more common[comma]...". Placement of commas can be a subtle thing, I understand.)

But back to the topic at hand! I've now been enlightened. We're ALL THE SAME, we all behave the same, we all find the same things attractive and desirable, and all naturally gravitate toward exclusive pair-bonding. I know this because Parks told me so, and he's the only anthropologist out there. And he KNOWS this, because he was totally there, dude. Totally. He even has video footage.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

[–]luciansolaris 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

[–]carchamp1 1 point2 points3 points 15 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

We call what we have now monogamy - that's the ideal. But that just isn't happening and it never did. I don't see why you think currently 1/3 to half of these men you're concerned about ARE getting sex. They aren't, or at least not to any satisfying degree. To whatever degree it did exist 50 or 100 years ago, the one woman, one man lifelong social construct is dead. Marriage is dying and if it wasn't for the remaining barriers to divorce the situation would be even worse (if one cares about such things).

"...without it he'll most likely work subsistence levels as there would be no family thus no need for doing more..."

There is NO need for men to do more now, at least not in the US. More and more men are realizing that there is nothing in marriage and "family" for them. They simply have little to no rights to their income, savings, or even children. Why bother?

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

"I don't see why you think currently 1/3 to half of these men you're concerned about ARE getting sex. They aren't, or at least not to any satisfying degree."

He didn't say get sex. He said get a woman. And I'd agree, the easier it is for women to divorce men without suffering life-destroying consequences, the faster marriage will die, and the sooner we'll all be living back in the cave.

It's a bit sad, because in the absence of any stake (even one that's an illusion) in the genetic lottery, a lot of men will do only enough to get by. No reason to build anything if there's no future generation to build it for, right? Then again, if lifelong sexual monogamy had ever actually been possible, it would functionally negate the evolutionary drives that are the keystone for success of any species. Lifelong sexual monogamy in which everyone passes on their genes and no one gets any sexual choice once they've made that commitment would cause stagnation or even devolution.

[–]carchamp1 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]girlwriteswhat 0 points1 point2 points 15 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

I should maybe have said "proverbial cave". And I'm not talking about much more than gender relations as they were back when we were in caves, practicing mostly serial monogamy--musical mates, with the top 80% of sexually attractive women reproducing with the top ~20% of sexually attractive males. Women were more choosy than men because their risk and investment in reproduction was higher. Women would move onto a new male when she wanted and as she could, because genetic variety is a good reproductive strategy. It's why even species that reproduce asexually will sometimes exchange genetic material.

And even back in the cave, I'd guess more than the top 20% of men formed pair bonds with women--the kids they were providing for just weren't necessarily theirs.

Pair bonding is a reproductive strategy, and it usually only occurs in species where babies are ultimately helpless, such as birds (and even among birds, there's some extracurricular hanky panky that happens, I'm sure). Humans have really helpless babies compared to most mammals--or rather, they're helpless for a lot longer than most mammalian offspring. Look how long it takes for, say, canine, ursine or feline offspring to become ambulatory and capable of putting food in their own mouths, compared to human offspring.

Human babies need a LOT of care compared to other mammal babies. Human childbirth is also a lot more painful and risky than for quadrupeds because of the pelvic shape necessary for bipedal walking, and recovery time is longer. That means pair bonds are, if not necessary, at least advisable.

It's also the reason why (overt) polyandry is kind of pointless. Being protector/provider to a woman who's burdened with a helpless child is a lot of work, and men are less likely to invest in that way in offspring they aren't reasonably certain are theirs. And multiple men + one woman doesn't = more babies the way multiple women + one man do.

That's why the double standard existed in regard to adultery--if the transactional contract of pair bonding (and its social formalization--lifelong marriage) is that the woman "rents out" her uterus in return for resources, then the man breaks his part of the deal when he stops providing for her and the kidlets, not when he steps out on her. She breaks her side of things when she dupes him into paying for the milkman's brats. So back in the day, the only thing as bad as an adulterous wife was not an adulterous husband, but rather a deadbeat husband/father.

We've removed much of the stigma and social consequences from female infidelity and promiscuity. We've also, kind of by extension, removed a lot of the stigma from men who can't, or choose not to, provide for their kids. They may be targeted by the courts, but they aren't vilified and shunned by society the way they used to be.

As far as I'm concerned, the child support extraction machine is fuelled by a combination of "patriarchy" (chivalrous men in the justice system who feel for the poor, helpless single mom, even if she's single by choice), and the facet of feminism that wants to punish men by whatever means possible. It's the double whammy--two bullies who hate each other, but get over it long enough to gang-rape someone they both hate more than each other.

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Title	How Feminism Ruined My Sex Life.
Author	eyeofthestorm
Upvotes	5
Comments	44
Date	March 30, 2011 3:43 AM UTC (15 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/geg5y/how_feminism_ruined_my_sex_life/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/how-feminism-ruined-my-sex-life.1041596 https://theredarchive.com/post/1041596

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