I’ve been married for 16 years to a man who by all standards, is a good one. He does more than his fair share of house work, is an excellent partner and father. But I have also been struggling with the fact that I never lived by myself due to the restraints placed on women by the patriarchy. It doesn’t feel like I will “get over this” and I have been honest with my partner as I go down this path.
We haven’t had sex in almost a year. Then, the other day as I’m crying to him about questioning among other things my orientation, he said “I’m so happy you have your best friend (him) to help you through this. But I miss my wife”. I know that was meant to be endearing, but to me it sounded possessive. Is sex the only thing that makes me a wife? And am I his?
On the flip side , I was in a store yesterday and a female store clerk asked me “Is he yours?” In reference to another man who walked in the shop carrying a bag from the same store I had just been to. I probably overreacted in my emphatic no, but it wasn’t because I would never date the man. It was a knee jerk reaction to that question of ownership. Or the phrasing of the question . As a married person, sex will always be a factor in the equation.
Hi Melissa, thank you so much for this vulnerable comment and for bravely questioning the status quo. You bring up so many great questions to which I have no answers. I’m asking them too because I as I write my memoir I see patterns emerging from all my long term relationships and my behavior in between being committed romantically to a man. I guess my biggest question is: if you take away religious indoctrination where women are Madonnas or whores, and we accepted that there was a demand for sex (by men) and women were able to supply it without stigma or criminalization, make a lot of money and become financially independent, what’s wrong with that? What if women were treated as full humans the way men are and no one dared thing to harm a professional doing their job? It’s a really big ask to suspend our disbelief because it’s widely accepted, without question, that sex work is inherently violent and dirty. It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, but it is because that serves the patriarchy.
Oddly I’m currently visiting Las Vegas for a wedding that included many religious references and heard things all last night like “found the one” “twin flame “ and just about every other cliche pushed by a religious based society. I don’t begrudge the couple, it was very sweet and their choice.
Sex work is absolutely work, and could empower so many women while preventing others from being forced into marriage for the sake of survival. Since turning 50 this year, I am trying to find more voices like yours who question the status quo and can imagine different alternatives.
I’m staying on the strip tonight and plan to celebrate and support women by going to a burlesque show.
Not all marriages are patriarchal. I was always expected to be the wage earner, even before kids, and I paid off my wife’s students loans during our first years together. When we moved overseas, I worked and encouraged my wife to complete her university degree at a US accredited university, which she did.
I always paid for full time household help for both inside work and yard work. When our children arrived, not only did my wife have a helper to assist her, but I also spent time doing household chores, cleaning, tending children, and repairs.
I have lived a virtually monastic lifestyle, have made no demands, and was informed after the marriage that some women simply aren’t interested in sex. Full disclosure would have been nice before the vows, which I still take very seriously.
I built a house with my hands, the mortgage was paid off in two years. I make no demands and have no expectations for meals, which 9 times out of 10, means I take care of myself. I do all our vehicle maintenance and repairs.
The past two years, my wife took at least four one or two week vacations with her relatives, and spent time at women’s retreats and other events.
When I discuss these things on line with other men, I find a surprisingly high percentage share similar experiences. While it’s anecdotal, I suspect there are fewer cavemen out there than is commonly reported.
I can understand the reluctance of young men to avoid dating, especially at university because of the risks to their reputations and careers that they face from the kangaroo court systems used by universities to deal with accusations. If rape is accused, then it must go through the criminal justice system. Too many young men have had their lives ruined by accusations that later are found to be false.
Finally, I read shrill comments and posts here on Substack about the epidemic of man hatred. Honestly, I don’t know how deep the hatred actually runs, but to me, a casual observer, it runs deep. It also taints so many interactions that men are withdrawing from women, or are reacting in unpleasant and brutal ways.
It reminds me of this election. People who might agree on 90% of the issues now hate each other because on narrow disagreements, that when discussed in good faith, often leads to mutual understanding.
All I know for sure is that I during my career, I’ve worked with women who would give anything to trade oppressions with western women. And while I’m bewildered by much of what I hear, I won’t allow myself to indulge in hatred of women. If I knew as a young man what I know now, I doubt I would make some of the same decisions. Living as a pariah because of immutable characteristics from birth and living an affectionless, loveless life is no way to grow old, and I’ve experienced those things since I was born to a mother who never showed physical affection or expressed love.
It’s not the marriage that’s patriarchal, it’s the society. What you wrote about is a perfect example. You provided financially and she had sex with you periodically (not as much as you would have liked, and to your credit you didn’t take it when she wasn’t willing). In the absence of religious indoctrination casting women as wanton temptresses who need to be controlled, what if women’s sexuality carried no stigma and they could use it to become financially independent? Or, if women were not penalized financially for having children? These are constructs of a patriarchal system where men benefit from women’s free labor. Individual behavior cannot negate the economic system in place which keeps women reliant on men. If you ran away with another woman, how would your wife survive financially without you? Does she have her own money? Does she have a 401(k) and a decent amount paid into social security for retirement? I’m genuinely asking because I see how older women fare if their husbands leave them.
Many women also benefit from men’s free labor. Most of my days are spent helping widows and single women who can’t afford auto repairs and other expensive and necessary services. Every damn day and it is not transactional. I do it because they don’t have the skills or resources (and I should add that at least a third of the work is for old men who don’t have the skills or resources.)
My wife would do fine. She has a 401(k), has paid into social security for enough years at a high enough rate to provide her with a good retirement income because she started working after the kids left for college a decade and a half ago. She has her own income. We live in a community property state, so all our assets are jointly owned. She would also receive my pension and insurance after I die, which statistically is what will happen.
Not as much intimacy as much as I would have liked? How about no expectations and not disappointed. Even an occasional good morning, I love you would be welcome. There was never anything transactional about any part of this relationship. This is the odd and hypocritical thing about our culture, especially now that porn and hookup relationships are so widespread. Without a father to teach young men that marriage will not be like a hookup or porn, they know only what culture teaches them, and will have expectations accordingly. No wonder so many marriages fail because of unmet expectations or that people try to hurt one another.
With so many sexless, without affection marriages that continue because of the high financial and psychological costs of divorce, it’s no wonder that people are turning to other ways of meeting their emotional needs in a marriage, although open marriages, polyamory, cuckolding, and all the other variations seem to be as problematic and more trouble than they are worth.
I’m trying to understand where female sexuality without stigma reduces the power of the patriarchy (I simply don’t understand. Wouldn’t that benefit the patriarchy, too, by giving them guilt free
access? I’m asking, because I don’t know, but I often think that men who a big advocates of abortion have a similar vested interest.
Do you think the patriarchy ever really existed as a force without a counter force? I think I mentioned to you once that my cousin killed her abusive husband. Or what about withholding affection and sex from a man who won’t react with abuse or unfaithfulness? To culturally define marriage as a power struggle rips out all the joy and goodness that could be possible.
And for the record, I read below about how women and children have always been the victims of the patriarchy. I always wondered what the guys pressed into armies over the centuries have felt about their privilege of being severed by broadswords, crushed by maces, endured endless drudgery guiding a wood plow, pressed into navies where they half starved, if lucky, or were impaled by wooden splinters every time a cannonball hit a gunwale.
Privilege has always belonged to the elites. It’s always been good to be king or queen, lord or lady, but for almost everyone else, life was 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,’ regardless of gender. And frankly, the people I hear most shrilly complaining about inequality and the patriarchy are upper middle class, often tenured, highly educated, and bestowed with white privileged. I never heard those kinds of complaints in rural African villages, where women undertook endless backbreaking work, as did men who weren’t away in another country working two miles underground in the mines and allowed to return home only every couple of years.
Amey, I think you know me well enough to know I’m not asking questions to argue, but to genuinely understand. As I’ve said before, I’m newish to this culture and there is much I don’t understand.
I enjoy these kinds of conversations because I really don’t have all the answers, and you are 100% right that I am very privileged within a culture that puts a premium on whiteness and money. I don’t think that sex within a heterosexual marriage has to be transactional on an individual level. I equate it more to an existential question of free will. If heterosexual marriage was created as an exchange of goods and services, a daughter for a bag of gold or an ox, how can my role as wife not be to have sex with him, bear his children and take care of his household? Does it really matter that the individuals within the system have evolved (to some extent) or not? Isn’t the system unchanged? Again, I am not making value judgements. I’m asking people to suspend their disbelief that within another belief system, where women gain money and status for providing their expert sexual services to otherwise sexless men? Ask yourself honestly how you would feel if the only way men could have sex is if they could afford to pay for it? Is there any part of you that believes that you should just get it for being a nice guy?
I think the men you ended your comment with are incels. Sucks to be them. But to your question, there would be market forces at work. Not everybody gets to drive a Bentley. Some are stuck driving Yugos. And frankly, not everybody in the trade would have equal earning power. Some might end up on the discount table. Not to be crass or disparaging, but unless the government set prices, many would have a tough time making a living. And further to your point, there was a short lived space sci-fi called Firefly, where one of the Firefly passengers was a “hostess” in the Geisha tradition.
You just reminded me of something I learned when I first went overseas and came face to face with various forms of bride price that is germane to this discussion. Where we lived, it was called lobola, which was generally paid in cattle. In other cultures, especially those where a man can divorce his wife by telling her three times he divorces her, women wear their dowry as gold jewelry, gem stones, and other portable wealth so they are financially secure in the event the husband decides he needs to move on. In every culture where I’ve observed bride price, it was essentially a financial security guarantee for women.
Also, in certain cultures where adultery is punishable by death (and even rape is often treated as adultery), there is a work around called “temporary marriages.” If a man is away from his wife for more than 40 days, he can negotiate and consummate a “temporary marriage.” I was told by knowledgeable sources that the practice is very common where men go to mostly segregated cities or regions for, say, religious studies. I don’t know many of the details of a temporary wife arrangement, but I suspect there is a minimum number of days so it doesn’t resemble prostitution, at least in the eyes of the lawmakers, but the marriages do involve a negotiated dowry.
Early on in my Africa days, on a Christmas Eve, a young man I knew knocked on my door and told me that his in-laws “repossessed” his wife and kids, “including their shoes,” he noted, because he was behind on his cash lobola payments. I gave him Z$20, which he promised to pay back, and was able to get back his family on Christmas Day. He never repaid me, which technically leaves me the option to foreclose, but considering the price of airfares, immigrations lawyers, and additional rooms on our house, I’ve written off the loan.
Although I do see the religiously sanctioned temporary marriages as transactional, I don’t think traditional dowries are pay for play. I see them as insurance for brides from capricious men.
I think you fail to see that in all the scenarios you talk about, women are treated as property. In America, the country where I live, my body is treated like property of the state. Until you have your body autonomy stripped away, until you are forced to give birth, until you face the same fear of walking the Earth in a woman’s body or can imagine living that way, please stand down. Ask the woman wearing gold trinkets around her neck if she feels free. The marriage contract you describe is between the husband and her family. She has no say in any of it.
These conversation lines get confusing, but I think you were responding to me.
I think we both made our points. The world still sucks and could be much wiser and kinder. We all carry the illusion that we are free, but in a thousand ways we aren’t. As a young man, my government could take control of my body, dehumanize me, force me to learn to kill and send me off to war in a some stinking jungle to die, for what? And it didn’t change much as time went by. I faced it for years in scores of countries. Face down in a street with a gun pressed against my neck. Missing getting kidnapped by half an hour, although my friends weren’t so lucky. Could I have chosen a different life? Would in really matter? Wage slavery is its own kind of death. Because of what it means to be a man, I will die younger or am much more likely to take my own life. I understand what that darkness means. I was there once, when the despair of the world was so strong in me that I could no longer bear it.
There is still much work to be done. We can be better than we are. I’m on your team.
I only challenge your thinking because you are open to hearing another point of view. That’s a good thing. I leave you with this thought, who orchestrates wars? Who sends other mother’s babies to be blown up in foreign countries for a piece of land and some natural resources? You can say it’s the rich trying to get richer, which is true. Look at who holds the wealth in most countries, who runs the governments and makes the laws? Who created the financial systems and legal codes still in place today? It wasn’t women. We were being burned as witches when that shit went down.
And it was a handful of men, but not most men. But it was also the Cleopatras, the Elizabeths, the Bloody Marys, the Catherines the Great who overthrew their husbands the king. The rest of us were being butchered with broadswords like a side of beef or working in feudal slavery on the lord’s holdings. We have much to gain and little to lose by resisting authority.
Thank you Bonnie! I consider myself a happily married woman for 13 years and yet now that I'm single (not by choice) I realize how much I gave up of myself to do the emotional work required to be in a heterosexual relationship. It's not that Steven was uncaring, but like most men he lacked the emotional intelligence needed to do the job. In fact, I don't think most men even see it as a job that needs doing. I'm not getting down on men, EQ is just not required of them. Their idea of showing up in a relationship and the division of labor is taking out the garbage, or other physical tasks.
☑️ I resonate!! Could not have said it better myself. I agree that EQ falls to women to balance heterosexual marriages. Men are not expected to learn and when they do, it’s a jackpot.
I can see in the patterns of my long term relationships I chose men with low sex drives so they didn't make those sexual demands of me. I suppose that was my way of maintaining some semblance of autonomy within the patriarchal construct of marriage.
Hi Bonnie, from the perspective of a woman who was married to a man for 28 years and bore 8 children, and who even before his side of the bed was cold, was involved in another 11 year relationship which I ended 3 months ago, Amy’s post hits the bullseye for me.
You’ve done great research again, Amy! I am surprised from comments how many women and men too do not have a compatible sex life. How is it work if you enjoy each other often with mutual satisfaction? Both partners work, share household duties, parenting, plan things together…but sex is a problem in marriages? Is it younger generations than me that feel they must do it; or must encourage the man to be more interested? I cannot relate to this and I’ve read it several times as I read each comment. As you know, dear friend…I took the same path as you after becoming a widow. Help me understand how these marriages last if sex is viewed as work?
I wish I had all the answers Joan, but I have more fun asking the questions. I know that during the pandemic, while both parents were working from home, it was usually women who were responsible for watching the children too. Many couples who thought their household labor and parenting responsibilities were split evenly, became aware of how much more the wives contributed to the running of their households. One father realized he couldn't plan his preschooler's birthday party in the backyard because he didn't know the names of their classmates or their parents, and he didn't know how to coordinate food, cake, party favors, paper goods, etc. That was just one party for one of their three kids. I am by no means getting down on your husband, but I wonder if you didn't do much more of the household managing than he did? His contribution was supposed to be financial, to provide, so maybe he made more money than you did? It's not so much that sex in and of itself is work (although the lack of sex education and the stigma of female pleasure lead to a lot of unsatisfying sex for women), it's that we have a system where men expect sex in exchange for providing financially for their families. Additionally, the stigma and criminalization of sex work run so deep in our culture that the knee jerk reaction to reading my headline is to be offended when I'm not making a value judgement. Again, not saying that's you or anyone else. My goal is just to get people to question why they believe what they believe. I think you're amazing, and I wish more women were as enlightened as you are.
I get it now…not just about sex. Absolutely I did more with kids and house. He was the cook… I cleaned up. He was gone a lot of evenings as a reporter, so bedtime and discipline often fell to me. I’ve never thought about it that way. I have no resentment…it was what it was. We both initiated sex, found the time. My paycheck went into savings, his took care of the bills. I took article this as a lack of or sex on demand. Mea culpa. You’re awesome as a catalyst/conversation starter and oh, the fun in that! And our very best headline writer…grab them by the headline! 😂😅😉love you! 😘
Hi, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on this very subject more than 20 years ago. Every now and then I think it's outdated, but then I read this and posts by Sarah Penn and think I need to dust it off and publish.
I’m not and never have been married, for some of the reasons you state above. My relationships (now that I’ve honed them) must be a balanced exchange of energy. I understand we all go through difficult transitions so the balance isn’t always 50:50. My body is my body is my body. I choose. So until I meet a person that understands I meet my needs first, I’ll stay happily single.
Thank you so much for this comment Anita. It's very hard for a woman to have agency within a marriage, and I say that as someone who was "happily" married for 13 years. I'm not saying I wasn't happy, but I think I was trained to believe what should make me feel fulfilled and happy. In a society where women are the "caretakers" is it possible to find a male partner that accepts a woman who demands to meet her own needs first? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm genuinely curious.
So far for me it is not possible. Every man I meet, no matter how mature or “evolved” seems to want a mother he can have sex with. Interesting thing I learned when I went through menopause is that estrogen is why women want to care for others. That dwindles and not so much caretaking drive. I’ve been told that I “think like a man” by some men or I’m not “a normal woman.” As if we all fit into one mold. I think I learned to be independent due to having a mentally ill mother. I used to take care of everyone, including my partners. I think mutual care is fine. Such as I cook, you do the dishes, clean the kitchen and take out the trash. If that can’t happen, I’m not in. I know so many female friends that have sex with partners when they don’t want it. Rape, coercion, manipulation, reluctance. So much nuance and it depends on where you stand in the equation. If I’m doing all the caretaking, I deserve extra compensation for sure. Time + energy + effort should equal something.
This is why it’s financially advantageous for women to get married because so much of our labor is unpaid, underpaid or unrecognized as work. I find it interesting that prioritizing yourself rather than taking care of others qualifies as thinking like a man. Men are socialized to believe their caretaking = providing (making money) for the family which is so outdated when women have been working outside the home en masse since the 1980s.
Yes that is why it’s financial advantageous and why I’ve opted for a more simple lifestyle. I simply cannot afford to buy a home alone in my city. I never understand the thinking like a man comment. Ha! Agreed men think caretaking is providing money. I suppose if a man has enough money to pay someone (other than his wife) to do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc. it might be a more equitable solution. I’m now reminded how many times I’ve heard men use the word “babysitting” rather than parenting. 😳 I recently saw a friend who hustles all the money, cares for her husband and 2 children (1 with special needs) who wants to leave her husband and cannot due to finances. I wish I were rich to help get her out of that toxic situation. I told her a week ago that sometimes I wish I’d spoken up about red flags in friend’s relationships, but you just can’t. Nobody wants to hear it at that point. In her situation many years ago she always did everything. I was visiting and he said he was hungry. She and I were in discussion and while normally she’d pop up and wait on him, she told him the wide variety of foods already prepared that he could plate for himself. He said “that’s why I have you” as if it were funny. No one laughed but she also didn’t listen to that. And she’s suffered the burden for years since.
One more thing your post brought to mind is a study I read about several years ago where they asked men and women what made them feel their partner loved them (hetero relationships). Men said if the woman would have sex with them. Women said if the men would really listen and talk with them.
I tend to agree. From ancient times women and children were basically on the level of cattle in the marriage contractual agreement. Religion and many social conventions still hark back to that reality. So, yes, marriage is a form of state sanctioned sex work.
It's the lowest paying form of sex work at that. Imagine how many women would forgo marriage if sex work was safe, legal and a respected form of employment? What if women could earn a good living and become financially independent instead of performing on demand for a lifetime. Anecdotally, men are more likely to leave their wives when they become sick and can no longer perform their "wifely duties."
Yeah, that's really reprehensible. But I have been around a lot of men who view their wives as a commodity that they purchased for the domestic work they can do and the free sex they provide.
I’ve never been married so I can’t speak from the position of marriage, but I can say that I didn’t get married for these very same reasons. My mother had nine children and much went on behind closed doors until it got very loud.
My mother went to father Clancy, wanting a divorce that was not allowed.
So she took up judo lessons and fought for herself because the treatment she was getting was legal, and she didn’t know what else to do.
I remember her first job outside of the home and when I was 14, she was able to get Mia paying job at the same establishment. There were many mouths to feed.
I remember when my oldest sister got married at 18. I hid under my bed for days crying because I was so afraid for her.
In general, I thought marriage was a sex crime against women.
Thank you for this essay. I haven’t thought about this for a while.
There is more to say, but I’ll save it for another time.
Thank you for the deep explorations that you inspire.
Thank you Prajna for always bringing such insightful reflections. Part of my point is to highlight how so many people, especially women, have such deep hatred for sex workers but think marriage is such a wonderful institution. Just because women appear to have more choices in terms of who they will marry, doesn’t make the institution of marriage fair and equitable. It doesn’t change the origins of the marriage contract, or provide a pathway for women to become financially independent. It keeps women dependent on men and often leads to negative outcomes for older women.
Yikes. This reads a little like the, "All women are whores” attitude. I know plenty of women who felt they were the ones not getting enough sex in a marriage. And also, plenty of us are grateful for loving relationships. There are compromises in all kinds of lifestyles. It's up to the people in them to find what works.
I love this discussion because we all view the topic through a different lens. Nowhere in my article do I use the word "whores" and that's because I see women having sex for money as work that is just as valid as any other type of work. I would challenge you to look deeper into where you learned that women having sex made them "whores" which I am assuming you see as something negative. Let's suspend our disbelief for a second and imagine a world where women gained status by having sex the way men do. The status quo is just a belief system built on casting women as temptresses and manipulators to get what they want from men. The very thing that makes us powerful has been turned against us. In no other area in a capitalist system is the concept of supply and demand turned into demand and supply. It's an unnatural bastardization of an economic system that would never be tolerated if it wasn't beneficial to the patriarchy.
This is an excellent article about how "sex" defined as penetration (in the dictionary) makes it patriarchal sex. This is why a lot of women do not like "sex" - because it's all about the man's pleasure. I just love the scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Meg Ryan insists that all women have faked an orgasm and then proceeds to do it in Katz Diner.
I don't find it offensive, but I'm not sure if it's still true. I'm a couple of years older than you, and I got married over 30 years ago to a woman I met in professional school. There was no expectation of particular roles in our marriage. For a long time we made about the same amount of money doing similar jobs. There was no pressure on her to have kids and take time away from her job, but she wanted to do that, and when we finally had kids after a while, she took time off and sometimes worked part time as a matter of choice. I can't honestly say that our particular union was an example of marriage as sex work because there wasn't much sex. It was pretty terrible.
In the past, marriage was more of a practical transaction than something borne of romance. The romantic attitude toward marriage is more recent.
I just like getting people to think about the status quo and who benefits from it. In the past, marriage was a "practical" transaction for parents and single men looking for free labor (cooking, cleaning, bearing children, sex, planting crops, harvesting, etc.).
There wasn't much in it for the woman unless she was lucky enough to be sold off to a man who didn't mistreat her. It wasn't the same as freedom, but I suppose it was better than being with an abusive husband.
I can believe there was no pressure on you to have kids, but it's hard to believe your wife felt no pressure from society and her family. I feel like a lot of men mistake the choices they had for the choices women had. We can agree to disagree on this and I know that has nothing to do with our friendship. You've always supported my work and for that I am grateful.
I don't pretend to know everybody's situation and I don't judge. I know mine. My ex wife and I married as equals in just about every way you could imagine, with no expectation of what roles we would take with regard to children and homemaking and the future. We didn't have kids for quite a while. But when it came time to have children, my wife suddenly valued being at home with the kids. I was frankly surprised at the degree to which her values changed. I know her family well enough to know that there was no pressure from that quarter. She genuinely derived value from foregoing income to be at home with her kids. I don't think I would have been willing to make the same choices. I think it's fair to say in this particular situation that she made voluntary choices and knew exactly what she was getting into and was willing to do it because being a mom was a form of compensation that made up for not working as much or earning as much money. In many ways I would say she "benefited" much more from the arrangement that ensued than I did.
I don't assume this is how it is for others, and I don't believe women in the past had the same sort of freedom. But that's how it was for us.
All the judgments I’ve had against “sex workers” and for most of my 62 years on this planet, I’ve been doing the same thing. I am stunned and happily so. 💐💐💐
This is one of my favorite comments. My intention was not to convince anyone to agree with me, but to get curious about why they believe what they believe rather than accepting that the status quo is just the way things are. Part of the problem is that sex work is so stigmatized and criminalized that people are offended that I would equate it to sex within a marriage. I am looking at this from a purely economic viewpoint. Women can have sex whenever we want, literally. All you have to do is look at the dating apps to see the imbalance of "power". The vast majority of men who are not drop dead gorgeous, get very little sex outside of a monogamous relationship. It's to a man's advantage to get married because sex is part of the bargain. He doesn't have to look anymore to get his needs met. In exchange, he provides financially for the household. It's not so much that any one individual wants it this way, but our society, our religion and the extent it's interwoven into our belief systems (which are not facts) sets up this dynamic where married women provide access to sex for men in exchange for money. My biggest problem with this is that it's the lowest and most financially precarious form of sex work that leaves many older women devastated if their husband leaves them. It's a systemic problem that benefits the patriarchy and keeps women financially dependent on men.
I’ve been married for 16 years to a man who by all standards, is a good one. He does more than his fair share of house work, is an excellent partner and father. But I have also been struggling with the fact that I never lived by myself due to the restraints placed on women by the patriarchy. It doesn’t feel like I will “get over this” and I have been honest with my partner as I go down this path.
We haven’t had sex in almost a year. Then, the other day as I’m crying to him about questioning among other things my orientation, he said “I’m so happy you have your best friend (him) to help you through this. But I miss my wife”. I know that was meant to be endearing, but to me it sounded possessive. Is sex the only thing that makes me a wife? And am I his?
On the flip side , I was in a store yesterday and a female store clerk asked me “Is he yours?” In reference to another man who walked in the shop carrying a bag from the same store I had just been to. I probably overreacted in my emphatic no, but it wasn’t because I would never date the man. It was a knee jerk reaction to that question of ownership. Or the phrasing of the question . As a married person, sex will always be a factor in the equation.
Hi Melissa, thank you so much for this vulnerable comment and for bravely questioning the status quo. You bring up so many great questions to which I have no answers. I’m asking them too because I as I write my memoir I see patterns emerging from all my long term relationships and my behavior in between being committed romantically to a man. I guess my biggest question is: if you take away religious indoctrination where women are Madonnas or whores, and we accepted that there was a demand for sex (by men) and women were able to supply it without stigma or criminalization, make a lot of money and become financially independent, what’s wrong with that? What if women were treated as full humans the way men are and no one dared thing to harm a professional doing their job? It’s a really big ask to suspend our disbelief because it’s widely accepted, without question, that sex work is inherently violent and dirty. It doesn’t HAVE to be that way, but it is because that serves the patriarchy.
Oddly I’m currently visiting Las Vegas for a wedding that included many religious references and heard things all last night like “found the one” “twin flame “ and just about every other cliche pushed by a religious based society. I don’t begrudge the couple, it was very sweet and their choice.
Sex work is absolutely work, and could empower so many women while preventing others from being forced into marriage for the sake of survival. Since turning 50 this year, I am trying to find more voices like yours who question the status quo and can imagine different alternatives.
I’m staying on the strip tonight and plan to celebrate and support women by going to a burlesque show.
Enjoy yourself! I wish I could go with you 🥰
Not all marriages are patriarchal. I was always expected to be the wage earner, even before kids, and I paid off my wife’s students loans during our first years together. When we moved overseas, I worked and encouraged my wife to complete her university degree at a US accredited university, which she did.
I always paid for full time household help for both inside work and yard work. When our children arrived, not only did my wife have a helper to assist her, but I also spent time doing household chores, cleaning, tending children, and repairs.
I have lived a virtually monastic lifestyle, have made no demands, and was informed after the marriage that some women simply aren’t interested in sex. Full disclosure would have been nice before the vows, which I still take very seriously.
I built a house with my hands, the mortgage was paid off in two years. I make no demands and have no expectations for meals, which 9 times out of 10, means I take care of myself. I do all our vehicle maintenance and repairs.
The past two years, my wife took at least four one or two week vacations with her relatives, and spent time at women’s retreats and other events.
When I discuss these things on line with other men, I find a surprisingly high percentage share similar experiences. While it’s anecdotal, I suspect there are fewer cavemen out there than is commonly reported.
I can understand the reluctance of young men to avoid dating, especially at university because of the risks to their reputations and careers that they face from the kangaroo court systems used by universities to deal with accusations. If rape is accused, then it must go through the criminal justice system. Too many young men have had their lives ruined by accusations that later are found to be false.
Finally, I read shrill comments and posts here on Substack about the epidemic of man hatred. Honestly, I don’t know how deep the hatred actually runs, but to me, a casual observer, it runs deep. It also taints so many interactions that men are withdrawing from women, or are reacting in unpleasant and brutal ways.
It reminds me of this election. People who might agree on 90% of the issues now hate each other because on narrow disagreements, that when discussed in good faith, often leads to mutual understanding.
All I know for sure is that I during my career, I’ve worked with women who would give anything to trade oppressions with western women. And while I’m bewildered by much of what I hear, I won’t allow myself to indulge in hatred of women. If I knew as a young man what I know now, I doubt I would make some of the same decisions. Living as a pariah because of immutable characteristics from birth and living an affectionless, loveless life is no way to grow old, and I’ve experienced those things since I was born to a mother who never showed physical affection or expressed love.
There is more than one side to this discussion.
It’s not the marriage that’s patriarchal, it’s the society. What you wrote about is a perfect example. You provided financially and she had sex with you periodically (not as much as you would have liked, and to your credit you didn’t take it when she wasn’t willing). In the absence of religious indoctrination casting women as wanton temptresses who need to be controlled, what if women’s sexuality carried no stigma and they could use it to become financially independent? Or, if women were not penalized financially for having children? These are constructs of a patriarchal system where men benefit from women’s free labor. Individual behavior cannot negate the economic system in place which keeps women reliant on men. If you ran away with another woman, how would your wife survive financially without you? Does she have her own money? Does she have a 401(k) and a decent amount paid into social security for retirement? I’m genuinely asking because I see how older women fare if their husbands leave them.
Many women also benefit from men’s free labor. Most of my days are spent helping widows and single women who can’t afford auto repairs and other expensive and necessary services. Every damn day and it is not transactional. I do it because they don’t have the skills or resources (and I should add that at least a third of the work is for old men who don’t have the skills or resources.)
My wife would do fine. She has a 401(k), has paid into social security for enough years at a high enough rate to provide her with a good retirement income because she started working after the kids left for college a decade and a half ago. She has her own income. We live in a community property state, so all our assets are jointly owned. She would also receive my pension and insurance after I die, which statistically is what will happen.
Not as much intimacy as much as I would have liked? How about no expectations and not disappointed. Even an occasional good morning, I love you would be welcome. There was never anything transactional about any part of this relationship. This is the odd and hypocritical thing about our culture, especially now that porn and hookup relationships are so widespread. Without a father to teach young men that marriage will not be like a hookup or porn, they know only what culture teaches them, and will have expectations accordingly. No wonder so many marriages fail because of unmet expectations or that people try to hurt one another.
With so many sexless, without affection marriages that continue because of the high financial and psychological costs of divorce, it’s no wonder that people are turning to other ways of meeting their emotional needs in a marriage, although open marriages, polyamory, cuckolding, and all the other variations seem to be as problematic and more trouble than they are worth.
I’m trying to understand where female sexuality without stigma reduces the power of the patriarchy (I simply don’t understand. Wouldn’t that benefit the patriarchy, too, by giving them guilt free
access? I’m asking, because I don’t know, but I often think that men who a big advocates of abortion have a similar vested interest.
Do you think the patriarchy ever really existed as a force without a counter force? I think I mentioned to you once that my cousin killed her abusive husband. Or what about withholding affection and sex from a man who won’t react with abuse or unfaithfulness? To culturally define marriage as a power struggle rips out all the joy and goodness that could be possible.
And for the record, I read below about how women and children have always been the victims of the patriarchy. I always wondered what the guys pressed into armies over the centuries have felt about their privilege of being severed by broadswords, crushed by maces, endured endless drudgery guiding a wood plow, pressed into navies where they half starved, if lucky, or were impaled by wooden splinters every time a cannonball hit a gunwale.
Privilege has always belonged to the elites. It’s always been good to be king or queen, lord or lady, but for almost everyone else, life was 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,’ regardless of gender. And frankly, the people I hear most shrilly complaining about inequality and the patriarchy are upper middle class, often tenured, highly educated, and bestowed with white privileged. I never heard those kinds of complaints in rural African villages, where women undertook endless backbreaking work, as did men who weren’t away in another country working two miles underground in the mines and allowed to return home only every couple of years.
Amey, I think you know me well enough to know I’m not asking questions to argue, but to genuinely understand. As I’ve said before, I’m newish to this culture and there is much I don’t understand.
I enjoy these kinds of conversations because I really don’t have all the answers, and you are 100% right that I am very privileged within a culture that puts a premium on whiteness and money. I don’t think that sex within a heterosexual marriage has to be transactional on an individual level. I equate it more to an existential question of free will. If heterosexual marriage was created as an exchange of goods and services, a daughter for a bag of gold or an ox, how can my role as wife not be to have sex with him, bear his children and take care of his household? Does it really matter that the individuals within the system have evolved (to some extent) or not? Isn’t the system unchanged? Again, I am not making value judgements. I’m asking people to suspend their disbelief that within another belief system, where women gain money and status for providing their expert sexual services to otherwise sexless men? Ask yourself honestly how you would feel if the only way men could have sex is if they could afford to pay for it? Is there any part of you that believes that you should just get it for being a nice guy?
I think the men you ended your comment with are incels. Sucks to be them. But to your question, there would be market forces at work. Not everybody gets to drive a Bentley. Some are stuck driving Yugos. And frankly, not everybody in the trade would have equal earning power. Some might end up on the discount table. Not to be crass or disparaging, but unless the government set prices, many would have a tough time making a living. And further to your point, there was a short lived space sci-fi called Firefly, where one of the Firefly passengers was a “hostess” in the Geisha tradition.
You just reminded me of something I learned when I first went overseas and came face to face with various forms of bride price that is germane to this discussion. Where we lived, it was called lobola, which was generally paid in cattle. In other cultures, especially those where a man can divorce his wife by telling her three times he divorces her, women wear their dowry as gold jewelry, gem stones, and other portable wealth so they are financially secure in the event the husband decides he needs to move on. In every culture where I’ve observed bride price, it was essentially a financial security guarantee for women.
Also, in certain cultures where adultery is punishable by death (and even rape is often treated as adultery), there is a work around called “temporary marriages.” If a man is away from his wife for more than 40 days, he can negotiate and consummate a “temporary marriage.” I was told by knowledgeable sources that the practice is very common where men go to mostly segregated cities or regions for, say, religious studies. I don’t know many of the details of a temporary wife arrangement, but I suspect there is a minimum number of days so it doesn’t resemble prostitution, at least in the eyes of the lawmakers, but the marriages do involve a negotiated dowry.
Early on in my Africa days, on a Christmas Eve, a young man I knew knocked on my door and told me that his in-laws “repossessed” his wife and kids, “including their shoes,” he noted, because he was behind on his cash lobola payments. I gave him Z$20, which he promised to pay back, and was able to get back his family on Christmas Day. He never repaid me, which technically leaves me the option to foreclose, but considering the price of airfares, immigrations lawyers, and additional rooms on our house, I’ve written off the loan.
Although I do see the religiously sanctioned temporary marriages as transactional, I don’t think traditional dowries are pay for play. I see them as insurance for brides from capricious men.
Mine is a situation where I was married for 28 years, happily homeschooled our 8 children and all that goes into this kind of lifestyle.
My own income? 401k’s? Sufficient social security? These are not something I benefit from.
Now, divorced, empty nester and 62…trying to figure out how to financially survive is no joke.
I can draw SS off of my ex’s income but it is not sufficient.
…I don’t know the answers to any of this, only that there are a lot of flies in the ointment.
"and to your credit you didn’t take it when she wasn’t willing)" Credit for not being a rapist.? The bar is that low!
You are so right. It really is.
I think you fail to see that in all the scenarios you talk about, women are treated as property. In America, the country where I live, my body is treated like property of the state. Until you have your body autonomy stripped away, until you are forced to give birth, until you face the same fear of walking the Earth in a woman’s body or can imagine living that way, please stand down. Ask the woman wearing gold trinkets around her neck if she feels free. The marriage contract you describe is between the husband and her family. She has no say in any of it.
These conversation lines get confusing, but I think you were responding to me.
I think we both made our points. The world still sucks and could be much wiser and kinder. We all carry the illusion that we are free, but in a thousand ways we aren’t. As a young man, my government could take control of my body, dehumanize me, force me to learn to kill and send me off to war in a some stinking jungle to die, for what? And it didn’t change much as time went by. I faced it for years in scores of countries. Face down in a street with a gun pressed against my neck. Missing getting kidnapped by half an hour, although my friends weren’t so lucky. Could I have chosen a different life? Would in really matter? Wage slavery is its own kind of death. Because of what it means to be a man, I will die younger or am much more likely to take my own life. I understand what that darkness means. I was there once, when the despair of the world was so strong in me that I could no longer bear it.
There is still much work to be done. We can be better than we are. I’m on your team.
I only challenge your thinking because you are open to hearing another point of view. That’s a good thing. I leave you with this thought, who orchestrates wars? Who sends other mother’s babies to be blown up in foreign countries for a piece of land and some natural resources? You can say it’s the rich trying to get richer, which is true. Look at who holds the wealth in most countries, who runs the governments and makes the laws? Who created the financial systems and legal codes still in place today? It wasn’t women. We were being burned as witches when that shit went down.
And it was a handful of men, but not most men. But it was also the Cleopatras, the Elizabeths, the Bloody Marys, the Catherines the Great who overthrew their husbands the king. The rest of us were being butchered with broadswords like a side of beef or working in feudal slavery on the lord’s holdings. We have much to gain and little to lose by resisting authority.
I love your perspective and deep dives on these issues, Amy. I'd be curious to hear from married women on this, also having never been married.
Thank you Bonnie! I consider myself a happily married woman for 13 years and yet now that I'm single (not by choice) I realize how much I gave up of myself to do the emotional work required to be in a heterosexual relationship. It's not that Steven was uncaring, but like most men he lacked the emotional intelligence needed to do the job. In fact, I don't think most men even see it as a job that needs doing. I'm not getting down on men, EQ is just not required of them. Their idea of showing up in a relationship and the division of labor is taking out the garbage, or other physical tasks.
☑️ I resonate!! Could not have said it better myself. I agree that EQ falls to women to balance heterosexual marriages. Men are not expected to learn and when they do, it’s a jackpot.
I can see in the patterns of my long term relationships I chose men with low sex drives so they didn't make those sexual demands of me. I suppose that was my way of maintaining some semblance of autonomy within the patriarchal construct of marriage.
Hi Bonnie, from the perspective of a woman who was married to a man for 28 years and bore 8 children, and who even before his side of the bed was cold, was involved in another 11 year relationship which I ended 3 months ago, Amy’s post hits the bullseye for me.
You’ve done great research again, Amy! I am surprised from comments how many women and men too do not have a compatible sex life. How is it work if you enjoy each other often with mutual satisfaction? Both partners work, share household duties, parenting, plan things together…but sex is a problem in marriages? Is it younger generations than me that feel they must do it; or must encourage the man to be more interested? I cannot relate to this and I’ve read it several times as I read each comment. As you know, dear friend…I took the same path as you after becoming a widow. Help me understand how these marriages last if sex is viewed as work?
I wish I had all the answers Joan, but I have more fun asking the questions. I know that during the pandemic, while both parents were working from home, it was usually women who were responsible for watching the children too. Many couples who thought their household labor and parenting responsibilities were split evenly, became aware of how much more the wives contributed to the running of their households. One father realized he couldn't plan his preschooler's birthday party in the backyard because he didn't know the names of their classmates or their parents, and he didn't know how to coordinate food, cake, party favors, paper goods, etc. That was just one party for one of their three kids. I am by no means getting down on your husband, but I wonder if you didn't do much more of the household managing than he did? His contribution was supposed to be financial, to provide, so maybe he made more money than you did? It's not so much that sex in and of itself is work (although the lack of sex education and the stigma of female pleasure lead to a lot of unsatisfying sex for women), it's that we have a system where men expect sex in exchange for providing financially for their families. Additionally, the stigma and criminalization of sex work run so deep in our culture that the knee jerk reaction to reading my headline is to be offended when I'm not making a value judgement. Again, not saying that's you or anyone else. My goal is just to get people to question why they believe what they believe. I think you're amazing, and I wish more women were as enlightened as you are.
I get it now…not just about sex. Absolutely I did more with kids and house. He was the cook… I cleaned up. He was gone a lot of evenings as a reporter, so bedtime and discipline often fell to me. I’ve never thought about it that way. I have no resentment…it was what it was. We both initiated sex, found the time. My paycheck went into savings, his took care of the bills. I took article this as a lack of or sex on demand. Mea culpa. You’re awesome as a catalyst/conversation starter and oh, the fun in that! And our very best headline writer…grab them by the headline! 😂😅😉love you! 😘
Love you right back 🥰💕
Hi, I wrote my doctoral dissertation on this very subject more than 20 years ago. Every now and then I think it's outdated, but then I read this and posts by Sarah Penn and think I need to dust it off and publish.
Yes!! Please do it! We need your voice now more than ever.
Yes
I’m not and never have been married, for some of the reasons you state above. My relationships (now that I’ve honed them) must be a balanced exchange of energy. I understand we all go through difficult transitions so the balance isn’t always 50:50. My body is my body is my body. I choose. So until I meet a person that understands I meet my needs first, I’ll stay happily single.
Thank you so much for this comment Anita. It's very hard for a woman to have agency within a marriage, and I say that as someone who was "happily" married for 13 years. I'm not saying I wasn't happy, but I think I was trained to believe what should make me feel fulfilled and happy. In a society where women are the "caretakers" is it possible to find a male partner that accepts a woman who demands to meet her own needs first? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm genuinely curious.
So far for me it is not possible. Every man I meet, no matter how mature or “evolved” seems to want a mother he can have sex with. Interesting thing I learned when I went through menopause is that estrogen is why women want to care for others. That dwindles and not so much caretaking drive. I’ve been told that I “think like a man” by some men or I’m not “a normal woman.” As if we all fit into one mold. I think I learned to be independent due to having a mentally ill mother. I used to take care of everyone, including my partners. I think mutual care is fine. Such as I cook, you do the dishes, clean the kitchen and take out the trash. If that can’t happen, I’m not in. I know so many female friends that have sex with partners when they don’t want it. Rape, coercion, manipulation, reluctance. So much nuance and it depends on where you stand in the equation. If I’m doing all the caretaking, I deserve extra compensation for sure. Time + energy + effort should equal something.
This is why it’s financially advantageous for women to get married because so much of our labor is unpaid, underpaid or unrecognized as work. I find it interesting that prioritizing yourself rather than taking care of others qualifies as thinking like a man. Men are socialized to believe their caretaking = providing (making money) for the family which is so outdated when women have been working outside the home en masse since the 1980s.
Yes that is why it’s financial advantageous and why I’ve opted for a more simple lifestyle. I simply cannot afford to buy a home alone in my city. I never understand the thinking like a man comment. Ha! Agreed men think caretaking is providing money. I suppose if a man has enough money to pay someone (other than his wife) to do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, laundry, etc. it might be a more equitable solution. I’m now reminded how many times I’ve heard men use the word “babysitting” rather than parenting. 😳 I recently saw a friend who hustles all the money, cares for her husband and 2 children (1 with special needs) who wants to leave her husband and cannot due to finances. I wish I were rich to help get her out of that toxic situation. I told her a week ago that sometimes I wish I’d spoken up about red flags in friend’s relationships, but you just can’t. Nobody wants to hear it at that point. In her situation many years ago she always did everything. I was visiting and he said he was hungry. She and I were in discussion and while normally she’d pop up and wait on him, she told him the wide variety of foods already prepared that he could plate for himself. He said “that’s why I have you” as if it were funny. No one laughed but she also didn’t listen to that. And she’s suffered the burden for years since.
One more thing your post brought to mind is a study I read about several years ago where they asked men and women what made them feel their partner loved them (hetero relationships). Men said if the woman would have sex with them. Women said if the men would really listen and talk with them.
I tend to agree. From ancient times women and children were basically on the level of cattle in the marriage contractual agreement. Religion and many social conventions still hark back to that reality. So, yes, marriage is a form of state sanctioned sex work.
It's the lowest paying form of sex work at that. Imagine how many women would forgo marriage if sex work was safe, legal and a respected form of employment? What if women could earn a good living and become financially independent instead of performing on demand for a lifetime. Anecdotally, men are more likely to leave their wives when they become sick and can no longer perform their "wifely duties."
Yeah, that's really reprehensible. But I have been around a lot of men who view their wives as a commodity that they purchased for the domestic work they can do and the free sex they provide.
Agree
Amy, agreed.
I’ve never been married so I can’t speak from the position of marriage, but I can say that I didn’t get married for these very same reasons. My mother had nine children and much went on behind closed doors until it got very loud.
My mother went to father Clancy, wanting a divorce that was not allowed.
So she took up judo lessons and fought for herself because the treatment she was getting was legal, and she didn’t know what else to do.
I remember her first job outside of the home and when I was 14, she was able to get Mia paying job at the same establishment. There were many mouths to feed.
I remember when my oldest sister got married at 18. I hid under my bed for days crying because I was so afraid for her.
In general, I thought marriage was a sex crime against women.
Thank you for this essay. I haven’t thought about this for a while.
There is more to say, but I’ll save it for another time.
Thank you for the deep explorations that you inspire.
Ps “ that’s just the way things are” is similar to “ going along for the ride” or “his beard isn’t that blue”
Prajna, this calls for WCM “Woman Circle Medicine”
Thank you Prajna for always bringing such insightful reflections. Part of my point is to highlight how so many people, especially women, have such deep hatred for sex workers but think marriage is such a wonderful institution. Just because women appear to have more choices in terms of who they will marry, doesn’t make the institution of marriage fair and equitable. It doesn’t change the origins of the marriage contract, or provide a pathway for women to become financially independent. It keeps women dependent on men and often leads to negative outcomes for older women.
Yikes. This reads a little like the, "All women are whores” attitude. I know plenty of women who felt they were the ones not getting enough sex in a marriage. And also, plenty of us are grateful for loving relationships. There are compromises in all kinds of lifestyles. It's up to the people in them to find what works.
I love this discussion because we all view the topic through a different lens. Nowhere in my article do I use the word "whores" and that's because I see women having sex for money as work that is just as valid as any other type of work. I would challenge you to look deeper into where you learned that women having sex made them "whores" which I am assuming you see as something negative. Let's suspend our disbelief for a second and imagine a world where women gained status by having sex the way men do. The status quo is just a belief system built on casting women as temptresses and manipulators to get what they want from men. The very thing that makes us powerful has been turned against us. In no other area in a capitalist system is the concept of supply and demand turned into demand and supply. It's an unnatural bastardization of an economic system that would never be tolerated if it wasn't beneficial to the patriarchy.
By the way, whether I fully agree or not, I always appreciate your interesting insights.
This is an excellent article about how "sex" defined as penetration (in the dictionary) makes it patriarchal sex. This is why a lot of women do not like "sex" - because it's all about the man's pleasure. I just love the scene in "When Harry Met Sally" where Meg Ryan insists that all women have faked an orgasm and then proceeds to do it in Katz Diner.
https://open.substack.com/pub/celestemdavis/p/patriarchal-sex?r=39usm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I don't find it offensive, but I'm not sure if it's still true. I'm a couple of years older than you, and I got married over 30 years ago to a woman I met in professional school. There was no expectation of particular roles in our marriage. For a long time we made about the same amount of money doing similar jobs. There was no pressure on her to have kids and take time away from her job, but she wanted to do that, and when we finally had kids after a while, she took time off and sometimes worked part time as a matter of choice. I can't honestly say that our particular union was an example of marriage as sex work because there wasn't much sex. It was pretty terrible.
In the past, marriage was more of a practical transaction than something borne of romance. The romantic attitude toward marriage is more recent.
I just like getting people to think about the status quo and who benefits from it. In the past, marriage was a "practical" transaction for parents and single men looking for free labor (cooking, cleaning, bearing children, sex, planting crops, harvesting, etc.).
There wasn't much in it for the woman unless she was lucky enough to be sold off to a man who didn't mistreat her. It wasn't the same as freedom, but I suppose it was better than being with an abusive husband.
I can believe there was no pressure on you to have kids, but it's hard to believe your wife felt no pressure from society and her family. I feel like a lot of men mistake the choices they had for the choices women had. We can agree to disagree on this and I know that has nothing to do with our friendship. You've always supported my work and for that I am grateful.
I don't pretend to know everybody's situation and I don't judge. I know mine. My ex wife and I married as equals in just about every way you could imagine, with no expectation of what roles we would take with regard to children and homemaking and the future. We didn't have kids for quite a while. But when it came time to have children, my wife suddenly valued being at home with the kids. I was frankly surprised at the degree to which her values changed. I know her family well enough to know that there was no pressure from that quarter. She genuinely derived value from foregoing income to be at home with her kids. I don't think I would have been willing to make the same choices. I think it's fair to say in this particular situation that she made voluntary choices and knew exactly what she was getting into and was willing to do it because being a mom was a form of compensation that made up for not working as much or earning as much money. In many ways I would say she "benefited" much more from the arrangement that ensued than I did.
I don't assume this is how it is for others, and I don't believe women in the past had the same sort of freedom. But that's how it was for us.
Wow! Amy! This is so, so deep. The ramifications of full on looking are monumental to say this least. Thank you!
All the judgments I’ve had against “sex workers” and for most of my 62 years on this planet, I’ve been doing the same thing. I am stunned and happily so. 💐💐💐
I'm going to need to chew on this one for a while. . .
This is one of my favorite comments. My intention was not to convince anyone to agree with me, but to get curious about why they believe what they believe rather than accepting that the status quo is just the way things are. Part of the problem is that sex work is so stigmatized and criminalized that people are offended that I would equate it to sex within a marriage. I am looking at this from a purely economic viewpoint. Women can have sex whenever we want, literally. All you have to do is look at the dating apps to see the imbalance of "power". The vast majority of men who are not drop dead gorgeous, get very little sex outside of a monogamous relationship. It's to a man's advantage to get married because sex is part of the bargain. He doesn't have to look anymore to get his needs met. In exchange, he provides financially for the household. It's not so much that any one individual wants it this way, but our society, our religion and the extent it's interwoven into our belief systems (which are not facts) sets up this dynamic where married women provide access to sex for men in exchange for money. My biggest problem with this is that it's the lowest and most financially precarious form of sex work that leaves many older women devastated if their husband leaves them. It's a systemic problem that benefits the patriarchy and keeps women financially dependent on men.