From: muffy@mica.berkeley.EDU (Muffy Barkocy)
Subject: "sexual favors" as a "power base" (was Re: men's issues vs. women's issues)
Newsgroups: soc.feminism
Organization: Natural Language Incorporated
Date: 16 Aug 92 14:29:46 GMT
	<24JUL199207433737@erich.triumf.ca>
	<1992Jul29.191026.7735@ucc.su.OZ.AU>

In article <1992Jul29.191026.7735@ucc.su.OZ.AU> maxtal@extro.ucc.su.oz.au (John MAX Skaller) writes:
> Most women seem to DEMAND an exclusive relationship
> in return for sexual favours. That is their traditional power
> base in modern society.

Actually, my understanding of the way the "traditional" roles work is
this (note that these are stereotypes, not assertions about how people
actually are):

o Men are told that they should desire lots of sex from women and that
  they should go to great lengths to get it.
o Women are told that they should not enjoy sex, but that they should
  submit to it in the context of marriage for the purpose of having
  children.
o Men are told that if they can have sex with a woman without marrying
  her, that's great, but she's a "slut."  Such a woman is not desirable
  as a wife, and it is not *necessary* to marry her, since they can get
  sex anyway.
o On the other hand, if they can find a woman who won't have sex with
  them without marriage, then they should grab her and marry her,
  because she's a "good girl."
o Men are supposed to want a "good girl" to marry so that they will be
  sure that she is faithful to them, will act as their property, and
  therefore any children will be sure to be theirs.
o Women are supposed to look for a man who will be well able to support
  them, via marriage.  There is really nothing in there about
  faithfulness, other than that it might be nice.  The agreement,
  therefore, is that he will support her and his children as long as
  *she* is faithful to *him*.
o In return, men promise to be faithful, too, but how does this really
  work?

If a woman is unfaithful, her husband can divorce her and not support
her any longer.  If a man is unfaithful, what can the woman do?  She
depends upon him for support.  As you say, she could withhold sex, but
since he is now getting sex from elsewhere, that doesn't really matter,
does it?  So, the effect of all these expected roles is to force women
to be faithful, while merely asking men to *say* they will be, without
anything to actually force them to be, other than some sort of moral
sense.

Now, in the context of "modern relationships," things change a little.
Women can now have sex with one or two people before getting married.
They can also support themselves to some degree, so that getting married
is not a necessity.  However, once they *are* married, things are often
much the same.  Once they have children, it is much harder to support
them on their own, so they are again compelled to attempt to stay with
the man for financial reasons.  In addition, while women can support
themselves better now, the situation is still not good.  The slight
improvement is that they have less trouble getting child support when
divorcing.  So, now men can find many more women to have sex with
without marrying them.  Meanwhile, once in the context of a marriage,
men still have more power.

The only real power that women have over men is if the man really wants
one particular woman, in which case she can ask him for something in
exchange for a relationship.  However, the same is true for women who
really want one particular man, so there doesn't seem to be an imbalance
here.

Muffy
--

Muffy Barkocy | muffy@mica.berkeley.edu | wi.4636@wizvax.methuen.ma.us
~Little round planet/in a big universe/sometimes it looks blessed/
 sometimes it looks cursed/Depends on what you look at, obviously/
 But even more it depends on the way that you see~ - Bruce Cockburn


--
Post articles to soc.feminism, or send email to feminism@ncar.ucar.edu.
Questions and comments may be sent to feminism-request@ncar.ucar.edu.  This
news group is moderated by several people, so please use the mail aliases. Your
article should be posted within several days.  Rejections notified by email.