The Great Sex Standoff

I just finished reading a pretty interesting book called Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print. The whole concept is to print articles that never got printed because they were stifled by internal censorship, usually because they offended the sensibilities of either the advertisers or the publishers. Most of them are interesting in and of themselves and lead the reader to cluck his/her tongue at the audacity of corporate censorship. A few, most notably an article sympathizing with the Palestinians by Mike Sager that was killed by the Washington Post in 1988, will make you wonder if they would have changed the political landscape forever if they had seen the light of day. Joe Conason plugs it on the cover, and I will follow and recommend the book here.

Anyway, the article that really amazed me was the one written by Betty Friedan about her college reunion and killed by McCall's titled, "Are Women Wasting Their Time in College?" that ended up turning into The Feminine Mystique. The article, which was based on a survey she managed of her reunion class at Smith, was too daringly feminist to get published anywhere. With such a history, I expected the article to be pretty feminist.

Much to my surprise, the wasn't about how women needed to be sprung from lives of servitude to others. No, it was a pretty retro piece arguing that contrary to popular belief, education did not make women incapable of being wives and mothers. But it was feminist in that Friedan didn't argue, as is customary, for giving women rights because their rights benefit men and children. No, she broke the rules and addressed women as human beings. She said that education made life more delightful, and that it would come in handy after the children are grown and you need something to do. Even now, it's considered in bad form to argue that women have rights like they were human beings or something; it's best to couch feminist arguments in non-feminist language about the importance of husbands and children. Still, it's hardly the height of feminism to argue that women might enjoy having some education after they are of little use to their children anymore. But it was too feminist for McCall's. One wonders what they expected women with grown children to do with themselves.

Friedan spends most of the article carefully refuting the many arguments that were floating around in the 50's that aimed to "prove" that education destroyed womanhood. Even though they were phrased differently, the main idea was no different than the sexist arguments of Victorian times and before that literacy caused uterine malfunction. There was no evidence for this, of course, but it was so feverently hoped for that men saw evidence where none existed. In Friedan's time, there were just vague psychological-ish arguments that education made women sexually unsatisfied. Again, no real evidence was produced. It was just "common sense". This is actually still a favorite "common sense" argument against good ol' women's lib, one that is being trudged around by Caitlin Flanagan. Flanagan has the irrefutable evidence that three couples she knows don't have sex like they used to; she figures it must be the fault of feminism, since no one ever had sexual dysfunction in a long-term relationship before feminism. Really, sex began going downhill once women started reading. Before then, people were fucking deliriously in the streets, I'm sure of it.

Actually, the reality is that educated women have better sex and better relationships than uneducated women. Let me gloat for a moment: DUH.

Of course education has a positive effect on sex. Knowledge improves absolutely everything. I realize that this is a point of contention, but only because the conservative propaganda machine has actually managed to make this common sense notion controversial. If you find yourself believing the hype that ignorance is better in some situations, find out where the children of those who are perpetuating that idea go to school. Yeah, I thought so. Education is one of the few absolute good things you can rely on. There is never a time that it is right to think that knowledge should be hoarded. Education naturally has a positive effect on sexuality. You can read up on sex and incorporate what you learn into your bedroom behavior. DUH.

When I read the articles that Friedan was refuting that claim that educated women suffer from sexual dissatisfaction or when I read Flanagan tout the same idea, I have to wonder. It seems unlikely that the people who are pushing this idea are stupid. They know that women aren't likely to suddenly learn where the clit is and how it works 'cause they read and stuff and this will lead to less sexual satisfaction. No, they know that it defies common sense that education is the direct cause of sexual decline in women's lives. I think it's clear what they are saying in a veiled way. It's a threat. They are telling women that if they get their brains all working and stuff, then men won't want them anymore and they will be sexless, lonely, cat-collecting spinsters. Or, if they do marry, their husbands won't want to fuck anymore because the male libido is very, very delicate and it's absolutely necessary that a woman be at home in an apron when he gets home for him to get a hard-on.

It's a threat. Men will stop wanting you if you get educated.

I love this threat. It's the most hollow threat ever made. Even if it were true that men are willing, en masse, to withhold sex from educated women to teach them a lesson, they still wouldn't get the upper hand. Because men aren't the only ones who can make that same threat. I could just as easily write an article claiming that men who are threatened by smart women are sexually dissatisfied, and I might actually have a point. (All other things being equal, a partner uneducated in the ways of love is probably not the same as one who knows her way around the sack.) Seriously, if men can hold out until women quit getting educated, women can probably hold out longer until men accept education.

But that's all utter nonsense. The threat never panned out, no matter how many times it was made. Women learned to read, won the vote, won the right to attend "male" universities. Sex never stopped happening. And, to make the whole threat that men will hold their favors for the uneducated even stupider, it's becoming ever clearer that young men are now holding out for wives/partners who equal them in education. The above article is one resource. To beat Flanagan at her own game, I will offer anecdotal evidence. In the graduate program I work for, only one in five students is female. Do the men gloat and hit on less educated women? No, they complain about not having women in the program to meet and date. If in fact sex between equals is difficult or impossible, I have a funny feeling these men wouldn't be looking high and low for it.