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June 06, 2008

Gender Politics Wars

Lont-time readers know that few things push my buttons like the periodic gender wars. The latest installment comes entitled Paradigm Shifts and paying for sex. (via Alas, a blog)

Instead of the Swedish model, tricking men could be licensed and be made to openly register with governments in countries where they use prostitutes. We could implement a 5-hour course in responsible prostitute-use similar to responsible driver or gun permit courses. We could make STD checks mandatory for every would-be john and maintain a website where men who use prostitutes can be listed so wives can know if the family food money, and her trust, is being misspent. As Eliot Spitzer just dramatically demonstrated, the Gordian Knot of prostitution is cut when johns lose their anonymity.

We need to unstick from the idea that men’s desire for sex is an immovable force of nature so uncontrollable that all we can do is “fix” prostituted women to withstand the frequent violence johns inflict. Battered wives know there’s no such thing as cooking dinner good enough to avoid getting punched or keeping the house clean enough to appease a violent man. Men’s violence is not about prostituted girls, good meals, or clean houses, it’s about communities confronting the male privilege that lets them get away with abusing prostitutes or any women. We still live in a world where the dominant paradigm blames battered women for not leaving instead of blaming men for the violence they commit.

Let's take these two paragraphs in reverse order.

First of all, battering sexual partners isn't about sex - it's about control. The same is generally true of any violence associated, however loosely, with sex. A famous example would be Amy "Long Island Lolita" Fisher who tried to murder the wife of her sexual partner. That wasn't about sex - it was about control.

Secondly, when it comes to broken trust involving sexual infidelity men hardly have the market cornered. A 2005 study revealed that, Surprise! 1 in 25 Dads not the real father.

Prostitution is merely a more formalized version of what has been going on for millennia and continues to go on right now between men and women. Many men use women and many women use men. It's typically done in different ways but that doesn't change the fact that it's two sides of the same coin.

In very general Darwinian terms, men are driven by the desire to find a genetically superior mate with whom to pass on his own genetics, and women are driven by the desire to find a mate who can provide and maintain an environment which allows her and her offspring to thrive.

Does anyone seriously believe that Anna Nicole Smith had sex with billionaire J. Howard Marshall, 63 years her senior, because she found him sexually attractive? Doesn't it make a great deal more sense that, despite her protests to the contrary, she essentially prostituted herself in return for the material rewards which he lavished upon her?

A fascinating 2004 German study found that BMW drivers get laid more often than Porsche drivers. I remember mentioning it to my Significant Other. She pondered it for a few seconds and replied that it made sense to her. It seems that Porsche drivers are more likely to be perceived as either playboys or men in the midst of a mid-life crisis, and thus not ideal sexual mates in the eyes of many women. BMW's apparently project a more business-like, ambitious image which is generally more appealing to some women.

None of which has anything more to do with the causes contributing to the battering of women than prostitution does. But then that is the nature of gender wars - they're, IMHO, usually nothing more than an excuse to vent a priori resentments.

Posted by Kevin at June 6, 2008 01:10 PM