It just buys into the stupid, tired old cliché that women have to "nurture" and "take care" of men, who are supposedly looking for a second mommy. It's a disservice to women and it portrays men as dummies who never grow up and need to be humored at all times, lest their precious feelings should be hurt.

Also forgot to mention that it's amazing that only men need support and are plagued by self-doubt. But, silly me, women don't have to doubt because they shouldn't do anything interesting or productive outside the house anyway...

This whole thing boggled me so much I actually signed up a typekey account just to make a reply.

The WORST possible response a woman could make to lack of sexual satisfaction in a marriage would be to fake satisfaction which does not exist. Any man who would not be more useful as a door stop or a source of protein for wild animals ought to be able to handle being told that women often have a substantially harder time having an orgasm than men do. The response of any man worth keeping around would be the usual response of men to a problem--we must fix this. If you can't have an honest talk about your sex life with your boyfriend/lover/husband/whatever, then he's not worth having. Guys who can't handle that are probably not worth keeping as if they can't handle that, I find it dubious they'll handle ANYTHING very well.

I can't imagine how a woman could build her happiness on lies and it certainly wouldn't be fair to make them do that. (And guys deserve better than to think they're doing a good job when, in fact, they're not holding up their end of things.)

Also, I think it's reasonable to make a distinction between 'women who work' and 'women with careers'. Women with careers is the subset of working women who aren't working simply because it's a choice between 'work' or 'starve' and who are doing something they like to do, instead of something they have to do. It is most commonly used to refer to women in professional areas. My mother worked as a high school teacher for 20 years, not because she liked it or wanted to, but because it was what she was qualified for (having been unable to finish her PHD due to having kids) and what she had to do in order to avoid starvation. She never thought of it as a 'career', just a job. My sister Susan, by contrast, definitely regards her work at the Texas Land Office as part of a career of public service and is very enthusiastic about it.

When people refer to women with careers, though, it's usually a metaphor specifically for 'professional women who likely have to work 50+ hours a week'. Two-Career marriages where both people have long work hours often fall apart due to the combination of 1) less contact with each other, 2) such jobs are stressful, 3) conflicts over how to handle the housekeeping end of things, which usually gets put on the woman to an unfair degree, and 4) such women make enough money they can get by without a husband much more easily than many women of lower income.

That being said, I have to agree with you that a woman is better off with no husband than with some pathetic weakling who will collapse in on himself like a blackhole if told about women's sexual issues. I'd like to hope most of my gender isn't that pathetic.

(Mind you, guys in fix-it mode can be hard to deal with too...)

John Biles, Ph.D in search of a full-time job.

Quite frankly, I would rather end up alone then have to sacrifice my passions for someone that can't handle them.

Thoughts?

Quite frankly, I would rather end up alone than be with a bored housewife who has no ambition of her own.

I, too, would rather end up alone than fake it.

That said, I think young women need to accept being single. In my experience, people like you and me are the exception to the rule. Most twenty and thirty-something women are are pathetic Sex in the City types who are unable to be happy on their own.

Weldon's approach may not be the best way to change the status quo, but at least it's something. (Well, at least something outside academia.)

What on earth... This stuff seems like it skipped over 30+ years of feminist progress, maybe that's what's making me slightly ill about this whole article.

If anything, this is misanthropic with a big helping of misogyny. Though wombat made some good points, I don't see why marriage is still seen as the relationship ideal. Its origins and most of it's history show it's nothing more than a means to secure inheritence or other economic benefits (without any benefit for women).

Early in my current relationship I fakes a few while in a certain position that my boyfriend liked - when you finally feel guilty and come (no pun intended) clean, he will be so angry with you. Forget the feminist aspect of the situation for a moment and think about it practically. IT'S LYING. Plain and simple.

And most guys want to know that they are actually giving you orgasms! Knowing that you are pleasing your lover it a good shot to your self esteem for both sexes. I can't believe that we are still debating this crap!

Um, no. If I'm making you feel good, you make me feel good. It works like that for me. If you don't do a good enough job, I'm going to let you know so you do better next time.

I can't think of a single woman I know that is not on some type of career path.

Nor me. For that matter, I can't think of a marrried or otherwise long-term partnered woman I know who isn't on some type of career path, either. Which might suggest that, in fact, all career women don't end up alone, after all, but it's a little much to expect the media to put 2 and 2 together and get 4, I guess.

Wow. I liked reading "Life and Loves of a She-Devil", but damn.

Is it true that women have a hard time coming via plane ol' vaginal sex? Sure. But are there *solutions* to that? Yes! All hail the fingers and the vibrator! Unless, of course, men are so abismally insecure that they can't handle doing a little bit of hand work before or after vaginal sex. And yes, I would much rather have a man who can deal with using those techniques if necessary. Actually, I'd much rather have a man who employs those techniques regularly, whether the almighty orgasm is elusive or not.

I really think this doesn't give men enough credit. Yes, there are assholes out there who think they can just go "stampeding toward the clitoris" without any kind of warm-up, but I think most men are open to conversations that lead to them becoming more proficient lovers. And as has been said above, if he can't handle that information, or you're not comfortable talking about it with him, you're probably with the wrong man.

Here, I think, is a crucial but overlooked point:
Overall, very few things make women happy - and even fewer of them, suggests Weldon, are matters of substance. 'Ask a woman what makes her happy and she comes up with a list: sex, food, friends, family, shopping, chocolate. "Love" tends not to get a look-in. "Being in love" sometimes makes an appearance. "Men" seem to surface as a source of aggravation,' she writes.

So, why, again, would women be so concerned about having them and making them feel good?? Not that I believe that "few things make women happy" or that, when pressed, most women would include chocolate and shopping on the list, either. But the logical inconsistency points to a deeper problem with this treatise, even apart from its apparent embrace of women-as-second-class-citizens.

As anyone who's ever taken a class on media literacy knows, facts are not always facts. I am so tired of these so-called statistics asserting that the vast majority of women are simply incapable of orgasm. Frankly, I just don't buy it. And the notion that women should simply accept this "fact" just relieves both men and women from ascertaining its accuracy and promotes an unchallenged culture in which sexual pleasure is the exclusive domain of men.

See, my take on the "facts are facts" about women generally not having orgasms during vaginal intercourse (which is the only thing she could be referring to here, given the swift sale of vibrators) is that dudes should just get the hell over it.

Wait... why would I get involved with someone who didn't bring me to orgasm on a regular basis? Not to be shallow, but I consider orgasms to necessary though not sufficient requirements for a relationship.

And yeah, I'm a "career woman."

Have these people never heard of the tongue? Everyone I know, even if it was difficult to acheive through vaginal sex, was able to orgasm with some good oral. And a little experimenting with positions can make all the difference in the woman's pleasure during sex.

Faye Weldon blew her feminist credentials for me some years ago with a particularly vitriolic NYT editorial arguing that Princess Diana was a stupid bitch for not realizing that being cheated on by her royal husband was what she signed on for when she married Charles. At the time, the great Katha Pollitt responded with a column that pointed out some of the nastier aspects of Weldon's thinking. (How dare Diana expect to have a happy marriage! Stupid girl).

Today is a banner day, apparently, for vitriol from previous feminist icons--I refer to Germaine Greer's nastily gleeful response to Steve Irwin's death.

God in Heaven, what an outstandingly piss-poor idea. I speak here as a typical het male horndog. And a dumb one, too. What would be really good for guys like me, instead of faking it, is if women would just come out and tell their partners in these damned romantic relationships what it takes to make them feel good, instead of expecting clueless fuckers like myself to figure it out by telepathy. I don't see how anyone can possibly improve their thing without communicating, and lying isn't communicating.

Of course, y'all being feminists, you probably figured this out already.

I'm sorry, because this is way too much information, but am I the only one whose sexual...aspirations have always revolved around giving somebody an orgasm rather than getting one? What kind of selfish prick would want a woman to fake her orgasms? What's the point of having sex if your partner is faking pleasure for your benefit? Aren't you basically just masturbating with a prop at that point? And why are women always supposed to be the sexual altruists, anyway?

Lame.

Cheers,

TH

jp, thanks for the lead on the Germaine Greer piece. Here's a link. What a depressingly nasty, and cruel, op-ed.

Cheers,

TH

Thanks for the link, Tom.
I'm disgusted by that op-ed piece. I adore animals and am a big advocate of their humane treatment, but the insensitivity displayed in that piece is astounding. Irwin's wife and children lost their husband and father in a matter of seconds; when he left the house that morning, they had no idea they'd never see him alive again. My father died very suddenly when I was 10 years old, and I know what they're going through right now. And I can personally assure Ms. Greer, they're suffering a LOT more than any of those "poor scared animals" he handled ever did. Implying that he got what he deserved is beyond callous.

Sorry for the OT comment. That piece got my dander up.

Back on topic:
Dennis Leary does a bit about how men have turned this issue into a kind of competition--"I made her come! I win the Orgasm Cup!"
As much as a woman faking an orgasm *might* stroke a man's ego, the knowledge that he can provide a *real* one is far more bragworthy. I think most men aren't naive enough to still believe that "insert, thrust, repeat" is enough to do the trick, and are very interested in learning what does. Even the most insensitive man these days will make the effort, if only to be able to boast about what a skillful lover he is--so I doubt this return-to-the-50s notion of women faking it will ever catch on. Men are no longer ignorant enough to buy it, and women aren't stupid enough to give up all they've gained.

Nothing helps a man's confidence like lying to him!