Here's a very interesting article from Atlantic Monthly, titled "The Wifely Duty." The tag line is "Marriage used to provide access to sex. Now it provides access to celibacy."

You can view it at www.theatlantic.com/issues/2003/01/flanagan.htm

An interesting quote from the end of the essay: "The rare woman—the good wife, and the happy one—is the woman who maintains her husband's sexual interest and who returns it in full measure."

Hell, that stuff starts in Kindergarten. I was watching a Charlie Brown Christmas show on TV last night. Lucy's little brother was in school, and was talking to a girl in his class who was a bit down that day. He said as a joke, "Well, why don't we go to Paris?" She thought that was funny, told her Mom, who told her teacher, who told the Principal, who slapped the little guy with a harassment charge.

Sometimes this stuff stays with these girls for life.

Moondog

(Message edited by moderatora on December 10, 2003)

Excellent article Murasaki. Thanks for posting the link to it.

Ix

Here's another article: http://www.salon.com/sex/col/quan/2003/12/10/asktracy_wed/

The guy has a sexually dead wife and is looking for paid sex. But, being a healthy brainwashed American male he is full of guilt about his desires. Here is part of his question to the sex/relationship advisor:

"I would be racked with guilt should I arrange a meeting with a call girl, but the very fact that I'm even thinking about it is a sign of something. Also, I am a little intimidated by the whole "call girl" scene; I wouldn't have any idea how to contact one. (I certainly don't want to call a random ad!) How would I know which ones are reputable vs. the ones that are more marginal, and so on. (And how can I go to bed with a woman that I can't kiss? That seems so odd to me.)"

You can read the advisor's answer at the link. It's not really all that bad considering her sex and her cultural background. Still, she could have saved the guy a lot of needless grief by simply giving him one of the literally hundreds of web addresses for escorts and/or review sites.

This makes me question whether or not the whole article is even legit. I would think that anyone, especially a male, who is computer literate enough to be reading Salon and decides to submit a question would have to have seen a zillion references to all the different sex sites that exist. So, is the guy for real or is this just some fantasy a female writer popped out to depict her version of the modern male?

Two years later nothing has changed, and the media portrays we mongers as perverted. That'll make paranoid, nervous, sexually unfulfilled American men feel even more guilt about his desires.
See my thread on GQ's series on SEX TRAVEL.