It almost makes you wish they hadn’t been so uptight, and had advocated concepts like “free love” or used slogans like “Make love, not war.”

Ah well. Only in a parallel universe where women like sex…. Although conservatives would probably have a hard time there, as well. (I’m imagining Prager, describing the role of birth control in such a universe… “If the cows can give milk wherever they want, without consequence, how do we keep them coming back to the farmer’s cold hands?”)

I don’t agree, but I understand. Let me tell you, after the sting of rejection happens every minute until it becomes less of a sting and more of a wound that just won’t heal over… yeah, your mind starts to go to pretty damned dark places.

Exactly — the fact that your ex wanted to control you to that extent is a sign of something larger that’s wrong in the relationship. Prager doesn’t perceive that marital sex can be something of a canary in the mineshaft: it provides signals of the overall health of the relationship. He says that refusals to have sex with your husband will make the husband *think* you don’t love him, but Prager doesn’t contemplate the possibility that a lack of desire, failure of communication, etc. might be telling us about problems in the marriage as a whole. He isolates them as being purely sex problems, ones that of course are cured by the wife’s willingness to fake desire and make uneducated guesses at her husband’s thoughts.

he argues that her sensual and romantic needs have sweet-fuck-all to do with real sexuality, since they cannot be tied to her guy’s (putative) need to get his rocks off full stop. Her desire for a sex life she can enjoy is damaging to the sex life of the partnership; his is its foundation.

Perfect!

No. the husbands who I have talked to who want sex much more often than they are able to have sex with their wives, have found that their wives do not approve of porn, sex aids, and masturbation. They can do it, but it’s in the closet, and that’s by no means an acceptable substitute.

Fair enough, but this seems like a separate issue even if both problems are occurring within the same partnership.

(Between Prager and the comments threads over at feministe etc., I’m getting mighty sick of these horribly unsexy comparisons, but:) Say I were trying to eat healthier, and needed to draw some boundaries around my willpower with my partner’s help. I could refuse to cook unhealthy meals for my partner. I could refuse to go out to eat unhealthy meals with my partner. I could insist that my partner not keep unhealthy food in the house. I could insist that my partner not eat unhealthy food at all. I could insist that my partner adopt the black-coffee-and-grapefruit diet for as long as I wanted to stay on it myself.

These are all different levels of imposition, and dominance in the relationship. And it seems to me that they represent different ideas about what you are and are not owed–different levels of inequality. If one partner refuses to have sex unless both people are in the mood, then they’re drawing a line down the middle. I don’t think that’s true of people who insist that their partners avoid sexual pleasure altogether.

It’s one of the many, many annoying things about the Prager series. Like Amp was saying about pretending happiness in order to feel it: I’m not Prager, so I won’t speak for the rest of the planet, but I have a lot of trouble feeling horny in the face of a sexual obligation. Quite the opposite! Having sex when I disliked to would not only fail to increase my partnered desire, but cut it down. It would be starved by stress and resentment.

But per Prager, a woman’s desires are defined by lack especially when they are strongest. Like the bible-thumpers who claim that we have freedom of but not freedom from religion, he argues that her sensual and romantic needs have sweet-fuck-all to do with real sexuality, since they cannot be tied to her guy’s (putative) need to get his rocks off full stop. Her desire for a sex life she can enjoy is damaging to the sex life of the partnership; his is its foundation.

There are marriages with the opposite problem — a wife who is frustrated and hurt because her husband is rarely in the mood. But, as important and as destructive as that problem is, it has different causes and different solutions, and is therefore not addressed here. What is addressed is the far more common problem of “He wants, she doesn’t want.”

I’d be willing to bet good money that the “different causes” for men’s lack of interest have to do with the woman not keeping up her part of the bargain by being sweet and attractive at all times. (Seems likely given Prager’s general attitude in this article.)

women need to recognize how a man understands a wife’s refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny).

And here we go with some quality dismissive squeamishness. I’m smelling hysteria all over Prager’s article, here in the form of not being willing to imagine or contemplate that women actively desire sex, and can in fact view sex as an expression of love. (Would probably surprise him to learn about those of us who have sex for the sake of, er, having sex!)

I’m curious about this too — I have yet to meet a woman (or man) surprised that their partner occasionally masturbates.

You never met my ex. It actually angered her. Oh, those were some fun times. But she was all about control, so it’s not really all that surprising. In fact, she may have a lot in common to talk about with Prager. It may be made a tad more difficult by the fact that she’s a woman, but I feel certain that there is something there.

My favorite bit from this Prager piece:

One should always act, post-’60s theory teaches, consistent with one’s feelings.

I was totally unaware that those dirty hippies were so violent. It’s news to me that if I hate somebody beyond any hate that I’ve ever felt that the hippies say that I should torture and kill them so that I am acting, to use Prager’s bad grammar, consistent with my feelings.

Or it could just be that Prager is a moron or a liar, I suppose.

I’m curious about this too — I have yet to meet a woman (or man) surprised that their partner occasionally masturbates. Indeed, most are pleased that on nights when they’re not in the mood, their partner has a reasonable option.

Oh my goddess, is he ever wrong about that. Women get the message CONSTANTLY (from women’s magazines and so forth — has Prager ever picked one of those up, you know, just for research?) that if their male partner doesn’t get a rock-solid boner every time she touches him on the shoulder, that it’s because he finds her unspeakably ugly, revoltingly fat, and stupefyingly boring, and that he’s obviously getting some on the side, probably with the babysitter or one of his daughter’s college classmates. There’s no such thing as a guy having a low sex drive, erectile dysfunction (nobody really takes Viagra or Cialis, right?), or libido-cutting illness (he’s 60 years old, doesn’t he even know any men who have had prostate cancer?). I cannot tell you how much that cultural meme has fucked me up over the years, and it’s BULLSHIT.

The women you have talked to who say they want sex less frequently than their husbands do, have told you that they forbid their husbands to masturbate?

No. the husbands who I have talked to who want sex much more often than they are able to have sex with their wives, have found that their wives do not approve of porn, sex aids, and masturbation. They can do it, but it’s in the closet, and that’s by no means an acceptable substitute.

Heh. I have one hyper religious friend, and it’s even worse for him. In fact, he’s pretty much screwed (figuratively only, of course).

I thought Jocelyn also promoted MUTUAL masturbation (i.e. handjobs) though I could be incorrect on that.

It’s not as if the “no sex thanks” wives are giving the OK to stock up on Fleshlights and DVD porn, and/or to lie next to them in bed and masturbate. The few women I have talked to (some straight, some not) report similar stuff.

The women you have talked to who say they want sex less frequently than their husbands do, have told you that they forbid their husbands to masturbate? Are they hyper-religious or something? (Not to mention living in a fantasy world if they think their husbands actually comply.) I frankly find this implausible: women know that men masturbate, and especially that they masturbate when they’re not having partnered sex. Other than a Victorian morality issue with onanism, what’s wrong with masturbation when the partner doesn’t want to have sex?

Jocelyn Elders is (in)famous for recommending masturbation as a way to reduce teen/premarital sex. When did she start promoting handjobs?

Mandolin Writes:
I think it’s reductionist to suggest that going outside the relationship is the only way to satisfy sexual desires that aren’t being met, and can’t morally be met by marital rape. There are other sensual activities… masturbation, with or without aids. But also one partner masturbating while the other one is cuddling hir. Sensual massage. Things like that.

Well, SEXual =/ SENsual, so if someone is looking for sexual stuff then cuddling isn’t it. Neither is solo masturbation, necessarily: fun, but different than partnered stuff.

It is my anecdotal experience, borne out by a variety of conversations with other people I know, that partners who are unwilling to have sex are also generally unwilling to be engaged in someone else’s sexual act. Largely that makes sense: irrespective of what sex your partner is, it’s probably less stressful and time consuming to give them a quickie handjob* than it is to give them a sensual massage. Folks who don’t want to do one don’t want to do the other.

Being male and straight I primarily hear about this from other het males, and I can say with high accuracy that “no sex” means “no sex-related stuff” in the vast majority of cases. It’s not as if the “no sex thanks” wives are giving the OK to stock up on Fleshlights and DVD porn, and/or to lie next to them in bed and masturbate. The few women I have talked to (some straight, some not) report similar stuff.

*I don’t understand why this solution isn’t more often suggested, other than by Jocelyn Elders. Sure, you may not want to have sex. But if you can give a 5 minute shoulder massage with a smile even if you don’t want to (and how many hundreds of those have we given over our lives?) then you can massage elsewhere with a smile. And if you can’t give a couple of 5 minute shoulder massages every week to keep your partner’s engine running smoothly (and you get yours, as well) then perhaps it’s time to find a new partner.

Act happy no matter what your mood and you will feel happier. Act loving and you will feel more loving. [...]

You know, if you “act happy,” that won’t make you happier.

Well, you’re both right. Yes, acting happy — in the meaning of ‘act’ as a false front, a character to be played dishonestly — won’t make you happier. But it is often true that choosing do behave a certain way can nudge your emotions in that directions. Do this in a conscious fashion. Acting (as in, ‘behaving’ or ‘taking actions’) in ways that would normally mean you care about someone can make you more caring, even if you started out indifferent to that person or really disliked them.

Prager’s “you will feel happier” is too strong. Your “it won’t make you happier” is too weak. If you’re sad (and not clinically depressed), then choosing different actions and framing things with different words can help improve your attitude. Words and deeds have power, even over the person who uses them.

But also one partner masturbating while the other one is cuddling hir. Sensual massage. Things like that.

There are other sensual activities that the couple can engage in that don’t involve forcing one partner to lie back and think of England, but can meet emotional and physical needs.

I come back to Jeff’s point about masturbation: we all ought to be capable of meeting our own physical needs. Every woman should have a vibrator; every man should have a Fleshlite. Everyone who is married should be getting their emotional need (to feel loved, prioritized and respected by an equal partner) met even if there is no sex. If the concern is about having the physical and emotional needs met simultaneously — which I think is the goal of marital sex, to be getting physical fulfillment with someone you love and who loves you — then an affair seems unlikely to do that. Unless it’s an affair that involves emotional commitment to a new partner, which is likely to break up the marriage.