Authors: Betsy Prioleau
226 Two scholarly books: See Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young,
The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture
(Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2003); and Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young,
Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame to Systematic Discrimination against Men
(Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007).
226 “What is that”: See Bashing Men Jokes, November 8, 1997, http://ifag.wap.org/sex/bashingmenjokes.html (accessed November 20, 2011).
226 Two-thirds of women: Kim I. Hartman, “Study: Two-Thirds of Married Women Opt for Anything but Sex,”
Digital Journal
, May 21, 2010, www.digitaljournal.com/print/article/292307. See Jessica Bennett, “The Pursuit of Sexual Happiness,”
Newsweek
, September 28, 2009; and Rohi Caryn Rabin, “Condom Use Is Highest for Young, Study Finds,”
New York Times
, October 4, 2010.
226 “Women’s sex lives”: Quoted in Duff Wilson, “Push Market Pill Stirs Debate on Sexual Desire,”
New York Times
, June 16, 2010.
227 several 2009 studies: For the seminal studies, see Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, “The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness,”
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association
, no. 2 (August 2009), 190–225; and Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress, “The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Changes Everything,” ed. Heather Boushey and Ann O’Leary, Center for American Progress, October 2009.
227 trend caused in part: Lisa Solod Warren, “Who Is Kidding Whom? The Shriver Report on Women,”
Huffington Post
, October 22, 2009, www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-solod-warren/who-is-kidding-whom-the-s_b_330060.html.
227 Spouses and boyfriends: Warren, “Who Is Kidding Whom?”
227 Women’s infidelity is rising: A conservative estimate is 40 to 50 percent, and pollsters say it’s on the upswing, rapidly gaining on, perhaps surpassing, the number of male dalliances. See cover story, Lorrain Ali and Lisa Miller, “The Secret Lives of Wives,”
Newsweek
, July 12, 2004. Also see Jagpreet Kaur, “The Anatomy of Extramarital Affairs, Part II,” from
Consumer Electronics
, November 27, 2007, available at http://articles.maxabout.com/marriage-divorce/the-anatomy-of-extramarital-affairs-part-ii/article-6411, which notes the dramatic rise in the number of female extramarital affairs, equating them with women’s entry into the workplace.
227 “Women,” said one: Mike Torchia quoted in Ali and Miller, “Secret Lives of Wives.”
227 Straus and others document: Jillian Straus,
Unhooked Generation
(New York: Hyperion, 2006), 36–39, passim; and Laura Sessions Stepp,
Unhooked: How Young Women Pursue Sex, Delay Love and Lose at Both
(New York: Riverhead/Penguin Group, 2007), 251, passim.
227 Women with options: Monique Honaman, “I Just Wish He Would Have an Affair,”
Huffington Post
, March 8, 2012, www.huffingtonpost.com/monique-honaman/i-just-wish-he-would-have_b_129799.html. See, too, Stepp,
Unhooked
, 37, where she found that settled companionship “didn’t rank very high on the desire scale” with young women; and Justin Wolfers, “How Marriage Survives,”
New York Times
, October 12, 2010.
2272012 survey of romantic values: “Harlequin’s 2012 Romance Report Findings Indicate Romance + Technology = #ITSCOMPLICATED,”
PRNewswire
, February 9, 2012, www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harlequins-2012-romance-report-findings-indicate-romance-technology-itscomplicated-13900.html.
228 “Too needy”: Ibid.
228 The brighter the woman: “Money Ain’t a Thing,”
Psychology Today
, July/August 2008; and see Ginia Bellafante, “A Romance Novelist’s Heroines Prefer Lover over Money,”
New York Times
, August 23, 2006. For the University of Louisville study, see Michael R. Cunningham,
New York Times
, September 23, 2007.
228 “female gaze”: See discussions of the “female gaze” in romance novels by scholars Catherine Asaro and Kay Mussell in Linda Ledford-Miller, “Gender and Genre Bending: The Futuristic Detective Fiction of J. D. Robb,”
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
11, no. 3 (2011), http://reconstruction.eserver.irg/113/Ledford-Miller_Linda.shtml (accessed December 11, 2011).
228 Women notice beautiful men: See Paul Hollander,
Extravagant Expectations: New Ways to Find Romantic Love in America
(Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2011), 7; and Cindy M. Meston and David M. Buss,
Why Women Have Sex: Women Reveal the Truth about Their Sex Lives, from Adventure to Revenge
(and Everything in Between)
(New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2009), 12–16.
228
Psychology Today
feature: Jill Neimark, “The Beefcaking of America,”
Psychology Today
, November 1, 1994.
228 “it’s really to do”: Quoted in Matt Rudd, “Ripped: Man’s Cosmetic Pursuit of Perfection,”
Sunday Times
(London), October 23, 2011, 12, 11–13. Barbara Thau reports that the number of cosmetic procedures among men rose 2 percent in 2010 from 2009. That’s 1.1 million procedures, with the ten fastest-growing ones being surgical. Thau, “Plastic Surgery Procedures Rise . . . and Men Are Fueling the Trend,” DailyFinance, March 23, 2011, www.dailyfinance.com/2011/03/23/plastic-surgery-procedures-rise-and-men-are-fueling-the-tren/.
228 Pertschuk discovered: Cited in Neimark, “Beefcaking of America.”
229 studied the “orgasm gap”: Shelby Martin, “Stanford Sociology Professor Details Gender ‘Orgasm Gap,’ ”
Stanford Daily
, November 6, 2007, http://archive.stanforddaily.com/?p=1025749. See, too, Laura Kipnis,
The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability
(New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 57. Gynecologist Monica Peacocke told me that the problem is two parts: women don’t know their own anatomy well enough, and “men are lazy.”
229 “inner vixen is coming out”: Gail Konop Baker, “Do Women Now Want Sex More Than Men?”
Huffington Post
, October 25, 2011, www.huffingtonpost.com/gail-konop-baker/women-want-sex-more-than-men_b_977416.html.
229 “women want”: Norman Rush,
Mortals
(New York: Vintage, 2003), 213.
229 their 2011 investigation: Ogi Ogs and Sai Gaddam,
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
(New York: Dutton/Penguin, 2011), 109.
229 same finding: See Stepp,
Unhooked
, 14, 57, 126–137.
229 Weary of putting the make: E. L. James,
Fifty Shades of Grey
(Waxahachie, TX: Writer’s Coffeeshop, 2011), 52.
229 sexual psychologist Marta Meana: Cited in Daniel Bergner, “What Do Women Want?”
New York Times Magazine
, January 25, 2009.
229 “Strike one”:
A Lot Like Love
, direc. Nigel Cole, Walt Disney Studios, 2005.
230 Seventy-five percent of women: “Harlequin’s 2012 Romance Report.”
230 “the most unexpected”: Hollander,
Extravagant Expectations
, 191.
230 “macho”: “Quotes about Men,”
QuotationsBook.com
, Google, 2011, 7.
230 swing toward “M-ness”: Marian Salzman, Ira Matathia, and Ann O’Reilly,
The Future of Men
(New York: Palgrave/Macmillan, 2005), 213.
230 Such “M” heroes: Abby Zidle, “From Bodice-Ripper to Baby-Sitter: The New Hero in Mass-Market Romance,” in Anne K. Kaler and Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek, eds.,
Romantic Conventions
(Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Press, 1999), 28. See “Gender-Bending,”
Economist
, October 25, 2008, 97; Lois Rogers, “Feminine Face Is Key to a Woman’s Heart,”
Sunday Times
(London), December 8, 2002; and Ayala Malach Pines,
Falling in Love: Why We Choose the Lovers We Choose
(New York: Routledge, 1999), 114–115.
230 “worthy sparring partner”: Stepp,
Unhooked
, 61.
230 Female medical students: John Marshall Townsend,
What Women Want—What Men Want: Why the Sexes Still See Love and Commitment So Differently
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 150.
231 In personals and polls: Hollander,
Extravagant Expectations
, 156, 190; and for conversation, see chap. 13 of Stains and Bechtel,
What Women Want
, 148–171.
231 “Renaissance characters abound”: Hollander,
Extravagant Expectations
, 111.
231 “grow at the same rate”: Townsend,
What Women Want
, 151.
231 “growing type of man”: Salzman et al.,
Future of Men
, 207.
232 major female grievance: See “Harlequin’s 2012 Romance Report.”
232 “Falling in love”: José Ortega y Gasset,
On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme
, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: New American Library, 1957), 44.
232 Every romance hero: Rosemary E. Johnson-Kurek, “Leading Us into Temptation: The Language of Sex and the Power of Love,” in Kaler and Johnson-Kurek, eds.,
Romantic Conventions
, 130.
232 Attention is the food of love: See Meston and Buss,
Why Women Have Sex
, 201; and James V. Cordova, “Attention Is the Most Basic Form of Love,”
Psychology Today
, May 6, 2011.
232 “The snap of the ladies’ man”: Molly Peacock, email, February 28, 2012.
232 “In our post-feminist age”: Glenda Cooper, “May the Worst Man Win: A New Study Has Proved beyond Doubt That Women Love Cads and Bounders. Of Course They Do, Says Glenda Cooper,”
Daily Telegraph
(UK), September 28, 2007.
232 “God’s gift”: Marina Warner, “Valmont—or the Marquise Unmasked,” in Jonathan Miller, ed.,
Don Giovanni: Myths of Seduction and Betrayal
(New York: Schocken Books, 1990), 99, 98.
232 “I’ve met a few”: “Sienna’s Casanova Hopes,”
Mail Online
, September 3, 2005, www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-361175/Sienna’s-Casanova-hopes.html.
233 “If Liszt”: Quoted in Nigel Cawthorne, “Lisztomania,” in
Sex Lives of the Great Composers
(London: Prion, 2004), 93.
233 “Some men are so delightful”: Jane Smiley, “Why Do We Marry?”
Utne Reader
, September/October 2000, 51.
233 Recent research: Tara Parker-Pope reports that “the people with the highest expectations for marriage usually end up with the highest quality marriages.” Tara Parker-Pope, “Can Eye-Rolling Ruin a Marriage? Researchers Study Divorce Risk,”
Wall Street Journal
, August 6, 2002.
233 “never succeed”: Ortega y Gasset,
On Love
, 28.
233 “an orang-outang”: Honoré de Balzac,
The Physiology of Marriage: Petty Troubles of Married Life
, ed. J. Walker McSpadden (Philadelphia: Avil, 1901), 70.
235 new research: See Helen Fisher on the study “Single in America,” in “The Forgotten Sex,” match.com, blog.match.com/2011/04/the-forgotten-sex-men (accessed February 5, 2012); and Nancy Kalish, “Are Men Romantic?”
Psychology Today
, June 1, 2009. For results of a Wake Forest study, see Robin Simon, “Nonmarital Romantic Relationships and Mental Health in Early Adulthood: Does the Association Differ for Women and Men?”
Journal of Health and Social Behaviors
51 (June 2010), 168–182.
235 Eighty-four percent of men: Fisher, “Forgotten Sex.”
235 “is the mainspring”: Garrison Keillor, “The Heart of the Matter,”
New York Times
, op-ed, February 14, 1989.
235 “we need a new myth”: Michael Vincent Miller,
Intimate Terrorism: The Crisis of Love in an Age of Disillusion
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1995), 224. See also Rollo May,
The Cry for Myth
(New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 15–21, passim.
235 “Sexual behavior”: Willard Gaylin,
The Male Ego
(New York: Viking, 1992), 117.
235 “hazardous business”: Stephen A. Mitchell,
Can Love Last? The Fate of Romance over Time
(New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 139.
236 “strong warrior energy”: Robert Bly,
Iron John: A Book about Men
(New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990), 151.
236 “Archetypes”: Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette,
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine
(New York: Harper One/HarperCollins, 1991), 127.
236 “from seed to flower”: Bly,
Iron John
, 133.
236 Her teaching: Madeleine M. Henry,
Prisoner of History: Aspasia of Miletus and Her Biographical Tradition
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 47.
236 “It takes”: Quoted in Edgar H. Cohen,
Mademoiselle Libertine: A Portrait of Ninon de Lenclos
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970), 92.
236 Schooled in “Special Techniques”: Aldous Huxley,
Island
(New York: Perennial Classics/Harper and Row, 1962), 63, 126, 158.
237 Men are freed: Ibid., 241.
237 educators unanimously plead: See Glenn Geher and Geoffrey Miller, eds.,
Mating Intelligence: Sex, Relationships, and the Mind’s Reproductive System
(New York: Psychology Press/Taylor and Francis, 2007). See D. F. Jansen on the absence of sexual education in general: “Sex Training: The Neglected Fourth Dimension in Erotagogical Ideologies,”
Growing Up Sexually: The Sexual Curriculum
3 (October 2002), www.2.huberlin.de./sexology/GESUND/ARCHIV/GUS/GUSVOL11CH7.HTM (accessed May 10, 2011). Also, on the gap in love education in America, see John Money,
Love and Love Sickness: The Science of Sex, Gender Difference, and Pair Bonding
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 63.
237 If men would spend: I paraphrased Robert Haas quoted in Theodoor Hendrik van de Velde,
Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique
, trans. Stella Browne (New York: Random House, 1926), 125.