Who is Responsible?

A woman was recently telling me about the sexual ignorance of her male partner-- he's in his 40s and still either pretends to not know where the clitoris is or honestly does not know. And it is too much trouble for him to listen and to learn. Or it may be that he does know where it is, but doesn't really know how to "operate" it so to speak. 

Common enough to be an entire series of Shutterstock (tm) images

Can you imagine a man putting up with a partner who didn't know where the penis was or how to work it, basically? The thought is utterly laughable. Even more unimaginable: a man whose female partner has never given him an orgasm. Never. I have talked with women for whom this is true: all of the orgasms they have, they have alone. Imagine a man during sex, maybe after his female partner has an orgasm, saying "It's okay, I wasn't going to come anyway," for 40 years. I get fairly exasperated by this weird double standard regarding sexual anatomy and sexual pleasure. Fundamentally, the basic physiological fact is that the clitoris is *the only organ* on the human body that exists *solely for pleasure*, yet it is problematic in our weird, still unrelentingly patriarchal culture. And the male sexual ego still seems so narroqwly rooted in the dick-- the attitude often being "well, if she won't come as a result of the magic powers of my dick, then she can take care of it herself, except not when I am around, because that huts my dick's feelings."

Dream girl completely unconcerned with her own body and always thinking dick

Another double standard that has been on my mind lately has been around parenting. I know a lot of younger women, many of whom are former students of mine, who are in the parenting thing. The men they are partnered with, usually with whom they had their children, are--basically-- fucking worthless. In fact, the young women who are happier being mothers do not have to deal with a male partner. What is up with this? The stories I hear are outrageous. One of my former students: "I have not been alone for more than 8 hours in the past 3 years." This seems unsustainable and absolutely not a good thing for either mother or child. Of course, the same young woman was quick to add: "I'm not complaining! I love my children!" Uh, well-- is it not obvious that one can love one's children and still want to take three or four days of an emotional and spiritual retreat? Wouldn't such opportunities actually enable one to love one's children *more effectively*? Why don't fathers more often say "You've been working, running the house and mothering like mad for months-- I'll take the kids, I'll take care of everything here, you go stay at a nice hotel that has a spa for a long weekend-- sleep! get some space!" Would FOUR FUCKING DAYS really be that difficult, you useless non-contributing spoiled rotten brat of a boy?

After A separated from her husband, she suddenly found herself with half of her time free from parenting, since they had an exactly 50/50 custody plan. This seemed so much better to her than the grind she had been in for about 3 years previously, where she was expected to work 40-50 hour weeks and do about 85% of the parenting and about 80% of the domestic labor (and to endure complaints about making noise while vacuuming, or how bad her meals were, or how his shirts weren't properly laundered-- this was in the *new millenium*, not way back in the 1950s). 

It's sadly ironic how the gains toward economic equity for women have been offset in many ways by the regressive realities of parenting and householding. Incidentally, the 50/50 custody arrangement also resulted in A's son's dad becoming a much better father, out of necessity. Isn't it sad that kids actually get a far better deal when their parents split? Two houses, two sets of toys, two bedrooms, often brand new loving step parents, etc. (I realize this is not always or even often the case when a mother is left to be a single mother, but in A's case, this is what her son got out of the deal, that everyone around the situation was horrified by-- "Oh, this will damage the boy forever!" Um, no.)

So here's what women generally seem to be able to look forward to: long work hours, boring phallocentric PIV sex preceded by pro forma lameass ignorant attempts at foreplay, no space or quiet time, hours and hours of domestic labor and parenting on top of long work hours, and being blamed for every problem their kids have-- even "little" things like wanting to go on a "girls' night out" (what are we, in 8th grade?) often prove problematic for male partners. It still seems largely true that men get to go to work, experience sexual pleasure, be fed, have their clothes laundered and their houses cleaned and their meals prepared, seem like fucking heroes for "taking the kids" for 3 or 4 hours (often so the woman can have time to get housework done), enjoy a larger social life, and then bitch about how cranky and unpleasant their female partners are or how unavailable or sex-avoidant or whatever.  

So-- as I ask in the title to this post-- who is responsible? Is it not an even sadder irony that many of the young women I talk with about this situation feel like *they* are responsible? "I could communicate better. I could set better boundaries. I could ask more for what I want, in bed." 

Here's a radical idea: men are 100% responsible for this lack of household equity. 100%. Would it be possible for men to stop taking their situations and their partners for granted and pitch in closer to 50% in domestic labor? In parenting? In bed? Of course. Of course it would. I suspect that men love the fact that their partners feel responsible for the inequity. It's just another way to reinforce male power at home. 

There's lots of "how to make a woman come" articles on the web, but they all ultimately make it the woman's responsibility to "communicate to her man" how she "likes it." I can see the value of this kind of communication, of course, and it's way better than mind reading, but there are some *fundamental areas of knowledge* for which *every man could become responsible*. The rest would be the distinct preferences of individual women, but at the very least, a knowledge of female sexual anatomy and an understanding of how the clitoris works and how the rest of the whole deal works *in general* would be incredibly easy for men to obtain. 

The other *hilarious* thing about these scenarios is that a lot of these men would definitely describe themselves as "feminists." Or at least they see themselves as being "all for" equity for women. But here again their attitudes just reinforce their own power, because what they really mean is they are "all for" their female partner earning money in order to take financial pressure off their own situation. It's all about equity in the work place (which hasn't even been achieved). There's either dishonesty or lack of awareness of equity at home. I think the term "the woke misogynist" is highly useful in this regard. 

It's been a long trip for me to wake up to this dynamic. I myself loved the advantages of these double standards in several partnerships, although I have only been involved in step fathering twice. I was entirely unaware of much of this inequity for a long time. I have always been devoted to the sexual pleasure of my partners, so I rarely allowed an orgasm gap for very long. But in domestic labor, I have been a lout. Many of my domestic partners have been unskilled in and indifferent to domestic labors, as was I (or so I tolerated), so the two of us lived in the fairly happy bliss of mild squalor, desultory meals, musky sheets and thrift store furniture. The bohemian partnership! Lots of fun, but not really sustainable once the reality of parenting kicks in. With A, I made a conscious effort to bring 50% to the table. I didn't always succeed, but I wanted to know what it would be like to *practice equity feminism* in my actual fucking life. 

It was hard work. I provided a lot of child care. I cooked half the nights of the week. I did roughly half the housework. 

In retrospect, this all seems fine and noble, of course. Until I realize: do women usually get to simply do *half*? Absolutely not. Then I try to imagine going to school full time, teaching half time and doing the vast majority of the parenting and housework. Very difficult to imagine. And yet, this is where the majority of the women in our culture find themselves, if they want to have children. 

I have heard younger women who have two children joke about how they actually have three children-- when they include their male partner, who lives on the edge of being an 8 year old boy who has all of his laundry done, his meals provided, his bathroom cleaned and even half of his bills paid. This just seems pathetic to me, not funny.