Online Gaming Zaps Marital Bliss
Among the couples they found who were willing to be studied (they say many dedicated gamers weren’t), the researchers found that the biggest problem when gaming enters a relationship is not so much the time spent gaming, but rather the resulting arguments and disrupted bedtime routines, which in turn can lead to less time spent doing shared activities or engaging in serious conversation.
So what they’re saying, as I grok it, is that adults with the emotional maturity level of teenagers and people struggling with addiction make awful romantic partners.
Thanks for that nugget, Journal of ‘Leisure Studies.’
/groan. Before a legion of indignant gamers attacks the comments section: No, I am *not* equating a penchant for WoW to being an emotionally-underdeveloped drug addict. I’m saying relying on gaming (or anything else) as a frequent means of escapism is a poor life strategy, and will ruin most romantic relationships.
Marriage: Like a Trip to the Zoo, Apparently.
Over the weekend, I happened across this article on relationships in Psychology Today (worth a read, if you’re interested that sort of thing – and I’ll make no effort to pretend I’m not, thank you). In a nutshell, the piece is a feature-length article which criticizes the practice – common among the American bourgeoisie and the copycat middle-class – of divorcing one’s spouse due to “irreconcilable differences.” It’s a good read, but the content isn’t why I bring it up. Rather, the accompanying photo spread is what caught my attention. Behold:
What’s the editorial intent behind this series of photos? It appears to tell the age-old story about every man being a wild animal until he meet “that special someone” who marries him and eventually “civilizes” him. Though notably, in the last photo of the spread, the chimp hasn’t magically transformed into a grown man. No sir, he’s just wearing a sweater vest.
While there won’t likely be too many men getting riled up over this photo spread (yet further evidence that men don’t inhabit the same sexist culture that women do), isn’t it still kind of… icky? If you’re a man, are you really okay with a popular cultural narrative that casts you as a smelly, pre-linguistic, feces-flinging animal that’s in desperate need of education in the ways of the world before he can be accepted into society? Imagine if the photos showed a man with a female chimpanzee. I have no idea what that would possibly imply, and part of me suspects that photos of a male human sharing a bed with a female chimp aren’t commonly published out of the fear that some people will mistakenly believe that the man might actually attempt to have sex with the chimpanzee. (And sure enough…)
None of this is to knock marriage or men or the editors at Psychology Today. It just seems like the decision to hire a chimpanzee (and whatever associated costs come with hiring an exotic animal) to play the role of Husband in a photo shoot about marriage is a non-neutral decision. An actor or model brings with him knowledge of using expression and body language, enabling the photographer to create more nuanced compositions that better illustrate the complexity of romantic relationships. Using a monkey stand-in for one half of the equation feels sitcom-trope-y and incongruous with the subject of the article.
In Which a Humor Site Validates My Unqualified Assertions About Sex
A year and some change ago, I blogged some of my hunches about why there’s a discrepancy between men’s and women’s attitudes toward casual sex. In that post, I argued that “orgasmic parity,” or the fact that penetrative sex is almost certain to result in male orgasms, but not necessarily female orgasms, might be the reason behind the common wisdom (and research supporting it) that men are more likely than women to sally forth when the opportunity for casual sex arises.
We all carry signs like this. Just in case.
Then along came Cracked columnist Robert Evans, who in his column yesterday suggested that I’m totally right:
A half century of feminism and women’s liberation haven’t changed the fact that women consider sex to be a step toward a long-term relationship and deep emotional commitment, while men consider sex to be nothing more than scratching an itch.
And there is plenty of scientific basis for this; a 1989 study showed that men were far more likely to accept solicitations for casual sex than women. Male and female students were approached by “moderately” attractive students of the opposite sex and awkwardly propositioned. The men, being 18 and in immediate proximity to a vagina, said, “Fuck yes.” Most of the women said no. Obviously.
But Actually …
A University of Michigan psychologist named Terri Conley decided to dig a little deeper. Her study found that women were no less likely to be down for some consequence-free coupling, as long as it was in a safe situation with a sexually competent partner. The difference wasn’t in the expected commitment, but in how much harder it is to bring a woman to orgasm.
So both genders seek sex for the awesome, toe-curling pleasure it brings. But the difference is that men know they’re going to get an orgasm no matter how bad the girl is in bed, and in fact know that it will happen even if she leaves halfway through. But women only orgasm 35 percent as often in first-time sexual encounters. Why commit yourself to a night of getting some guy off if you aren’t getting anything but filthy sheets out of it?
Studies of bisexual women showed that their hesitance to bone disappeared as soon as the partner wasn’t a man. That infamous female prudishness all came down to the fact that most men have awful cocksmanship.
[Emphasis mine.]
If I may hash this reasoning out for the sizable number of straight guys who still don’t quite grasp the concept: imagine an alternate reality in which sex is divorced from reproduction. I suspect that if the act were defined as the culmination of the female orgasm; if very little thought had been put into the male orgasm for much of your culture’s written history; if your ability to orgasm was historically considered by physicians to be a disorder considered by physicians to be a useful treatment for a made-up gender-based mental disorder instead of a normal function of the human body; if the odds were good that any new lady you went home with would be clueless about how to please you (or even worse, not really interested in doing so); if the majority of mainstream ‘adult entertainment’ was marketed toward women and featured gorgeous men getting their rocks off (supposedly) with women who looked like this; if there were a vocal minority of women who refused to (ahem) orally pleasure men and who also thought of this refusal as a symbol of their own dominance; if there were centuries worth of cultural baggage associated with your gender’s sexual agency – at best defining it very narrowly and at worse denying its existence entirely… you, too, might opt to stay home with your vibrator instead.
The moral of this story is that the straight guys out there should adopt a quality-over-quantity approach – at first – and spend less time and energy on merely scoring notches on their bedposts, and more time developing some damned skills. (Dan Savage would agree with me). Yes, I agree with the advice that women should “speak up and say what you want,” but as I wrote the last time around, having to direct the entire show with each new partner can be tiresome. The great thing is, if enough men follow this advice, women will eventually catch on, and there will be more sex to go around. Now that’s what I call progress.
The article has some more fantastic tidbits, like a debunking of that obnoxious old advertising adage that “sex sells”:
Studies show that less than 10 percent of men who were exposed to sexual advertising could even recall the actual brand the ad existed to promote. And that’s men, the gender that’s supposed to get brainwashed by anything titillating, including the word “titillating.” For women, sexual advertising cut brand recall in half.
The upshot is that sexy advertising gets your attention, but doesn’t communicate that a company has any confidence whatsoever in its product’s ability to sell itself. Who would have thought?
Friday Linkage
“The ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ condition is still only dimly understood.”
Disney Princesses as hipster fashionistas.
A group of libertarians call for an end to misogynistic rhetoric
On ending the abuse of the word ‘literally.’ (While we’re at it, let’s go over begs the question and irony once more, shall we?)
5 Great Things that have been co-opted by douchebags (and to CRACKED author Daniel O’Brien: I don’t care how awkward you are, you dressed up like Tobias Funke for Halloween and managed to still be super-adorbs anyway, which makes you my internet crush).
What I Learned During 30 Days of Sobriety
“Are we in denial about how much of the way we’ve constructed our society relies on us spending our evenings very lightly pissed?” – David Mitchell
Today marks the last day of Sobuary for me, and I figured I owed my blog some reflections on going 30 days without alcohol.
First, I learned that January is a terrible month to quit drinking. Since drinking is nearly synonymous with socializing, I spent a lot of time at home. It’s too cold, dark and dreary for me to want to sit sober in a bar on a Friday night. If I were to quit drinking in April, say, I’d still be game to meet friends on a roof deck or patio. In fact, next year I’ll probably opt to celebrate Sobpril.
Second, as David Mitchell alludes in the video linked above, I learned that much of socializing among adults in my age cohort revolves around alcohol. I lost my drive to go out during the month. I partially attribute this to the cold, dark weather, and partially to the lack of appeal in sitting in a dimly-lit bar, conversing with people who are only going to get more difficult to keep up with as the night goes on. Consider: If you decided to never drink again, how often would you go to business established for the sole purpose of getting you sloshed?
Third, (speaking of bars) I learned that working in a bar can still be fun even if you’re not doing shots with the regulars. That was the most pleasant part of this experiment – learning that I don’t have to be lightly buzzed to be an absurdly charming bartender.
Fourth, it was nice to have my Sundays back. If you’re part of the DC brunch culture, you know what I’m talking about. (For those of you not privy: (11 AM) Order bottomless mimosas –> (12:30 PM) you are now slightly drunk –> (3 PM) “Hey, why don’t we just pay our bill and move up to the bar and keep drinking?” –> (5 PM) “Dude, I need to go home and take a nap” –> (6 PM) blow off all your evening plans and pass out watching Netflix –> (10 PM) “Aw man, I’m not going to fall back to sleep for hours” –> (6 AM) you are suffering massive sleep deprivation. I suspect Sunday brunch has been behind every “case of the Mondays” in recent American history).
In all, abstaining from booze for 30 days isn’t a very difficult challenge, and I’d recommend anybody who’s curious should try it out. The only downside for me was the hesitancy to go to bars, but I managed to still get in some non-boozy face time with friends. Another friend of mine did Sobuary and said he felt physically great. I didn’t have any personal epiphanies, but I also didn’t feel any creeping OMG-I-might-have-a-problem anxieties either. It was just a rather uneventful month.
Shadowy Figures That Rule the World: The Inebriati!
Quality Humpday entertainment from That Mitchell and Webb Look:
Paterno-lism
Indeed, like many on the internet, I’d say it’s a damn shame that JoePa will be remembered not for his unmatched ability to instruct a team of over-privileged, overgrown “student”-athletes to chase an oblong leather ball around without sustaining massive brain injuries, but instead for his bewilderingly insufficient actions taken in response to reports of children being raped on his watch.
Authors, Take Note
I started reading a new book this week, but I couldn’t make it past the first page without rolling my eyes, for right there in paragraph #2, the protagonist was described as a extreme rollerblader with a penchant for wearing “skintight leather.”
Listen up authors: the next time you want to dress an action character in “skintight leather,” remember this scene from Friends.
(Apparently, none of the youtube clips of this episode are embeddable. Watch the clip here.)
Friday Linkage
THIS. In this TED talk, Tyler Cowen explains that the world is much more complicated than the simplistic good-vs.-evil narrative (but not so complicated as to be nothing but a web of conspiracies) that we’re used to reading in our culture’s stories.
Rachel Marsden on Margaret Thatcher vs. fake female empowerment: “Here’s the harsh reality about exceptionally accomplished women: It’s a quiet, lonely, very private and incredibly long struggle. It’s a lifelong commitment. There is no feel-good, publicly extolled “progress” for the individual woman who seeks a life of meaning and contribution outside society’s accepted and tread-worn norms. It’s an endless, highly discreet struggle…”
Will Wilkinson explains why he’s not a Libertarian.
A tribute to Cordelia Chase.
Update: Half-way through, Twilight is still god-awful.
I’m nearing the half-way point in Stephenie Meyer’s first Twilight novel, and Bella is still incessantly going on about how gorgeous and wonderful and amazing Edward is. I get that real life teenage girls can be insufferable like this – my bff and I spent many hours our sophomore year dissecting every aspect about our crushes – but this is also why novels are not written about real-life teenagers. It’s as though Meyer, in all the stream-of-consciousness mind-diarrhea that is this novel, can’t figure out how to round out a paragraph that’s nothing more than a series of sentences describing what Bella is doing (“I left the cafeteria…” “I made my way to the gym…” “I walked into the locker room…”). So she frequently throws in some line about Bella being dizzy. Bella dear, spending most of your waking hours on the verge of fainting is not normal; go get your blood pressure checked.
Furthermore, this whole butterflies-constantly-in-Bella’s-stomach portrayal of Twue Wove is starting to get to me. I understand authors and screenwriters often choose to expedite the falling-in-love portion of the plot in order to get to the action, but when nearly every book and film relies on this love-at-first-sight trope, it does a disservice to us all. While I’ve said before that learning the difference between fictional trope and real life is part of growing up (and I stand by that), I also can’t help but think there’s something fundamentally incoherent about a plot in which chaste teenagers fall in love at the drop of a hat. The phenomenon of LAFS (a.k.a., infatuation) is based on physical attraction and desire, and the feeling doesn’t persist in most relationships. Cracked columnist John Cheese recently wrote some wise words regarding healthy relationships:
And please, please note that when I talk about enjoying the girl’s company, I am not referring to that breathless worship where you think she’s a magical goddess, where you feel the gut butterflies every time she walks past and you go aaaawwwww every time she farts. Pop songs have taught you this is what it’s all about (“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”? Fuck you, Sting, your songs are full of bad relationship advice). If you’re still in “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” mode, you don’t even fucking know this person. You’re still treating them the way you would treat a celebrity, projecting onto the real person a fantasy that lives in your head. Anyone who says they’re still feeling the butterflies after fifty years of marriage needs to see a cardiologist because there’s some serious medical shit that needs fixed right goddamn now.
Bella is constantly “woozy” or “dizzy” or “dumbfounded” because of how gorgeous Edward Cullen is. In real life, kiddos, hotness gets old, fast. As Rosie O’Donnel said in one of the greatest movies about the quarterlife crisis (NSFW): “No matter how perfect… unless there’s some other shit going on in the relationship besides the physical, it’s gonna get old.“
The face of true love is a cheap James Dean knock-off.
