Married men and women who divide household chores in traditional ways report having more sex than couples who share so-called men’s and women’s work, according to a new study co-authored by sociologists at the University of Washington.
Other studies have found that husbands got more sex if they did more housework, implying that sex was in exchange for housework. But those studies did not factor in what types of chores the husbands were doing.
The new study, published in the February issue of the journal American Sociological Review, shows that sex isn’t a bargaining chip. Instead, sex is linked to what types of chores each spouse completes.
Couples who follow traditional gender roles around the house – wives doing the cooking, cleaning and shopping; men doing yard work, paying bills and auto maintenance – reported greater sexual frequency.
“The results show that gender still organizes quite a bit of everyday life in marriage,” said co-author Julie Brines, a UW associate professor of sociology. “In particular, it seems that the gender identities husbands and wives express through the chores they do also help structure sexual behavior.”
Taking out the trash as a manly activity made me giggle.
To be serious, I see the problem like this: we don't understand what should men be like anymore.
We have at least two viable role models for women: girly woman and equal breadwinner woman. Both attractive as you can see.
But we have no viable role model for men. Egalitarian man loses sexual attractivity and "manly man" is a dick who doesn't do his fair share.
As a programmer I spend the whole day sitting in a chair and clicking my mouse (keyboard tapping from time to time). Is that manly? I don't know.
> "manly man" is a dick who doesn't do his fair share
Oh? My wife, back when I had one, never seemed interested in an egalitarian split for chores like, say, replacing the car's serpentine belt and tensioner, or sorting out the electrical fault that'd stopped the taillights working -- or, for that matter, taking out the garbage. (Which, incidentally, I gather from empirical evidence does count as a "manly activity", presumably because garbage is often heavy and occasionally malodorous.) So also for yardwork and most repairs to the domicile; in general, if the job seemed likely to involve sweating, swearing, or a risk of ending up bleeding, the job was mine, and the egalitarian split business applied only to the rest.
Which got galling after a while; I don't mind mowing, weeding, edging, and sweeping, or spending six hours getting filthy with my arm jammed to the elbow up the ass end of a car engine, but when I've been doing that all day, and have finally finished up and got a shower, a beer, and a piece of the couch, I don't give a damn if it's my turn to cook -- and nor should I, because I've done my fair share.
> We have at least two viable role models for women: girly woman and equal breadwinner woman.
I'm not sure about that. I've known a lot of people whose marriages involved what you call an "equal breadwinner woman". Most of those marriages have failed. While I've known rather fewer people whose marriages have involved men and women who more closely followed what the modern age pleases itself to regard as outdated, patriarchal, oppressively stereotypical gender roles, almost all of those whom I do know are still married, and indeed many have been for longer than I've been alive. Causation is always a tricky beast to corner, but at the very least there's a strong correlation there, and I tend to think there's a reason for that.
(I'd also note, parenthetically, that the men I've known who've been married to your "equal breadwinner women" haven't been men I've found particularly worthy of respect, nor for the most part have I had the impression they had much respect for themselves. The women themselves tend to be lovely people, if lonely, but their husbands have been no prizes, which does a lot to explain the high divorce rate I've observed among them.)
> As a programmer I spend the whole day sitting in a chair and clicking my mouse (keyboard tapping from time to time). Is that manly? I don't know.
No, it's not, and I say that as one who does likewise. (Except mostly with his hands on the keyboard -- what kind of programming do you do that you touch it only rarely?)
"replacing the car's serpentine belt and tensioner, or sorting out the electrical fault that'd stopped the taillights working"
[I don't have a car.] The problem is, once your home is up and running there's not much for you to do, but "unmanly" house chores form a never-ending stream.
"Men work" scale (do it good once, it's good for a few years), but "women work" doesn't (wipe the floor today, still needs to be done again in a week).
"the men I've known who've been married to your "equal breadwinner women" haven't been men I've found particularly worthy of respect"
Well, most people are a kludge. We tend to have higher expectations for men for some reason, but at the end of day we are still human, flawed and all. Should find a solution that works for almost everybody.
"what kind of programming do you do that you touch it only rarely?"
The one when you "fly" your product most of the time as a pilot and only occasionally modify it as a developer.
Some would argue that your programming position is too manly, that the programming field itself is too insulated with the male gender and that it should be seen as less of a boy's club and more of an equal ground for all.
Weird, when you think about it. Clicking and typing. I suppose there's some rhetoric about "X is better at math than Y and programming is based on math" but at the end of the day it just seems like bologna. And it doesn't address any insecurities you may have as an individual who is also a man.
My solution, though, as a man is to simply not care about being a man. I'm a person. I've got all the skills of all genders because I believe all skills are, unto themselves, genderless. Mannerisms, fashion, hair-styles, etc. can follow as well but really, they don't bug me. I've got other interests in mind. I think we, as a society of computer users and consumers, have all these other worlds to fancy ourselves with nowadays. Sometimes I catch myself in the mirror and have to realize I am not just some running narrative but a person with "roles" and "definitions" It can be a bit jarring. Still, that passes and I'm back to being me, my little identity, not caring about gender roles and other hang-ups like that.
I hope some day that everyone can be happy being themselves and not have to question "What does it mean to be X, and how do I follow that rulebook?" Instead we should ask, "What does it mean to be me?"
My concern with programming as a field that it's neither equal nor manly. It might be a boy's club but consisting of boys who're "not getting any". A lot of boys' rude talks just mask them being afraid of actually interacting with women, you know.
WRT bologna: I have a colleague who is like two meter tall and very big. He could easily smith horseshoes on but what he actually does is programming: click and type. And he's pretty good at that, too. This is a bit comical.
"as a man is to simply not care about being a man"
I don't think this will work sexuality-wise.
My bottom line: male sexuality becomes more and more tricky and real men (who are pretty simple and straight creatures after all) fall short of it.
I'm glad you have concerns about programming as a field and I feel as though they are valid. It's not my fight, though, so I wish you luck. I agree it isn't equal, in many definitions of the word, but I wouldn't necessarily associate it with manly or womanly in terms of sexuality/identity. It's simply a field. A field that has, up until now, been primarily men and perhaps even primarily negative men and perhaps, again, men who are negative towards women because they are insecure about it. I think it says more about them than the field, but I could be wrong. I still stand by the thought that programming is inherently nothing other than a field, ripe for societies to use or abuse as they will. I could say the same about any field, teaching children I guess is the opposite at least in terms of number by gender.
Not sure what the large, burly man colleague of yours has to do with my point, though. He could be a four foot tall waif and I wouldn't think any differently of the field. I work with many said waifs and I make no distinction.
Sexuality, as I've found, can be fluid even within the boundaries of something like being straight. Your bottom line is interesting, but mine is more or less, "Don't feel bad about falling short of something you have complete control of." There's no reason to feel as though you need to live up to some definition of sexuality when it involves identity. Carve your own identity. It isn't easy, and it isn't straightforward, but I trust humans to be more than simple creatures.
I've never met these elusive mysterious men in the software industry that are negative towards women, or towards the idea of women working in the software industry. I have however met plenty of women (high school era mostly) who were very negative about the software industry because it "is not about people" and involves "sitting at a desk all day". So I guess these same women today just work some other desk job that just pays half as much, so they complain about gender income inequality.
Don't want to be sexist here; I would strongly encourage anyone (male or female) to work in our exciting industry. I just don't think men are more to blame for the imbalance than women.
It certainly doesn't seem to follow that "manly man who takes out the trash and fixes the car, roof, and does the lawn" has to be a dick in any manner as you put it.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/14/men-wom... reports that men spend 10 more hours than women doing paid work at work while women spend six more hours than men doing household work. That's not being a dick either, and is considered manly by many.
Imagine man doing same amount of paid work* as his woman, and their home not having any car, roof and lawn. What would the manly man do? Lay on coach and drink beers?
* actual pay may differ both ways but that's not where we look when comparing effort.
When all you have is 35 m^2 (400 sq ft) flat there is a simple limit on amount of manly things you can do there. Once everything works, no more drilling, repairing or building is necessary.
But house chores are still unlimited, to be repeated every week.
Um, household chores are not unlimited, and there are many that are considered manly, and still, still, you don't respond to my repeated statement, nothing about doing manly chores, or being manly necessitates being a dick.
I am not going to prescribe what chores are manly and panty wetting when we disagree on premise of what "fair share" means. And yes, you can redefine the problem such that you think there are no obvious manly chores left in your apartment, but I think that is left up to each couple.
I think you should reconsider your phrasing "dick" as well as your concept of "fair share". Both appear pretty sexist and derogatory to me.
Maybe "dick" was too harsh. Maybe we can agree that labour divide is hard and when one side tries to only do things they perceive as manly (when other side doesn't limit herself) he may run out of things to do.
Almost. I agree dick was too harsh, and in fact, it was shaming. And I do think that if one "side" is not contributing resentment can build up that no one wants. I do take issue with the notion of "sides" and I think it should be left to each couple, working as a couple to determine what fair contributions are, and shouldn't be left to popular culture pundits to declare that this is the era of 50/50 sharing and only regressive neanderthals would think otherwise.
Manly man that does his fair share is the proper combination. I knew a lot of men that properly combined those two aspects growing up, they were excellent role models. I have plenty of friends that fit that bill today in their marriages.
I don't know a married couple that doesn't complain about sex however. I think that's a problem of how invigorating can the same thing be after 10 or 20 years. It's a life challenge across the board to keep any long term relationship sharp, I'm not sure why we expect sex to be different.
I really enjoyed "No More Mr. Nice Guy" by Dr. Glover, it does a really good job of covering this very topic and providing the reader with a plan for how to fix the situation.
I believe the TL;DR is simply, live for your own goals and health first and then help others after, instead of trying to conform to some idea of a chivalrous person.
It isn't some strange P.U.A. take on the "friendzone" issue, either. I think a lot of people are turned away from the book because of its title and connotations. I think that was a clever move on the author's point, to be honest.
So from what I understand, it's more of a self-help/self-confidence book than anything.
What if I don't have any grandiose goals? I'm a simple person who likes to come home and be friendly with my significant other and occasionally get laid.
Also perspective is different for people in healthy relationship. We don't have a word friendzone mean anything.
The book is almost completely about regular joes in regular relationships not getting what they want out of them, and consequently out of life. It's not about wannabe Casanovas trying to break world records of number of lays. There's plenty of literature on that subject, but all of it deep down boils down to simply regaining masculine confidence and learning how to be a healthy male in a society where men are brought up and educated by women.
Taking out the trash as a manly activity made me giggle.
Well, the scene in Mad Men of Draper assembling the play house comes to mind. I'd bet many activities could be seen as manly, as long as the guy is well-muscled, in a thin shirt, and the activity requires muscle.
I'm being nitpicky, but these are the exact moments when statistical findings get turned into forced conclusions:
"The risk of divorce is lowest when the husband does 40 percent of the housework and the wife earns 40 percent of the income."
It's not that some risk is lowest, it's that, of the divorces studied, apparently regardless of demographic, there seems to be a statistically significant smaller amount of divorces coming from that particular configuration of earning and housework.
Emotional write ups, of everyone's favorite subject, like this are destined to be rife with opinion and forced conclusion. That entire write up, IMHO, is just as valid as answering the question with the word "no."
Like everything else in life you need to ask yourself, "does my sex life suck?" and then "What can I do to change it?" If the answer is, "Tell my wife to make less money and do more chores" then go for it.
"... of the divorces studied, apparently regardless of demographic, there seems to be a statistically significant ..."
Most generally, correlation is not causation.
Maybe people who are more attracted to each other sexually form more asymmetric marriages or maybe people with stronger sex drives are more likely to follow gender stereotypes. Just taking a sample from a self-selected population doesn't even indicate anything about causation.
What we need is a study where the researchers randomly assign men and women into marriages with partners chosen by the researchers where they will divide up roles according to gender stereotypes or divide up responsibilities evenly. Then the researchers will return a decade later to see how they're doing.
How much money would you bet on the answer to the question being "no"?
Based on the evidence we have, couples in more equal relationships seem to have less sex and are less satisfied with the sex.
This is a conclusion based on statistical inferences made from sample containing about 4,500 marriages. It is much more valid than a "no", even if it is imperfect.
If we return to our bet, how would you propose that we resolve the answer? How large would the sample size have to be for you to be satisfied?
"How much money would you bet?" Is not a good way to start a healthy argument.
Opinions and statistical molding are not conclusions in this sense. They are just opinions. There is no possible way to "resolve the answer". Every every person is an individual, relationship is different, and they change over time. There's absolutely no way to prove or conclude that equality in home and monetary responsibility are emasculating men and ruining sex lives. People should be evaluating their sex lives on an individual basis, not blaming them on any broad "conclusion" posted to the internet based on poor statistical inference.
Last sentence is great:
"“It’s a tall order for one person to be your partner in Management Inc., your best friend and passionate lover. There’s a certain part of you that with this partner will not be fulfilled. You deal with that loss. It’s a paradox to be lived with, not solved.”"
It's why I've only recently "got" open relationships. A couple years ago I would have vehemently derided them as an excuse for not being able to keep it in one's pants and inability to commit to a relationship. But now I see that no one person has never been and will never be "everything" to any one person...and if two people who openly understand this and have a relationship, then it will only strengthen their love for one another because they realize that while they may not be everything to each other, both are getting the most out of life while still having an anchor at home.
From the graph on page 40 of the original report, it appears that the couples where men did little of the "core work" (core work being indoor chores like cleaning, cooking, etc.) had sex almost 5 times a month. Couples where men did nearly all of the core work had sex slightly over 3 times a month.
So the article really does mean [amount of sex] - 1.5
That ratio is just an interesting coincidence. From page 38 of the report† (page 13 of the PDF), it's plain they are asserting a reduction in frequency from 4.8 times per month to 3.2 times (a delta of 1.6, not 1.5, as in the article):
To illustrate the substantive size of these
effects, Figure 1 shows predicted values for
sexual frequency, varying the share of house-
hold labor performed by men while setting all
other variables to their means. As the figure
shows, shifting from a household in which
women perform all of the core household
tasks to one where women perform none of
the core household tasks is associated with a
decline in sexual frequency of nearly 1.6
times per month. Given a mean sexual fre-
quency in this sample of slightly over five,
this is a large difference. The figure repre-
sents two extreme values, but even house-
holds in which men do 40 percent of core
household task hours report substantially
lower sexual frequency than households in
which women perform all core housework.
This is a common error. Usually authors mean that y = x/1.5 rather than y = x - 1.5*x. I think it comes from taking the phrase "1.5 times more" and replacing more with less to reverse its meaning.
According to the original study, the gender stereotype couple would be having sex 39 times a month if the equal couple has sex 26 times. This is for couples at opposite ends of the spectrum.
Homo sapiens has evolved from a long line of primates exhibiting significant sexual dimorphism. [1] Attempts to eliminate spontaneously emerging gender roles are thus fighting millions of years of evolution. This doesn't necessarily make such attempts bad—the strategy of forced copulation is also millions of years old [2], and I'm sure we agree it should be suppressed with vigor—but it does suggest that denying the reality of sex differences might cause unnecessary suffering.
Quoting directly from the first line of your [1]: "Sexual dimorphism in humans has long been a subject of much controversy, especially when extended beyond physical differences to mental ability and psychological gender."
That seems directly counter to your statement that gender roles are based on any sort of clear evolutionary basis across millions of years. Upon what do you base your conclusions?
Certainly the studies I've heard about haven't identified a strong sexual dimorphism in humans, outside of physical differences.
You raise a good point. Wikipedia's policy of NPOV (neutral point-of-view) effectively means "mainstream"; while I grant that "controversy" on this subject exists in the mainstream, I believe in this case the mainstream is unhinged from reality. Thus, on this point, so is Wikipedia. [1]
Given the dramatically different reproductive incentives for women (one egg per month for ~25 years, 9 months of pregnancy plus lactation, etc.) and men (millions of sperm per week and potentially no more than a few minutes' commitment), biologically determined cognitive and behavioral differences are obviously the null hypothesis. In other words, the burden of proof is on those who claim that women and men don't exhibit cognitive dimorphism. Does this strike you as the "mainstream" view? For example, there are many who claim (or, much more often, merely imply) that women and men must on average be equally well-suited to engineering. Are such people routinely called out by NPR and the New York Times to produce evidence to support their position? Um, no. So, we can see that the mainstream is in error: even if it turns that there is such evidence, the mainstream doesn't generally demand it. (Indeed, those who do demand it risk censure for their beliefs.)
A survey of different cultures around the world tends to confirm the null hypothesis: a belief that women and men have different natures is a human universal. [2] For a rigorous account of the positive case that women and men differ in their cognitive and behavioral characteristics, I can recommend The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker. [3] If you're short on time, see his TED talk for a quick overview. [4]
[1]: If creationism were mainstream, Wikipedia would claim a "controversy" over evolution. Indeed, many creationists make just such a claim. This doesn't make them right.
I'm not the one who started by pointing to Wikipedia. ;)
"the burden of proof is on those who claim that women and men don't exhibit cognitive dimorphism"
As for example Maccoby, Eleanor Emmons, and Carol Nagy Jacklin, eds. The psychology of sex differences. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press, 1974? And the additional analysis by Janet Hyde in papers like "How large are cognitive gender differences? A meta-analysis using! w² and d.." American Psychologist 36.8 (1981): 892? (Plus more recent work. Those citations come from the full paper behind the link I posted previously, which lists many more references.)
There's a century of work on this topic. Some say there are differences, others say there aren't any. The ones that say there are differences don't seem to be that reproducible. There's publication bias as well - someone finds a difference, but when the test is repeated the difference decreases or even disappears. This is expected for the reasons behind http://xkcd.com/882/ and elaborated in that 1974 reference as:
> We shall return now to the importance of the null hypothesis - to point with some alarm to the tendency for isolated positive findings to sweep through the literature, while findings of no difference, or even later findings of opposite results, are ignored. Studies with nonreplicable[sic] positive findings are reprinted in books of readings, cited in textbooks, and used to buttress theories about the nature of the development of sex typing.
along with a quote about their hypothesis for why beliefs about cognitive sex persist:
> An ancient truth is worth stating here: if a generalization about a group of people is believed, whenever a member of that group behaves in the expected way the observer notes it and his belief is confirmed and strengthened; when a member of the group behaves in a way that is not consistent with the observer's expectations, the instance is likely to pass unnoticed, and the observer's generalized belief is protected from disconfirmation. We believe that this well-documented process occurs continually in relation to the expected and perceived behavior of males and females, and results in the perpetuation of myths that would otherwise die out under the impact of negative evidence.
Or there's papers like Feingold, Alan. "Cognitive gender differences are disappearing." American Psychologist 43.2 (1988): 95. If cognitive gender differences are innate, and easily measurable, then there wouldn't be a change over time. That there's a decrease says they are either not innate or not easily measurable.
You wrote: "So, we can see that the mainstream is in error: even if it turns that there is such evidence, the mainstream doesn't generally demand it. (Indeed, those who do demand it risk censure for their beliefs.)"
Are you kidding me? There's a bajillion people who say there's evidence for cognitive sex differences. Here's one citation:
> '"Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different," said David Geary, MU professor of psychological science. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. ..."' Quote from http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2013/0313-internati... . Author's home page http://psychology.missouri.edu/gearyd .
How has this person been censured?
The paper is freely available. It points out that there are measured sex differences, and in hypothesis #3 that it might be "biological in origin, see pp.291–294, pp.411–412 of [10]", but "At this point, we have no definite answer to what can explain the correlation, which means that it requires further study."
And that's the issue - there is evidence of differences, but there isn't strong or significant evidence that those differences are biological in nature. But it's very easy to see the difference and assume it must be biological.
I see that you reference popular science books and lectures as basis for your decisions. Moreover, all of those resources came from a single person. That is not rigorous. Pinker could be misinterpreting the data and you wouldn't know.
Where is the primary data? How are the experiments done? What confounding effects might be in the data? How reproducible is it? Can you point me to some of the peer reviewed literature?
I looked at the 'human universals' link. It immediately made me distrustful, since the first one is "environment, adjustments to". All life adjusts to the environment, so this isn't particularly special for humans. It's like saying that eating and defecating are human universals; while true, I note they aren't on the list.
But there's easily things in there which are not universal. My cousin doesn't prefer sweets. There are people who feel no pain (congenital analgesia). Those without thumbs/hands/arms have no thumb sucking. Yet those people are obviously human. More likely, these "universals" are not actually universal, no?
Or take "males dominate public/political realm"? How universal can that be given that Andorra and Rwanda have respectively 50% and 56% female parliamentarians? If there ever is a country with a majority of female politicians across all levels, would this mean Pinker's universals hypothesis is completely false? Or would the list be adjusted to fit whatever is the current conditions?
I appreciate your detailed response. As you might guess, I find many points of disagreement, but rather than belabor the matter with an enumeration of such points, let me just note that my comment wasn't a dissertation, so accusations of a lack of rigor are misplaced. In particular, my purpose in citing Pinker was to point you to an accessible introduction to the subject, not to do a comprehensive literature review. Moreover, what you dismiss as a "popular science book" has hundreds of footnotes to refereed publications. Take a look at it—you might be surprised at what you find.
As you yourself have implied, creationist books also have 'hundreds of footnotes to refereed publications.' ;)
I have a hard time trusting Pinker's views, or most of the work of evolutionary psychology. They in general do not seem to understand evolution. That is, they seem to think that everything is an adaptive result of specific evolution, and don't consider the idea that some mechanisms are neutral with respect to selection. I also believe they have make conclusions based on insufficient evidence.
My own experiments with genetic algorithms show just how much crap there can be, which has nothing to do with evolutionary fitness. But I at best dabble in evolutionary biology (my own work is related to small-molecule chemistry, and my training is in structural biophysics, so only tangentially related to evolution).
"Take a look at [them]—you might be surprised at what you find." ;)
Quoting from the latter:
> Have I ever said that we shouldn’t study gender or racial differences? No. We know there are going to be differences. The catch is that they have to be studied very, very well, with rigor and careful analysis, because they are socially loaded and because science has a deeply deplorable history of using poor methods to reach bad conclusions that are used as ideological props for the status quo.
The first of those links has 654 comments, with all sorts of viewpoints ... and a number of references, like from #516:
> In this paper, we use meta-analysis to analyze gender differences in recent studies of mathematics performance. First, we meta-analyzed data from 242 studies published between 1990 and 2007, representing the testing of 1,286,350 people. Overall, d = .05, indicating no gender difference, and VR = 1.08, indicating nearly equal male and female variances. Second, we analyzed data from large data sets based on probability sampling of U.S. adolescents over the past 20 years: the NLSY, NELS88, LSAY, and NAEP. Effect sizes for the gender difference ranged between −0.15 and +0.22. Variance ratios ranged from 0.88 to 1.34. Taken together these findings support the view that males and females perform similarly in mathematics.
> These stereotypes are of concern for several reasons. First, in the language of cognitive social learning theory, stereotypes can influence competency beliefs or self-efficacy; correlational research does indeed show that parents' and teachers' stereotypes about gender and mathematics predict children's perceptions of their own abilities, even with actual mathematics performance controlled (Bouchey & Harter, 2005; Frome & Eccles, 1998; Keller, 2001; Tiedemann, 2000). ... A second concern is that stereotypes can have a deleterious effect on actual performance. Stereotype threat effects (Steele, 1997; Steele & Aronson, 1995) have been found for women in mathematics. ... Stereotypes play a role in policy decisions as well as personal decision-making. For example, schools and states may base decisions to offer single-sex mathematics classes on the belief that these gender differences exist (Arms, 2007).
Note that these two confounding cultural effects are not genetic, and seemingly much stronger than any biologically-based difference which might exist.
Presumably many hackers eventually get married and, being generally left-leaning, practice an egalitarian marriage as described in the article. So, relevant? Maybe.
> woman in her early 40s said that it wasn’t until she came across some porn scenes her husband had viewed online that she felt comfortable telling him about her fantasies, which happened to be very similar to what she found. She thought he’d be thrilled, but although he enacted the scenes with her, she was surprised by his lack of enthusiasm.
I'm sorry. There is most likely a much simpler explanation for this, and it has nothing to do with manly chores. The fact that the esteemed author fails to even mention it undermines everything else.
> Specifically, if men did all of what the researchers characterized as feminine chores like folding laundry, cooking or vacuuming — the kinds of things many women say they want their husbands to do — then couples had sex 1.5 fewer times per month than those with husbands who did what were considered masculine chores, like taking out the trash or fixing the car.
1.5 times fewer per month... is that statistically significant?
The real purpose of that article is to establish that "number of household chores shared" is a meaningful measure of equality in a marriage. The sex bit is just the transmission vector for the feminist meme.
The concept of "gender" as social/cultural difference between the two sexes is being killed off by society. It's been happening slowly but steadily for the past century, and it will continue until the concept of "gender" is societally offensive.
Tumblr isnt real life. Its more likely people will stop being offended by things once they realize it's the weakest form of argument and serves no purpose other than to be used as an argumentative social trump card and non-sequitor: to reduce credibility from one person and move authority to another.
Science Daily writeup: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082258.ht...
Slate: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/03/28/guys_who_do_...
Write from U of Washington where the research was done here: http://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/29/more-sex-for-marri...
Married men and women who divide household chores in traditional ways report having more sex than couples who share so-called men’s and women’s work, according to a new study co-authored by sociologists at the University of Washington.
Other studies have found that husbands got more sex if they did more housework, implying that sex was in exchange for housework. But those studies did not factor in what types of chores the husbands were doing.
The new study, published in the February issue of the journal American Sociological Review, shows that sex isn’t a bargaining chip. Instead, sex is linked to what types of chores each spouse completes.
Couples who follow traditional gender roles around the house – wives doing the cooking, cleaning and shopping; men doing yard work, paying bills and auto maintenance – reported greater sexual frequency.
“The results show that gender still organizes quite a bit of everyday life in marriage,” said co-author Julie Brines, a UW associate professor of sociology. “In particular, it seems that the gender identities husbands and wives express through the chores they do also help structure sexual behavior.”