‘Stepford wives’ and ‘hollow men’?
By Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden
In “‘Stepford wives’ and ‘hollow men’?” Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden address the different kinds of emotion work men and women do in marital and couple relationships, exploring the question of how this work effects the authenticity of an individual. The authors begin by quoting Hochschild definition of emotional work as “emotional effort made by individuals—both men and women—to ‘manage’ their feelings to bring them into line with the societal ‘feeling rules’ which prescribe how they ‘ought’ to feel in particular social situations.” (212) They then address how various sociologists have described the emotion work of each gender.
It is said that women work to tray to make men open up emotionally and that they are expected to nurture men and take care of their emotional needs. They do so by perfeoming physical displays of happiness and intimacy such as smiling, laughing, hugging, kissing, and even faking orgasms. Further, they seem to magnify their husbands importance and minimize their failures in order to build up their husbands image. They also tend to take complete responsibility for maintaining relations with a wider network of kin and relationships. Men, on the other hand, seem to direct their emotion work towards coping with the stresses of “being a breadwinner and in order to conform to their own ideology of masculinity.
Duncombe and Marsden present Hochschild theory regarding the danger of behaving ‘inauthentically’ while doing emotion work. They term her belief that there results an over-identification with the required role, “‘self-loss’ as a result of ‘deep acting’”(216). The other result that Hochschild believes can arise is a becoming estranged and cynical, which the authors call “‘self-withdrawal’ and a refusal to do any acting at all”(216). Next, the authors refer to the psychodynamic theory, which questions the validity of the concept of ‘authenticity’ that implies a certain ‘real’ feelings that arise from a ‘real’ self. This theory asks whether the ‘self’ that develops from childhood and adolescent experiences is particularly authentic. However, the authors do not believe that this theory provides a reliable structure of authentic feeling and behavior. The, therefore, regard it as “elaborate metaphor which usefully stress that gender-stereotyped emotional differences may be ‘deeply rooted’ in childhood and adolescence, so that it is difficult for individuals to recognize consciously what they are doing and to change their behaviour by rational reflection.” (217)
The authors then refer to various attempts sociologists have made to combine the psychodynamic models and “new sociological theories of the cultural and historical variability of gender and personality,” in order to avoid gender stereotyping. To begin with, there is the idea that the ease with which an individual is able to assume gender ideology depends on “how well it fits to the ‘self’ and ‘identity’ that have developed through the processes of socialization, development and attachment during early childhood and adolescence.” (218) Next, there is the belief that gender is not static, rather an ongoing development that changes according to how certain actions and rationales conform to particular gender identity. They call this latter theory “doing gender.” According to “doing gender,” emotion work involves performing emotional skills and abilities to do emotion work in a way that conforms to the respective gender ideology. The authors say that feelings of inauthentic behavior may arise from the inability to unite the “feeling rules of the gender ideology” with the “core self” or “core identity
In their own research, Duncombe and Marsden found that when men encountered problems in their marriage, they became aware of the pressures to change their emotional behavior. While many of the men they interviewed found that shallow emotion work helped their relationships with their wives, most of these men few felt inauthentic in doing this work. Many women the authors interviewed had come to resent “what they had come to perceive as the unfairness and inequality of relationships where they did all the emotion work and seemed to get no direct emotional benefits in return.” (222) Other women said that they had felt authentic about doing emotion work in the beginning, but more and more felt withdrawn from it.
I found this reading to be an almost philosophical account of the human person. I found Hochschild’s account of authenticity to be very simplistic and general. I do not believe that one can define “authenticity” universally. Rather, I think authenticity is particular to each individual. For this reason, I appreciated Duncombe and Marsden concluding remarks that in “lacking any independent guide to truly ‘authentic emotional behaviour—we have to accept that some individuals may derive their sense of authenticity from ‘core selves’ and ‘core identities’ which various other commentators might want to criticize as deeply inauthentic.” (225)
Whose Orgasm is this Anyway?
By Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden
In “Whose Orgasm is this Anyway?” Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden. explore how heterosexual couples in long-term relationships deal with the disparity between media heightened sexual expectations and their actual sex lives. They address the concept of “sex work” in a similar way to how they addressed “emotion work. They begin by presenting the argument of some feminists that marital sex is a form of aliented work. While the authors approve of this perspective in so far is it successfully addresses address “the hierarchical and exploitive institutionalisation of the ‘male/female’ relationship,” they criticize it for often ignoring “the relevance of individual subjective experience of sex.”
Before presenting their own empirical findings, Duncombe and Marsden present that of others. They begin by discussing Rubin’s large US survey and Mansfield and Collard’s study of 60 UK newly-weds, both of whiched found that while people tended to use media ideals as a measure of the state of their relationship and emotions, there is an inconsistency between that ideal and couples’ actual behavior. Mansfield and Collard found that women in marriage encountered greater difficulty in refusing sex out of fear causing their husbands to feel rejected. At the same time, husbands were less likely to express the emotional intimacy women required in order to experience fulfilling sex. It seems that in the long-term, sexual activity tends to decline among married couples.
Next Duncombe and Marsden use their own research to study the change in longer-term relationships. According to much of the respondents, it seems that many couples are unable to recapture earlier passion and romance, but they do not know why. Many women confessed that the had always, at some level, found their sexual relationships unfulfilling. While in the beginning, many of these women blamed themselves, later in the relationship they often began to identify the problems as the fault of their husbands. Men, on the other hand, who realized early problems usually blamed them on what they believed to be their wives’ low sex-drive. The authors partly attribute the decline in sexual activity among married couples to the disruptions of work, childbirth, and family.
Next, Duncombe and Marsden discuss the use of pornography among long-term couples. They found that in most cases this use was intiated by men. Many women accepted it in the early stages of their relationship, but later on many of these women rejected it as they felt a loss of intimacy or they felt less capable of allowing themselves to be sexually aroused. Other ways couples attempted to improve their sexual activity was through experimentation. Some men urged their wives to give them oral sex. Some women flat out refused while others fulfilled their husbands’ request and some women even experienced a sense of power in doing so. Many of these husbands turned to more frequent masturbation in order to avoid coercing their wives and thus a sense of guilt. Women also turned to masturbation, but usually preferred to do so alone out of shyness and fear that their husbands would be insulted. Rather than continuing to practice unfulfilling sex, some couples negotiated arranged period of celibacy, but their was usually resentment that followed this negotiation as it was most often initiated by one person. However, Duncombe and Marsden point out that “in all these instances where couples had come to some kind of negotiated stand-off arrangements about sex, there was the ever-present danger that the marriage would be destabilized by one partmer becoming involved in a passion that would highlight the inadequacies of the marriage.” (233)
I do not know what to think after reading this. I don’t know if there is such thing as “authentic” sex. The optimist in me does believe in a romantic and passionate ideal of spontaneous sex. But then even if this does exist for how long can it exist with the same partner? Duncombe and Marsden conclude with similar uncertainties; while this makes me value and respect their article more, it also leaves me a bit disappointed.
Sex Work for the Middle Classes
By Elizabeth Bernstein
In “Sex Work for the Middle Classes,” Elizabeth Bernstein examines the phenomenon of the growing number of middle-class women participating in sex work. She begins by addressing the economic considerations of such work, which she asserts are still significant today in middle-class sex workers’ erotic and professional decision-making. This is true because of gendered inequality within the high technology sector, well-paid, part-time work was difficult for many women to find even during the zenith of the internet economy. The relatively high pay of the sex industry as compared to other service sector jobs was enough to attract some women from middle-class backgrounds. While this basic economic account is valid, Bernstein says that there are nonmaterial reasons too based on acknowledging the middle class as petit bourgeoisie who “seeks its occupational and personal salvation (and thus its sense of distinction) via an ethic of ‘fun.’”(477) Bernstein, therefore, argues that we cannot only study the middle-class sex workers’ pursuit of an ethic of sexual experimentation and freedom in ideological terms, but we must also study it as a means to obtaining class distinction.
In her research, Bernstein found that the goal of most middle-class sex workers is eventually obtain professional autonomy. She found that women working with third-party management tended to remove themselves from situations that promoted a purely instrumentalist relationship to the labor. The internet, in reconfiguring the structure of sexual commerce, has benefited many middle-class sex workers, assisting them in realizing their goals. To begin with, the internet has broadened their clientele. It has also made it ever more possible for women able to combine technical expertise with sex work to operate without third-party assistance.
Bernstein says that this new paradigm of middle-class sex work that has evolved in this modern, technological age, involves, within the commercial context, a greater amount of emotional and physical labor of what is bought and sold. Within this context, an important emotional boundary for both the worker and the client is established through successful commercial transactions. This boundary, however, is one that can be lessened in order to establish the clients’ desired authentic interpersonal connection. Additionally, it is important to many sex workers that their labor be meaningful to themselves, not just to their clients.
I thought it was very interesting how Bernstein discussed the emotions and authenticity of sex work. I wondered if this is the same sort of passions that arise in other, non-sex related jobs. Though her article did seem to be very biased towards middle-class sex work. All the women she interviewed were ones whom were in favor of and having positive experiences with sex work. I believe that Bernstein successfully painted a economic and professional picture of sex work, which I cannot decide is good or bad.
By Elizabeth Bernstein
In “Whats Wrong with Prostitution?” Elizabeth Bernstein attempts to construct an adequate theory of prostitution, which accounts for culture, context, history, race, and class. She bases her own input on eighteen months of fieldwork and interviews she did among San Francisco Prostitutes. She reviews recent feminist literature, classifying them into three main categories: (1) radical feminist critique; (2) pro-sex feminist defenses of prostitution; and (3) contextualized feminist approaches to various aspects of the sex-work industry.
In the radical feminist critique, prostitution is usually deeply criticized. This critique says that the sexual objectification of women within this occupation makes it uncomporable with other, traditional wage labor. Furthermore, women gain now empowerment from sex work. Rather they become subordinate objects to men, paying for the service, who gain power in such transactions. However, pro-sex feminist argue that women, in fact, gain power through sex work since it allows them to freely express their sexuality and in doing this work, they deny traditional gender expecations. Contextualized feminist approaches focus on prostitution as a last resort, pursued by women who are left with no other option.
Next Bernstein addresses the different classes of women sex workers, which establishes a hierarchical structure in this sphere. She explains that class, which is determined according to race and appearance, assigns the type of work a sex worker finds, who a sex worker work for, and how much she gets paid. High-class sex workers are unique in that they get paid more than they would in any other profession they could pursue. These women generally encounter little legal trouble for work and express greater feelings of security than sex workers of other classes. The lower the class a sex worker belongs to, the more dangerous becomes her job as the worse the area in which they work become and the lower the pay becomes. Low-class sex workers are more likely to be as young as teenagers.
Bernstein spends sometime focusing on COYOTE, which stands for Call Off Your Tired Ethics. Founded in San Francisco, COYOTE is a national prostitutes’ rights organization which works towards legitimizing the profession of sex work. The group consists does not claim to represent streetwalkers and in fact disregard it as appropriate. The group is more made up of college graduates or highly educated women who willfully chose this occupation and lifestyle. Those involved in the group deny the term “prostitution,” replacing it with “sex work,” as they maintain that the former term carries negative connotations, with which they are trying to do away
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