The Changing Rules of Sex

1956. The chronological bulls-eye in an era of stodgy conservatism. Dean Martin was still a hot item, although not as hot as Elvis who had just shimmied onto the stage, shocking the older generation out of their diligently starched corsets with his wildly elastic legs and blatantly seductive stage presence. Rock Hudson was still makin’ the ladies swoon, but not so swoonily as they swooned for James Dean who brought the petulant male anti-hero home in ‘Rebel without a Cause’. Change was a-brewing. The well ironed zeitgeist had hit an ideological midlife crisis and was shopping for a second hand Porche. It was the year that Grace Kelly married her prince, that Autherin Lucy faced a hostile mob trying to prevent her from attending the University of Alabama as their first ever black student and that Science Magazine published an article informing readers of the possibility of a new hormonal oral contraceptive pill; one that would work. 

In 1957 ‘Evonid’ was approved by the FDA for the treatment of menstrual disorders, and made available on prescription packaged in uncharismatic bottles with a bright red warning: “will prevent ovulation”. Perhaps ‘warning’ was not quite the term they were looking for. The next two years saw a suspiciously sudden rise in menstrual disorders reported in every doctor’s office in every small town in America. By 1960, pretenses had been dropped and Enovid was being sold unabashedly, as an oral contraceptive. The sexual revolution had started.

‘Sexual revolution’ is, of course,  really just a stuffy feminist academic’s euphemism for hundreds and thousands of women thinking “Yaay risk free sex” and hurtling joyously into this newly opened carnival with bouncing abandon. A quick look at women in the spotlight over the last six decades exposes the memes through which women’s idea of their own sexuality have developed.  The 1950’s gave us the peachy and professedly naïve Marilyn Monroe, lifting her skirts coyly to give her public a peek of her milky thighs. The magazines of the 1960’s gave us page after page of lean, expressionless girls showing mile after tiresome mile of leg. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the zeitgeist settled down for a nice cup of tea and got comfortable with the female sexual status such as it had become. The 1986 sex thriller ‘9 ½ Half Weeks’ starringMickey Rourke and Kim Basinger portrayed it’s lead female character as being in control of herself and sexually active, but still completely overcome by her domineering mate so long as she was a willing participant.

In the 1990’s a new female archetype exploded into being. She was a woman with no desire to settle down and a rampant sex drive; a self-determined tramp, domineering and permissibly perverse. She was expressed by Sharon Stone as the psycho-killer female sex maniac in ‘Basic Instinct’, Madonna as she lived the dream dancing around on stage in her underwear with symbolically penis-esque breasts jutting bizarrely from her chest and has reached its peak with Lady Gaga repeatedly portraying herself as a man-poisoning femme fatale. The new woman is sexually aggressive and emotionally unavailable; a man dressed in suspenders and heels.

In the system of spoken and unspoken rules by which we poke, shag, fondle and hump, female chastity has long been considered a desirable trait. This was a view largely prescribed by the famous book ‘How to live slowly and die old for Dummies’ (otherwise known as The Bible).

When asked “Why are religions so concerned with sex?” by bigthink.com, Lionel Tiger, professor of anthropology at Rutgers University said: “Men and women have different reproductive strategies because the costs of sex (unprotected sex) for females are infinitely different than for males, so there always has to be, in any community, the basic mammalian contract, which is, somebody has to take care of the mother child bond. Chastity is usually respected only to the point of marriage, and with marriage suddenly it all changes. You’re supposed to be chaste and then at marriage suddenly you have sexual obligations. So the system is very aware of the relationship between sexual license and responsibility”

Naturally the oral contraceptive pill can be expected to have changed all that. After centuries of oppression, women seem happy to adopt an increasingly masculine sexual agenda and moreover, are being expected by men to do so. In a sense, without the risk of pregnancy to create balance, the male sexual agenda (plant as many oats as possible) can realize a completely uninhibited (though impotent) expression of itself. The female sexual agenda on the other hand (yes, I’m talking about being swept off your feet by a strong capable man with manicured fingernails) seems to have been locked in the trunk of that 1956 Buick.

In her books, ‘The male brain’ and ‘The Female Brain’, Dr Louise Brizendine, neuro-psychiatrist at the University of California outlines the differences between men and women. She reveals that “men have two and a half times the brain space devoted to sexual drive in their hypothalamus” while women have larger parts of their brains devoted to centers for communication, observation, processing of emotion and emotional memory.

According to Dr Brizendine, the structure of our brain has a profound effect over our values, priorities, perceptions and behaviour. “Baby girls are born interested in emotional expression. They take meaning about themselves from a look, a touch, every reaction from the people they come into contact with. From these cues they discover whether they are worthy, lovable, or annoying. But take away the signposts that an expressive face provides and you've taken away the female brain's main touchstone for reality.”

These needs, processes and reactions happen below the level of our conscious thought.

“Ho Hum” I hear you say, “we’ve known this all along… relationship and nurturing is more important to women and sex is more important to men blah blah… what’s new?”

Here’s what’s new: Considering that the sexual revolution was ostensibly about women coming to terms with their sexuality, they are suddenly doing the most extraordinary things to themselves in the name of sexual liberation. Things that offer no enhancement to the biologically built-in female sexual agenda. Things that in fact, betray a disquietingly strong presence of the female ‘need to please’ in view of the fact that they seem to cater primarily to male pleasure enhancement.

In typical “do whatever pleases your man” style, women are having Brazilian waxes to look like a porn stars (no one’s idea of an afternoon picnic) becoming more willing to experiment with anal sex, which, according to AskMen.com is a perfectly reasonable request since it “only really hurts like a bitch the first three or so times” (Eh?) having labia reduction surgery (excuse me?) and being more willing to engage in increasingly frequent casual sex (not exactly in line with the female emotional agenda) to name a few. For the first time in history women are experiencing sexual performance anxiety (the inability to achieve orgasm after 30 thrusts) and feeling anxious enough to have their G-spots enhanced with Hyaluronic acid (so that it sticks out so much you don't have to look for it). These expressions of ‘female sexuality’ don’t come any where near the natural feminine desire to find a loving, caring mate who is sensitive to your needs not to mention being largely defunct of things that are naturally valuable to us; communication, nurturing and emotional bonding. 

The ancient contracts of sex are clearly no longer being honoured.

There is also a growing, subtle assessment of women who want to be in love with their lover and establish long term meaningful relationships as clingy and naïve. By extension, single motherhood is on the rise. The ‘Tinbergen Institute discussion paper on Marriage Markets and Single Motherhood in South Africa’ reveals a whopping 46% of women between the ages of twenty and forty have at least one child out of wedlock and are bringing up their children with no access to the father’s resources. Census figures from Britain show that the proportion of single parents has more than doubled since 1986.

While certainly a lot of women are comfortable in this new sexual territory, many of us can’t help but cringe a little and the saner among us have to be asking themselves “why in the seven hells would I want to cut my labia off?”  

Wherever you are on the proverbial fence, there is a distinct possibility that women have taken their “man pleasing” exercise to a ridiculous level. It might be time to sit back and ask ourselves whether this behaviour is really an expression of our sexual self-worth and independence or whether we have conned ourselves into a new echelon of self-imposed sexual compliance (mistaken for self-determination) causing us to engage in behaviour which essentially denies our needs under the guise of feminine equality.