blog 10

This week’s readings about sex and emotion work were quite juicy. Not only were they fascinating on a human-interest level, but they also had important sociological implications.
Jean Duncombe’s “Whose Orgasm is this anyway?” discussed the sex work she thinks that many women perform in marriage. Since the modern sexual ideal is mutual orgasm, women feel like they have to work to enjoy their sex life, like it’s a duty to have fun. They may not really be fulfilled, since sex in marriage remains a male-dominated area. As the years go by and couples’ sex lives wane due to work/family obligations and resentment, husbands tend to want to bring in more and more exciting techniques to spice up their level of physical intimacy. But wives get sick of doing sex work to maintain what is supposed to be a mutually “satisfying” sex life, so resist their husbands’ advances.
This was a rather bleak, depressing take on sex in marriage. Granted, I am not married, but I hope that this is not what it’s like. While I understand her point that often women feel like they have to perform sex work, as dictated by gender roles, many men (nice guys at least) also perform sex work. While it is true that sex is often a venue for gender inequalities to show themselves, modern American men may have a different idea about sex than these older British men. I do understand her point, though, that the sexual ideals of the time (today’s is mutual orgasm) often put a lot of pressure on men and women, and may lead to a type of “inauthenticity” in intimate situations.
Duncombe’s “Emotion Work” article discusses women’s roles as nurturers to men. It takes a great deal of effort to constantly try to put men in touch with their feelings, make them feel good, and foster an emotional connection, she argues. Men also do emotion work, though it is generally work-related or done to prevent themselves from feeling emotions. The division of emotion work is dictated by gender-roles, and can lead to men and women being inauthentic. While men may just never acknowledge their full breadth of emotions, women often over-act their nurturance and end up burnt out.
The fact of the matter is, people grate on each other after years of being married to eachother. And, since women are often responsible for nurturing emotional ties in the family, the burden falls on them to keep things going. However, women get annoyed too, and emotion work can become increasingly laborious over time. Duncombe’s discussion of inauthenticity made me wonder if authenticity was ever truly feasible, especially in a marriage context. If we were all authentic (that is, being true to our impulses and feelings), we would all be pretty mean to each other on a regular basis. Also, people would probably not be monogamous. Therefore, marriage (and most other relationships) are build on some degree of inauthenticity. However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just a fact of life.
Elizabeth Bernstein went undercover to get a deeper sense of the accuracy of feminist theories on prostitution. Radical feminist critiques say prostitution objectifies and victimizes women, forcing them to sell not just their bodies, but their selves. This is certainly true of the crack-addicted prostitutes in San Francisco’s ghetto. Pro-sex feminists see the sex worker as a powerful, independent professional, as corresponds with the college-educated escorts she profiled. The street-walking prostitutes are somewhere in between, subjugated to pimps and police but able to exercise some control over their clientele. She emphasizes that prostitution must be dealt with differently depending on its context.
In “Sex Work for the Middle Class,” Bernstein looks deeper into the phenomenon of college-educated, middle-class prostitutes. She uses Pierre Bordieu’s analysis of taste to describe these women’s business tactics. These women are attracted by the promise of easy money and often subscribe to an “ethic of fun,” which sees pleasure as a duty. They try to professionalize the work and often bring in techniques from their previous, legitimate jobs. They try to simulate authenticity with their clients, while not ignoring the fact that it’s an economic transaction.
These themes of authenticity and pleasure as duty arose once again in Bernstein’s articles. These ideas must be deeply linked to how we view sex in this society. Also, the fact that these prostitutes tried to professionalize their job showed how, even though they were trying to be rebellious, they still had the value systems of their middle-class upbringings engrained in their heads. The street-walking prostitutes also brought the values of their class situations to their work: they did what they had to do, answered to who they had to answer to, but still tried to retain some degree of choice and dignity. The crack-addicted prostitutes had the desperation of the truly impoverished.