Sunday, June 07, 2015

More sexist bullshit from Evan Marc Katz

"Men and women are different" is one of the favorite statements of people who want to bolster the patriarchy. Because the difference is always used as an excuse for why men get privileges denied to women.

Men, since the beginning of time, were designed to spread their seed.
Because monogamy lowers the chances that our genes will survive, men are not, by nature, monogamous creatures. We choose monogamy because we deem that it’s more beneficial to have love, stability, and a nuclear family than to have lots of children running around with our eyes. But make no mistake, monogamy is a choice, not a natural state.
Evolutionary psychology is used to promote lies about the essential natures of men and women, or as Katz demonstrates:
This is just a long, roundabout way of saying that, in general, men want variety.
I recall a study that said the exact same thing.
Men would be perfectly content having missionary sex with a new woman every night.
Women would be perfectly content with the same man forever, as long as he mixed it up in the bedroom a bit.
Katz is so personally invested in this narrative that when a more recent study comes along indicating that in fact WOMEN are bored more quickly than men by monogamy Katz attacks Amanda Marcotte for mentioning it.
Marcotte harps on studies that show that women respond to novelty in porn (duh) and fantasize about sex with strangers (double duh). All that proves is that, yes, women can get bored with routine sex as well. I don’t think there’s any right-minded person who ever thought otherwise. What this doesn’t prove, however, is that women are MORE driven by sex than men. While it’s useful to recognize that women and men are similar in many ways, I think it’s shortsighted to suggest that we are the SAME, as if gender was simply a societal construct and not somewhat tied to biology. 
Are there some women who want to sleep with hundreds of men? Sure. But there are more men who want to sleep around. 
Are there some women who can separate love and sex and have no emotional attachment after physical contact? You bet. But there are more men who do.
Are there more women who give up on sex within a marriage? Apparently. But that might just mean that she’s married to a jerk for 20 years and can’t summon any more amorous feelings for him. It doesn’t mean that she’s more likely to cheat or that she values sexual variety as much as he does.
 
So, to me (and my confirmation bias), this study is much ado about nothing, in that it’s verifying something we already know. The reason that Marcotte is jumping on it is because it confirms what she wants to believe (women and men have the same take on sex), not because it represents a true shift.
Katz can't be bothered to analyze the competing studies and explain why his favorite study is true and this more recent study is wrong - mainly because he lacks the intellectual ability, he's titanically lazy, and he prefers to pull things directly out of his ass. So his response is basically: oh yeah, well this other study says MEN like variety more than women so nyah nyah nyah!

Now I've had my issues with Marcotte in the past, but I have to laugh at Katz, who claims to be a liberal, attacking Marcotte. As Roy Adroso in his Alicublog noted recently:
Anyway, a lot of prominent liberals (including Amanda Marcotte, conservatives' favorite feminist voodoo doll)...
Marcotte is actually referencing an article in the NYTimes but Katz would rather attack her than Daniel Bergner, the author of the Times article.

Katz promotes the idea that marriage and monogamy were invented by women, and forced on men by women. This in spite of the fact that all societies up to the present time are completely dominated by men. The outright illogic - and self-serving - of such a belief system is absolutely breath-taking. Women are so not naturally monogamous that monogamy is enforced on women often on pain of death. And in a way that is not forced on men.

If women were so congenitally monogamous we'd hardly need to be threatened into it.

In his recent blog post Katz says:
Yes, this is a blog about dating and relationships, but I always find it interesting to share pieces about gender dynamics as well.
Good - then people will know exactly how sexist his attitudes are about gender dynamics.

I think my next entry in this Katz series might be "Evan Marc Katz thinks men are insensitive, shallow, entitled, cheating jerks - and he wants to help you find one for your very own."

More of my thoughts on Evan Marc Katz.