Just a small program note: We're going to launch a premium tier of Confidence and Joy this week. Free subscribers will still get explainers like this one, but some of the Q&As and such will be for premium folks. I'll have more information shortly!
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This Wednesday, I want to talk about a delightful and academically hilarious theory paper called, The Heteronormativity Theory of Low Sexual Desire in Women Partnered with Men, authored by a dream team of women sex researchers: Sari M. van Anders, Debby Herbenick, Lori A. Brotto, Emily A. Harris & Sara B. Chadwick.
This paper is in the genre that I (following Douglas Adams) call “from the MaxiMegalon Institute of Slowly and Painfully Working Out the Surprisingly Obvious.” It’s the kind of work that makes me love science even more and also remember why I am an educator first, and a researcher only secondarily or tertiarily.
The authors provide an extensive literature review, ultimately theorizing that women’s “low desire” in straight relationships emerges in response to 4 factors: “inequitable divisions of household labor, blurring of partner and mother roles, objectification of women, and gender norms surrounding sexual initiation.”
To clarify, those four things are:
Inequitable divisions of household labor. This is the phenomenon of the “second shift,” where women are expected to do more household work in addition to their outside career.
Blurring of partner and mother roles.
Objectification of women.
Gender norms surrounding sexual initiation.
I know right???
Yeah. Slowly and painfully working out the surprisingly obvious.
It reminds me of a time in 6th grade when the kid sitting next to me kept shouting out the right answer, so eventually I raised my hand, got called on, and said what this kid was saying.
“How did you know?” my teacher asked, knowing exactly where I got the answer.
“It was a totally random guess,” I said with all the facetiousness a 12 year old can muster.
Sometimes, the Powers That Be just need you to say the answer in a way they’re willing to recognize. In my 6th grade class, the PTBs (my teacher) would only hear the correct answer from someone who had raised their hand and whom he then called on. In the case of the Heteronormativity Theory, the PTBs (people who do research on low desire in women in straight relationships) will only hear the correct answer from a peer-reviewed article in an elite academic journal, complete with literature review encompassing everything from the history of theories of women’s low desire to the physiological mechanisms underpinning the impact of heteronormativity on women’s desire, including 328 citations.
That's not me, but this kid knows where it's at
When I was a kid, that kid sitting next to me who knew the answer, just kept saying it out loud, saying it over and over again, and getting more and more frustrated that no one would acknowledge the right answer. I raised my hand to help the kid out—I knew what you had to do in order to get heard, this kid knew the right answer, together we got heard.
I feel like a lot of straight women have known this answer for basically ever. Thank goodness for van Anders et al for raising their hand and putting the right answer in a format the PTBs can hear.
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
Stay safe and see you next time!
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EMILY NAGOSKI is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling Come As You Are and The Come As You Are Workbook, and coauthor, with her sister, Amelia, of New York Times bestseller Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She earned an M.S. in counseling and a Ph.D. in health behavior, both from Indiana University, with clinical and research training at the Kinsey Institute. Now she combines sex education and stress education to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. She lives in Massachusetts with two dogs, a cat, and a cartoonist.
