Sex and Housework Study: But Femdom!

...how is it that deep cleaning the kitchen, waiting on Xena hand 
and foot, then providing a massage, all while wearing a neutering 
chastity device, makes her receptive to oral service? 

So there's this sex and housework study and it shows that for husbands, not sharing chores is bad for your relationship, but doing "unmanly" things about the house is bad for your joint sex life.

The plausible explanations are differentiation (we don't fancy people like ourselves), gender scripts (women fancy manly men doing man stuff), and conflict (couples argue over shared chores.

Even so, Femdom, including Female Led Relationships, seems to lead to more rather than less sexual activity. How come?

Is it just that BDSM couples have more sex anyway? Either because they have a higher sex drive, or making a hobby out of it keeps it fresh?

Could be.

However, any sort of Domination and Submission tackles the differentiation issue since it divides the couple into clearly defined roles. If the D&S stretches to Domestic Service, then it also resolves--at least temporarily--the conflict issue since the dom gets the work done to his or her standards.

It's on the issue of gender scripts that Maledom and Femdom part company. Maledom, obviously, wallows in a very old gender script, which perhaps explains why it is so possible in vanillaized form in Romantic Fiction.

Femdom, especially the service-oriented flavor favored by vanilla dominatrices, utterly violates the gender scripts.

...could it be that FLR is as
natural as MLR?

For example, how is it that deep cleaning the kitchen, waiting on Xena hand and foot, then providing a massage, all while wearing a neutering chastity device, makes her receptive to oral service?

It's not kink. Like many of the wives of fellow Femdom bloggers, Xena isn't particularly kinky (though I suspect she enjoys beating me at times). For her, a fresh cup of tea is just a fresh cup of tea; there's no particular buzz being served by  a slave any more than by a waiter.

That leaves two interesting possibilities:

First, subs like me are really slipping in as masturbation aids. Our wives are receptive to us the way that they are to their vibrators or fingers.

Second--and this is one I am leaning towards--could it be that FLR is as natural as MLR?

Why not try one of my Femdom self help guides and find out?

So what does this housework and sex study mean for modern husbands

The more similar we are to our partners, the
less we fancy each other.

So I've had time to digest the housework and sex study. There are obviously issues with it; the data is old, and there are questions we'd like to ask. But, taking it on face value, what are the implications for the husband in a modern egalitarian - peer - couple?

The good news is; sharing the chores is good for the relationship! And if you don't share the chores, no sex, and probably no relationship (and quite right too).

However, sharing household chores is bad for your sex life. Since most couples have lives where "manly" chores are not required--no wood to chop, no roof to fix--this is an issue.

The implications depend on which explanation you believe:

Explanations for why doing household chores damages your sex life

Lack of Differentiation

One explanation is "The less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.”  The more similar we are to our partners, the less we fancy each other. Lack of differentiation is supposed to explain why monogamous gay couples often run into desire problems. OMG! Are we all Lesbians?

Gender Scripts

Do couples where the man a
successful main provider have more sex?

Another explanation in the original paper is that whether through nature or nurture, sex is inextricably entwined with the old gender roles.

This has disheartening broader implications. Do couples where the man a successful main provider have more sex?

More to argue about

she hated waking up to a messy
room, and it was his
turn to vacuum

This is something I've experienced with Xena. We each have views on each other's chores and whether we are individually pulling our weight. This quote from the New York Times article inadvertently illustrates this:

“I’m very attracted to you,” she said earnestly. “You know when I really crave you? It’s when you’re just back from the gym and you’re all sweaty and you take off your clothes to get in the shower and I see your muscles.”

Her husband countered by saying that this very situation had occurred that morning but that his wife became irritated when he tossed his clothes on the floor, which led to a conversation about his not vacuuming the day before, when she worked late. He had worked late, too, which accounted for the lack of vacuuming, but still — she hated waking up to a messy room, and it was his turn to vacuum.

Three things husbands can do to make things a bit better

People are often uncomfortable with approaching sex pragmatically, as if it's somehow cheating to think about how to get laid. I think, though, the following is of the same order as "have a shave" or "wear clean boxers".

The three (vanilla) possible domestic responses that come to mind are:

#1. Do man stuff when possible

Don't make a fuss about it, don't flag up you're doing it, but if there's a traditionally masculine task on your to-do list, do it soon and do it properly, especially if it's a task that requires skills and strength not possessed by your wife. This potentially nails both the gender scripts and the differentiation issues.

#2. Have different areas of responsibility

Where possible, share out the responsibilities such that you don't overlap. This could help with differentiation and more to argue about.

#3. Do chores to high standards (but don't make a fuss about it)

If you do your chores to a high standard, then your "unmanly" responsibilities will be less obvious. Better, for example, if you are up to date with the vacuuming, then the messy carpet won't distract your wife during a potential sexual encounter. This fixes all three issues, especially more to argue about.

However, if you make a fuss about your high standards, then you are probably making any gender scripts issue worse!

Or you could just introduce some Female Centered Femdom to your relationship!

Housework, Sex, Middle Aged Marriage and what the study actually says

Under Contract to My Wife asked; Do manly men get more action? He was responding to that New York Times article, Does a More Equal Marriage Mean Less Sex?

The article is about this paper that shows that in "peer marriages" where men and women share chores, they have less sex than in marriages where the men perform more manly roles.

Summary of Egalitarianism, Housework, and Sexual Frequency in Marriage by Sabino Kornrich, Julie Brines, and Katrina Leupp

The authors open by citing other studies:

• Couples who both work and share chores are less likely to divorce than traditional marriages.
• Where chores are shared, women's satisfaction goes up.
• Peer marriages lack passion, and this is not explained by lack of time.
• A small unpublished study links chore-sharing to sexual frequency.
• However, other studies show peer marriages have less sex.

This study - the authors say - will take a closer look at chores: roughly "womanly" housework versus "manly" other tasks.

Less sex?

They present two competing models: Either (A) men doing housework buys or facilitates sex, or (B) housework transgresses gender scripts.

In other words, if I do the dishes, either (A) my wife will have time and energy for sex, or reward me with it, instinctively or consciously or (B) though she may be feel satisfaction at our relationship, on some gut level she won't feel like a shag from a man who wears an apron.

The authors want to know, which is it?

Obviously the study shows it's B, but why?

They dispose of the idea that "manly" men demand sex more and wives refuse it less regardless of female desire, since these wives report marital satisfaction.

That leaves two possibilities: traditional domestic roles are a turn-on, or at lease foster a feeling of being sexual people, and; Traditional domestic roles increase marital satisfaction, and facilitate marital sex.

The authors cite more research on Sexual Constraints and Opportunities:

• Lack of marital satisfaction hampers marital sex (so men opting out of chores can be a disaster)
• Practicalities like children hamper married sex
• Lack of time when both partners are working has no effect on marital sex (if a couple want it, they'll find the time)
• Couplet time spent on housework correlates to more sex--either "work hard/play hard" or else increased satisfaction leading to increased sex. However this doesn't differentiate between flavors of chores.

Then they move onto the data.

They're actually using an old survey: Wave II of the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH) (Sweet and Bumpass 1996). (Yes, those really are the names of the authors!) They still think it applies, however--they'll get to this. They go onto explain all the clever things they did with the data to make sure it was useful and not full of errors.

At last we get to the results: Determinants of Sexual Frequency.

Some of what they found confirmed earlier studies: being healthy, wealthy, young and having time alone with your spouse means you'll have more sex. Duh!

Otherwise, the results confirm Option B: Peer marriages disrupt gender scripts, disrupt sex. Apart from Protestants and Religious Conservatives having more sex, nothing else seemed to make a difference, including religion, how macho and feminine the partner's jobs were, and the household politics--Feminists, it seems, still fancy firemen. 

Men doing chores does increases marital satisfaction, but it only increases sexual frequency if those chores are manly ones, and this holds good when the couple has a "modern" definition of gender roles.

Here's their graph:

Sexual Frequency is per month. If the man does all the core household chores, he has 1.6 fewer shags per month compared to his macho friends who do chores, but only the man stuff.
However, this is based on all the couples in the study. That number on the left may be substantially smaller for some couples. 

In the Conclusion, they summarize their findings, argue that they are still relevant despite the data being 20 years old, caution against applying the results to gay couples, and muse on workarounds: either couples must divide labor along gender lines, or women must be empowered or empower themselves to learn new scripts.

Why I think this matters

If anything, I suspect more modern data would paint a bleaker picture. Twenty years ago, people had peer marriages who positively wanted them. Now--quite rightly--it's the socially approved default. However, that means many more peer couples will have an underlying issue with equality.

I also wonder about the picture for middle aged people. When desire drops below a certain threshold, that doesn't mean proportionately less sex, it means no sex. Given that middle aged married couples report twice a month as typical, and that there are a lot of near sexless marriages - and judging from the Internet forums, I think these are under reported! - we need to take seriously anything that reduces desire by about 30%! 

So where does this leave Femdom and FLR couples?

I suspect Femdom and FLR couples have found their own workaround and embraced different gender scripts. However, I will have to think about this...

Why find your own workaround and introduce some Female Centered Femdom to your relationship?