Not Working in the Bedroom?

Bettina Arndt. The Sex Diaries. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 2009.

Reviewed by Kirsten McLean

 

Man’s best friend. Anti-feminist. Rape cheerleader. Bettina Arndt has been called them all since the release of her new book The Sex Diaries. Arndt admits she knew The Sex Diaries would be a controversial book, and while in many ways it is, it doesn’t really tell us anything new about men, women and their sexual relationships.

Arndt’s book is based on the ‘sex diaries’ of 98 Australian heterosexual couples of varying ages, although some partners didn’t write for Arndt or, indeed, know their other half was diarising their sex lives. Arndt encouraged her diarists to write as little or as much as they wanted about their negotiations of sexual intimacy over a period of six to nine months. The main theme emerging from these diaries was the enormous difficulties many of the couples experienced in negotiating what Arndt calls “the sex supply”. In most cases it was the men, unsurprisingly, who wanted far more sex than their female partners. Most of the men expressed enormous frustration at this situation, whilst most of the women expressed similar amounts of frustration about the expectations of sex from their male partners.

This finding, of course, is nothing new – for years, popular psychology and self-help books have been offering a multitude of solutions to overcome the apparent discrepancies in sexual desire between men and women in contemporary heterosexual relationships (see for instance, John Gray’s Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, 1997). Arndt’s book, however, adds little to these debates. The reason for this is partly Arndt’s overreliance on common biological understandings of the sexes for the crux of her discussion. According to Arndt (and many others before her), women’s low libido is biological and results in women going off sex after some time in a relationship. Men, on the other hand, have a high libido because of high levels of testosterone and, as a result, rarely experience the same decline in libido. The problem, however, is that Arndt uses these biological explanations to support her claim that it is men who suffer the most in not having their sexual needs met: women, it seems, are the sexually powerful gender in being able to reject men’s sexual advances and in refusing to have sex, or only agreeing to sex sporadically, are leaving countless men suffering from a lack of intimacy in their relationships.

The book is then a call to women: in her most contentious argument, Arndt says that women, despite their low libidos and lack of sexual desire, should “just do it”. Arndt adds a disclaimer to this call – she does not advocate non-consensual sex – but her argument implies that it is women who should learn to accommodate men’s higher sexual needs. (Even John Gray balanced his proposal that women cater for men’s sexual needs and agree to ‘quickie’ sex by suggesting men needed to reciprocate with long, sensual sex sessions with lots of foreplay to satisfy their female partners.) Arndt claims that men, in going without the amount and kind of sex they so desperately desire, are already accommodating women’s low libidos, and now it is women’s turn. Arndt argues that the belief that women need to desire sex in order to have sex lets everyone down: instead, women should ‘just do it’ and they might find they actually want sex once it starts. She backs this up with comments from her female diarists who have ‘just done it’ despite a lack of sexual desire, and who have eventually found themselves enjoying sex with their mate. In spite of this, one gets the impression that it is only a few of her female diarists who report that the ‘just do it’ technique has revolutionised their sex life.

Furthermore, while Arndt pauses to briefly acknowledge that: ‘Social relationships, cultural and family values and future aspirations have a far stronger influence on sexual behaviour than sex hormones alone’ (51), these factors are not explored in the book. This is a shame, as many of the diaries – and Arndt’s interpretation of them – raise a number of issues about the role of the social in constructing male and female desire. For example, an examination of the role social learning plays in encouraging men’s sexuality whilst applying restraints on women’s sexuality would have been far more useful than the repetitive platitudes about the biological differences that lead to discrepancies between men’s and women’s sexual desire. Indeed, there are clear examples of men and women in the book who buck the biological trend – men who have low libidos (Arndt calls them ‘celery stick men’) and women with high libidos (‘juicy tomatoes’) – and while they are a smaller group than her low-libido female diarists and high-libido male diarists, they clearly demonstrate that desire and sex are far more complex than her generalisations show. But Arndt fails to explore the hows and whys behind these differences: what were the cultural, social or other factors that may have shaped these men and women’s sexualities?

The book is also hampered by Arndts glaring biases and favouritism, and it is women who lose out on both fronts. Women are criticised for their unrealistic expectations in relationships that lead them to divorce men they are unsatisfied with (the implication being, of course, that they are using this mechanism far too much), and for withholding sex from men who just want to show them love. Women expect men to know how to please them, and then get angry when they don’t. By comparison, the male diarists, and men in general, are rarely judged. There is no balanced discussion of some of the historical and contemporary gender inequalities that have seen women endure the burden of responsibility for the emotional and domestic labour within heterosexual relationships, nor of men’s complicity in maintaining these gender inequalities for their own benefit. Arndt clearly also favours the stories from those with active sex lives. In one chapter, Arndt tells the story of retired engineer Michael whose wife Heather dresses up in corset and suspenders every evening and ‘totters around on her high heels, preparing dinner, offering Michael his evening drink, laying the table, doing a few chores’ (16). This couple, in Arndt’s assessment, sets the benchmark for a healthy and long sex life. Other couples who manage regular sex sessions with each other are also applauded for their successful relationships. Arndt clearly delights in the retelling of stories from sexually-satiated couples and the details they provide about how they keep the sexual fires burning. 

The book is aimed at a general audience and thus it may be unfair to judge it by academic standards. The problem, however, is in the strong message the book sends to women, many of whom Arndt readily admits aren’t that fussed about their low libidos and sexless relationships: it is up to women to fix things in the bedroom, or the relationship is doomed.  Women are told to ‘just do it’. Arndt’s high-libido female diarists are told to ‘just do it’ and initiate sex with their ‘celery stick’ men. (Dressing up in corsetry and stilettos will also help.) Apparently women need to be doing all the work in the bedroom, regardless of the level of their libido. The implication is that women with low libidos who don’t fulfil their male partner’s needs are the problem. But in an era where women are expected to be perfect partners, employees, and mothers, the last thing women need is more guilt, this time served up as ‘self-help’.

I was left to wonder, upon finishing the book, if the problem in many of the diarists’ lives wasn’t the supposed imbalance between their libidos, but that they just weren’t in love anymore. Many of them expressed anger, shame, bitterness, and jealousy that spoke of problems far deeper than the frequency or quality of their sexual encounters. No amount of ‘just doing it’ will save a relationship that simply isn’t working.

Kirsten McLean is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, Melbourne. She teaches and researches the areas of sexuality and gender and is currently working on projects mapping same-sex couples in Australia and examining the pedagogical and methodological issues involved in teaching and researching sexualities.