Baumeister, R.F. & Twenge, J.M. (2002). The cultural suppression of female sexuality. Review of General Psychology, 6(2), 166-203.
I was initially excited to read this article. It’s an important and interesting topic and I knew of Roy Baumeister as this powerhouse researcher who was an authority on nearly everything. I thought I would learn a lot about the forces that suppress female sexuality in our society. Instead I learned that reputation isn’t everything and you can’t believe everything you read in a journal.
Oh my goodness. I haven’t had this strong of a reaction to a scholarly article in a long time. It took me a few days to finish this 38 page article because I kept having to put it down out of anger and frustration. Where to begin…
Baumeister and Twenge were on a hunt to find out who was indeed responsible for the suppression of female sexuality. They entertained two theories, 1) the male control theory, in which men are the suppressors because they want their wives to be faithful to them (wives who don’t desire sex won’t sleep around), and 2) the female control theory, in which women are the suppressors because sex is a product with which women can barter for other products from men (e.g., money, security, commitment, etc.). In order to get the most buck for their bang (so to speak…), women need to suppress female sexuality so that men do not have free and easy access to sex.
Baumeister and Twenge explore the available evidence to determine which of these two theories is the true one. Like detectives in a mystey novel, they analyze each clue to see which suspect it indicts. Consistently, their evidence points to women as the culprits in this case. It is women who wants to reign in female sexuality. Women are the gossips who sully other women’s reputations. Women rally against pornography, thus restricting poor sex-deprived men’s access to sexual stimulation, keeping them dependent on the whims of their wives and girlfriends. I recognize how flippant and facetious I’m being here, but it’s difficult not to be when these authors make surface level arguments and try to pass them off as well-reasoned and rigorous! It doesn’t help that the first author is famous and well-respected.
I think there’s a lot to be said about woman-on-woman crime, so to speak. The way women can and do put each other down and compete viciously with each other is a phenomenon that has always struck and troubled me. But Baumeister and Twenge’s consideration of this ends there. They pay lip service to the notion that women behave this way due to the uneven power structure in our society which pits women against each other in competition for men and resources. There’s no consideration of the large structures in place, the underlying causes of the suppression of female sexuality. They look at data that show women have negative reactions to other women’s sexuality and say, “Oh, well, women themselves are guilty of the suppression then! How about that. You get off scott-free, fellas.”
What’s worse is that they argue that men wanting women to be sexual and sexualized has nothing to do with cultural suppression, as if catcalls and whistles from the street were liberating rather than suppressing. There’s so much to say about this alone, but I feel myself running out of steam.
What a provocative and frustrating article. It angers me that this is in print.
I just posted about this. If you follow the link to my blog, you’ll find other links about Baumeister. This guy is a misogynist – his speech at the APA convention against women was quite extraordinarily ignorant and sexist.
Guys are more jealous and possessive than women are. They think that every time a woman interacts with or checks out other guys, they think she’s a slut. They’re thinking that other guys will impregnate her even when they won’t. Come on, it’s natural for women to have many guys and such. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s just that guys can’t get laid easily.
Baumester is spot on. To women the public enemy Nr 1 is younger and/or more beautiful women. Not climate change, not radioactivity, not terrorism. Younger-more-beautiful-women. Envy is everything.
Baumeister and his collaborators are 99.99999% correct Sex is not only a scarce resource that females have and that males can’t get enough of (by contrast, for females, due to greater female parental , sex with more male partners does not confer a genetic advantage and also has many costs), but the more power females have the more they demand in exchange for sex. Females in poor regions (some African and Near East countries resort to clitoral cutting, total body covering, and stoning for adultery) suppress female sexuality to raise the cost of sex sufficiently to extract basic necessities of life from males, while ‘liberated’ Swedish feminists enjoy sexual freedom but seek to abolish the sex industry through the ‘Nordic’ legal regime of criminalizing the purchase of sex – because they know that they cannot compete (to extract emotional commitment from males) with hoards of Brazilian, Thai, and Ukranian sex providers. Wayne in Bangkok
From your post, it’s easy to gather that you disagree with Baumeister and Twenge’s arguments and conclusions, but it’s not clear why. You didn’t offer any substantive counterpoints to B&T. You just don’t like their conclusion. That’s an awful reason to dismiss an argument.
>Oh my goodness. I haven’t had this strong of a reaction to a scholarly article in a long time. It took me a few days to finish this 38 page article because I kept having to put it down out of anger and frustration. Where to begin…
Yep, way to live up to the stereotype of the overly-emotional and irrational woman. This is why no one should ever take the opinions of women seriously.
Haha! Couldn’t have said it better myself! Must have come from the same linki.
What an utter idiot you truly are. Have you actually got a single point?! Read the paper properly and address their points, making your own counters, listing evidence in support.
Can’t do it? That’s because the authors’ points and evidence are all accurate and converge on their conclusion just as they claim — and you haven’t got much of a clue where to start anyway.