You have to love the caution with which academics, forced by data, endorse stereotypes:
It is believed that men, in contrast to women, are more likely to cognitively separate sex from love (Banfield & McCabe, 2001; Duncombe & Marsden, 1999), and though investigators disagree as to the causes (biology, social conditioning, or a combination of both), available findings seem to reflect this tendency. In a sample of 253 heterosexual men and women, men were significantly more likely than women to report engaging in ongoing sexual relationships without wanting emotional involvement (Townsend, 1995). Compared with women, men have been found to be significantly more likely to approve of sex in a casual relationship (Hyde & Oliver, 2000) and to consider having sexual intercourse with a stranger (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Glass and Wright (1985, 1992) found that over half of the men in their sample who had extramarital sex stated that their marriages were actually happy or very happy and that they pursued extramarital relationships for sexual excitement rather than emotional fulfillment. When 844 gay, lesbian, and hetero-sexual respondents were asked their reasons for engaging in sexual behavior, men (both gay and heterosexual) were more likely than women (both lesbian and heterosexual) to give reasons that emphasized sexual pleasure and recreation rather than intimacy (Leigh, 1989).
The passage, sent along by a friend, is from the article “Extradyadic Sex and Gay Male Couples: Comparing Monogamous and Nonmonogamous Relationships.”
July 2nd, 2012 | 6:43 pm
To be fair, there’s kind of a long history of people endorsing stereotypes about, say, Africans, or women – without, or even in spite of, data. A little caution does not seem amiss…
July 3rd, 2012 | 11:54 am
It is believed that men, in contrast to women, are more likely to cognitively separate sex from love . . .
I think they weren’t careful enough. The sentence doesn’t make sense. Men are not, in contrast to women, more likely to cognitively separate sex from love. Men are more likely than women to cognitively separate sex from love.
And of course there is a danger here. If we think of men as people who cognitively separates sex from love, we are misapplying the data. There may be many men who cognitively separate sex from love less than many women. You have to remember that averages and tendencies don’t describe individuals.
For example, if we say men are, on average, taller than women, we are making a correct statement. However, if we say that men are taller than women, we have made a nonsensical statement. And if we have jobs for which the height requirement is, say, 5’11″, and we seek to hire only men to fill them, we are discriminating for no good reason against women who are 5’11″ or taller. There may be many fewer of them than men, but there are still plenty of them out there.
So it is unfair to think of men as people who cognitively separate sex from love, just as it is unfair to think of men as tall and women as short.
July 3rd, 2012 | 2:26 pm
Ingles is being careful. But if you have been in a university setting–even one that is more conservative than large state universities, you do have to recognize how difficult it was for the author(s) to write what they wrote. It was not that long ago that child development text books asserted that the behavioral differences between little boys and little girls were totally due to social learning. Only ideologically-driven parents could believe that. But many child psychologists managed the feat.
July 5th, 2012 | 9:36 am
In any case, from this data it’s clear that gay male couples have the most to gain from the stabilizing effects of marriage.
Right?
July 5th, 2012 | 11:10 am
This just in:
“By contrast with other inorganic molecules, whose lack of polarity is associated with a significant lack of liquidic properties, it may be ascertained by observation that H20, a compound consisting of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, shows a statistically significant increase in the tendency toward wetness.”
July 5th, 2012 | 12:18 pm
_And if we have jobs for which the height requirement is, say, 5’11″, and we seek to hire only men to fill them, we are discriminating for no good reason against women who are 5’11″ or taller._
Of course. The problem is that in contemporary America, the fact that there will be far fewer women than men in those jobs is almost always taken by the courts and many legislatures to be evidence of sex discrimination rather than the result of men naturally tending to be taller or to be taken as evidence that the restriction was set up in the first place deliberately to exclude women.
My wife (a retired Navy officer) and I disagree about women in combat for precisely that reason. She maintains that there are, in fact, women physically capable of combat duties. I agree, and if we could assure that only those women get combat assignments, she would be right. But that’s not the way American politics and culture works. The preponderance of men vs women who have that physical capability, and the concommitant preponderance of men who get those assignments would be taken as discrimination. Lawsuits by women not physically capable would eventually “dumb down” the physical standards, and at that point, people start getting needlessly killed. It’s all part of our postmodernist tendency to see “truth” as whatever we want it to be and to see any natural barriers to what we want as oppressive constructions of power structures.
July 5th, 2012 | 12:29 pm
_In any case, from this data it’s clear that gay male couples have the most to gain from the stabilizing effects of marriage._
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. More realistically, though, it means that gay male couples are mostly unlikely to have successful monogamous relationships; ergo, unless marriage is redefined to exclude monogamy, gay “marriage” is likely to be an oxymoron in most cases.
July 5th, 2012 | 4:16 pm
_In any case, from this data it’s clear that gay male couples have the most to gain from the stabilizing effects of marriage._
I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. More realistically, though, it means that gay male couples are mostly unlikely to have successful monogamous relationships; ergo, unless marriage is redefined to exclude monogamy, gay “marriage” is likely to be an oxymoron in most cases.
All of which ignores that gays rely on adultery as their primary method of “reproduction”.
The act of recognizing their union as a legitimate form of family creation necessarily means legitimizing adultery.
July 6th, 2012 | 12:32 pm
Blake –
Well, maybe. If nobody will let them adopt…
(Just to make things explicit – you are saying that any heterosexual married couple that goes for surrogacy is engaging in adultery, right?)
July 6th, 2012 | 4:42 pm
“The act of recognizing their union as a legitimate form of family creation necessarily means legitimizing adultery”
This is a lie, pure and simple.
It is a lie to call adoption adultery.
It is a lie to call remarriage with children adultery.
It is a lie to call artificial insemination adultery.
July 7th, 2012 | 5:25 pm
Well, maybe. If nobody will let them adopt…
Adoption is not reproduction.
But either way, I am sure adoption laws will re-tighten back up, and refocus on the child’s best interest, as the current information (and future information) about how using children in selfish ways actually affects children.
One continues to wonder why, if marriage isn’t procreative, gays and lesbians won’t simply accept that their marriages will be barren – and accept that any children they have should be shared with a member of the opposite sex.
July 7th, 2012 | 5:27 pm
as the current information (and future information) about how using children in selfish ways actually affects children.
Ugh, I’m so terrible about this.
Meant to follow that up with the second half of the sentence – something to the effect that now that we have real proof that children are not endlessly resilient – and selfish parenting practices do hurt them – (and being gay does not magically make you a “better parent”) – this new knowledge has yet to be integrated into our adoption and child custody laws.
But it will be.
July 8th, 2012 | 6:40 pm
This is a lie, pure and simple.
It is a lie to call adoption adultery.
It is a lie to call remarriage with children adultery.
It is a lie to call artificial insemination adultery.
No, it’s not.
It’s about making a baby with someone other than your spouse.
Also: once again I err – I did not mean to lump adoption or remarriage with children in with artificial insemination, since it seems to me self-evident that those two examples are absolutely irrelevant to the point – and are not about reproduction (or fraudulent claims to reproduction) in any case.
In a remarriage, children are not normally pressured to call their stepparent anything other than stepparent, and it’s usually recognized as abusive if a child is in fact forced to confuse these boundaries.
And in adoption, it is true there is a real and compelling conflict between what gays demand as “their right” vs. what’s actually best for the children who were actually supposed to be the ones served by adoption. But it’s a separate issue (specifically, it’s an issue of whether guardians have an obligation to their wards, not a question involving kinship and genealogical fraud).
July 10th, 2012 | 12:59 am
“Also: once again I err – I did not mean to lump adoption or remarriage with children in with artificial insemination”
How can you say that you “didn’t mean to lump” these three things together when you have done so repeatedly even after I have repeatedly called you out on it? How can you say that you “didn’t mean to” when you have admitted several times that you have made an error and yet a week later you repeat the same lies?
“since it seems to me self-evident that those two examples are absolutely irrelevant to the point”
But lumping the three things together is absolutely crucial to a deceptive campaign. If you are really against artificial insemination, then argue against it instead of arguing against gay marriage. Explain to childless heterosexual couples why you think their union legitimizes adultery.
“since it seems to me self-evident that those two examples are absolutely irrelevant to the point”
If adoption and remarriage are “absolutely irrelevant to the point,” then you can no longer peddle the lie that “The act of recognizing their union as a legitimate form of family creation necessarily means legitimizing adultery.”
July 10th, 2012 | 10:54 am
“Also: once again I err – I did not mean to lump adoption or remarriage with children in with artificial insemination”
How can you say that you “didn’t mean to lump” these three things together when you have done so repeatedly even after I have repeatedly called you out on it?
I have never considered adoption a form of reproduction.
You are confusing reproducing with parenting. They are not the same thing.
Either way, my point remains: if marriage is procreative, then gays don’t qualify; if marriage is not procreative, then there is no reason why gays should have any sort of “right” to raise children together, when clearly a child has reason to value both mother and father relationships.
I don’t understand how gays can argue that (their!) relationships are so terrifically important that it’s “oppression” to deprive them legal recognition – but at the same time, (their kids’!) relationships are trivial and unimportant. Why would gays as a group be so reluctant to grant to their kids what they value for themselves? Is there a reason? Because I have yet to hear any reason other than simply not caring and selfishness.
July 10th, 2012 | 5:14 pm
“I have never considered adoption a form of reproduction”
Then argue against artificial insemination. Your beef is against it, not gay marriage. The only way you can use family formation as an argument against gay marriage is to lie about the relationship between them.
“You are confusing reproducing with parenting. They are not the same thing”
I know that, but you keep eliding the difference between reproduction and parenting. You mislead people into thinking that all gay families are illegitimate because some form families using artificial insemination. In the meantime, you are quiet about heterosexual use of artificial insemination. The day you are serious about straight marriage is the day that you will taken seriously about gay marriage.
“if marriage is not procreative, then there is no reason why gays should have any sort of “right” to raise children together, when clearly a child has reason to value both mother and father relationships”
In other words, when you’ve lost the argument about how families are formed, then you change arguments and start talking about the sex balance of the parents.
A more honest approach would be to admit that your argument against how families are formed applies only to some gay marriages.
The fact is that your arguments rely on dishonest characterizations. You characterize gay family formation as adulterous only to admit later that only some are adulterous. And then you try to change the attack.
The odds are good that on some later thread you’ll make the same arguments and claim they’ve never been refuted. The truth is that you abandon arguments rather than admit that they’ve fallen apart.
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