Psy 409b November 8, 2005

Psy 409b November 8, 2005

My Third Oral Presentation of Assigned Readings

By Lacey Ethier

“What Men Want”

Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands by Dr Laura Schlessinger (Harper Collins Publishers, 2004), Pages 124-137.

Instructions for this activity are found at:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy23/409b-g23-oral.htm
Instructor: Dr. Leon James

I. Keeping up Appearances

Men need visual stimulation in the form of naked women to be sexually fulfilled. So wives should work to keep themselves looking reasonably attractive for their partners in order to meet this need. While men do not need a centerfold wife, they do want to be attracted to her and so it is her responsibility to keep up her appearance for him. This should come in the form of dressing nicely for him, keeping your weight under control, making sure your makeup is fresh before he gets home, and seducing him with sexy clothes every once and a while.
This concept fits in the dominance model because it requires the wife to chance her appearance to please the man without regard to her life, feelings, or goals.
I wanted to talk about this topic because it seems so old fashioned and it still surprises me that Dr Laura so openly promotes this kind of behavior. While it is one thing to maintain good physical health it is completely another to constantly primp yourself so that your husband gets his dose of visual stimulation.

II. Men Need Sex

In this chapter Dr. Laura claims that men need sex in the same way women need communication. When a wife rejects her husband or neglects his need for sex she is shutting him out in a hurtful and damaging way. Dr Laura says that she understands that being a new mother is hard but for a wife to continually reject her husband’s sexual advances is cruel and unfeeling. Even though these husbands won’t give their wives mental intimacy wives are “lovingly obligated” to give their husbands sex. Even if she does not feel “in the mood” she should just give in and have sex with her husband because who knows she might end up enjoying herself.
This concept is related to the dominance model of marriage because again the wife is expected to please her husband weather she wants to or not. The idea of obligation to please her husband sexually when he is clearly not working to give her mental intimacy goes against the unity model in every sense.
I chose this concept because what Dr. Laura says makes me really angry. I can understand some of her points about how a wife can change her marriage first and her husband may follow suite. However in this area I think it is wrong to tell women to sleep with their husbands even when they really don’t want to, on the off chance that this will make him start showering her with the love, caring, and mental intimacy that she deserves.

III. But don’t get me Wrong, Men aren’t Sex Hounds!

Even though men need sex they are not to be considered sex hounds. They too use sex as a way to establish intimacy and show their partners that they love them. When women refuse sex they are cutting off the one of the only ways that men know how to show their emotions and love for their wives.
This concept is related to the dominance model because it allows men to claim that they don’t know how to share their emotions through any other way than sex which is not true. It also promotes women giving in to sex with their husbands even when they don’t really want to.
I chose this concept because I thought it was really odd how Dr Laura could say that men need sex but they are not sex hounds. I understand that the two do not necessarily correlate but they way that she frames the concept is that men need a lot of sex and wives are obligated to give it to them. This in turn really makes men seem like sex hounds.