Actuarial Love

This story didn’t really surprise me, but it should have.  A modern, educated, liberated woman is bored of dating progressive, enlightened men, and finds herself strongly attracted to a man who believes that he should control the finances in a relationship because he is the man, and only he should initiate sex.  She is very sad when he breaks it off, partly, at least, because he finds that she earns more money than he does.

This is real.  It’s not made up.  It’s not from Fox News.   It is a real, educated, affluent young woman declaring that there is something about a man with conservative values that appeals to her on a visceral level, something she isn’t sure she herself comprehends.

At the same time, some men who behaved the way she describes are being excoriated by feminists.  The question is, how far from “abusive” behavior is the style of a conservative man who believes, as she described, that the man always initiates sex?  That means he makes the first move.  That means he doesn’t ask for her consent first.  He makes a move.  And if the woman is receptive, she makes that clear with her body language and sounds– not with verbal consent.  In fact, that is one things she clearly doesn’t wish.  And she’s not the first writer on the subject in the Times to say so.

Consider this:

My idea of a hero is not someone who comes and sweeps the woman off her feet and turns her into a princess, but a man who cares about what a woman has to say, who listens to her, who pays attention to her needs and wants,” Guillory said when we recently spoke over the phone, adding that the ideal romantic lead would also then ask “what she wants, just to make sure that he’s right” in his assessment.

Well, that pretty well sounds exactly like the one thing Jasmine Guillory in The Atlantic denies she says she wants: to be treated like a princess.  She wants someone who listens, pays attention, addresses her needs and wants only what she wants.  Your highness.

Jesus, that does sound exactly like a princess.  It certainly doesn’t sound like a partnership.  It doesn’t sound like two people of equal abilities and capacities and potential and strength of character coming together for a mutually beneficial relationship in which obligations, responsibilities, and assets are shared equally.  But yeah, doesn’t that sound kind of boring?

Just imagine this:

My idea of a lady is not someone who comes and sweeps the man off his feet and turns him into a prince, but a woman who cares about what a man has to say, who listens to him, who pays attention to his needs and wants…”