Eric Felten opens his Journal column with the line, "Pity the man whose wife writes a memoir." His Exhibit A: Elizabeth Weil's Times Magazine piece about the intimate details of her marriage. I'll admit I winced a bit when reading this piece — Felten quotes Weil's mention of the "safe, narrow little bowling alley of a sex life" she and her husband shared, and I for one hope never to have my relationship problems written about in the Times. But I don't believe that men I've dated have never discussed those problems with anyone. Interestingly, Felten does. He writes,

No husband I know speaks out of school about his wife. You wouldn't trust any man who did. Say what you will about the male half of the species-famous for its promiscuous and predatory proclivities-but they can be remarkably discreet about the intimate aspect of marriage. Whether this is stoicism or a residual chivalry, it is a core part of the male code. Consider Tiger Woods's alleged transgressions: Perhaps the most appalling of them is the report that he prattled on to one of his cookies about how she connected with him in a way his wife did not. As if cheating weren't bad form enough.

Etonian diction aside ("speaks out of school?"), Felten's claim will seem pretty laughable to anyone who's ever heard a male friend complain about his significant other (I'm raising my hand). And the phrase "my wife doesn't understand me" became an old chestnut for a reason. Apparently, though, Felten is of the opinion that men remain stoically silent about their dissatisfactions while women chatter hennishly away:

Women, by contrast, seem to be at somewhat greater liberty to share private matters. This can be reflected in trivial indiscretions. DoubleX, a blog on Slate, asked its contributors for their Christmas wish lists. First up was Rachael Larimore, who proclaimed "All I want for Christmas is for my hubby to get a vasectomy. And he is!" I'm sure that made his day. Still, that's nothing compared to what gets aired in coffee klatches, where, according to writers such as Sandra Tsing Loh, the ladies get together to talk about how their husbands haven't touched them in years.

OMG vasectomy gross! And where those "coffee klatches" are concerned, if your husband "hasn't touched you in years," it seems legitimate to find some outlet for your frustration. Perhaps Felten would recommend the arms of an (appropriately quiet) mistress, but I think the ability to talk openly to friends about relationship problems is something men would do well to learn, if they haven't already. I'd also like to wag a finger at Tsing Loh, for feeding men's fear and hope that women's private conversations are all about them.

As The Daily Beast's Rebecca Dana points out, men have been responsible for this year's major sex scandals. Dana quotes Emily Gould, who says,

Men are typically seen as having agency and women are typically seen as being acted upon in romantic relationships. So then even when those stereotypical power dynamics aren't really the ones at play, the culture-making machinery will simplify whatever the real story is until it is a more familiar wronged-woman, lothario-man narrative.

But one of the ways women have been able to reclaim some agency, especially in times of great subjugation, is by talking. It's no accident that Scheherazade saved her skin with stories, or that the Little Mermaid had to give up her voice to land her prince (some view this as a metaphor for castration). Women may not actually have a monopoly on words, but men have always feared female "oversharing," because it's a way of taking back a narrative otherwise controlled by men. If women can write about their marriages in the New York Times, then the "familiar wronged-woman, lothario-man" story, along with the story about how women become asexual when they hit forty, and the one about how men need variety and women need security, and all the other patriarchy-approved stories about sex and love and female identity, have some competition. No wonder Felten wants us to keep our mouths shut.

Wives Who Kiss And Tell, And Tell, And Tell [Wall Street Journal]
Why Women Don't Have Sex Scandals [Daily Beast]

I was attempting, in this exchange to determine via field work the veracity of Hadley Freeman's claim on Style.com that while women allegedly adore SJP and feel outraged by Matthew Broderick's tomcatting antics, men feel an antipathy towards her. She calls it "The SJP Divide."

Freeman ultimately arrives at the conclusion that "the reason men don't like her is because she dresses for herself rather than for them." Um, maybe? I'm more inclined to believe most men who purport to dislike Mrs. Broderick couldn't tell you a thing about anything she's ever worn except maybe that tutu in the opening credits of Sex And The City. But whatever the reason for men's 'viciousness' towards the actress, why do we care? Why are we so defensive about her? Why do we get so outraged when Maxim calls her unsexy? I think it's because she kind of epitomizes that, at the end of the day, men have very traditional standards of attractiveness and nothing we can do can change that. And it's infuriating. "But...she's chic!" We cry. "She's fun! She's darling! She's unconventionally attractive! What more need we do? Why won't you get the message? " We can laud her all we want, call her 'best-dressed,' make Carrie Bradshaw our role model. Men just aren't into her.

I also think this is a part of men's hostility. It's like, 'why are you worshiping this woman we've deemed unattractive?' After all, women react to her the same way we traditionally do to a conventionally beautiful woman, and this is very confusing to men. In a sense, we are defying them, creating a new ideal of sexiness that has nothing to do with male gratification — here I agree with Freeman — and this is obscurely insulting. If we disagree about what is fundamentally sexy, this becomes threatening, because the subtext of all sexiness is male attraction. To women, Sarah Jessica Parker is the actress who has shown women can be attractive without being conventially "pretty". To men, this distinction doesn't exist. And that's tragic. And it's not going to change.

"Hey," I whispered to my boyfriend, popping up behind his chair in the library's reading room. "Are you threatened by Sarah Jessica Parker's wardrobe?"
"What? No," he said.
"Are you threatened by the fact that women find her attractive?"
"No. I'm confused by it."
"Why?"
"Because she's obviously ugly! She looks like she was in a bar fight."
"She's a classic jolie laide!" I hissed. Then an old man asked me to be quiet.

Free Speech: Hadley Freeman Looks Into The Great SJP Gender Divide [Style.com]