We Bid Farewell To Liz Jones

Liz Jones writes, “I am now going to write something that will enrage feminists the world over, and provoke an outraged backlash in the columns of online feminist website Jezebel (which already has an entire section that monitors me, entitled Keeping Up With Jones).” Hmm, do we rise to this bait?

Here is what is supposed to provoke the outrage. Jones writes that she, like a lot of people, finds the thought of her partner cheating on her with a sex worker (while sleazy and distasteful) less horrible than an “emotional affair.” She doesn’t claim to speak for all women, and she’s certainly not alone — even if for many of us it would, in fact, mean the end of a relationship if only due to the risk to one’s health. No, that’s not the part hyped to induce outrage:

The truth is: we don’t really enjoy sex that much. And we definitely don’t want sex as often as men do. That is a cold, hard fact. And women most definitely, incontrovertibly, do not want sex once they have children – or so my friends who have children confess to me. Particularly once their stomachs develop a texture akin to cold porridge. The only reason we do have sex is to get a man, keep a man, steal his sperm and flatter ourselves that we are attractive. Once we have a man, his children, his name on a piece of paper, his youth and his house, we no longer want to indulge in that ridiculous, time-consuming, horizontal dance.

Um, this doesn’t make us feel outraged, Liz: it makes us sad. Sad that you feel this way, and sad that you think everyone does. Also, sad that some of the salient points you make here — about the unrealistic, unilateral model of sexulaity painted by the Cosmo-Samantha-Joneses of the wold — get lost amidst the hyperbole. And especially saddened by this bit: “Most of my friends find the men in their lives a mere annoyance to be hovered over, bossed, and moved around as we Hoover under their giant feet.”

I’m really sorry Jones had such a terrible experience with her marriage — as she details in the piece. And, yes, I’m sure the friends whom she quotes are telling the truth, too. Relationships are hard, people are different, happiness takes work and commitment. But those are the only generalizations that are safe to make — anything else quickly becomes projection. And don’t worry, Miss Jones, we’ll be retiring “Keeping Up With the Jones,” as of today.

I’d Rather My Man Paid For Sex Than Had An Affair [Daily Mail]