November 23

Emotion and Sex Work

Whose Orgasm is this Anyway? Sex Work in Long term Heterosexual Couple Relationships
Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden

This article defines the term sex work as a word that has been used to refer to prostitution- contrasting paid with consensual relationships- feminists also assert marital sex is essentially a form of alienated work- sex work. Duncombe and Marsden attempt to show throughout this article how sex work is carried into the home and into long term heterosexual relationships. Within long term relationships, this article explains that women have expressed dissatisfaction in their intimate relationships, due to the lack of emotion present within sex and within the relationship itself, thus also causing women and men of long term relationships to force themselves to appear as the perfect couple that they are not. However, this image of the perfect couple has been destructing to the way that the media portrays the way in which sex within relationships occur. Gidden describes this “plastic” sexuality that makes it seem as if gender is an innocent factor within sex work, and feelings arising from both partners are spontaneous and not resulting from any work. However, traditionally, sex has made the dominant figure to be played by the male, in which the male doesn’t pay any attention to his partner’s sexual needs, and women have become dependent on satisfying themselves. Self satisfaction is encouraged by the feminists, who say that women need to take the initiative to become sexual subjects, thus making a man’s presence for satisfaction unnecessary. The only way as Hamblin describes that both women and men can benefit from sex, is a concept sexual empathy that requires a woman to be in a relationship with a non- traditional male that doesn’t feel the need to be in power of the relationship.

What I felt that was most disappointing, was that sexual activity experienced a decline within marriage because of stresses from family and from work. Many of those in long term relationships experience deja’vu and flashbacks of their romantic lives before marriage. The decline of passion due to the lack of energy that each individual has within a marriage has caused them to lose that initial feeling and emotion that they experienced with each other when they first met. I found this pretty discouraging and hopeless in a sense, especially as a woman, when many women confessed to never really feeling satisfied within their relationships because so many of them felt shame in admitting or in expressing to their partners that they were not happy with the sexual, passionate aspect of their marriage life. This article also explained how men and women had turned to other forms of sexual satisfaction such as pornography and masturbation, because they could not feel that satisfaction with their own life partners, and with respects to them did not ant to engage in an affair. This also really made me sad, because just the thought that your life partner isn’t providing enough love or enough desire for you anymore is really scary. Just when you thought that you had found the one, you find out that this person isn’t really the person who can provide complete and total joy in your life.





Stepford Wives and Hollow Men
Jean Duncombe and Dennis Marsden

Duncombe and Marsden attempt to explain in this article how emotion work within a relationship has become more about the woman fulfilling the man’s emotional needs thus demonstrating women’s “false consciousness” under male domination and power. A few examples that this article provides as women participating in emotion work are, women trying to make men talk openly about their feelings and confront their problems not only to provide a peace of mind for men, but also to disclose the sense of intimacy that they value within a relationship, women also work more at keeping the relationship together by planning certain things to do, hearing how he feels, and giving men hugs and kisses after something nice happens. Women also repress their sexual tensions, and are said to fake orgasms for their husbands. Women are said to be more worried about satisfying their husbands and making them feel good, thus embodying the image of a stepford wife. This article also argues that men do actually participate in emotion work, but differently from a woman. Men believe that they perform emotion work through being the breadwinner and relieving women of their work related stresses. Emotion work for men is being that financial support for their woman, and coping with all the stresses resulting from being that financial provider. Men also feel that they do participate in emotion work in their sexual lives, as they describe times in which they have had to fake orgasms in order to conform to the ideology of masculinity. However through theses examples, one can see that men’s idea of emotion work is purely personal and selfish, as they suppress their emotions, and resist becoming emotionally involved with their partners. Men have this ability to put up walls and become emotionally remote within their emotional relationships, thus embodying the image as the hollow man.

The loss of authenticity is described in this article as dangerous, as both men and women due to the gaps between real feelings and ideological feelings on how to behave, begin to lose themselves within their personal relationships. Women’s psychological developments in a male-dominated society from theories of fraud are used to help explain why women are greater participants in emotion work than men are. Women are socialized to be attuned to recognize the emotions and needs of others, thus giving more of themselves to others than to themselves personally. Because women are always acting on the behalf of others and not from their true selves they are in turn becoming inauthentic. In contrast, males are encouraged to fulfill the values of masculinity, such as independence and maturity, by always doing and making serving others as secondary. In men’s efforts to suppress their emotional more feminine side, they too are becoming inauthentic in nature. This authenticity is carried throughout marriage in which wives live a “family myth” and succumb to their husbands tasks and obligations, by continuing to take part in a great deal of emotion work in order to convince themselves and others that they have a good relationship. I think that it is important for both people to be invested in revealing themselves emotionally, so as to remain true to their identity. However I can see how emotion work is in fact unequal within the home, causing one person, usually the woman to lose a sense of herself in order to cater to her husband and his needs.


Sex Work for the Middle Class
Elizabeth Bernstein

Bernstein asks the questions, why are middle class women doing sex work, and can sex work be a middle class profession? What can be seen throughout this article is that many of times job opportunities are limited to women, even middle class white women with a college education. Jobs that may seem more socially acceptable do not always offer the most pay, in contrast to participating in sex work that leaves them with a more reliable source of income. Sex work has also become more popular due to the convenience of the internet. The internet has enabled sexual commerce to thrive by increasing the accessibility to information and creating camaraderie amongst those other workers who participate in sex work activities. The internet has also made it easier to advertise services and personalizing one’s own space.

I found it surprising yet and quite discouraging that even women who are well educated and come from a pretty stable home, resort to a career in sex work after thousands of dollars and time are spent on school.


What’s Wrong With Prostitution? What’s Right with Sex Work? Comparing Markets in Female Sexual Labor
Elizabeth Bernstein

This article attempts to explain to readers what prostitution really is as it is commonly misunderstood in today’s society. Bernstein attempts to show us different perspectives on prostitution from a radical feminist who critiques prostitution, pro- sex feminist defenses of prostitution and contextualized feminist approaches to various aspects of the sex work industry. The feminist perspective of prostitution says that prostitution is just another way in which men can objectify women. Prostitution is an abuse of women and of sex, that motivates gender inequality. The availability of sexual services is a part of what makes a man a man, and is what this world has been built off of. The pro- sex feminists say that prostitution allows the woman to be in control in the amount of money they demand and the type of services that they provide. It allows the woman to be emancipated, free and better paid than they would be in any other job.

Then Bernstein describes the several types of prostitutes that there can be. There are those who are drug addicts, those who are college educated, and even men who sell sex to other men. There are a variety of reasons in which people become prostitutes, in which as a society we have to understand. Bernstein also goes into how prostitutes are different and are paid different according to class. They can be distinguished by their different clothes, their ages and their race. There are some who make a significant amount more money than others a night due to the type of clients that they deal with.

The economic and sexual liberty that is experienced is something that prostitution offers. There are some women who have been in sexual, or physical abused in previous relationships, and as a prostitute, this is the first time in which they have actually consented sex. In my opinion I feel that prostitution should be legalized. People should be in control of their own bodies, as long as they are not doing any harm to any other person. The term prostitution is too small to categorize the many different types of prostitution and the many different effects that prostitution can have on the individual and on society.

Paid Carework

Parental Leave and Child Care
Deanne Bonnar

This reading focuses on the inequalities present in care work. Much care work as suggested by Bonnar is conducted by the female. This article also suggests that care giving is not considered work, yet it is a duty expected to be fulfilled by the woman of the household. Women’s labor outside of the home has received little acknowledgment and though they are participating in double the work, housework is continued to be recognized only as a biological right. Bonnar discusses that housework also contains the aspect of care giving and human care. Human care as explained by Bonnar is the aspect of nurturing, and emphasizing the difference between caring for things and people. Women are responsible for not only taking care of regular household chores but also most importantly women are responsible for taking care of their children. This becomes a problem when women participate in both household work and outside market work.
Thus women discover the conflict of scheduling, leave benefits thus limiting them in jobs that are poorly paid. Bonnar also suggests solutions to these problems, especially the most significant of them all, unpaid care work. Because housework has not been defined as work, one interesting suggestion made by Bonnar would be considering to provide wages for domestic work. Another solution that I more agree with than paying for domestic work and care giving, is modifying the time variable that will allow for more personal time with the child and with the family.

The Color of Family Ties
Race, Class, Gender, and Extended Family
Naomi Gerstel and Natalia Sarkisian

Throughout this article, “The Color of Family Ties” Gerstel and Sarkisian attempt to explain to readers the extended family relationships that exists amongst different racial and class groups. In attempting to understand these relationship differences, Gerstel and Sarkisian first note that amongst different families of different races, blacks and latino/a families are more likely to have closer relationships with extended family than that of white families. The reason why blacks and latino/a families are closer with their extended family is because they are more dependent upon the financial support of their extended family. Because it is “widely known” that whites make a higher income than minority groups, white families tend to be more financially stable within their own direct families, that they are not dependent upon the support of others. Further throughout the article, Gerstel and Sarkisian actually prove that familial interactions within the direct family and also within extended family is more related to class than to cultural differences. Although there are obvious cultural differences within different races, “White, Black, and Latino/a individuals with the same amount of income and education have similar patterns of involvement with their extended families (4).” I don’t know if I necessarily agree with this statement, because throughout my experiences both coming from a middle class minority background and having friends whose families are also middle class however they are white, I find that minority groups and families are more likely to be dependent upon extended family not only because of financial support, but also emotional support, as that extended family of a minority group looks for people who can relate to their other obstacles that they have to face as a minority. I feel that it is almost more necessary and important for minority families to have a closer relationship with their extended family because they are most likely the only other group in which they can share similar experiences and social issues with. I do however agree that within married relationships, there is a certain disconnect that people experience with their extended family because now it is not only important to maintain a relationship with one’s direct relationship with their extended family, but also maintain and build a relationship with their spouse’s extended family.



Using Kin for Child Care: Embedment in the Socioeconomic Networks of Extended Families
Lynet Uttal

This article attempts to explain why African American and Mexican American mothers who are employed are more likely than Anglo American mothers to use childcare arrangements with relatives. There are three different explanations to explain why Black and Hispanic families depend more on the support of their extended kin for childcare, “the cultural explanation that states that these practices are the product of differing cultural preferences, the structural explanation that conceives of them as adaptive responses to structural constraints ( such as limited economic resources) and the integrative explanation that argues that they are due to the intersection of culturally-specific values and practices (race and culture), structural constraints (race and class), and the social organization of gender (care-giving is provided mainly by female relatives). Throughout the article, Lynet Uttal includes some of the conclusions that she gathers from her interviews. I thought that it was really interesting that White mothers were so reluctant to have their own mothers look after their children because they thought of it as an imposition upon their lives, and many did not agree with the way in which they treated childcare and Black and Latino/a families thought that although it was not ideal for their mothers to look after their children, it was an acceptable form of childcare that was treated as something that was supposed to happen. Minority women are also more likely to use extended kin to help take care of their children because it is more financially reasonable and supportive, it serves as an acceptable temporary substitute for a mother, and also it helps encourage and continue cultural practices that have shaped much of their lives as adults. I feel that not only would it be insulting to my mother who has raised me to not have time to help me raise my children, but also it would put a particular strain on their relationship as grandmother and grandchild. I think that by having extended family help raise another’s child is important to help maintain the cultural values that embodied and structured much of the way in which I view the world, and are the basis of the values that embody my life today.

The Female World of Cards and Holidays: Women, Families, and the Work of Kinship
Micaela di Leonardo

Women’s work in the family and in society has experienced significant changes in which di Leonardo wishes to examine. Micaela di Leonardo notes the change in women’s role in the household, as they have become more necessary to maintain relationships with the extended family. Tasks revolving around keeping in touch with extended family and organizing holiday celebrations are dependent upon the woman in the household. Women have now taken over another aspect of work, this is called kin work. Similarly to housework and child care, men are not active participants. Throughout my personal experiences, I feel that women are more family oriented than men are. As stated by the author, kin work is also solely based on gender, it is not influenced by race or social class, which allows sociologists to study all different groups of women. In my personal experiences, the women in my family are more family oriented than the men in my family in terms of planning and organizing family events. However the men in my family are very involved and are active participants in daily family activities. I don’t think that this is necessarily because the men in my family are more lazy than the women in my family or care less about getting the family together, but I just think that overall women do enjoy more sentimental events that include getting the family together than men do.

Explaining the Gender Gap in Help to Parents:
The Importance of Employment
Natalia Sarkisian and Naomi Gerstel

This article examines the gender gap of ones willingness as adults to spend time taking care of their parents. Daughters are more likely to spend more time helping their parents than sons, and Sarkisian and Gerstel attempt to explain why. In attempting to discover why females are more apt to help their elderly parents than males, Sarkisian and Gerstel study the structural differences in the types of jobs men have and the types of jobs women have. I thought that it was really interesting that another variable that contributed to the gender gap was race, and that African American women, employed or non- employed were more likely than European Americans to help their parents, and also that the level of education affected one’s likeliness to help their parents.