Emotion Work and Sex Work

Duncombe, J. and Marsden, D. 1998. "Stepford Wives and Hollow Men? Doing
Emotion Work, Doing Gender and Authenticity in Heterosexual
Relationships." Pp. 209-224 in Gillian Bendelow and Simon Johnson
Williams (Eds.), Emotions in Social Life: Critical Themes and
Contemporary Issues. New York: Routledge.

I found Duncombe and Marsden's article absolutely fascinating. It speaks to dynamics I have often observed in my mother's marriages but never quite been able to word properly. The article argues that it is primarily women who manage to keep marriages together by engaging in 'emotion work.' The overlying metaphor of the article is women as 'Stepford Wives' (engaging in acting to maintain a certain desired image) and men as 'hollow men,' who appear not to be capable of communication or emotion and often behave in a detached manner, making their wives feel they aren't really 'there.' The idea of the 'Stepford Wives' is defined as women losing awareness of their exploitation by doing emotion work on behalf of emotionally hollow men. I believe that one of the most important points here is that the women are engaging in emotion work on themselves as well as their husbands - they must also convince themselves that they are happy and they have good marriages. The article questions whether emotion work results in a loss of self-awareness and authenticity, which I would argue, it does. However, my question would be, is there really any other option? Is divorce the best idea? How do we fix this?

Hochschild's definition of emotion work is "the emotional effort made by individuals - both men and women - to 'manage' their feelings to bring them in line with the societal 'feeling rules' which prescribe how they 'ought' to feel in certain situations." Hochschild insists that there are differences in gender in emotion work which "embody the psychological effects of men having power and women not having power." Personally, while I do agree that there are likely gender differences in the emotion work, I am not sure if it has as much to do with the imbalance of power (though that does impact almost everything, so I'm sure it does have an effect) as with the specific roles and expectations of each gender's role. Of course, the roles are by definition imbalanced, but I would argue that both images put pressure on the man and the woman to conform and cause issues that way even more so than as far as issues of relative power. For example, men are socialized and taught that they are not supposed to express emotion and they must define themselves by their breadwinner role. They are also taught to avoid anything 'feminine' and may feel they are betraying their 'manliness' when they help with housework - which is not fair and creates imbalances of power and responsibility, but I believe it has more to do with the man trying to fulfill his own role rather than him trying to exert power over his wife.

The article discusses women's use of acting in this emotion work. This is something I have seen a great amount of in my own life. In order to convince herself and others that she has a happy and successful marriage, my mother (among many other women) acts as though she is perfectly happy - she smiles at him even when he is being a grouch or even when she herself is in a bad mood or having a bad day. She essentially denies any and all of his shortcomings to herself as well as to others. She values his activities and congratulates him on his activities. She acts as though everything he does is very important. He rarely, if ever, acknowledges her work outside the home as well as within it. If he does acknowledge that she does too much, he is yelling at us kids that we should be doing more to help her around the house (which, we should, but so should he). My mom definitely employs the 'mandatory smiling' the article discusses, the overvaluing of his activities, the attempts at physical affection with big hugs and kisses, and constantly acting. It has always really upset me, and I'm glad this article has addressed these issues.

The article discusses the "family myth" that many, many women live within. The myth is that they have a happy sharing couple life, which is sustained by women by “belittling their own input, reducing their husbands’ obligations to tiny symbolic tasks, becoming ‘supermoms’ who cope with jobs and the second shift, and (guiltily) lowering their standards of childcare and housework.” A major concern of all of these self-delusions is that eventually the real feelings are going to catch up with the ideological feelings, and when these feelings don't match up, a crisis of some sort may occur, or at the very least quite a bit of resentment is likely to surface. Mrs. Walker discusses some of the emotion work that she does:

“My husband can be a very sarcastic man…I find myself softening what he says, tidying it up and smiling to make it seem like a joke – which perhaps it is, but people can’t tell…it is important to me to be seen to be living with a decent man. In a funny way, I feel it would rub off on me if everyone thought he was awful.”

I think my mother does a lot of this as well with my step-dad. He can be inappropriate and rude, his road rage is horrific, and he has a bad tendency to swear a lot, which embarrasses my mother to no end. But she will refuse to admit a lot of these things. A lot of women had “mixed feelings” about their husbands, but would always claim things like “…but don’t think we’re not happy together, because we are.” Clearly, the image is very important. Mrs. Darnley, another example, essentially explains that she just avoids thinking about anything that is negative or unpleasant or would force her to admit certain realities in her life (like the fact of her husband's unpleasant personality). I believe this is a defense mechanism that many people use....my mother absolutely has used it for most of her life.

The article discusses the avoidance of self-reflection in emotion work. If these women admit to the realities of the extent of emotion work they are doing simply to keep their lives together, it would be a devastating realization. The authors talk about "self-loss" as a result of deep acting. I pray to God my life never gets to the point where I am afraid to engage in self-reflection because I'm afraid of what I will find.

Women go to great lengths in order to avoid conflict with their husbands and in order to sustain the image, 'we're ever do happy, really." This is a very sad reality and I found the close examination of personal relationships in this article to be very eye-opening. Any relationship involves a certain amount of work, but it is amazing to see the system of delusions these women must employ in order to convince themselves and others that they are happy with their lives.

How do we fix it?

Duncombe, J. and Marsden, D. 1996. "'Whose Orgasm is this Anyway? 'Sex
Work' in Long-term Heterosexual Couple Relationships', in J. Weeks and
J. Holland (eds) Sexual Cultures: Communities, Values and Intimacy, pp.
220-38. Houndmills, UK: MacMillan.

I found this article to be extremely depressing. I really and truly hope there are some long-term couples out there who have meaningful and fulfilling sex even after being together for a very long time. An excellent point was made in the very beginning of the article, in which the authors explain the issues with our current cultural beliefs involving relationships and 'soulmates' and finding our 'other half.' The search for self- fulfillment through another person really makes no sense. The way relationships are depicted in the media and common beliefs about relationships really set people up for unhealthy expectations.

The authors discuss a type of 'sex work' that is similar to emotion work. People engage in this work in order to try to bring their sex lives into line with their view of how sex 'ought' to be experienced or some sort of ideological version of sex. They found that, overall, people are very confused about their sex lives and sex in general. Even when describing what they felt they wanted, people articulated all kinds of discrepancies. Men seemed to want a 'sexually experienced virgin,' which is of course an oxymoron, and women said they wanted their men to be 'dominating, but in a gentle sort of way.' So, to me, one of the main problems seems to be that people do not know what they really want. Expectations about sex also likely confound the situation further.

In their examination of long-term relationships, the authors found the common issue of loss of passion and romance. However, at closer glance, women seemed to describe that the relationship was always sexually unfulfilling in some way. In the beginnings of relationships, women may "deep-act" and ignore any issues with the sex because the passion for each other is still there. Looking back at a later time, women are more likely to acknowledge that, in fact, it was never all that incredible. Open discussion about sex was often avoided in relationships because the two did not want to hurt each other. Additionally, men wanted to avoid looking or feeling vulnerable, and women often feared men's reactions and feared their anger. Many couples also experienced sexual issues after the birth of children.

There were some radical views explained in this article, including ideas that heterosexual sex is automatically about male domination and is really only engaged in by women as an exchange for something (money, stability, etc.). Some of these perspectives advocated celibacy.

I wondered about the lack of conversation in this article about sex as a way of connecting with someone, as a way of sharing love. The couples interviewed did not seem to discuss this much. There was a lot of talk about orgasms and what each person's orgasm means and issues with the necessity of using fantasy to reach orgasm, etc. so there was a lot about the physical realm of sex. But, I feel that the best sex is sex that combines the physical with the emotional and gives you a feeling of connectedness with someone else. Maybe this is representative of the idealized version of sex that they spoke of as essentially unrealistic and unattainable, but I like to think that hopefully someday even if I am married for a long time, I will still be able to have that kind of sex with my husband because (hopefully) I will still love him. This article was tough to read because it really was overwhelmingly negative and offered very little hope of a satisfying sex life with someone you love and have been with for years. The options seemed to be negotiated celibacy, unsatisfying sex and resentment, or affairs. Not great options.

The discussion of masturbation (particularly men's masturbation) and porn was very disturbing. Men described becoming accustomed to focusing on only pieces of a woman's body while masturbating and then found that when they actually had sex they did the same thing. One man described when he had sex with his wife, he was simply “going at this bum” and not really experiencing the activity with the whole person - he was more or less masturbating using his wife.

The article concludes with essentially an explanation of sex as becoming all about 'exchange value.' Everyone is out to get their own orgasm, but mutual orgasm is the ideal. I also take issue with this because while orgasms are great, I don't really see them as the entire point of sex. Sex can feel good either way, first of all, and second of all, it can also be about connecting with your partner and physically 'being one' with them. I know this sounds cheesy, but there is such a thing as romantic sex and making love. I think one of the first issues with all of this is that these people seem to have started seeing sex as simply a means to an orgasm, rather than seeing all of the other components.

I am not married, and my longest relationship was not incredibly long, but I really do hope that there is more out there than what has been described in this article. I have no doubt that all of these dynamics exist and are a big problem for many couples, but I do hope that there are also people on the other end of the spectrum - I wonder what the criteria was for those interviewed? Was it automatically geared towards couples with sexual issues? Or just any couples?

Ultimately, the article asks, is there any 'authentic' sex?

Bernstein, Elizabeth. 1999. "What's Wrong with Prostitution? What's Right with Sex Work? Comparing Markets in Female Sexual Labor." Hastings
Women's Law Journal 10:91-117.