Help with Dashboard

2005-09-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

Thanks for ChuaMike for help with Dashboard settings.

2005-07-13T02:08:00.000-07:00

I'm from Singapore. For the past week or so, our newspaper (Today)'s forum pages have been filled with letters from women debating whether women should be submissive. It was an emotive question with opinions expressed by many angry women writers. It all began with one long letter on 1 July 2005 from a woman (Writer A)describing her pain when she found that her husband had an affair. She lamented that she was already dead tired after a long day ... even in bed, she (and her husband) were separated by at least one child... She concluded by saying that "now that I know what my husband needs, I have to work on my role as a wife". After several letters lambasting men and extoling the virtues and independence of women, another letter appeared on 5 July (Writer B) expressing a wife's wake-up call when her husband reminded her that she was a wife first, then a mother.... Writer B asked whether she had neglected her wifely duty in the bedroom "giving him the excuse that I am too tired and stressed?". She concluded by calling on women to revisit her grandfather's values for women ("to love and obey"). Not surprising, that elicited another few indignant letters from women. The latest, on 7 July, called for "new models of relationships based on reciprocity and unity". I am not sure whether all the writers were discussing the same thing. Many women writers pounced on the old model of submission as being the inferior partner -- ie a doormat with no brain and no opinion. But they may be missing the point that both Writer A and B were speaking of being submissive in the bedroom -- not during intellectual debates conducted in the living room nor social discourse over dinner! They were not speaking of door mats. They were speaking of more sex. But they were using euphemism such as "wifely duty" and "submissive" as indiction that having more sex was not for their own enjoyment, but to meet the needs of their respective husbands. I think therein lies the crux of the problem -- the crisis in today's marriages. Why are women not enjoying more sex for themselves? Look at all the sexy women from to Ally McBeal to the lawyerly Matchmaker to Desparate Houswives who appear to have a healthy appetite for sex. Women love these sitcoms and indentify with their sexiness. But it seems that the sitcom-carricature of women is absolutely unreal. After a long day, men gets perked up by sex. You hardly find letters from men lamenting that after a long day, they are dead tired and too stressed out for sex. So where is the new model of relationship based on reciprocity and unity if one party is keen and the other too tired and stressed out?

Men's answer to Feminism

Help with Dashboard