Demand will always exceed supply on that one.

I do. And I'm annoyed with this Peter character for ruining it.

Now, do you figure that's a public company?

Not having seen the site, nor being willing to go investigate, it ought to be hard for me to pass judgment. Somehow it is not. Which led me to wonder if there is something comparable and "perfectly respectable" being offered to women? Given modern mores, I could not be surprised. I am curious, but not so curious as to go look.

But Julie, my husband sent me a link to an article that made him confess that he owed me. My dear, I would send it directly to you, if I knew how and chose to clutter your thread with it because it is tangentially connected, being about male/female relations.

To the contrary, Kate! Housewives are only worth that using some very questionable assumptions. For instance, in lieu of a wife, would most men actually clean, much less cook? I think not. As Rita Rudner has said, "Men are like bears, but with furniture."

Illicit sex? I thought that had gone the way of the culture. How can anything be illicit today if we can let everything hang out and do what we want when we want with who we want!

Kate, I have seen and made that argument before--but you probably won't be shocked to learn that it has generally fallen on deaf ears. Still, that won't stop me from emailing the article to my husband!

I did think that it was interesting to note the difference between the would-be earned domestic salary of working vs. stay-at-home mothers. (Working moms earning about $85K for their domestic duties while stay-at-home moms earning $135K.) For the mathematically and ever practically inclined, they might now do a bit of simple calculation to discover if their salaries are sufficiently above and beyond $50 K needed to make their working start to be profitable. In other words, it appears that up to the first $50 K of a woman's salary, she is likely using most of it to take care of tasks that she is unable to do because she is working. But, as Dain may point out, that assumes the family is not inclined to live like bears. If it actually matters whether the house is clean and dinner is on the table, then someone has to do it or pay for it. When you add in the tax penalties for extra income, etc.; I have never been able to see how it really makes sense.

Of course, this is off-topic a bit, but coming as your link did in this somewhat suggestive thread . . . I can't help but note what is missing in these calculations.

Kate

Which led me to wonder if there is something comparable and "perfectly respectable" being offered to women?

For better or for worse, these types of sites are increasingly patronized by women. Do a search on "percentage of women porn viewers".

I'm not sure what to make of your link, which seems to suggest that we all (or just women?) should be paid for everything we do. It did not mention sex in its list of unpaid jobs, although perhaps that was just an oversight.

John, Actually, it would make me very sad to know the percentage of women porn viewers. I'll do a "head in the sand" on this one, thanks.

dain, I take your point, especially having come home from a recent trip to find the house looking like it had been inhabited or ravaged by bears, when it was actually only my husband and daughter.

Julie, I note your calculation, and have noted before that most women who work outside of the home earn enough to pay the family tax bill, especially as her income pushes them into higher tax brackets.

One of my favorite cartoons was from the WSJ editorial page a number of years ago. Visually, it was very simple, a woman at a kitchen table with a list of figures and an infant in a high chair. She is looking up at a man suited up and with a briefcase, presumably her husband. She said, "I've just figured how much I am worth as a housewife. The only trouble is that it's more than you earn."

I wondered at the time how much I saved us in private school bills, because of the home schooling. I also wondered, as both of you do, how the calculation of what the woman might earn as "sex worker" would work. I have read elsewhere of the problem of the exhaustion of the working wife, and the decline in sexual relations in households where both work. The working wife's value to her husband would decline in that case. Perhaps this explains the rise in respectable porn. "Honey, are you too tired for the real thing? Watch this!"

Kate, that last bit is brilliant! TVs can be babysitters and replace women in playing with their kids and Porn can replace them in playing with their husbands. What will there be left for this new liberated woman to do in this brave new world? I guess she will be so independent that she can get her own porn and play with . . . never mind. Will boredom be the thing that finally smacks us all back into our senses? I don't know if it will do the job in the end--things may be too far gone--but I think this line of argument might be very appealing to young people. Also, Kate, in lieu of looking up information about women and porn, you might like this book that I reviewed last year here. But read the book, not just my review. It will shock you but the truth is shocking.

I was a feminist in the 1970's. We worried then about how far we were going to have to go to "keep up" with men. I remember a Women's Studies course where we discussed the possibility of porn designed for women. Nothing much has changed, except that the respectable are inured to the darker depths of the culture. It seems impossible, now, to fight back.

It is not as if one can avoid this stuff. Look away, and it is over there, too. I am not really shocked, just sick of looking at it or hearing about it or even knowing it is there when I am not looking or listening. At the community college, girls come to class intending to impress - not me, but someone. Even those girls at the Christian high school, my daughter as well, want to look like the FCPs, even if they intend to remain chaste. I tell them they are guilty of false advertising. When I tell the other girls they can choose innocence, they look at me with disbelief. Well, not all, but too many. And they are NOT happy as they are.

I like your review, and also the one Peter Schramm mentions above on the blog. The reviews are good, as is your writing in them. I appreciate that you are telling me about books that I would rather not read.

I had known about oxytocin in relation to maternity, but not the other cause of release. That will be valuable information the next time some girl is sobbing on me about the fellow she thought was wonderful and was not.

Kate, the oxytocin information (i.e., that it is released during sex as well as during nursing/childbirth) was news to me as well and I do try to follow this stuff as much as my non-science brain will permit. It was, however, only one bit of fascinating medical and scientific information that was useful in the way you describe. It turns out that medical and scientific truth support and confirm most of what rational common sense can tell us about sex differences and morality. The book is not long and it is a quick read. I read it at my son's kindergarten in between classes, for example. If you work with and care about young people, you really should read it and pass along the relevant medical facts that might persuade them to make good choices where common sense and morality have--for whatever reason--failed to do the job.