The third installment of my response to Mary Kassian’s post from earlier this week, which she titled “
,” focuses on how she uses the terms “alpha” and “beta.” As a reminder, Kassian’s words are indented and italicized. See the rest of the series below.
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Even More Money and Sex
According to Patriarchy
What’s more, since our roles affect our sexual conduct, it isn’t easy for a woman to switch from being alpha in bread-winning to being beta in bed. Nor is it easy for a man to switch from being beta in bread-winning to being alpha in bed. As Newman points out, this presents a severe dilemma for alpha women. They have been taught to crave financial independence, power, and control, but find they aren’t sexually attracted to beta boys.
Issue #5: Equating roles in the bedroom with how much
money a person earns conflates monetary value with relational value, and ignores
the great diversity that women have in their sexual attractions beyond stereotypically wanting “an alpha man” in bed.
Kassian’s argument aligns “alpha” with “earns more money”
and “beta” with “earns less money.” But she applies a gender-based double
standard on what these terms mean when applied to men and women. When applying
to women, being “alpha” means that the woman has been “taught to crave
financial independence, power, and control.” This then makes it difficult for
women to “switch from being alpha in breadwinning to being beta in bed.” But
with men, being “alpha” isn’t about craving independence, power, and control.
For a man to be the breadwinner, he is living “according to God’s created
design” as the “head of the house,” and provider for his family. Simply put, a woman is not a “true woman” unless she is working and having sex as a “beta.”
A man is presumed to be in his natural, God-designed state when he is the primary breadwinner and “alpha” in the bedroom. In contrast, a woman is shamed for being in an “unnatural,” supposedly God-dishonoring state when she is the primary breadwinner and “alpha” in the bedroom.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what alpha and beta mean
in the context of the bedroom (Dominant/submissive? Active/passive? On top/on bottom? I should read 50 Shades of Gray and find out?), but
Kassian insinuates that women should not or do not want to be alpha in the
bedroom and rather want “an alpha man” in bed. (This is sounding like naughty
readings of fortune cookies now.) In fact, she ends her loaded post with “deep
down, every woman wants her man to be a man.”
What does this even mean?
As someone who spent most of my teen and early college years in evangelical purity culture, this section of Kassian’s argument is downright confusing. After all, how many books and conferences and articles have been written about Christian women needing to stay sexually attractive, available, and even assertive with their husbands? Just last month or so in the Christian blogosphere, a wave of posts on being a “sexy wife” came out in response to this disturbing trend of elevating hotness over holiness (not that they’re mutually exclusive!).
Basically, the confusing message boils down to: Christian wives, be sexually attractive and available to your husbands. But don't be overtly sexual – that's your husband's role as the “alpha” man.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my husband and I appreciate one another much more when we don’t try to conform to these boxed-in rules for our genders. Rather, we enjoy our marriage, a union of two becoming one, in not being “alpha” or “beta” but simply as us.
I'm also pretty sure my biological and anatomical sex, as well as my gender identity, do not change according to whether I am the “alpha” or “beta” in the bedroom. I don't stop being a woman if I initiate sex, just as my husband doesn't stop being a man if he accepts this initiation, and vice versa.
The only thing that's clear about Kassian's use of these terms is that they highlight what she believes to be a God-ordained power differential between husbands and wives.
If God intended men to be the head of the household, then he naturally should be the “alpha” not only in the office, but also in the bedroom. Since you know, he's a man. And if God intended women to be the helper, then she naturally should be the “beta” not only at home (or perhaps in an office for “supplementary” income), but also in the bedroom. Therefore if a woman fails to align with this natural, God-given role as the “beta” partner in the marriage, then she throws this whole marital power dynamic off-balance, i.e. what's a man going to do if he can't be “alpha” both at the office and at home?
Kassian's advice is not for men to overcome their insecurities about being “real” or “true” men (whatever that means) or cherish the contributions their wives bring to their family, but rather reinforces the old-as-time claim that
women are the ones who are to blame. Women need to check their “alpha” selves at the threshold after a day of slaying corporate dragons, and...what? What are they supposed to do? Resume traditional gender roles during a “second shift” in the cooking, cleaning, and child care to preserve their husband's purportedly fragile egos?
Study after study shows that they are already doing that.
Others have said it before, and I'll say it again: patriarchy harms both men and women, treating them as less than fully human and only shells of who they really are as people made in the image of God.
Stay tuned tomorrow for the next and final installment of my response.
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