Paget Brewster, Sandra Daugherty & Carla Cackowski on the Fullers Ferry Tour of Waiheke Island in New Zealand

Hal Lublin, Paget Brewster, Sandra Daugherty, Carla Cackowski & Craig Cackowski at the Waiheke Island Ferry Terminal in New Zealand 

Craig Cackowski, Ben Acker, Paul F. Tompkins, Carla Cackowski, Paget Brewster & Sandra Daugherty at the Stonyridge Vineyard in Waiheke, New Zealand 

Sandra: I enjoy Thing. Dave: Yeah, me too, actually. Sandra: Oh, you do? That’s nice. Dave: WAIT, WHAT? I was just making a joke. Men can enjoy Thing?? Sandra: Many men enjoy Thing. Dave: Huh! I didn’t, uh…huh.

Sociologist Dr. Lisa Wade reveals the fascinating reality behind hook-up culture, what it is, and surprising ways to do it better. TOPICS: College Students Trapped on Campus, Choice vs Obligation, Expectation, Narrowly-defined Sexual Exploration, Orgies, College Parties, Paula England, Science!,…

I listened to this episode of Sex Nerd Sandra last night and I thought it was both quite entertaining and very informative. There was, however, one thing that I had trouble accepting, and that was their...portrayal?...of androcentrism — the practice of valuing the masculine over the feminine. (This begins around minute 46.)

They make several great points and provide good examples of masculine things being valued over feminine things, but I can't help but think that they're glossing over the fact that masculine things are really everybody things and that most feminine things are also everybody things (I'm excluding menstruation, boobs, and childbirth from the argument).

Here's what I'm getting at, more acutely. One thing they talk a lot about is that when little girls engage in masculine activities, we praise them for it, but when little boys do feminine things, we think of it as suspect. They say this carries through to adolescence and adulthood such that everyone is trying to be masculine, but no one is trying to be feminine. Women, essentially, get to be everything (rewarded for being masculine and accepted for being feminine), but then men are only allowed to be masculine, lest they be deemed outcasts. By and large, I agree with the claims they make, and they're particularly relevant to the topic of hook up culture (which is what the damn episode is about, so I'm really being a bit harsh here). However, I would say that many things we consider masculine are really just things women were not allowed to do at one time or another — they're everybody things that have been dressed up as masculine things for most of human history. This leveling of the playing fields should be celebrated! They make mention of women throughout history only being of note because they behaved like men — such as scientists, pilots, or detectives — but I can't help but think they're the only notable women in history not because they did masculine things but because women weren't allowed to do anything important back then! They were just doing things in an environment where most women weren't allowed to contribute. So yes, those were masculine at the time, but they aren't inherently masculine, nor are they masculine any longer. (They're discussing everything in an American and somewhat European vacuum.)

On the other side of the argument is feminine things, which they provide very few examples of. In the arena of sex, I agree with them — things like attachment, tenderness, eye contact, and love are all still viewed as predominantly feminine — but when we talk about interests and occupations, we can't really use the same classifications since women were straight up not allowed to do most things for so long. Math is no longer masculine!

Also, their lack of feminine examples frustrates me. I don't know what they're referring to, and that just makes me think even more that when they say that everyone is celebrating the masculine, we're mostly just talking about celebrating the freedom to do whatever the hell you want. I particularly think this because in recent decades, men are celebrated for participating in many feminine things. Society loves men who cook, help out with housework, aid in raising children, have a sense of fashion, and demonstrate kind, caring behavior towards romantic partners instead of being assholes all the time. Men are absolutely celebrated for those perhaps more feminine things and they don't seem to address that at all.

Photos courtesy of Rachel Porter

“Hello, naughty monkeys,” Sandra Daugherty says into her microphone at the start of her show, the wildly popular sex education podcast Sex Nerd Sandra.