Wives who don’t have enough sex with their husbands are partly to blame for men committing sexual assault, according to an article published by the Daily Mail. The writer, Dr Catherine Hakim, claims that “decent” husbands whose wives “starve” them of sex are driven to affairs and “forced to seek relief elsewhere”, resulting in “a profoundly negative effect on our society – fracturing families and potentially leading to violence and crime.”
“Sexually starved men,” says Hakim, offering no evidence to back up this claim, “are more likely to visit prostitutes, view pornography and, in the worst cases, even molest other women.” She later reiterates the supposed connection between sex-deprived husbands and sexual violence, writing: “Men, as we know in our heart of hearts, will have affairs, or perhaps even worse, when faced with sexual starvation and the inevitable resentment that causes.”
Throughout the piece, the blame for men’s behaviour is clearly and repeatedly placed with negligent wives, who are “calling catastrophe into their lives” if they fail to have enough marital sex. But the author goes further, suggesting that such wives are also to blame for sexual violence befalling other women. She writes: “More worryingly, there is little doubt, in my view, that sexual frustration can lead to assaults on women, though I am in no way excusing this behaviour.”
Yet excusing such behaviour is precisely the end result of a mainstream news website choosing to publish completely unsubstantiated claims repeatedly suggesting that men are pushed to commit sexual violence because their mean, frigid wives fail to sexually satisfy them. At no point is any comment made or judgment passed on the active choices of men who commit rape. The writer’s stated credentials as a “social scientist” and the use of unrelated statistics about sex in marriage create a deliberate veneer of scientific fact, though absolutely no proof is offered to substantiate the link between marital sex and male violence.
The conclusion readers are encouraged to draw is clear: poor, sex-obsessed men have no control over their own actions and no choice but to turn to affairs or sexual assault when marital sex is not available. No matter that such a ridiculous argument utterly relieves perpetrators of responsibility and is insulting to other men. Never mind that it ignores everything we know about rape, which is an act of power and control rather than sexual attraction. Or that it erases male victims and the existence of unmarried rapists. Or that it collapses in the face of the reality that 90% of offenders are already known to their victims, suggesting that many women are still raped by their own husbands.
Indeed, the article also risks normalising sexual pressure or even assault within relationships by re-affirming Victorian ideas about spousal responsibility for male sexual satisfaction. On the subject of affairs, Hakim says: “What else are men who need sex regularly to do when married to an unsympathetic wife?” She appears to lament modern women’s financial independence, writing: “Though the days of women exchanging sex for financial security provided by their husbands are gone, we need to find new ways to trade our wants and needs for theirs … If he wants more sexual treats, tell him that the deal is you get more help with the washing up, a meal in a lovely restaurant or a new dress.” The notion that women might actually enjoy sex themselves, or even have the capacity to buy their own clothes and food does not seem to occur to Hakim. And clearly it would be absurd to expect a husband to contribute to household chores without sexual bribery.
We live in a society where tens of thousands of women are raped annually and hundreds of thousands sexually assaulted, and where reporting rates remain dismally low – in part because of widespread victim-blaming and misconceptions about sexual violence. In that context, publishing such misogynistic, unsubstantiated nonsense to a wide audience could have a very real impact.
The people who read Hakim’s article will include survivors of sexual violence and those who might come into contact with them, from friends and family to police officers and potential jurors. They will include women whose partners might be pressuring them into sex, or who might have experienced marital rape, or survivors who have been silenced and those who are weighing up whether or not to speak out.
But perhaps most worrying of all, the article will also be read by men, to whom it sends a clear message. You are not in control of your actions. You are not to blame. Your wife owes you sex whether she feels like it or not because you are a man and it is what you need and deserve. And if she doesn’t oblige, it is reasonable or even inevitable for you to have an affair, or to sexually assault another woman (a natural progression). It’s not your fault, she pushed you into it.
If anything risks having “a profoundly negative effect on our society … potentially leading to violence and crime”, it is not women who choose when they do and don’t want to have sex. It is messages like these and the media outlets that choose to spread them.