The Female Control Theory

Cultural Suppression of Female Sexuality (Baumeister & Twenge):

Mothers and female peers, rather than fathers and male peers, are the main sources that teach adolescent girls to refrain from sexual activity.

Women support the double standard more than men; in other words, women are the main supporters of a moral system that condemns acts by women more severely than identical acts by men.

In cultures that use surgical methods to curb female sexuality, these practices are supported and carried out by women, to almost the entire exclusion of men. In our own culture, the sexual revolution, which almost by definition was a major defeat for the forces that sought to suppress female sexuality, was received more positively by men than women and regretted more by women than men, implying that women were more in favor of the sexual suppression that prevailed before the sexual revolution.

Sex ratio studies show that when gender imbalances in the population give one gender the greater ability to dictate sexual norms, female power generally pushes for sexual restraint, whereas male power pushes toward more liberal sex.

Our social exchange analysis emphasized that women have responded to their inferior position in society in a rational manner, namely by using what they do control (sex) to pursue a better life for themselves.

There are two important reasons to be skeptical of the view that men in general have conspired to exert indirect, distal influences to suppress female sexuality. The first is the fact that when we did find evidence of male influence over female sexuality, it was generally in the opposite direction. Boyfriends push young women toward more sexual activity, not less. Male power tends to produce more sex in relationships, not less. When the sex ratio is unbalanced in favor of men, the result tends to be more sexual activity. These findings suggest that if men really could exert direct control over female sexuality, they would opt for more of it, not less.

He found that women were more negative and intolerant toward female homosexuality than men were. Men were more opposed to male homosexuality than to female homosexuality, contrary to the male control theory's hypothesis that men want to suppress female sexuality while allowing each other to do whatever they want. Both men and women are more negative toward homosexuality of their own gender than of the opposite gender's homosexuality.

The principal agents of female social control are other women. Since the middle of the nineteenth century ... the frontline workers in the sexual regulation industry?social workers, nurses, counselors, teachers, members of the semi-professions?were, and continue to be, almost exclusively female. Thus, when government agencies do regulate female sexuality, women take the lead in doing so.

Prostitution is opposed more severely by women than men, and so it seems a bit misleading to consider the enforcement of anti-prostitution laws an instance of men suppressing female sexuality. Far more men than women are active supporters of prostitution, and suppression of prostitution is higher on the female agenda than the male agenda.