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Vanishing Point

Excellent essay on Lolita and much more. The author very rightly points out:

The housewife who married for money and then fakes orgasms, the single mother who has sex with a man she doesn’t really like because he’s offering her some respite: where are the delineations between consent and exploitation, sex and duty? The first time I traded sex for material gain, I had some choices, but they were limited. I chose to be exploited by the man with the resources I needed, choosing his house over homelessness. Lolita was a child, and she was exploited, but she was also conscious of the function of her body in a patriarchal economy. Philosophically speaking, most of us do indeed consent to our own exploitation.

Even if not a housewife,a woman has to fake their interest in their husband in intimate and non-intimate ways to keep his self-worth up; to ensure he has enough motivation to do this part for the marriage and the family they have built together. It is the cost of doing business in marriage. In similar vein, the man may need to pretend his wife has the most impeccable taste, is great at her job, the most charming host and a wonderful mother to their kids. He needs to do these things if he wishes to keep the peace and derive the value from his wife. It would ill-serve both to be too blunt and stop pretending.

Is that an exploitative situation just for the wife or for both? Maybe the man is dying to tell his wife, the dress she wore to the most recent dinner party resembled a colorful canvas sack, she is woefully out of shape, does not at all inspire him in bed or out of it, that her high pitched voice grates his nerves and the kids are mostly embarrassed by her. This is as much of a "hardship" as the wife needing to laugh at the infinite repeat of his same stupid jokes, his bombast about his work successes, his thoroughly unimaginative love-making, his lack of attention to the emotional needs of their teen-aged kids and much more. 

Everything within reason and balance is fine, once that is exceeded one or both could feel like that they consented to their own exploitation. The trick is to keep things just shy of that point.

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