Urbzen

I don’t generally write much about “the sex” in this space, aside from the occasional Chuck Grassley/boobies joke, because, among other reasons, several of my colleagues—and, god knows, by this point, probably my mother—read this blog, so, really.

But my post last week about divorced comedian Steve Harvey’s book of so-called advice for single women, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man,” has raised a lot of issues about women, sex and dating that I’d really like to explore a bit further. If this is the sort of thing that makes you blush, well, I really don’t know what you’re doing on this blog in the first place, but you might want to wander on over to something a little more PG.

Anyhow. Several of the folks who commented on and emailed me about the post articulated my problem with Harvey and his philosophy better and more succinctly than I could.

Blogger/author Robin Monique kicks Harvey’s ass around the block and offers some of the soundest dating advice I’ve heard, well, ever:

When should I sleep with him? Answer: When you want to and not a moment before.

What if I sleep with him and then he stops calling? Your value is not determined by your vagina. He can’t see that? His loss. Keep it moving.

Don’t I lose my power when I sleep with a man? As long as you’ve got two feet and the good sense to leave a situation that’s not working for you, you always have power.

When should I let him go? When you find that you’re more often unhappy than happy in the relationship.

How do I avoid heartbreak? You can’t. It is a part of life. Trust that you’re strong enough to get through it.

See the pattern? Your greatest relationship is the one that you have with yourself (or your God if you’re religious/spiritual). Setting your relationship behaviors around arbitrary rules rather than your own natural tendencies will all but guarantee a lifetime of confusion, anger and heartbreak.

Meanwhile, commenter TheProblemWithCaring picks up on a largely unspoken racial dimension of Harvey’s argument that I completely missed (edited for length; read the original comment here):

It seems to me that Steve Harvey wrote this book to all the “good” single women of color out there, who seem to be lapping it up. From the church to beauty salon to the late night tearful debriefing sessions with sisters, mothers, aunts and friends on “What went wrong with Mr. Right;” the answer always is YOU GAVE UP THE COOCHIE TOO EARLY.

It’s never that the man is just emotionally unavailable, a misogynist with intimacy issues, a commitment-phobe, fucking your cousin, or just not that into you. It always comes down to When Did you Sleep with Him.

It would fly in the face of the paradigm for women of color to say “BUT HEY DIVORCED STEVE HARVEY. I AM A WOMAN, BUT I LIKE SEX TOO.” It’s easier for Oprah and others to accept it and try to claim power from their sub-status as women (i.e. Our pussies are magic! Men cannot resist!) instead of trying to assert real power. Personally, I think Black women could do a lot for themselves, their communities and the world if they stopped listening to little dicks like Steve Harvey and started telling Black men, Eat my pussy, fuck me right AND call me tomorrow, or fuck off and let me date your brother.

There were also a few critical comments (though not many, leading me to believe I have a very naughty readership) that made the reasonable point that in a situation where a woman is looking for a long-term relationship and a man is just looking for sex then, yeah, by having sex the woman does give up a lot of leverage.

But, if you’re looking for a ring or just a long-term serious relationship, then dating a man who is very openly NOT looking for those things is a losing proposition from the start. Far too many women—the Carrie Bradshaws of the world, let’s say—drive themselves to distraction trying to get men who aren’t interested in commitment to commit. It defies reason. If you’re looking for a Volvo, don’t go to the Ferrari dealership, okay?

But—and I think this might come as a surprise to Mr. Harvey—it works the other way too. Not every woman in the dating pool has back issues of Modern Bride stashed away in her closet. You might need to sit down for this, Steve, but here’s the truth: Not every woman you date wants to marry you. We are not even close to that into you. Seriously.

If you have a mother like mine, you’re familiar with the maxim that no man is going to buy the cow when he’s getting the milk for free. But here’s a thought: The cow is not for sale.

Ponder that.

So I was browsing through Oprah.com yesterday, for, uh, RESEARCH PURPOSES ONLY, and I came across O’s interview with one of the original Kings of Comedy, Steve Harvey. Being someone who occasionally likes to “laugh” at “jokes,” I thought the Harvey piece would be right up my alley.

Oh, my.

Turns out our friend Steve fancies himself as something of a social commentator. And you know his favorite thing to offer commentary on? Women. Specifically, Steve was on Oprah to share with us his pearls of wisdom regarding how ladies ought to behave.

Harvey’s first book, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man” currently tops the New York Times best seller list in the advice category, and Oprah, apparently, is lapping it up. According to Harvey, whenever a man approaches a woman, he knows what he wants from her and is trying to determine what it’s going to cost him—a premise that’s hardly revolutionary. In fact, I’m fairly certain I’ve heard it somewhere before.

The problem, Harvey says, is that modern women “have stopped setting the bar high.” You sluts are basically giving it away for free. And because, according to Harvey, a gal’s vagina is pretty much all she brings to the table, by giving it up, you’re giving away all your power. Steve is just looking out for you, see.

For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, though, Harvey isn’t comfortable calling sex sex. Instead, he calls it a “cookie”: “We’ve got to have a cookie. Everybody likes cookies. That’s the thing about a cookie. I like oatmeal raisin…but if you’ve got vanilla cream, I’ll eat that too.”

Honestly, I don’t even know what that means.

And how long does Harvey think a lady should wait before giving up her “cookie”? Three months. Months. Look, I’m all for taking things slow if that’s what you feel like you want to do. Fine. Good. But 90 days? I’m a lady, Steve, not a saint.

Of course, Harvey says, you can put out the cookie platter before then, but only at the risk of looking “desperate.” “You all keep changing the rules,” Harvey writes. “And men are aware of the fact that you are changing the rules. We’re aware of the fact that you act desperate. We’re aware of the fact that you think there’s a good shortage of good men out there.”

The flaws, insults and outright misogynies in Harvey’s argument are both too numerous and too obvious to outline here. But it all goes back to the idea that sex—I mean, the “cookie”—is the only thing a woman has to offer that a man could possibly be interested in. Which, when you think about it, is degrading to men maybe most of all.