JAMES TARANTO: Opposites Attract: Science confirms obvious facts about human nature. It ain’t fiction, just a natural fact:
Journalism ensued when Gottlieb looked into the social-science research. It turned out to confirm, in general terms, the boyfriend’s hypothesis. A study published last year in the American Sociological Review found, as Gottlieb sums it up, that couples had less-frequent sex if husbands performed “what the researchers characterized as feminine chores like folding laundry, cooking or vacuuming” than if they did “what were considered masculine chores, like taking out the trash or fixing the car.” The researchers also reported a correlation between a “more traditional . . . division of labor” and the wife’s sexual satisfaction.
Julie Brines, one of the study’s authors, sums up the findings to Gottlieb as follows: “The less gender differentiation, the less sexual desire.” So sex differences are sexy: Once again, science confirms the obvious. . . . Society has become vastly more accepting of adults with unusual sexual identities. More tolerance of the usual–including ordinary differences between men and women–would do a lot to promote human flourishing.
We celebrate our differences, but only when they are in support of the Narrative. Meanwhile, here’s a blast from the past, proving that everything old is new again.