Dehumanizing Sex: "The Stepford Wives" redux
Jonathan Sawyer
Elmore Clemmentson
, a high school mathematics teacher, was noted for his meticulously groomed yard. As a matter of fact, he had won the neighborhood's "best yard" award for last three years in a row. He was very proud of his methodical and rational approach to life's dilemmas.
Although a scientist by trade, he harbored an antipathy toward certain branches of technology, especially the mechanization of the species through androids and silicone dolls. For him, science had gone amok. Robotics was useful but served also as a means of distorting human relations.
Current movies were rife with examples of technology's excesses. The future was at stake and humanity was competing with emotionless replicas of itself.
Sadly, a short while ago Elmore had lost his wife of twenty years; she had been hit by a drunk driver, killed on the spot, and he had never really recovered from the shock.
After the funeral and the departure of family members, Elmore had to face his solitude whenever he came home at night and there was no one to talk to, no one to snuggle against on the couch while watching television and, of course, no warm body to love during those evenings and nights when he and his wife had both expressed their love through regular and satisfying sexual encounters.
Even as young lovers, they had a true lust for each other; at times, after a particularly energetic session with moans and sighs, Millicent would laugh and ask him what supplement he was adding to his diet...not that she was complaining! Although he didn't give the appearance of a gigolo-type guy--he was of average height, bespectacled, and thin--Elmore was a very sexy guy in the bedroom.
He had been blessed with an unusual sex drive and an oversized member that thrilled his spouse. In fact, prior to having sex, she would play with his penis casually at times in an admiring way. She had fondly labeled it his "bulbous battering ram."
It was a thing of fascination and utility/procreation that singled him out from the average man. It was a part of his identity just as much as his mathematical knowledge and professional skills.
All this love-making had produced only one daughter. Millicent had gone through two miscarriages prior to her birth. Caitlin, the daughter, had recently married and was living far away with her husband. She would call Elmore on a regular basis and ask how he was doing. He was due to visit them on Thanksgiving; Caitlin would be spending Christmas with her husband's parents.
It was the sexual dimension of their marriage that he missed the most. He soon found out, however, that many women who were alone for a variety of reasons were interested in satisfying his needs. They were even brazen about their availability.
Months after Millicent's passing, he finally asked one of his female associates out to dinner. Later on, he discovered that he could take her to bed with a minimum of effort and fulfill his sexual needs. He was amazed how easy and uncomplicated everything was.
One problem was that after several outings and sexual romps, the woman would become very insistent that he commit to her exclusively and stop dating other women, who were also willing to satisfy his ongoing carnal desires in exchange for evening companionship and a body in bed.
To be honest, most of Elmore's partners understood that sex was the reason they were both dating; marriage or, in this case, remarriage was only a distant possibility, not an obligation. It was human warmth and company they sought but not a long-term relationship.
Elmore was sexually satisfied but something was missing: that was the immediacy and vivacity of an individual to tease, to converse with about what had happened in the classroom that day, and with whom he could simply watch television without having to talk on and on. Millicent was a comfortable presence by his side. That feeling of togetherness would be very difficult to replace.
After a hard day at school, Elmore came home and ignored the messages that had been left on his voice mail. He knew they would be from women he had dated. He didn't feel like taking someone out to dinner, and then returning to her place (he preferred that arrangement) to have programmed sex, sometimes with passion but many times with only ejaculation in mind. If she had an orgasm in the process, they would both be fulfilled.
Out of boredom one night when alone, he turned on the television pay channel and came across a classical oldie, "The Stepford Wives," that he had seen years before. At the time he found it fascinating although far-fetched. The film was inspired by a novel of Ira Levin whose stories always dealt with the recreation or altering of human beings for nefarious ends.
One scene in the "Stepford Wives" stood out in Elmore's mind: two female neighbors had slipped into the town pharmacist's home during the workday; they heard loud cries of pleasure coming from the upstairs bedroom. The two intruders were surprised at how passionate their sexual intercourse was. The average-looking, decidedly non-sexy pharmacist was not only having sex in the middle of the day but he was driving his wife to ecstasy with his bedroom skills. It was the fulfillment of the male fantasy--passion and wifely obedience at his fingertips.
Later, after multiple incidents, the female protagonist finds out that the pliable and submissive wives were in reality sophistical mechanical dolls that had been fashioned to replace the human spouses who had been nagging their husbands with endless demands for a better and more profitable existence. To her horror she comes across her own incomplete replica that was ready and waiting for eyes to be inserted before being activated. In the end, she surrenders her humanity and becomes one of the mechanical suburban Stepford wives.
For the audience of the 1970s it was a chilling look into the future of technology and misogyny. That, most certainly, would never happen. Not in their lifetimes.
Elmore sat in the den and thought about the condemnation of male patriarchy in the film and the personal limits imposed by demanding wives.
The hard working male suburbanites of Stepford had concocted a way to rid their lives of an impediment to happiness: replacing a sharp-tongued and always exigent wife with an obedient and subservient mechanical doll, who was the antithesis of the new woman championed by feminine activists such as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem.
According to the new feminist order, male dominance was on the way out; women were now freed from the burden of multiple pregnancies thanks to contraception and expanded abortion rights.
Their access to once forbidden careers had guaranteed them financial independence. A more equitable world was at their doorstep in so many fields. It was rapidly becoming a feminized society. The male would be a progenitor, an entertainer, a bread winner, a plaything, and little else.
