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Rebels, tune in to 'Let's Talk UNLV' with Dr. Tanya Crabb and Dr. Sammie Scales. Your express pass to everything UNLV — campus highlights, programs, and the latest buzz. Join us weekly as we chat with student leaders, administrators, and faculty, diving into the core of what makes us Rebels.
The program brings guests from different areas of UNLV every week to discuss campus highlights, programs and services, research interests that are essential to being a Rebel. Let’s Talk UNLV places its emphasis on connecting with student leaders who represent the voice of students on our campus. Guests also include administrators, faculty and staff responsible for upholding the mission of the university, which is teaching, research and scholarship.
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0:00:00
Alright, welcome to another segment of Let's Talk UNLV. On KUNV, you're with co-hosts Keith and Renee. Renee, how was your weekend?
0:00:15
Let's see, what did I do?
0:00:18
Well, you know the weather was beautiful. You know, we're still in that great space living in Las Vegas before it gets 200 degrees out.
0:00:26
Yeah, I think it was just a chill weekend. I don't recall anything standing out of importance. But what about you?
0:00:32
You know, I just was lazy to act this weekend. You know, we had a couple of soccer games and, you know, my boys were disappointed. The teams lost both games. So, you know, that was, you know, a little dreary for them. But, you know, then we just spent just doing some movie time. You know, mom was out of town, visiting some friends. So it was just the boys. So we just, you know, we were lazy. I don't even know if we changed clothes all weekend. Well, you deserve that. You're the guy of the year. So, you know, we ate junk food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and popcorn. So the boys, they enjoyed it. So good relaxing weekend. But you know, I'm excited for this segment today. We have Dr. William Jankowiak with us. He's a professor of anthropology. William, welcome to the show.
0:01:14
Yeah, hi. Glad to be here.
0:01:16
Could you share a little bit about the work that you're doing within Anthropology?
0:01:20
Sure. I really work on three different topics. One is where I did my dissertation, and I tried to get to the field every year, and that's northern China, where I worked in a minority area called Inner Mongolia. And I've done a lot of writing on how China has changed over the last 30 odd years. The second is a short, or really not short, but four years or so on and off, a research where I did in a Western polygamist community. And I have a book under manuscript that's now being reviewed on life in that community. And the other is I'm really been used to human universals and one of the things I'm studying is love around the world and whether romantic love is the human universal which I published saying that it is and then now I'm trying to write a book on looking at the tension between love and sex in the sense that no culture ever gets it right. Wow this may be one of our more popular shows once the word gets out. Wow.
0:02:30
You're talking love and romance and sex.
0:02:32
Yeah, so tell us more about this research in Human Universal's love and sex. What are you finding throughout your research?
0:02:43
Well, what you find is that not all cultures have a normative value. They don't make it required that you have to fall in love. This is particularly true of range marriage societies, but you find even in a range marriage societies where love is the great fear. Parents really fear that their sons or daughters will hook up with somebody and run away, which defeats the whole point of a marriage alliance system. And so love is the great danger to them. But it's interesting, you find in all cultures, particularly among youth, you find people falling in love. And there's all sorts of folk tales about love stories, and what they should do and what they should not do, and this seems to speak to a human universal, because how many times have you gotten tired of people talking about what a good car would be, or how much a good pair of tires would? We haven't been involved yet in tires or cars, but we have gotten involved to be very curious about not just ourselves, but people we know
0:03:59
And so how then is sex interpreted or how does sex evolve or play a role in these cultures?
0:04:11
Yeah, why doesn't any culture get it right? And this really gets into, if you will, another human universal. So this is controversial, since everyone doesn't agree, but the data I think is overwhelmingly that men and women have a lot of different attitudes, if you will, towards what's attractive and what they want in a relationship. Out of that then becomes the thing of great disappointment. You find in some senses men are just drawn, and they're not sure why, to seek sexual uh... to sexual price with someone else which they may or may not have any emotional and uh... interest them you think of going to a prostitute it fit the kind of a male's fantasy of partner variety but with no strings attached or enough or a one night and or a man could be in a relationship and move in that way uh... it's what's interesting guy because you quickly would say, well what about women? Women do the same thing. Well, not really. How many women do you know who went through a prostitute? Can't think of one. There was an interesting thing in the R.J. a couple, maybe five or so years ago and he was only going to service women. And so it was all written up in the paper, because this was legal, it was up in Pahrump, which is legal, and three months later I noticed in the R.J. that he quit. He said in three months he only has five customers.
0:06:00
Not a good business model.
0:06:05
No, not lucrative at all.
0:06:06
And I was thinking like how many would a professional, again a prompt prostitute, how many customers would they have in a week versus over 120 days or 90 days or so, right? And so the question then is why do they do that? And I asked our colleague who was giving a brilliant talk to our department, Marta Media, who studied female sexuality, and she really taught me something. I asked her the same question, why don't women go to prostitutes? And she said, my 20, 30 years research on female sexuality, I've discovered the driving interest of women is to be sexually desired. And to pay somebody to act like they're sexually desired kind of defeats the purpose. Though that being said, there are cases of middle-aged women in Jamaica, in Egypt, in Europe, or Canada, in America, who do pay money to men, who then act as if they sexually and romantically desire them. But in some sense, these women do, but they don't do it for one hour. It has to be for a weekend, where they speculate, or, wouldn't it be good to get you back to America? It's a fantasy. Everyone kind of knows it, but why is that important? Now let's go to a male, since we have a male host here. How many men do you know saying, I really got into a romantic, before I have sex with a woman I have to get into a romantic frame of mind, and we have to speculate how we're going to go, and we're going to travel around, and we're going to go to Yellowstone. Most men would say, huh? They'd say, wait a minute, is this the girlfriend? Oh, no, no, no, no.
0:07:43
Now, William, don't you get me in trouble with the men now. You're going to get me in trouble.
0:07:47
So, now, a lot of people, in fairness to my sociology colleagues, who, if they were listening, would be seething now and wanting to write in Texas, they'd say, well, this is all culturally constructed. Maybe, but I think not.
0:08:04
And that's what I was going to ask you if your research bears it out, if you've collected research in the area, in terms of similarities or dissimilarities in developed cultures or more modern, or underdeveloped cultures, or even this individualistic society versus collectivism society.
0:08:23
Yeah, well you know, here comes the real dilemma. Remember I said culture gets love or sex right? That's not promising. Men have just as great a desire for a loving, dyadic bond as any woman or as anybody you've ever known. It doesn't matter if it's medieval Japan, medieval China, imperial China, or 18th century London. And so what's the dilemma? You can have partner variety going from prostitute, but it's not emotionally pleasing. It's sexually gratifying, but sexual gratification is not for a man now. I mean, necessarily it's emotionally gratifying. And also I would say for a woman, sexual gratification. So what do men do? They seek out a mistress who's a love bond. Even the great Chinese emperors all had favorite wives. And what is a favorite wife? It's one that
0:09:30
you want to spend most of the time with. The one that you develop close personal
0:09:39
feelings for. It's the one where you share your fears. So I know you mentioned that most cultures rarely get it right. Are there what cultures do get it right or more right than others? Oh, that's a good question. That's a good question. I don't think of any culture, cultures make up norms. They try to help people. They help their youth and guide them in terms of recognizing the values that they think are the way you should live. So that's all cultures try to do that. And the more people get integrated into that culture, But yet in all cultures, you find people somehow wondering, do I want to stay this way? The culture says I should do this, I should be sexually monogamous, so why am I being pulled with my fantasies in this other way? Even women, they don't go to prostitutes, but they have profound implications of maybe I should find someone else, maybe I should get involved with someone else, maybe I made the wrong choice in my partner, maybe I could do better with a different partner, which is not quite the same thing as sexual variety just for momentary encounter. They're looking for creating an alternative relationship, but they're wondering too, did I make the right choice? So I think that's an underlying psychological state. So then what culture gets it right, you know, would be, what do you mean by that? Do you mean by what culture gets everyone reproducing and producing themselves? Then more or less all cultures get it right at that level. But what culture gets it right at the individual level where everyone's very satisfied and never has these doubts? And I don't think any culture ever gets it that way.
0:11:13
Now what do you, and I'm talking, I guess, more United States. So what do you what do you think the appeal is to like all of these reality shows that are centered around finding relationships like The Bachelor, The Bachelet? You got this new show, Marry First Sight. You know, you have all these relationship related shows that are surfacing. question I guess whether you made the right decision with your current partner or whether you're satisfied with your current partner or should seek a new relationship.
0:11:40
Yeah well this is, you know, sociologists have commented on this because this is just not America, this is hitting Western Europe and soon it's going to be hitting urban China as well. of marriage? Is it just a signal that you've created this incredible sense of deep intimacy and you stay married as long as the deep intimacy is there? And if the deep intimacy leaves and you kind of go flat, not like you dislike the person, but you're kind of just, ah, whatever, you know, is that a signal that you need to go out and find another deep intimacy. Some sociologists have argued, Andrew Giddens for one, a Brit out of London, he argued that's the new state of the world, that we can say kiss goodbye to marriage as being a lifelong institution and just look at it as the end point of a bunch of serial emotional monogamies, that both people will stay in it as long as you have a connection. And when you don't have a connection, what's the point of being married since that's the reason you got married?
0:12:58
You know, as you were talking, I was thinking about friends of mine. Yeah, they probably would prefer a one night stand with a man than to seek out a prostitute in a man.
0:13:08
That would be more acceptable.
0:13:09
You know, you go out. Yeah, you're talking from the woman perspective.
0:13:14
From the woman perspective.
0:13:15
You know, you go out, you maybe go to a restaurant or a bar or you meet someone and you strike a conversation.
0:13:25
You develop a relationship of type, if you will. But here's the thing, and a lot of women don't realize that when men say frequent sex, and I don't want to embarrass your audience, but remember this is an analytical conversation. When men talk about frequent sex, they can have oral sex that lasts 10 minutes and that's considered to a man to have been a pleasant outing of money. That would just be absolutely obscene to any woman. But you're right on qualifying it though. It's not that women are prudes. They just have a different mechanism by which they want to get involved. That's a very important point.
0:14:03
And then I've also known female friends of mine that are engaged and leading up to marriage and maybe they fell in love with that high school sweetheart. As friends, we would kind of tease them like, that's your only one? Are you sure? You sure you don't want to find a prostitute, you know, to figure out if there's pleasure, but there is this kind of thing of girl, before you settle down, you might want to explore some things so you have a better sense of what you like as a form of pleasure. And I know the guys definitely get that kind of pressure, right Keith? Am I off beat on that? Yes.
0:14:54
You know the guys are like, are you insane? Why are you getting married?
0:14:56
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
0:14:58
wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,
0:15:07
What's it about?
0:15:08
It's ideally saying, look, look what you're going to miss now. Yeah. And on the flip side, William, when you go to the female bachelorette party, I go back
0:15:17
to your point about women wanting to be sexually desired. That's what we do. We give them all these paraphernalia to sexy lingerie, edibles, and all these things to make that night a night of high desire and fantasies fulfilled. And we build that night up to be the night.
0:15:51
Right?
0:15:52
And you got to make it right. And so much is placed on the emphasis of that night and what it entails. But yeah, you want to be the most desired. Even the wedding, you know, it's like bridesmaids, you cannot outshine me on my day. You cannot wear...
0:16:14
Interesting, yeah.
0:16:15
Yeah, and that's because she is to be viewed as the most desired individual apart of that
0:16:24
whole ceremony.
0:16:25
The most desired individual. Well that explains why the bride and groom's dresses are so bloody ugly.
0:16:32
Laughter.
0:16:35
Well that's interesting, that ritualistic pattern that sort of prevailed over centuries.
0:16:41
Yeah, yeah.
0:16:42
You know and.
0:16:43
Yeah. Now I'm going to switch gears a little bit because I'm same gender loving so I've got to give some time to those of us who are sentient or loving. And my partner and I, we're at the point where love isn't enough. I'm 45, she's 58, and we're just like, at this point, you gotta bring some other things to the table. I like you, and I like that you look good, you keep yourself fit, you go to your mani and your pedi and you know what I mean, but you got to have a few dollars in your pocket. You got to have a credit score that, you know, that we're not worried about us having to pay additional interest because of some past mistakes. You know, emotionally, you got to be stable. You need to be able to think about some career milestones. And yeah, I'm at that.
0:17:37
But is that more being sort of at the age you described and then also being in a professional setting that you're, is that sort of, would that be universal for male? I know like male friends who have been in marriages or who are still single sort of at that 45 and above and they have the same interest you have as, hey, I need somebody to bring something to the party, you know, other than the gifts that someone would get the night before a wedding, right? I need more than that. I need you to be a contributor in more ways than that. But is that a social construct in itself?
0:18:07
That we feel like at this age, put away the toys, put away, you know. Let's talk more partnership. Yeah, partnership. Let's talk more about our own individual, but yet partner aspirations. Yeah. You know, my partner, we've even talked about, she's out of state, if she were to relocate, we've talked about having separate houses. Like, no need of us trying to figure out how to cram everything into one house. We might just be better off having two houses and we would probably have a happier life. So I'm just saying, so it's interesting. So
0:18:43
maybe William Keyes speak to, or what you desire to get out of a marriage at 20 to 30 versus 45, 50 and above. If there are
0:19:01
differences. And is there also any differences based on sexual orientation? You raised two
0:19:07
interesting questions, two responses. One is, is a correction to the notion that Americans have a 50% divorce rate. That's true if you're not college educated and you got married before 30. The divorce rate for college educated people who got married after 30 or higher is around 18%. Why the big difference? Because at 30 you begin to know yourself. Before that you have the culture saying, go for the most beautiful woman you can get, go for the highest status man you can get. Now that might work for some, but you might find, hey, the beauty without all this other stuff is boring. High status is fine, but he's a bore. But at 30, you know what works for you. You know, I know a lot of people say that's what you should get, but that's not my ideal. I know what my ideal is. And so you made a better choice. The other one which you're getting at in terms of sexuality and interest, there's different responses to the dilemma of no culture gets it right. One of the responses is spousal exchange which we call in America swingers. But spousal exchange do have companionship love for their spouses. I thought originally they didn't. I thought they were just in dead marriages but no, no, they had, they had real close relationships but what they did realize is that they were asexual and they thought sexuality should be enhanced and so they got into this arrangement and what I discovered was the most important thing is not sexual fidelity but if you will, cognitive fidelity. If you ask your spouse, may I or may I not have sex with this person, they feel empowered and they don't feel threatened. It's when you do it in secret that they feel threatened, which is either one woman and two guys or one man and two women. Interesting in polyamore, you seldom see it's one man and five women and one woman and five guys. It always seems to be a triad, three people involved. They will tell you really right up front, the reason we're doing this is to enhance our eroticism. And so you're finding again the response is trying to hyphen sexuality in and of itself. And you find with women, you find it in a relationship and both of people are seeking relationships in a way. I have a colleague in another state who studied polyamory. I haven't, so I'm just going to repeat what she told me. Again, I have never studied polyamory. And she says it was her opinion that it was really low-ranking males. She uses the word beta males, alpha males being top, beta being under. And these cannot get women on their own, but they agreed to share a woman. And so they participated. So what you're seeing all people organized around what? What do I personally need to have a hyphen erotic encounter if that's important to me? Not important to everybody, but if it's important to me, will this work either for spousal exchange or polyamor relationships? Do I want to have an intense love affair with an individual but I don't want to divorce my wife or husband. A lot of women have long-term love crushes with somebody else, but they stay married.
0:22:57
William, have you seen through your research differences in success rate among, I guess, between those in polygamous communities versus traditional marriages?
0:23:10
Yeah, the big question is polygamy work. The subtitle of my book, it's called
0:23:12
Illicit Monogamy, How Romantic Love Undermined Plural Love. What I discovered in the community I was working in is that every single man had a favorite wife and the others were what I would call low-profile wives, which doesn't mean they treated them as crap. No, no, no, but they were respectful interaction, but their real passion, who they saw the most, who they sought out, who they spent most time with, was the favorite wife.
0:23:47
Well, I'm betting there's some women that says, I have a husband, but I also have a favorite man.
0:23:53
Well, that was kind of part of the idea of the mistress for the man, that maybe we should name the favorite man for the woman.
0:24:05
Yeah, favorite boyfriend.
0:24:06
But again, you see the woman is, yeah, yeah, it's my secret boyfriend or my backdoor man.
0:24:11
Yeah. Now, in that sort of favorite wife scenario, were there sort of common factors that made the wife the favorite wife or?
0:24:22
You know, that's interesting because it wasn't necessarily the youngest. A lot of them really hung on to wives a long time. Sometimes the favorite wife was their high school sweetheart. They stayed really committed to that and that was kind of their soulmate. But if the first wife was not their favorite wife, it just never started off that way, it allowed the next wife, generally the second wife, to take over. And then she could become the favorite wife. Now he might take a third wife and he might find her the youngest, the most sexually attractive or whatever, though it would be really bad form to admit any of this. So he would never have met this publicly. But whether privately he felt, however, that was not necessarily his love wife. This was a wife he would interact with, duty fulfilling of this and that. You have to remember, polygamy is not about sex. Polyamory is about heightened sex. Polygamy is not. Polygamy is about reproduction. It's about having large families.
0:25:25
All right. Well, thank you, William, for joining us today. Were there any questions or points that we did not, questions we didn't ask, or points that you wanted to make that we didn't have time? And we'll get you out on that last question.
0:25:36
Okay. You guys were just terrific. It was a lot of fun. And thanks for really asking insightful questions.
0:25:41
I know you got me sitting on the edge of my seat. I'm like, Renee and I are looking at each other trying to figure out who gets to ask the next question. We're like, no, no, I got it, I got it. This is my next question. So thank you for sharing and educating us and the audience, and I'm sure this is going to be a popular podcast once it's aired. Renee, what are your takeaways from today?
0:26:02
I learned a lot. I mean, the fact that no culture gets lover sex right.
0:26:07
Yes, that was very surprising, right?
0:26:10
Yeah, very surprising.
0:26:11
And I guess one...
0:26:12
Yeah, I may be disappointed or maybe hopeful. If no culture gets it right, if I haven't got it right, well, then I'm just normal.
0:26:20
Right, right. And I guess I was also, it was fascinating to hear that, you know, because you always hear, you know, the success rate of marriage is like 50%. And it was great to hear you sort of break down the success rates within different factors such as age and education. That certainly significantly impacts the success rate of marriage.
0:26:42
Thank you for tuning in to this week's episode of KUNV Let's Talk UNLV. I'm my co-host Keith. I'm my co-host Keith.
0:26:48
I'm Renee. Tune in next week, Wednesday at 12, on KUNV 91.5 Jazz and More. That's a wrap!
Transcribed with Cockatoo