Varför vill ni feminister förbjuda mig från att köpa sex?

Let me set the scene for you. There I am, wearing gray pajamas that are actually long johns, sitting up in bed, three cats pressed against my legs as I try to read a book. I feel heavy from the takeout empanadas I had earlier, fuzzy from having watched a movie that went on too long. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see my husband watching me.

"Soooooooo…" he says, stretching out the word until I give up on reading and look over at him. "You want some of this?" He's half-kidding but, still, he flexes his biceps and does that thing I hate where he makes his pecs dance. I flare my nostrils. Raise my eyebrows. "Um…"

At which point I'm forced to determine what choice would be more exhausting: to have sex with him, or to spend 10 minutes convincing him that, no, really, I'm not in the mood. Many women go through this same mental gymnastics repeatedly through the course of a relationship. It’s the moment when they decide — should I take one for the team? Should I say "yes" to maintenance sex?

If you haven't heard the phrase before, this put-upon act of intimacy is a willing acquiescence to sex that, at least for the less randy half of a couple, is undertaken for the good of the relationship. The concept seems benign enough, until you realize that it falls under the umbrella of sexual compliance, which is when a person willingly engages in sex they don’t actually want.

Sexually compliant behavior is troublingly common, particularly among women. In one study published in The Journal of Sex Research, for example, it was found that among 1,519 unmarried college students, 55 percent of women reported that they had consented to unwanted sexual intercourse. Other studies have yielded similar results. Since then, what researchers have struggled to determine is — why?

But where does that sentiment — that one has to close their eyes, hold their nose, and just get through it — come from? In studying sexual compliance within the context of young adults’ committed relationships, researcher Sarah Vannier, Ph.D., found numerous reasons why one might engage in unwanted sex. Some do so out of fear that their partner will lose interest in them if they don't put out. Some just don’t want to deal with the verbally coercive behavior they’ve come to expect from partners met with a "no." Others report that they comply with their partner's sexual requests in order to fulfill what they see as the obligations of their relationship. Still others have maintenance sex in order to boost intimacy in their relationship. The list goes on.

"It's an interesting idea because it's something people are agreeing to," says Vannier. "There's a willingness there, but there's not sexual desire."

While Natalie’s experiences with maintenance sex have been negative, Carley*, a 25-year-old customer service representative in Florida who has been with her present boyfriend for six months, has seen hers as a force for good; in fact she goes along with maintenance sex quite often to keep her partner happy.

"I don't have a very high sex drive, and my partners usually do," she says. So even when she's not in the mood, if she's not completely against it, she'll give it a go.

At the same time, she prioritizes intimacy within her relationships, and knows that if she waits to be in the mood before agreeing to sex, she might never have it at all. “I dated someone who only wanted me to have sex with him when I wanted to have sex badly,” says Carley. It was well-intentioned, but, “We went from having sex very often to very rarely.”

Natalie, for one, is much happier since she stopped forcing herself to engage in penetrative sex she didn't actually want. And she says the ubiquity of this kind of maintenance sex makes it harder for women like her to stop.

"There's a feeling of, like, if so many people were experiencing this, wouldn't we be angrier about it? It either gets ignored or accepted. I think the comparison that people are afraid to make is that maintenance sex can be like sexual assault or a form of it. You don't want to come out and say it but, I don't know, I think the universal acceptance of it as this joke, this thing we roll our eyes at, makes it harder to equate. I wish it were easier to have this conversation."

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. Prostitution is sometimes described as sexual services, commercial sex or, colloquially, hooking. Prostitution occurs in a variety of forms.

Emma* has been married for 15 years. She says it’s mostly a happy marriage. She and her husband still play sport together, go camping every year and spend most of their non-working hours together enjoying each other’s company.

Once or twice a month they have sex that Emma doesn’t really want to have but says, “I put up with it to keep the peace, and I don’t have to worry about him feeling rejected or upset when we’re trying to have fun.”

Is that rape? Legally, no. Emma does not dispute that she consents to sex she doesn’t want. But it’s certainly not enthusiastic consent.

Jennifer* has also had experience of what Greer calls giving in rather than giving consent. Her husband of six years says he “needs” to have sex nearly every day. “If I say no he doesn’t force me, but he sulks and tells me I’m being manipulative. Sometimes he’ll start something and I just lie there," she says. "As long as I don’t actively stop him, he’ll keep going so we have sex and from start to finish I haven’t even moved.”

Jennifer doesn’t call it rape. Greer would probably call it “bad sex”. It would be interesting to know what Jennifer’s husband calls it.

How does an otherwise non-violent man come to an understanding of his relationship with his wife that includes finding highly regular satisfaction in imposing himself on her unresponsive body? How can he imagine that such uncaring behaviour will not irrevocably damage their marriage as well as his wife? Or is he able to just not think about it at all?

Emma and Jennifer are not helpless victims. Both of them are intelligent, articulate, capable women who have the ability to express their feeling and they both say they do not refuse sex because they are scared of being forced if they say no. They say they don’t say "no" because the emotional ramifications are too exhausting.

They are also far more typical than either of them realise. A study of more than 20,000 Australians found that 33 per cent of women didn’t have an orgasm in their most recent sexual encounter, compared to 92 per cent of men who did. Twenty one per cent of women in heterosexual relationships said sex with their partner relationship was not pleasurable or only moderately pleasurable.

Bound up in all of that is the violation, not just of the body but of identity and personhood, inherent in sex that is taken from a partner without thought or care.

Neither Emma nor Jennifer want criminal redress for this regular violation. But they do wish their husbands were not so inculcated to ignore women’s desires that the effort to have those desires recognised is greater than the emotional effort of giving in to unwanted sex.

Prostitution is the business or practice of engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. Prostitution is sometimes described as sexual services, commercial sex or, colloquially, hooking. Prostitution occurs in a variety of forms.