Cheating Women Poem by gershon hepner

More and more now married women cheat
no less than do their husbands. Oh, alack!
In offices––no need for bars––they meet,
and very soon they end up in the sack
with other women’s husbands. Twelve per cent
of married men do this each year, the figure
for wives who share with them the cheating bent
is seven. They perform with equal vigor
without Viagra as a prop or safety aid,
since their anatomy is always ready
to help unfaithful husbands to get laid,
providing them with pencils that are leady.
Fifteen percent of women do this in
their lifetime, sixty is the number for
the men. It seems we’re going long on sin––
commandment number seven such a bore!
We’re all egalitarians now, and aren’t
dependent on the tablets Moses smashed,
except Viagra for those men who can’t
perform without it when they’re unabashed.

Tara Parker-Pope writes about the increase of infidelity in women (“Love, Sex, and the Changing Face of Infidelity, ” NYT, October 29,2008) :
The most consistent data on infidelity come from the General Social Survey, sponsored by the National Science Foundation and based at the University of Chicago, which has used a national representative sample to track the opinions and social behaviors of Americans since 1972. The survey data show that in any given year, about 10 percent of married people — 12 percent of men and 7 percent of women — say they have had sex outside their marriage. But detailed analysis of the data from 1991 to 2006, to be presented next month by Dr. Atkins at the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies conference in Orlando, show some surprising shifts. University of Washington researchers have found that the lifetime rate of infidelity for men over 60 increased to 28 percent in 2006, up from 20 percent in 1991. For women over 60, the increase is more striking: to 15 percent, up from 5 percent in 1991. The researchers also see big changes in relatively new marriages. About 20 percent of men and 15 percent of women under 35 say they have ever been unfaithful, up from about 15 and 12 percent respectively. Theories vary about why more people appear to be cheating. Among older people, a host of newer drugs and treatments are making it easier to be sexual, and in some cases unfaithful — Viagra and other remedies for erectile dysfunction, estrogen and testosterone supplements to maintain women’s sex drive and vaginal health, even advances like better hip replacements. “They’ve got the physical health to express their sexuality into old age, ” said Helen E. Fisher, research professor of anthropology at Rutgers and the author of several books on the biological and evolutionary basis of love and sex.


10/29/08