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...this is, well, special. Very, very special. The End of Courtship
Quotes:
"For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature."
Because God knows, if you're not having babies with a man, your life sucks.
"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."
Because if there aren't women that you can look down on as sluts, then there's just something wrong with the world, isn't there?
"For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love. Women also lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests. For only by holding herself in reserve does a woman gain the distance and self-command needed to discern what and whom she truly wants and to insist that the ardent suitor measure up."
So, um. A woman can only know what she wants by being a tease, because she's just naturally too un-self-controlled to know if she wants to have sex.
Some people are really, really dumb.
Quotes:
"For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature."
Because God knows, if you're not having babies with a man, your life sucks.
"The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother."
Because if there aren't women that you can look down on as sluts, then there's just something wrong with the world, isn't there?
"For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love. Women also lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests. For only by holding herself in reserve does a woman gain the distance and self-command needed to discern what and whom she truly wants and to insist that the ardent suitor measure up."
So, um. A woman can only know what she wants by being a tease, because she's just naturally too un-self-controlled to know if she wants to have sex.
Some people are really, really dumb.
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Okay, right there it's obvious that the writer has no clue whatsoever about the history of family structures. Gotta love people who think social history begins and ends with Victorian England.
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(Edited for spelling.)
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As a confirmed single, I just . . . gah. So offensive and so dumb!
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This is not a view of humanity to which I subscribe.
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Sometimes men are manipulative shysters and sometimes the women are hormone-crazed and shallow.
See? It's an equal-opportunity race to the bottom, it is!
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(Edited for left out word)
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My mother's one of them. "You shouldn't live with a man before marriage."
"Why not?"
"What's his incentive to marry you if he's already getting all the things he wants?"
"So I have to trap him!?"
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This is possibly the singlemost offensive statement in the entire article. I think it highlights what many social conservatives consider the /true/ purpose of marriage is. It's not a joyous union of two people who want to spend their lives together. It's not a method for procreation or for raising families. It's society's vehicle for the discouragment of sexual misconduct.
And I think /that/ is where the opposition to same sex marriage comes from. Because, if you view homosexuality as sexual misconduct, then yes, same sex marriage undermines the purpose of marriage. It's just not the purpose that they'll admit publicly. (It also explains why homosexuality often gets lumped in with truly bad things like pedophilia and beastiality. They're all forms of sexual misconduct in these people's eyes, and therefore all equally bad.)
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I mean, okay. Assume that God made us out of whole cloth. Then, presumably, he included the ability to orgasm. And more than that, to have a lot of other touching and stuff feel good, even if it doesn't directly involve intercourse. Presumably, he's responsible for all of this. So what's bad about enjoying it?
You end up with this view of God that's...God is a bastard, really. God rigged up all these feelings and sensations explicitly to try and seduce us into doing things he disapproves of. WTF? (Although, admittedly, it goes well with the idea of a God who would plant ancient fossils, thousands of years before anyone had the ability to view them, for the express purpose of tricking scientists into believing their senses over the Bible. And then punish them for it.)
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If you start with, "God is a sadistic bastard," everything DOES make a LOT of logical sense from there.
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This does not negate the "God is a bastard" theory, but rather is my attempt at figuring out what kind of paralogia these folks would resort to, is pressed on the issue.
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Buh?!? Who is this person, and what agenda is he pushing? I though at first it was one of these anti-sex religious female types.
It seems like someone has taken the interesting tidbit that fairly large numbers of women are choosing to be homemakers and finding fulfillment doing so, to extrapolate some rather outlandish conclusions. This seems like the rhetorical flipside of 'A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle'. Do most women need a man? Yes.
But equally, most men need a woman JUST AS MUCH. And to claim that we only want some of the poo-say and that's all we want is as denigrating to men as the implication that women who enjoy the sexuality are somehow less worth than their more frigid sisters.
Save for a very few who are stuck in a sort of permanent adolescence, most guys I know, even those who are/were something of a player, wanted companionship too.
I'm also tempted to throw in some Paglia and ramble about how he's simply trying to return men to being captive to the power of the female/chthonian, but I can't work myself into a proper fit of self-righteous moral indignation to go quite that far with it.
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What man in his right mind is going to want a woman like that? It would turn one's entire life into this nightmare struggle of having to continually bribe her to come to an agreement on this. And the idea that women would prefer to be this sort of...of...of I don't know what, or that the idea is 'romantic'. Because what woman would want to have that sort of dynamic? Where everything is some contest? Some attempt to manipulate a man into changing his natural impulses into something else via teasing?
You've officially blown my tiny little libertarian mind.
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If you're a man, then you've got the assurance that she's not going to cheat on you, because you're her only source of security. (And besides, she hates sex, so why would she go out shopping?) And, presumably, the idea that is once you've married her, she /is/ available for sex anytime, because that's the deal. (This ties into the (wrong) idea that there can't be rape between spouses. Marriage means sexual availability whenever one partner wants it.) And, if you believe that men are solely motivated by their need for sex, /and/ are in a society where unmarried women are expected to deny sex at every turn, that's a powerful incentive.
If you're the woman, you get enjoy sex...as long as you don't enjoy it too much, or too often, so that he doesn't get bored with you. You can't count on him being faithful, but he'll pay the bills, and not complain overmuch. And if there's ever anything you seriously want, you can probably get it by manipulating him sexually, or denying him sex. Also, you don't have to play the game anymore with other men, which means that you finally get to be more like the person you really are. (Hence the old joke about a woman becoming frumpy after she's 'trapped her man'.)
It's a nasty dynamic, but one that, sadly, does play out with couples across the country.
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That's *if* he's enjoyable in the sack, or even cares about your enjoyment beyond his.
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This makes me consider the area that most of this ethos comes from (Victorian England and earlier) and the average life expectancy and age of adulthood at that time.
How old were men (and women) when they started on the marriage market at that time? Its entirely possible, and likely from my murky memories, that most of the marriageable men and women were still in late adolescence. Then how much time did they have while married when they were both of an age at which they had finished maturing physically?
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Consider that in Victorian England, 'childhood' and 'adolescence' as we know them didn't really exist. Children could be and were considered workers and producers from a fairly young age, working hours as long and jobs as difficult as adults. There was no 'moritorium' like we give adolescents these days as a time to explore their identities and options, and make mistakes that won't haunt them.
However, it was expected that men would do certain things, and women would do certain things. While, for the expectations of men, we'd consider that behavior 'childish' or 'immature' these days, in those times it was normal. A man was not held to the same standards of fidelity as a woman, as long as he did his husbandly duty. Didn't humiliate his wife in public, kept her and the children fed, clothed, etc, and was reasonably discreet about his affairs. And, of course, didn't do something stupid like leave a wife for a mistress.
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One of whom wound up divorced after her guide to "keeping a man forever" hit the stands, in an act of cosmic justice I consider performed for my own private, malicious amusement.
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Okay, in this fellow's defense, I have to say that the last quote kinda makes sense. I can believe that some woman might be so overwhelmed by the really hot, hot sex as to marry guys who are wrong for them in the long run.
*giggle*
The lovely thing about this worldview is that it so neatly pairs off men and women who deserve each other. They can have their perfect little dry and lifeless marriages; I'll be over here enjoying the company of men who put out on the first date. :D
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From: (Anonymous)
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