Oh, boy...

[pyrephox]

...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.

Comments

[solaas.livejournal.com]

Oh, help. *speechless and appalled*

As a confirmed single, I just . . . gah. So offensive and so dumb!

[solaas.livejournal.com]

Not to mention how offensive that sentence is in that it brands all men as sexcrazed idiots who don't want anything more than getting laid? Wanting companionship isn't just something women do. XD

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Pretty much. As I mentioned in my commentary post, the 'traditional' roles of men and women, as seen by this guy, are just as insulting to guys as they are to women. You end up with men being pictured as hormone-crazed, shallow sociopaths, and women as conniving, manipulative shysters.

This is not a view of humanity to which I subscribe.

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Absolutely not.

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!

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

Yes! The sexes can both be equal bastards. :D

[cpip.livejournal.com]

I'd replace "can be" with "are," but, well, we've established you've a more optimistic view of human nature than I.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

I like people, yeah. :) And I think most people are pretty good, and trying to do the best they can in a confusing, frustrating, and occassionally actively hostile world.

(Edited for left out word)

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

It's funny how many people find it acceptable to think of men as hormone crazed, shallow sociopaths. These people would be stunned if you point it out to them, and go into fits of denial.

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!?"

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Well, what IS the incentive to marry?

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

To me? The legal ones, but otherwise... eh. I'm pretty ambivalent about marriage one way or the other. Legally, marriage makes your relationship a partnership. Every other aspect of marriage is completely up to the individual.

[archangelbeth]

In-state tuition rates.

[ryuutchi.livejournal.com]

Visitation rights, the right to make legal decisions when your partner is incapacitated, ease in adopting (if you're interested), inheritance, taxes... Yeah, the legal ones.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it?

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.)

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

It's all about making sure people don't actually enjoy sex.

[pyrephox.livejournal.com]

There's that, too. Which, I'll admit, is one of the things that I just don't understand. Even when I try to look at it from their point of view.

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.)

[cpip.livejournal.com]

Well, yes.

If you start with, "God is a sadistic bastard," everything DOES make a LOT of logical sense from there.

[prodigal.livejournal.com]

Looked at through a "I'm bending all science to fit my religious preferences" way, the orgasm only exists in order to make pregnancy more likely. The male side, to propel things as far toward the woman's egg as possible, and the female side, to pull it in the rest of the way.

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.