In the discussion section below this post, we’ve somehow gotten sidetracked on to the topic of men, feminism, marriage, and changing sexual mores.
If there’s a cultural myth I find loathsome, it’s the notion that men are losing interest in marriage because sex with women has become widely available outside of marriage. This showed up in some of the comments, and I wanted to take some time to respond.
As the saying puts it, "Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?" I’ve heard many of my more conservative friends offer one variation or another on that old story, explaining why it is that one male friend or another is proving reluctant to marry his girlfriend. I know that a great many of the young women I’ve taught in my gender studies classes got one version or another of that message from their parents; I’ve read countless journal entries about cows and men and milk and sex. So I can’t say I’m surprised to see someone resurrect the old line in a discussion of sexual mores.
First off, for those folks who are convinced that earlier generations of Americans always punished pre-marital sex, do please take a good course on the Puritans. Failing that, let me recommend a great book by a man who is a dear friend: Sexual Revolution in Early America, by Richard Godbeer of the University of Miami (FL). It’s an indispensable corrective to many of our myths. And as any student of family history knows, depending on whose study you read, anywhere from 10-40% of brides in eighteenth-century New England were pregnant on their wedding days — judging by the records of healthy first-born children delivered eight months or less afterwards. (Perhaps there was an epidemic of hardy preemies in Boston three centuries ago?)
But I correct student misconceptions for a living in the classroom. It’s not what I want to do here on the blog. Rather, I have to say that as a Christian, a married person, and as a man, I find the notion that women ought to withhold sex in order to convince men to marry them to be profoundly objectionable. It certainly reflects a very limited view of men, women, and the nature of marriage! It also ignores what I think is the real reason for falling marriage rates: not sex, but economics. As more and more middle-class women become financially independent, more and more of us of both sexes can choose to be "picky" about whom we marry. We can make it on our own in a way that earlier generations could not; that means that marriages are more likely to be reflect our romantic and spiritual choices than our need and our dependence. On the whole, I tend to think that’s a good thing for both men and women.
Obviously, I believe in marriage, and I’m thrilled to be married to this beautiful and amazing woman. But I didn’t marry my wife so I could finally have sex with her. She didn’t marry me so that she could have a roof over her head. Rather, we chose to embrace marriage as an expression of our devotion to each other and our mutual eagerness for the unique "crucible" experience that marriage brings. As I’ve said before, I believe in marriage because I believe it to be a uniquely powerful vehicle for personal growth. I also believe it can provide a safe, nurturing environment for children.
For the most part, these are modern reasons. I didn’t get married to have licit sex. I didn’t get married because I’d starve without a wife. I didn’t get married to meet other’s expectations; heck, when it’s your fourth wedding, some people think you shouldn’t get married ever again! I got married because I am in love with the woman who is my wife, because we challenge each other in all the best ways, and because I truly believe that she and I will be better equipped for love, service, and transformation together rather than apart.
I’ll be honest. Despite my evangelicalism, I’ve always worried that the "no sex before marriage" rule has the (possibly) unintended consequence of encouraging folks to marry before they are emotionally and spiritually mature enough to handle such a relationship. No, I don’t think experience is the best teacher; yes, I know many successful marriages where both parties were virgins on the wedding night. But I’d hate to think that someone was marrying me just so that they could finally have sex with me! Indeed, I’d go so far as to suggest that for those of us raised in a more sexually tolerant and affluent culture, when we go to the altar with our college degrees and our IRAs and our own set of past physical experiences, we can offer our new spouse the radical assurance that we are truly marrying them for who they are, not for what we will finally be allowed to do!
The divorce rate among evangelical Christians (who presumably "waited") is equal to that of secular folks. That may say something about the culture’s influence on the church, of course, but it also makes clear that abstinence before marriage is hardly a reliable vaccine against future divorce! Mind you, I’m not suggesting folks go about "sowing oats" heedlessly. Promiscuity is rarely healthy. But when we idealize a more innocent past, and make an idol out of virginity and marriage, I’m not sure that’s particularly healthy either.
The young men I work with and my male peers don’t see women as "cows". (Vulgar, sexist humor notwithstanding.) For the most part, they don’t see sex as "milk" to be taken "for free". The fellas I run with and work out with are either reasonably happy in their marriages or they are single men looking to get married. The teenage boys I work with may be very horny (the same can of course be said for many of their sisters), but they too talk of marriage. Two years ago, during a discussion about sex, I asked a group of two dozen All Saints kids from impeccably liberal families, "How many of you want to get married someday?" All the boys and most of the girls raised their hands. Interestingly,three girls were the ones who said they never wanted to be married, for a variety of reasons. (One young woman remarked privately that when and if gay marriage becomes fully legal, she’d love to wed.)
Most of the teens I work with expect to have sex before marriage. Many, of course, are already sexually active. But the fact that "my kids" have had sexual experiences does not seem to noticeably dim their desire to someday marry; rather, it has the salutatory effect of making them less eager to marry very young! They want to marry when they’re well and truly ready financially, educationally, emotionally, sexually, and spiritually. And because most aren’t waiting, they expect that they will be able to make that marriage decision — when the time comes — motivated by a profound desire to unite with another human being, not a craving for a physical experience that they have never known.
Do our All Saints kids have a sound view? Perhaps. But given that divorce statistics in the liberal churches are no "worse" than those in conservative ones, my more traditional friends will have a hard time defending the notion that "waiting" is the best guarantor of lifelong marital bliss!
I very much understand the desire to not get married, as a college educating female. Why buy the pig when all you want is a little bit of sausage ;)?
Seriously, the statistics on reversion to gender roles, the less money in careers, the shorter lifespan, and then incidences of domestic violence is quite enough to convince me that marriage is at best superflorous and at worst downright dangerous.
I have a cousin a couple years younger on my dad’s side. She got her MAT this Spring, and a few months later married a young man she’d known about eighteen months (if I’m remembering right). Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go, and I haven’t really talked to her or my cousins on that side in several years, but according to my dad and uncles, my cousin’s become quite religious over the past few years, and apparently also quite conservative. This is in sharp contrast to the rest of my dad’s side of the family, who range from atheist (me) to actively involved in church (my dad), but are all quite liberal. Oh, except for my uncle with the MBA, but we’re pretty sure he voted for Bush just to annoy the rest of us ;)
Anyway, my mom and I enjoyed seeing pictures of the wedding (my parents are divorced, so she didn’t go either), but we were both worried about how young the couple was, and how little they’ve known each other. In my experience, not only do conservative churches put a lot of pressure on their members to marry and start families, and not have sex until marriage, but they also talk about sex in remarkably ecstatic language (and that word choice is deliberate). It gets described as the ultimate expression of human emotion, compared to the divine being, and on and on — and while sex CAN be a transcendent experience, it can also be perfectly mundane fun, or self-conscious, awkward, and distancing, especially the first time.
I wonder how many conservative Christians lay back next to their high school sweethearts on their wedding night thinking ‘that was it’?
I know Amanda (she of the Panda which has left) believes waiting for sex until marriage is actually morally wrong; maybe she can explain her point of view to us?
Antigone, I’d be curious to see your data on that, not doubting you, but it seems as though I’ve seen quite different stories from other credible sources. At a minimum, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about shorter lifespans. There was a post somewhere (crooked timber? don’t recall) a month or two ago giving a picture of marriage from what is called the “happiness literature;” ie, sociologists that study distribution of happiness and what (wealth? jobs? family/marital status?) tends to effect it.
The data is a nice rejoinder to the sillyness you hear about marriage as a way of trapping men–while both men and women are, on average happier (as privately self-reported in surveys) married than not, other demographic factors held constant, the happiness boost for women is quite modest, while it’s much more sizable for men.
(I’m sure you’re right about more money in careers, but of course married women are less subject to poverty statistically which is not insignificant)
I of course have no way of knowing whether your cousin is old enough to know her mind on marriage, Noumena, but I wouldn’t worry about marrying after knowing each other for only eighteen months. Plenty of successful marriages follow an acquaintance of less than eighteen months. It doesn’t seem like an especially hasty interval at all (of course, I married someone I’d known for slightly more than a year).
Is that a given, or have you just “given” it to yourself? I’ve heard the overall divorce statistics are roughly the same between nominal Christians and nominal non-Christians, but I’ve never heard it was the same across denominations, which would be more than a little odd since some think the Biblical proscription against divorce establishes a mortal sin, while others think it was one of God’s little April Fool’s jokes, and most others fall somewhere in between. If divorce stats really are evenly spread among these groups, then query whether religion has any real influence on anybody at all.
It’s a little frightening to think back on how many people I knew at my small Christian college who got married out of the desire to validate sex, rather than be condemned for it. A friend of mine and her fiancee described their turning point toward engagement as, “I just got tired of sending him home at night.” I doubt that was all of their reasons for marrying, but it worried me that that was their top reason for becoming man and wife.
I can’t imagine why any reasonable man would get married in modern North American culture. A man who marries exposes himself to all sorts of woes:
–domestic violence against him;
–false accusations of domestic violence;
–false accusations of rape;
–a substantial risk that his wife will cheat on him;
–a substantial risk that his wife will commit paternity fraud against him;
–a substantial risk that his wife will divorce him and…
**extract alimony from him;
**rip his children out of his life, with the approval of the state; and
**extract ‘child support’ (aka a tax-free, post-divorce transfer of wealth) from him.
She’ll do all of this with complete impunity and the blessing of the state. No thanks.
Divorce statistics aren’t the same across all denominations, but they also aren’t consistently lower for denominations which, in theory, condemn divorce worse. Specifically, Baptists and Christians who identify as born again are more likely to experience a divorce than are mainstream Protestants, while Catholics have a relatively low divorce rate. If divorce rates were consistent with how strongly denominations condemned divorce, mainstream Protestants ought to have the highest divorce rate.
I believe Catholics do more in the way of premarital counseling than Baptists do; perhaps actually counseling couples about their impending marriage is a better way for churches to reduce the likelihood of divorce than is simply saying that divorce is bad.
All these divorce stats are from a survey conducted by the Barna Research Group in Ventura, California.
I’m not aware of any survey which has tracked the effect of premarital sex on the likelihood of divorce, and such indirect evidence as I know of is inconsistent. Sexual liberals point to the high divorce rate in the Bible belt as a sign that condemning premarital sex leads people to marry in haste, while sexual conservatives point to research showing a higher divorce rate among couples that have cohabitated before getting married.
How do you figure? Catholics condemn divorce as strongly as anybody. I’d be interested in knowing how that survey defined Baptist; IIRC the term is used by roughly 200 sects that have nothing to do with each other. One of them is Fred Phelp’s infamous “God Hates Fags” church, Westboro Baptist, which I’ll not link here. Another, Landover Baptist, is a parody.
I never did understand why anyone advocated the “no sex before marriage will allow you to trick/coerce some poor guy into marrying you” as a good thing. I don’t want to be married to anyone who only married me because it was the only way he could get laid. What a very depressing way of looking at relationships.
I’m not surprised that religious folks get divorced at the same rate as everyone else, nor that the stats break down the way Lynn outlines. In fact, I’d surprised if churches that encourage early marriage didn’t end up with high divorce rates unless divorce was illegal.
I share Amanda’s view that waiting until marriage to have sex is, if not actually morally wrong, at least unwise. What if you wait and end up married to someone with whom you are not sexually compatible? Think of all the misery that could cause. What if you build up the idea of sex on your wedding night into this magical, mystical thing, and then find that it’s fumbling and awkward like most first-time sex is? What will that do to the way you see your spouse? What if someone is kidding themselves that they’re straight and, never having had sex, are able to continue denying their true orientation right up till the time that actually try to have sex with an opposite-sex partner and realise that yep, they really are gay? I’ve actually known a few people who’ve tried hard to convince themselves that they’re not really gay, right up till they tried to have hetero sex and found the experience quite horrifying…if the person experienced that particular revelation on their wedding night, imagine the fallout both for them and for their spouse…
So, I think that not having sex before marriage is unwise to say the least. There are too many scenarios in which doing so could lead to problems later. You could built a decent case for why it is in fact more ethical to have sex first to spare both yourself and your partner some of the problems that might arise from having “waited” until marriage.
MRAboy, nothing in your list is particular to married men: half the items are ‘risks’ married women are taking, too, and single men are just as capable of inadvertently fathering a child as married men.
How do you figure? Catholics condemn divorce as strongly as anybody.
I figure because a large chunk of Baptists are Southern Baptists, and Southern Baptists, in theory, condemn divorce more than mainstream Protestants. Now, the fact that Catholics, who do indeed condemn divorce as strongly as anybody, have a relatively low divorce rate shows, IMHO, that religion can have an influence, but it needs to not just set out what’s bad, but rather provide practical support for reaching its ideals (e.g. the pre-Cana stuff that the Catholic Church encourages). I’ll go further out on a limb and say that, even though I disagree with some of the Catholic Church’s advice on marriage (the part about never using birth control), and even though its counsel is likely to be offered by never married priests, just having serious conversation about marriage with someone who isn’t merely cheerleading the wedding is probably a good thing. But this part is just my opinion; the survey doesn’t say anything about what sort of premarital counseling the various denominations provide.
I’d be interested in knowing how that survey defined Baptist; IIRC the term is used by roughly 200 sects that have nothing to do with each other.
I believe it includes everyone who self-identifies as Baptist, and does indeed include sects that have nothing to do with each other. Here’s the site of the group that did the survey: http://www.barna.org/. They do a lot of surveys of the relationship between religious belief and various things. Here’s their page on denominations: http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=16.
The Barna Group, which appears to be coming from an evangelical Protestant perspective, also classified Christians as “born again” or “notional” based on answers to two questions: “have you ever made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in your life today?” and, if the answer was yes, “when I die, I will go to Heaven because I have confessed my sins and have accepted Jesus Christ as my savior.” “Born again” Christianity had no effect on whether you were likely to get divorced (of course, the “born again” language is language Catholics aren’t likely to use, and so “notional Christians” could include devout Catholics).
It also strikes me that there are a fair number of people who hold religiously conservative beliefs without really being well linked into any particular church. People did not have to actually attend the church they identified with particularly frequently to be classed in that denomination. The Barna Group does also survey church attendance (45% of the adult population on any given weekend, about equal about Protestants and Catholics, higher among women, blacks, older adults, and in the Bible Belt).
Well, finally a topic that piques my interest.
First off, way to go Antigone - nice job setting a respectful, civil tone for the discussion.
Hugo wrote: “It also ignores what I think is the real reason for falling marriage rates: not sex, but economics. As more and more middle-class women become financially independent, more and more of us of both sexes can choose to be “picky” about whom we marry. We can make it on our own in a way that earlier generations could not; that means that marriages are more likely to be reflect our romantic and spiritual choices than our need and our dependence. On the whole, I tend to think that’s a good thing for both men and women.”
Hugo, I think you’re correct here re. economics playing a key role in being selective about not only whom we marry, but as MRAboy correctly points out, the prospect of marriage for men in general. And while Noumena points out that some of the things MRAboy lists are possible risks that women take when marrying, the sad reality is that for those risks that women share with men (i.e., DV, false accusations of DV, divorce, alimony/child support, and loss of children) the numbers clearly show that the odds are decidedly against men and in favor of women should the legal “justice” system get involved. Throw in the fact that it’s ridiculously easy to get the legal system involved (i.e., no-fault divorce) and the scenario gets really ugly. Therefore men see the “marriage contract” as little more than an unenforcable sham for men, enforceable only for women who enjoy the full aid and support of the state, and thus from the perspective of many men, not worth the paper that it’s written on.
Insulting remarks about “cow/milk” or “pig/sausage” aside, the sentiment that Antigone expresses is one commonly found in men, however, the numbers show that on balance the prospects for our female friends ending up on the losing end are far less than for men, so to me men’s case is stronger. Thus, what it ultimately boils down to for many men is a simple, rational aversion to being screwed. It’s based on a simple risk analysis, and for men the risks of getting screwed by Cupcake and the legal/social system that backs her far outweigh the benefits of marriage. Many guys see it as much safer, cheaper, and thus making more sense to skip the kids and hire hookers and maids rather than get married. And frankly, in this PC environment I can’t blame them.
This also plays into another common myth, the old “men are afraid of commitment” canard. I have two things to say on that topic: First, that given the above, can you really blame men for being extra cautious about signing on to the unenforceable “marriage contract?” And two, what’s so irresponsible about being cautious and not diving willy-nilly into such a serious commitment? Given that women initiate the solid majority of divorces, and mostly not for reasons of adultery, DV, etc., but rather for weak reasons like “he doesn’t appreciate me,” “I want a new life,” etc. (see “‘These boots are made for walking’: why most divorce filers are women,” MF Brinig, DW Allen - American Law and Economics Association, 2000), it seems to me that a case could be made that it is men who take their marriage commitments more seriously than women do.
Ok, flame away.
I share Amanda’s view that waiting until marriage to have sex is, if not actually morally wrong, at least unwise. What if you wait and end up married to someone with whom you are not sexually compatible?
I question the “be sure you have sex before you get married so you know whether you’re compatible” argument, actually.
a) Something bothers me, personally, about “sex as an audition.” It sounds cold, as if I were to run a credit check on a guy before I went on a date with him.
b) You don’t know that you will be sexually compatible for life, just because you had sex before marriage. Many, many people are well matched in their sex drives during the first flush of infatuation, but very ill matched in their sex drives later on. That’s because lots of people only have a really high sex drive in the early stage of a relationship. Also, after marriage you encounter illness, aging, small kids, etc. There’s a really good chance that you have to work at sexual compatibility, whether you had sex before marriage or not.
c) In real life, most people who waited till marriage before having intercourse were at least passionately kissing each other and doing some level of making out beforehand. So, they probably do know whether they turn each other on.
What if you build up the idea of sex on your wedding night into this magical, mystical thing, and then find that it’s fumbling and awkward like most first-time sex is?
That, in fact, is what worries me about some of the “wait till marriage” preaching. Not that waiting till marriage is bad, but that building up how much more wonderful your wedding night will be if you’re a virgin is the wrong way to encourage people to wait till marriage; it sets unreasonable expectations.
Let me be clear, Lynn, that this post is NOT about encouraging “auditions” or “test drives.” That’s a very simplistic understanding of sex, for the reasons you give. Compatibility does fluctuate wildly over the course of a long relationship, after all. Rather, I’m making the reverse argument: Don’t get married just because you’ll finally get to have licit sex, and don’t assume that those who are having pre-marital sex are somehow ruining their chances for happy and fulfilling and lasting marriages.
How much of the lower rate of divorce among Catholics is accounted for by divorced and remarried people leaving a church that will not acknowledge them or give them Communion? If raised-Catholic “failures” (divorced) are counted as practicing non-denominationals or Presbyterians or whatever at the time of survey?
Sex as an “audition” might be useful for the virgins who haven’t much heterosexual sex drive, possibly because those virgins are gay but don’t want to confront it.
Nancy, that certainly includes me; if I were surveyed today, I’d identify as an Episcopalian AND a “born-again.” What I probably wouldn’t say is that my first marriage was in a Catholic Church, and I left Holy Mother Church after that divorce over, among other things, the issue of remarriage. I think you’re spot on.
Lynn, you make some great points - good show!
Hugo, I’m glad that you’re not advocating the “audition” approach to sex before marriage. To me, Amanda’s approach is at best shallow, cynical and irresponsible, and for reasons that Lynn points out, probably futile anyway.
Nancy P., I hadn’t thought of the sex as audition for homosexuals, but why would GLBTQ status make any difference in this context? Certainly “questioning” (the “Q” in GLBTQ) people aren’t all that different from others, are they? And yeah, I know a number of divorced Catholocs who for all practical purposes ceased to exist as far as the Church is concerned once the legal paperwork went through, so I doubt that they’d be counted in official statistics. Convenient use of investigator bias to skew the data, don’t you think?
Bravo, Hugo! Another thoughtful and cogent post on a thorny topic — no less than I would expect to find here, naturally, but a pleasure nonetheless.
Your point that Americans haven’t always punished premarital sex is an excellent one, and puts me in mind of my friend Hanne’s forthcoming book, a history of virginity. I wonder whether it might prove useful to you in your teaching? It’s forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2006; let me know if you want me to dig up info on it.
I’ve yet to see any of the “marriage is such a bad deal for men” crew do either of the following two things: a) demonstrate that their view that men are increasingly avoiding marriage is an actual social trend, and not just something a few disgruntled associates of theirs go on about; b) come up with an explanation that married men recieve a much greater “happiness boost” than married women do.
I’d be very interested, Rachel!
djw said: “I’ve yet to see any of the “marriage is such a bad deal for men” crew do either of the following two things: a) demonstrate that their view that men are increasingly avoiding marriage is an actual social trend, and not just something a few disgruntled associates of theirs go on about; b) come up with an explanation that married men recieve a much greater “happiness boost” than married women do.”
The British and Australian press have written on the declining rates of men marrying, so I recommend that you look to those sources for proof of that very real social trend. As for the disparity in the “happiness boost” between men and women vis-a-vis marriage, IMO it’s likely due to differences in what it takes to make men and women happy. For example, for a guy to be happy all it might take is a six-pack and a TV, while for women, a yacht, mansion and hundreds of pairs of shoes might not even be enough. IMO from personal experience the stereotype that women are “high maintenance” relative to men is likely based in fact.
A wise man once noted “Women don’t know what they want, they just know that they want.”
I’d like to see that, too, djw. For the purposes of addressing Mr. Bad’s arguments, I’ll assume here that men are, in fact, avoiding marriage; but I don’t believe that for a minute.
Mr. Bad, my point wasn’t that some of the things on the original list weren’t limited to men; rather, they’re risks to EVERYONE in a (straight) relationship, male or female, married or not. The sudden manifestation of an abusive personality in one’s partner, or an accidental pregnancy, can happen to anyone. It’s not like only husbands are abusive, or only husbands have to worry about an unexpected child. The list only works to explain differences in behavior, in terms of risk aversion, if it adequately presents risks which threaten men more.
Now, it’s true that, after a divorce, a man will most likely have to make child support payments, and no longer be the legal guardian of their children, while women are in the opposite boat. But this isn’t due to some gender bias in the custody laws; rather, the motivation is that the primary caregiver before the divorce remain the primary caregiver after divorce. Some states do make the sexist assumption that the primary caregiver is automatically the mother, and I think MRAs are right to oppose this. But that doesn’t mean the underlying principle itself is misandrist. Legally avoiding child support payments and alimony is actually quite straightforward, under this principle: be a stay-at-home dad.
Perhaps your argument really isn’t meant to compare the genders directly. Maybe you want to say that men might want to avoid marriage because the cost, financially and emotionally, is so high, should it end in divorce: they would have made so much money every year if they’d stayed single, but now they have to make child support payments and pay alimony and whatnot. But, if this is what you’re saying, then women have a still better case for avoiding marriage, and children in particular, like the plague: they bear the brunt of financial and opportunity costs of having children, even today, as has been well-documented. (See, for instance, Ann Crittenden’s Price of Motherhood.)
For example, for a guy to be happy all it might take is a six-pack and a TV, while for women, a yacht, mansion and hundreds of pairs of shoes might not even be enough. IMO from personal experience the stereotype that women are “high maintenance” relative to men is likely based in fact.
And in my experience, men seem to be the ones who ‘need’ a brand-new car every three years, a huge house in a ‘nice’ suburb, a big teevee with a bitchin’ sound system and the latest incarnations of the Playstation and Xbox. We can play the ‘my personal experiences support/defeat sexism!’ game all day, but the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data’. Neither is ‘dude, chicks are golddiggers!’ an argument.
Idle thought: How is it that women are supposed to naturally be compassionate, caring, and maternal at the same time that they’re naturally shallow, selfish, and materialistic?
“but the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data’…”
LOVE IT!
I’d simply like to point out that in addition to variable sex drives (and individual tastes) which will require negotiation and compromise in any successful long-term relationship, there can be issues of physical compatibility as well. If you and your partner simply don’t fit, sex can range from boring to painful–and there’s very little that you can do about it.
I’m of the opinion that it’s best to learn that before making a big ol’legal mess…and I would not use the word ‘audition’, as it implies some sort of contest. I think the term ’safety check’ fits better–you wouldn’t fly to Europe with a pilot who didn’t check the fuel tank before taking off. And you’re only going to be with him (or her) for eight hours, not a lifetime.
BGSF: “I share Amanda’s view that waiting until marriage to have sex is, if not actually morally wrong, at least unwise. What if you wait and end up married to someone with whom you are not sexually compatible? Think of all the misery that could cause.”
Not really. It would only cause misery if you’ve based your whole marriage around sex. And that’s the whole problem: not that people have sex, or enjoy having sex, but that it’s placed at the center of everything.
Lynn: “In real life, most people who waited till marriage before having intercourse were at least passionately kissing each other and doing some level of making out beforehand.”
Maybe, maybe not. Remember that not everyone who eschews sex does so for religious reasons; some simply have no use for sexual pursuits, including the “just messing around” you mentioned, or “foreplay,” or however you wish to describe it.
I agree with the idea that it’s a bad idea to glorify the “virgin wedding night” scenario, not only because it inflates expectations, but also because, once again, it puts sex at the center. I’m uncomfortable when a “chastity pledge” person — one who has different reasons from mine for remaining chaste — will say that (s)he’s dying to have sex, but has made the difficult decision to save this very special thing for that one special person. The problem is that this person says it’s okay for non-married people to hug, kiss, hold hands, do just about everything else but sex. Unwittingly, they’re doing the same thing, placing sex at the top of the list, making it more “special” than these other things. I believe that to be false.
I may have mentioned this here before, but I completed a short story some time ago about a couple engaged to be married. All their friends learn that they’re both virgins, and suggest that their wedding night is going to be “spectacular.” Except the couple isn’t even thinking about that, isn’t even sure if they’ll HAVE sex that night, not because they’re afraid or prudish or any other negative reason, but rather because they’re so elated to be with one another that it doesn’t matter WHAT they do or don’t do.
So if this fictional couple of mine eventually has sex and it isn’t great, no, it won’t cause “misery,” because it’s just one way out of a hundred to share romantic love, and shouldn’t be given any precedence over any other.
boy genteel
End violence against women AND men.
http://www.safe4all.org
Noumena wrote: “Now, it’s true that, after a divorce, a man will most likely have to make child support payments, and no longer be the legal guardian of their children, while women are in the opposite boat. But this isn’t due to some gender bias in the custody laws; rather, the motivation is that the primary caregiver before the divorce remain the primary caregiver after divorce. Some states do make the sexist assumption that the primary caregiver is automatically the mother, and I think MRAs are right to oppose this. But that doesn’t mean the underlying principle itself is misandrist. Legally avoiding child support payments and alimony is actually quite straightforward, under this principle: be a stay-at-home dad.”
Hmmm. Feminists have argued that numbers and representation in various categories are evidence of discrimination (e.g., the so-called “wage gap,” “women in science and engineering,” etc.) but in this instance, when men are on the losing end, you deny that discrimination may be relevant? Are you sure? There have been many cases where stay at home dads have lost-out in custody battles, and I think that if you ran the numbers the proportion of men who lose-out would be higher than one would expect if the disadvantage was equally distributed. Personally, I don’t believe that the laws themselves are biased, just the interpretation and application of them by judges. And so, yes, I do believe that the courts do indeed discriminate against men and favor women; unless I see good evidence to the contrary I’m not likely to be swayed from this position.
Continuing: “Perhaps your argument really isn’t meant to compare the genders directly. Maybe you want to say that men might want to avoid marriage because the cost, financially and emotionally, is so high, should it end in divorce: they would have made so much money every year if they’d stayed single, but now they have to make child support payments and pay alimony and whatnot. But, if this is what you’re saying, then women have a still better case for avoiding marriage, and children in particular, like the plague: they bear the brunt of financial and opportunity costs of having children, even today, as has been well-documented. (See, for instance, Ann Crittenden’s Price of Motherhood.)”
Actually, I said nothing at all about women, nor did I even intend to imply reasons for why women might not marry - I’m just not interested in that topic. All I addressed were the reasons men currently give for not getting married. If women also don’t want to get married, then IMO great - eveybody’s happy and nobody gets hurt. I would just say to those women that I don’t want to hear any whining later on when they get into their 40s about how disappointed they are that they didn’t have children when they were younger, before their biological clocks ran out. We seem to hear a lot of those sob stories lately.
And like Hugo, I just love the remark “but the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data’…”. I’ll have to remember that the next time I hear a feminist discuss how women are so oppressed and discriminated against in modern society!
I pointed out that men face a lot of risks entering marriage. I also pointed out why I think marriage in North American culture (and probably all of Western, feminized culture) is a bad idea for men because of the severe risks of harm.
Predictably, I get the same tired old responses that evade the issues and merely recite feminist dogma.
“MRAboy, nothing in your list is particular to married men: half the items are ‘risks’ married women are taking, too, and single men are just as capable of inadvertently fathering a child as married men.”
Where did I say there was anything in my list that was “particular to married men”? I didn’t. Where did I say anything about “inadvertently fathering a child”? I didn’t. Whether women incur some or all of those risks is irrelevant. My comment was about risks to men, not to women.
Now, it’s true that, after a divorce, a man will most likely have to make child support payments, and no longer be the legal guardian of their children, while women are in the opposite boat. But this isn’t due to some gender bias in the custody laws; rather, the motivation is that the primary caregiver before the divorce remain the primary caregiver after divorce. Some states do make the sexist assumption that the primary caregiver is automatically the mother, and I think MRAs are right to oppose this. But that doesn’t mean the underlying principle itself is misandrist. Legally avoiding child support payments and alimony is actually quite straightforward, under this principle: be a stay-at-home dad.
On the contrary, the whole notion of “primary caregiver” is a sexist bias against men. It’s essentially a reincarnation of the outmoded “tender years” doctrine. Both in theory and in practice, it places greater value on the contributions women make to a child’s upbringing than those that men make. Even men who have been “stay-at-home dads” have been found not to be the so-called “primary caregiver.”
In any event, none of this changes the fact that men face the risks I have identified.
I’ve yet to see any of the “marriage is such a bad deal for men” crew do either of the following two things: a) demonstrate that their view that men are increasingly avoiding marriage is an actual social trend, and not just something a few disgruntled associates of theirs go on about; b) come up with an explanation that married men recieve a much greater “happiness boost” than married women do.
Sorry, but you don’t get to dictate the terms of the discussion. I did not make these claims, so I have no need to support them, much less prove them.
In short, I really don’t care about all the claims for married women. I made a comment about men. I’m sorry if so many of you need to play the victim on behalf of women, but I’m wise to that game; I’m not going to be suckered into it.
Mr. Bad wrote:
Actually, I said nothing at all about women, nor did I even intend to imply reasons for why women might not marry - I’m just not interested in that topic. All I addressed were the reasons men currently give for not getting married.
Mr. Bad,
You noticed the same thing I did. Feminists must always whine and moan and complain about how “awful” wymyn have it. If you say something about men’s problems, they try to trump it with their claims of being a “victim.”
Whatever happened to sex as a sacred act consecrated by marriage and a sense of a divine? As opposed to a pure animal act designed to satisfy a bodily urge such as hunger and thirst.
I put this on the wrong thread before but maybe it should also go on the divorcing Christian thread
and as far as auditioning, maybe that is why whores, porno stars, and Paris Hilton are so popular these days. Maybe the modern man prefers a woman with a bag of tricks and set, fake dialogue rather than a fearful virgin who may have to be brought into explore sexuality in all its glory.
and as far as the primary caretakers, what about all the mothers who provide all the care and all the money to support the child. The father who only shows up for occasional amusement and to assert rights provides what? all a married man has to threaten is joint custody or suing for full custody and mom who is working day and night has to roll over and play dead to noncontributing, philandering spouse or boyfriend.
Maybe men do not get anything much out of marriage and perhaps they never did. Which goes back to the original point. Which is that in a society with stricter morals then our own, men who do not marry spent a lot of time either masturbating or with prostitutes.
Who’s a bigger victim isn’t relevant to this discussion.
Mr. Bad and MRAboy, I’m glad you see my point: you didn’t start off with any arguments to explain differential behaviors by men and women, just reasons why *people* don’t get married. Now, why the gendered language at all? If MRAboy’s list was a list of reasons for *people* to avoid getting marriage, why didn’t he just say so in the first place? And, Mr. Bad, why, in your first comment in this thread, did you use the language of differential behaviors and differential risk if you weren’t talking about it if it’s not a topic you’re interested in?
Quite frankly, I’ll admit I think the question of why a group of people, in themselves, do or don’t do something is kind of odd, and prone to groundless speculation; it seems to me like the better question is whether and why group A behaves differently from group B in respect to the topic at hand. That’s what using control groups is all about, after all.
Rainbow — I think one of the most interesting things about sex is that it can be both profoundly sacred and the satifaction of a physical appetite, for different people or even the same person at different times. I think a healthy cultural view towards sex should be able to accommodate both extremes, and everything in the middle, giving people the freedom to decide the importance of sex to their own lives. Sexual liberation means exactly that: liberation to be sexual in the way one chooses, not according to standards given by others, whether Jerry Falwell or Adam Carrolla. Sadly, it’s been appropriated by the Girls Gone Wild ilk into a new variation on an old patriarchal theme.
The ‘plural of anecdote’ line isn’t mine; I think I saw it on Pandagon first.
“Sadly, it’s been appropriated by the Girls Gone Wild ilk into a new variation on an old patriarchal theme.”
NYMOM said: Well could you be a little more precise about what you mean by this?
Girls gone Wild I agree.
How do you see that as a segway into the “old patriarchal theme”…
The old patriarchal theme was to limit sex to marriage for most men and women (outside of a small male elite who could afford a mistress). This kept most of us married and producing progency within the confines of a legal marriage.
After seeing the state we’re in after about 4 decades of ignoring this theme, now we know the good of their thinking.
But how do you see this linked in anyway to the Girls Gone Wild theme of our current society.
“anywhere from 10-40% of brides in eighteenth-century New England were pregnant on their wedding days”
Given that you needed children for their labor on the farm as well as to take care of you in your old age, it was a sensible precaution to make certain both parties in a marriage were capable of concieving before officially getting married.
Mr. Bad and MRAboy, I’m glad you see my point: you didn’t start off with any arguments to explain differential behaviors by men and women, just reasons why *people* don’t get married. Now, why the gendered language at all? If MRAboy’s list was a list of reasons for *people* to avoid getting marriage, why didn’t he just say so in the first place?
I was referring to men, not *people*. That was intentional. As compared to a man, it’s really unlikely that a woman risks the following harms by getting married:
–false accusations of domestic violence;
–false accusations of rape;
–a substantial risk that her husband will commit paternity fraud against her (this one is really impossible);
–a substantial risk that her husband will divorce her and…
**extract alimony from her;
**rip her children out of her life, with the approval of the state; and
**extract ‘child support’ (aka a tax-free, post-divorce transfer of wealth) from her.
Given the facts and the statistics, women aren’t seriously risking these things by getting married. So stop trying to put words in my mouth; you’re really making a very poor attempt of it.
and as far as the primary caretakers, what about all the mothers who provide all the care and all the money to support the child. The father who only shows up for occasional amusement and to assert rights provides what? all a married man has to threaten is joint custody or suing for full custody and mom who is working day and night has to roll over and play dead to noncontributing, philandering spouse or boyfriend.
Are you seeking to govern by some rare exception? Hard cases make bad law. There may be a tiny percentage of such cases, just as there is a tiny percentage of cases wherein the fathers provide all the care and money for the child. That doesn’t mean we should determine policies based on the existence of a few cases.
Man-hating zealots like Trish Wilson make a career out of dreaming up such cases. Again, that doesn’t make them worthy of serious consideration, especially by policy makers.
FWIW, I think it’s immoral to trap someone in a relationship when all your cards aren’t out on the table. That’s why I think having a sexual relationship–not just sex but a real relationship–before marriage is critical.
“anywhere from 10-40% of brides in eighteenth-century New England were pregnant on their wedding days”
NYMOM said: Could we please stop using this bit of folk wisdom to imply that Puritan New England was the equivalent of what western civilization is today with over 30% of births being out of wedlock, sexual transmitted diseases rampant and 50% of first time marriages ending in divorce.
Must we drag our ancestors through the mud to cover up modern day sexual mores and those who encouraged the like of Girls Gone Wild, Sex in the City and other propaganda to encourage women to act out even more?
Not that I believe that above statistic for even a minute btw; as many are very invested in making it seem like there is NO difference in the way Puritans approached sex then and the way we approach it today.
Which, of course, is total bull.
But for the sake of THIS argument, I’ll assume it’s true. Yet it still says nothing significant. Many societies OVERLOOKED a couple, already engaged, having sex AS LONG AS THE MARRIAGE ULTIMATELY WENT THROUGH. If it didn’t, it was a whole different matter.
So just because Puritans in New England overlooked it if people had sex, after engagement but before marriage, and a woman was unnoticably pregnant when finally married does NOT mean that there is no difference in the sexual mores of Puritans and of us today…
Obviously this is a red herring being put out there by people who have an agenda.
“FWIW, I think it’s immoral to trap someone in a relationship when all your cards aren’t out on the table. That’s why I think having a sexual relationship–not just sex but a real relationship–before marriage is critical.”
NYMOM said: But what difference should this make?
I’m not coming from a moralistic standpoint, but just curious about why whether or not you had a sexual relationship BEFORE marriage would make a difference?????
I mean why can’t it wait until after????
Maybe the modern man prefers a woman with a bag of tricks and set, fake dialogue rather than a fearful virgin who may have to be brought into explore sexuality in all its glory.
Yes, let’s hope so. I don’t even want to know what kind of sick piece of work would prefer a fearful virgin.
It is nice to know that the virgin/whore dichotomy is as real as it ever was, though. God forbid feminists should have a moment’s respite from eternally reinventing the wheel.
(signed, a former virgin, never fearful (of sex))
“Yes, let’s hope so. I don’t even want to know what kind of sick piece of work would prefer a fearful virgin.”
Often, those who have not experienced something prefer others who haven’t experienced it. It’s not so wrong, or sick, and it’s true about sex OR about romantic love. Trust me.
boy genteel
Stop violence against women AND men.
http://www.safe4all.org
bmmg39 - you noticed that I quoted the phrase “fearful virgin”? The adjective is the point here.
Wanting virgins for romantic partners is a bit hard to fathom, as I don’t quite get the concept of ranking people on their sexual experience, but whatever; wanting people who are afraid is where I draw the line.
Also, while I respect the fact that your preferences differ from my own, I don’t have to ‘trust you’ on this, because like everyone else in the world, I was a virgin myself for quite some time. I remember it well.
Well, I have my theories as to why someone would want his new partner to cringe in fear at the thought of his giant member, but I won’t share them. I think you can figure it out.
MRAboy, you make a great point re. “governing by exception” - that’s the feminist’s stock and trade. You see it in legislation addressing DV, rape, sexual assualt, etc. In every category one considers, the vast, vast majority of men are innocent, yet women get protection and compensation. And to be fair, I think that it’s just; after all, most crimes are committed by a very small percentage of persons, male and female, but that shouldn’t obviate a victim’s right to seek justice. What I think is entirely unjust is the fact that in virtually all categories of crime, women are treated less harshly, and for crimes that only women can commit (e.g., paternity fraud) they get a complete pass. That injustice is simply obscene.
As for bigots like Trish Wilson, well, I think that the newly-coined phrase “plural anecdotes aren’t data” applies, and her nateful invective is pure plural anecdote. (I love that one and plan to use as often as I can. :)) What we really need to do is work to discredit and eliminate the likes of Trish and her ilk, or at the very least, implore the people in power to ignore the likes of her.
Amanda wrote: “Well, I have my theories as to why someone would want his new partner to cringe in fear at the thought of his giant member, but I won’t share them. I think you can figure it out.”
Oh please Amanda, must you soil Hugo’s space with your vulgar sexist bile? I can think of just as many (actually more) women as I can men who relish causing fear, pain and suffering for the opposite sex simply to feed their sick egos and sexist fantasies, so please don’t lay that misandrist BS on us here - keep it over at Pandagon where it belongs.
Noumena wrote: “Mr. Bad and MRAboy, I’m glad you see my point: you didn’t start off with any arguments to explain differential behaviors by men and women, just reasons why *people* don’t get married. Now, why the gendered language at all? If MRAboy’s list was a list of reasons for *people* to avoid getting marriage, why didn’t he just say so in the first place?”
Because your take on it is incorrect, that why. MRAboy and I already dealt with most of the issues (e.g., the disproportionate exposure to victimization of men by all of the injustices presented, judicial misandry, etc.), so the only thing I would add is to ask just how do you think men could perp paternity fraud on a woman? Paternity fraud is perhaps the most heinous, malign and unjust crimes committed against men and children, so I’d sincerely like you to explain how you think that this is something that “people” do to others, vs. what women do to men and children. Do you seriously expect us to accept your thesis that this is something “people” are at risk for vs. exclusive to men? Please, justify your stance on this. IMO you’re engaging in invalid equivocation.
As for the rest, like I said, MRAboy covered it nicely.
Just to reiterate, MRAboy, my problem with your list was that nothing on there was particular to married men. If you’re a straight guy, and your girlfriend gets pregnant, you still have to pay child support. If you’re a woman, your partner can still file charges against you for rape or abuse, whatever gender or marital status. You already agreed to all this; what exactly are you trying to argue now?
Maybe it’s some implicit claim about differential risks: I’ll agree that men are more likely to have to pay child support than women, after being married. You can construe this as a legally-compelled and untaxed transfer of wealth, but then I’m going to point your attention to the corresponding higher likelihood than women are going to have legal custody of the children, which means she’s responsible for paying all the bills after his child support cheque arrives, as well as all the day-to-day work of actually raising them. If child support is a legally-compelled transfer of wealth from the father to the mother, than her custody of the children means she’s legally compelled to raise his children for nothing more than a few hundred bucks a month.
Of course, all of this is spectacularly dumb, and leads to a lot of pointless animosity between ex-spouses. Child-support payments should be viewed, legally, as transfers of wealth from non-custodial parents to their children, in inverse proportion to the amount of time the children spend in the non-custodial parents’ care. (I’m not saying this is the formula that should be enshrined into law as I’ve written it, but it seems to me to be the common-sense principle child support laws should be based on.)
If your problem is, like Mr. Bad, with well-intentioned but poorly-written laws, or sexist judges, that’s one thing: I’m sure every honest feminist is going to agree that primary caregiver does not automatically = the mother! But if your argument is that child-support payments, in their very nature, are some spectacular imposition on men that are scaring them away from even considering marriage, then you really need to examine the economics of divorce from a wider variety of perspectives.
Okay, one more before bedtime!
Trish Wilson uses anecdotes — like statistics from the Department of Justice
And unlike people who use data and non-ad hominem arguments like this: “Oh please Amanda, must you soil Hugo’s space with your vulgar sexist bile? I can think of just as many (actually more) women as I can men who relish causing fear, pain and suffering for the opposite sex simply to feed their sick egos and sexist fantasies, so please don’t lay that misandrist BS on us here - keep it over at Pandagon where it belongs.”
First, since this isn’t Trish Wilson’s blog, and since she hasn’t written anything at all anywhere in this comment thread, could we just leave her out of the discussion here? It feels a bit weird to see the thread start to turn into a discussion of how man-hating and bigoted some absent party is.
Now, in reply to Amanda: FWIW, I think it’s immoral to trap someone in a relationship when all your cards aren’t out on the table. That’s why I think having a sexual relationship–not just sex but a real relationship–before marriage is critical.
I don’t see these two things as equivalent. Trapping someone if your cards aren’t out on the table would be if you marry someone without telling him or her something that he or she isn’t aware of not knowing. Such as, for example, marrying without mentioning that you already have four kids that you’re supporting, or not bothering to say anything about $30,000 of credit card debt, or lying about the fact that you have HIV, or something like that.
But if you don’t have a sexual relationship before marriage, both of you know darn well that you didn’t have a sexual relationship before marriage. Everything’s above board, and the cards are out on the table, you just deliberately made a mutual agreement not to turn some of them over yet. Presumably you either both don’t find sex that important (like bmmg39 - sometimes two such people do match up together), or else you both share a belief that it’s better to wait till marriage before having sex. After all, it’s not like people who are willing to have sex before marriage are scarce.
Scrolling a bit further up, to alex: I’d simply like to point out that in addition to variable sex drives (and individual tastes) which will require negotiation and compromise in any successful long-term relationship, there can be issues of physical compatibility as well. If you and your partner simply don’t fit, sex can range from boring to painful–and there’s very little that you can do about it.
Color me skeptical. The vagina is rather stretchy and flexible, and most guys don’t have elephant penises. Painful sex is usually more a matter of tightening of the vaginal muscles (vaginismus) or lack of lubrication than an outright poor fit. And so actually there are several things that can be done to improve physical fit: Kegels, a good lube, working up to intercourse with things like finger fucking if vaginismus is an issue, etc. (sorry if that’s too graphic for anyone). I think what’s more of an issue is that if, in addition to waiting till the wedding night to have sex, you expected the wedding night to be automatically wonderful, you may not know a lot of this stuff.
And, I have to admit, I have trouble believing that accepting the general sinfulness of masturbation makes for good preparation for marital sex, especially for women, and especially if the descriptions you’ve heard of what sex is supposed to be are penetration focused. That, and the message from some quarters that women don’t really like sex all that much anyway, can make for trouble. There are some conservative Christians now who are pushing a somewhat broader repertoire for married couples, while still holding to the no sex till you’re married proscription, and I’m all in favor of that. You can do without having intercourse before your wedding day, but don’t try to do without proper attention to the clit once you do have sex, is my opinion.
You can do without having intercourse before your wedding day, but don’t try to do without proper attention to the clit once you do have sex, is my opinion.
Quite. And, hell, you can do without vaginal intercourse after your wedding day as well. Just have lots of sex instead.
I think most people would at least pretend to believe that leaving a lover who became wheelchair-bound or disabled was shameful - so what kind of person would leave the love of her life just because his penis was too big? or leave his future wife because she preferred that they have sex that didn’t hurt her? I mean, honestly. I have the most boring, vanilla sexual tastes imaginable, and even I can think of more than one kind of sex to have. “Physical incompatibility” (between two people who are sexually attracted to one another and not suffering from serious sexual dysfunction) doesn’t make sense as anything but code for lack of consideration in bed. There’s only “very little that you can do about it” if one of you is indifferent to the pain of the other.
Just to reiterate, MRAboy, my problem with your list was that nothing on there was particular to married men.
Who cares??? You can rant all you want about points I never made, but I’m not going to waste any more time responding to said rants.
If you’re a straight guy, and your girlfriend gets pregnant, you still have to pay child support.
It’s a sexist assumption that the man won’t have custody of the child. Moreover, with feminists, it always comes down to the money. Men are wising up to that little game. Pretty soon men won’t let women have custody of children. Then those women will be SOL.
If you’re a woman, your partner can still file charges against you for rape or abuse, whatever gender or marital status. You already agreed to all this; what exactly are you trying to argue now?
Pay attention and maybe you’ll be able to figure it out without having someone repeat it to you. If you’d stop trying to put words in others’ mouths, perhaps you could keep up.
Okay, one more before bedtime!
Trish Wilson uses anecdotes — like statistics from the Department of Justice
The fact that Trish Wilson linked to one set of statistics does not prove that she does not use anecdotes. Oops, there’s that Logic 101 that trips up feminists every time!
And unlike people who use data and non-ad hominem arguments like this: “Oh please Amanda, must you soil Hugo’s space with your vulgar sexist bile? I can think of just as many (actually more) women as I can men who relish causing fear, pain and suffering for the opposite sex simply to feed their sick egos and sexist fantasies, so please don’t lay that misandrist BS on us here - keep it over at Pandagon where it belongs.”
Was there supposed to be a sentence there? It’s fine when femiskanks like Amanda and Trish spout their garbage, but let a man do it and it’s a problem, huh? You don’t like it? Too bad.
First, since this isn’t Trish Wilson’s blog, and since she hasn’t written anything at all anywhere in this comment thread, could we just leave her out of the discussion here? It feels a bit weird to see the thread start to turn into a discussion of how man-hating and bigoted some absent party is.
My mentioning of the man-hating Trish Wilson was appropriate in the setting wherein I used it. Her blog, indeed most of her so-called ‘writing’, is filled with poor logic, anecdotes, sexist assumptions, and blatant misandry. (I can’t speak for the pornography that she writes and crows about on her blog, because I don’t read that sort of garbage.)
Man-hating bigots like Trish Wilson must be exposed for what they are: vile misandrist hatemongers. If that offends you, perhaps you should take it up with Madame Wilson, since it is her own behavior that causes her ill repute.
Something bothers me, personally, about “sex as an audition.” It sounds cold, as if I were to run a credit check on a guy before I went on a date with him.
We were talking about marriage, right? Is it cold, or unwise, to check the credit of a person with whom you’re entering into an economic partnership?
Mr. Bad, pick one: either data matters, or your personal experiences are proof alone. You tend to trot out the latter whenever you want to dip the girls’ pigtails in the inkwell, which stops being cute after second grade. Saying “well feminists do it too!” is both a generalization, and an acknowledgement that henceforth, you will accept “me and my female friends” as proof from feminists–as you’re logical and not about double standards.
I’m still wondering why folks like MRAboy don’t simply become “political homosexuals,” as many women turned to “political lesbianism” fifteen or twenty years ago. Sticking to sex with men only avoids ALL issues of pregnancy and child support; in most states you can’t get married; and you needn’t worry about those annoying women who have lower sex drives and won’t do blowjobs.
I’m still wondering why folks like MRAboy don’t simply become “political homosexuals,” as many women turned to “political lesbianism” fifteen or twenty years ago. Sticking to sex with men only avoids ALL issues of pregnancy and child support; in most states you can’t get married; and you needn’t worry about those annoying women who have lower sex drives and won’t do blowjobs.
If women got their act together and started behaving decently, men wouldn’t have to respond in a way that prompts women to ask such silly questions as you have posed. If you want to get nasty, we certainly can do that, but I do prefer to take a higher road. I suppose nastiness is what a man can expect when he challenges American womens’ insatiable lust for preferential treatment.
I mean, honestly. I have the most boring, vanilla sexual tastes imaginable, and even I can think of more than one kind of sex to have.
Yes, that, too. One of the reasons I have trouble seeing sexual intercourse before marriage as a necessity for everyone is that I have trouble seeing sexual intercourse as inherently the be all and end all of sex. (This doesn’t mean I agree with the “cow/milk” analogy - Hugo’s points about why sex before marriage shouldn’t be seen as ruining women’s chances to marry are well founded. Whatever moral grounds may exist for not having sex before marriage, it sure doesn’t doom either your chances of getting married or the future success of your marriage.)
We were talking about marriage, right? Is it cold, or unwise, to check the credit of a person with whom you’re entering into an economic partnership?
Generally, if you’re going to be getting married, you’re going to be talking about finances, etc., beforehand. So, you might not have shared a checking account, but you’d have shared how each other feel about spending money. You might not have seen each other’s credit reports, but you’d know about any outstanding debts. You wouldn’t have gone through fertility testing, but you’d know that you were on the same page about kids (marrying with a plan to change the other person’s mind about kids is a bad idea). And you ought to know each other well enough to have some idea of each other’s attitudes about sex, and of how likely each is to be sensitive to the other’s needs both in bed and out of it. But I don’t think that requires meeting any particular physical goalpost ahead of time.
MRAboy, phrases like “femiskanks”, used again, will result in all of your comments being deleted and you will be banned. Please try and avoid name-calling.
“Trish Wilson uses anecdotes — like statistics from the Department of Justice”
Using flawed studies to make your point (as Trish has done) is even WORSE than using anecdotes:
“This factoid cites research by Murray Straus, Suzanne Steinmetz, and Richard Gelles, as well as a host of other self-report surveys. Those using this factoid tend to conveniently leave out the fact that Straus and his colleague’s surveys as well as data collected from the National Crime Victimization Survey (Bureau of Justice Statistics) consistently find that no matter what the rate of violence or who initiates the violence, women are 7 to 10 times more likely to be injured in acts of intimate violence than are men.”
Those who actually understand the nature of domestic abuse know that you don’t have to put someone in the hospital or otherwise injure the person to have committed violence. Gelles looks at all of the studies that indicate that women often strike the first blow, and mystifyingly concludes that it doesn’t matter, because men still cause more damage when they hit back. Of course, even THAT aspect of the statistic is flawed, because men are far less encouraged to seek help when struck by romantic partners, and are far more likely to be referred to as sissies or wimps if they have the courage to do so. A lot of beaten men have gone to the E/R, where they’ve told medical personnel that they’ve fallen down the stairs or had a carpentry accident (see my Suzanne Vega post from a few weeks ago) because they know that battered men are a target of ridicule in our culture. If a battered man “has a carpentry accident,” then the large cut on his arm doesn’t make it into the DV statistics at all.
Furthermore, I’m sick of this alleged “minority” status that battered men have being used as a reason to deny them public funding. Let’s pretend for a minute that men WERE only 5% of abuse victims. A battered man would STILL deserve all of the compassion and support that any battered woman receives. About 98.5% of our war fatalities right now are men, but we rightly refer to our “brave men and women” who’ve paid the ultimate price. Most of the emergency personnel in NYC and DC on 09/11/2001 were of the male variety; that doesn’t mean we exclude the women who served that day simply because they’re not in the majority. And yet this ridiculous reason is used to ignore and neglect male victims of abuse.
It would be outrageous to have a commission to help only white people with AIDS. It would be absurd to have a program to protect only right-handed people from identity theft. And it is equally ridiculous and unfair to have something called the Violence Against Women Act, which places its focus on just a subset of the overall victims.
boy genteel
Stop violence against women AND men.
http://www.safe4all.org
mythago wrote: “Mr. Bad, pick one: either data matters, or your personal experiences are proof alone. You tend to trot out the latter whenever you want to dip the girls’ pigtails in the inkwell, which stops being cute after second grade. Saying “well feminists do it too!” is both a generalization, and an acknowledgement that henceforth, you will accept “me and my female friends” as proof from feminists–as you’re logical and not about double standards.”
mythago, if you could actually cite a specific instance where I said these things I’d be glad to respond to it, otherwise your comment is mostly a non-sequitor. I’ll take a chance and assume that you are referring to the “numbers” comment I made, and if so, it’s completely justified that use numbers similarly. Feminists set the standards vis-a-vis low numbers being ‘proof’ of discrimination, so I was just abiding by them. Or are you suggesting that there be two sets of standards for proof, one for women and a stricter one for men? I guess it wouldn’t suprise me if you were, but I’d still be disappointed.
And yes, data matters when it comes to policy and laws and personal experience matters in some cases, e.g., when providing examples of inconsistency/hypocrasy, exceptions to the rule, etc. The data vs. anecdote debate is highly dependent on the context of the discussion and thus is a red herring in the context you use it. Either provide concrete examples for me to respond to or I’ll not address this point any further.
And MRAboy is once again correct re. Trish Wilson: The page that Noumena links to happens to be one where she indeed does use citations to data (although the citations are highly selective), but that does not negate the fact that much - if not most - of her work is based on anecdote gleaned from sexist partisans like herself. As MRAboy stated, logic 101. But enough about Trish.
As for “political homosexuals,” I assume you mean “political gays” (lesbians are also homosexuals), and if so, you’ve got to be kidding, right? The “political lesbians” you refer to were already lesbians; one can’t just change their sexual orientation like they can their underwear, can they? Or can they? Gay men argue that homosexuality is an innate trait that is simply another natural variant of sexuality, while lesbians apparently believe that homosexuality is a conscious choice, political or otherwise. So which is it, choice or nature? And if it is indeed a choice, that certainly bolsters the credibility of the fundamentalist Christians who claim to be able to “deprogram” and convert homosexuals back to hetersexuals, doesn’t it? Personally, I think the gays and lesbians need to sit down together and get their stories straight if they wish to have a prayer re. credibility in the sphere of public opinion.
And sorry for the thread drift, but the idea of “political gays/lesbians” is just too ridiculous to ignore.
“Wanting virgins for romantic partners is a bit hard to fathom, as I don’t quite get the concept of ranking people on their sexual experience…”
It has nothing to do with “ranking people;” it’s just finding someone compatible with you. And you seem to be confusing two concepts; I used the examples of sex and romantic love and the two weren’t intended to be connected (though they certainly COULD be). If you’ve never had sex (and want to) you might be more inclined to find another virgin. If you’ve never been in love, you might try to find another person who’s in the same boat. (It was with this that I said, “Trust me.”) If you’ve never kissed anyone, ditto. (And ditto.)
I was going to write a long post on this about six weeks back when the topic came up, but had too many other things to handle. Maybe I can explain part of it now.
The first time you experience anything, you remember it, regardless of how wonderful the experience itself is. If you write poetry, you remember the first poem you had published. Perhaps now you look back and can’t believe you even wrote that piece of junk, much less that someone published it, but you remember it. If you play soccer, you remember your first goal. Maybe it was nothing spectacular, and maybe you’ve scored 52 goals since then, but you still remember your first. (No, I’m not making some gross sex/”scoring” analogy.) If you’re a realtor, you remember the first house you sold. Businesses frame the first dollar they make.
So, with something on the level of romantic love, you want to be someone’s first boyfriend/girlfriend, NOT just for something like “bragging rights,” but also for the reason WHY people remember their first love: because, at that moment, they feel something universal that they’ve never felt before, and it’s about you.
A person who has never experienced something might not want someone who’s experienced it (whatever “it” may be) so many times that the person is now jaded. A person also might not want to feel as though one is being “trained” by a more experienced person. It’s really not as petty or egotistical as you might think.
Of course, a person may or may not feel this way, and even one who does may question his/her beliefs on this upon finding someone more experienced at love/relationships/sex/whatever. One may even fly to another country to meet this person after two years of talking online and on the telephone. On this matter, too, I say, “trust me,” and you can ask for the whole story, but it might not be a happy one.
“Well, I have my theories as to why someone would want his new partner to cringe in fear at the thought of his giant member, but I won’t share them. I think you can figure it out.”
That’s certainly not true in my case, Amanda, for at least three reasons I can think of. One: I don’t want anyone to “fear” me or my body. Two: I’m not interested in sex, as I’ve said umpteen times. And three….well, to quote you, “I think you can figure it out.”
boy genteel
Stop violence against women AND men.
http://www.safe4all.org
I do prefer to take a higher road
I tend to see a higher road as making darn sure you don’t conceive children with someone you don’t like or trust, but I guess that’s just me.
As for “political homosexuals,” I assume you mean “political gays” (lesbians are also homosexuals), and if so, you’ve got to be kidding, right? The “political lesbians” you refer to were already lesbians; one can’t just change their sexual orientation like they can their underwear, can they?
“Political lesbians” were a particular category of lesbians who claimed to be choosing sex with women for political reasons. Obviously, most lesbians (like most gay men) don’t claim to be making such a choice. (I’ve never been personally acquainted with any “political lesbians,” but I used to hear more about them, a couple of decades ago.)
Gay men argue that homosexuality is an innate trait that is simply another natural variant of sexuality, while lesbians apparently believe that homosexuality is a conscious choice, political or otherwise.
Most lesbians don’t experience lesbianism as a conscious choice. A few have said otherwise.
Personally, I think the gays and lesbians need to sit down together and get their stories straight if they wish to have a prayer re. credibility in the sphere of public opinion.
Personally, I think that people in general (gay or straight) will sit down together and get their stories straight about how they experience their sexuality approximately when hell freezes over.
Lynn Sazis-Sax said: “Personally, I think that people in general (gay or straight) will sit down together and get their stories straight about how they experience their sexuality approximately when hell freezes over.”
LOL - that’s great!
Lynn, I’m really enjoying your posts - they’re quite thoughtful and enlightening, and frankly, I’m becoming a big fan of yours. I hope that’s not too scary a prospect for you!
Mr. Bad, you’re right, that wasn’t exactly setting the most respectful tone in the discussion. But I was just pointing out that there is a flip side to the cow/milk analogy; it was tongue and cheek, and not meant to be an insult. Thus the smiley. Chalk it up to the limits of the internet.
I can’t really contribute to the rest of the thread, as I’m going to ignore everything that Mr. Bad and MRAboy said, so that’s somewhat limiting.
But, getting back to the post: I don’t see why marriage is a desirble thing: it makes it too difficult to leave a partner. And I’d rather hedge my bets, and just cohabitate if I find someone to love for a length of time. Because the only thing I’m limited by is a lease. And I don’t see sex as the only thing I have to offer, so I’m not worried about having to convince someone to love and care for me with it.