Prudishness is pretense of innocence without innocence. – Friedrich Von Schlegel
In my column of last September 30th I wrote that, as my friend JustStarshine points out, “Western Society has descended into a new Victorianism”:
…we have become shockingly hypocritical about sex and grant our governments tremendous power to suppress it while simultaneously spending tremendous amounts of time and money on it (Victorian London had the largest number of prostitutes per capita of any place and time in history). We have revived Victorian ideas of government-enforced temperance and “social progress”, and the Victorian “Cult of the Child” has returned with a vengeance. The…adult myth that children live in some sort of state of Divine Grace which must be protected at all costs and extended as far into adulthood as possible…preaches that children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma; its adherents also believe that teenagers (whom they equate with “children”) should be lied to, spied on or even criminally prosecuted to prevent them from engaging in any kind of sexual behavior, and some even believe that adults should not be allowed any form of entertainment or reading material which is inappropriate for even the youngest child, on the grounds that a child “might see it” and thereby be petrified as if he had looked into the eyes of the Gorgon. Child cultists can be recognized by their stated belief that any degree of tyranny is acceptable “if it saves even one child,” and by their fondness for promoting unconstitutionally broad legislation lugubriously named after dead little girls.
The Child Cult’s rhetoric is also pressed into service for sex issues which have nothing to do with children; as we have stated before, only 3.54% of all Western prostitutes are underage and the average underage prostitute is 17, which does not legally qualify as a “child” for sexual consent purposes anywhere in the United States except Arizona, California, Iowa, North Dakota, Oregon, Tennessee and Wisconsin. But that hasn’t stopped prohibitionists from resurrecting the late Victorian “white slavery” moral panic under a new name, “child sex trafficking”, and wielding it as a bludgeon against adult whores and our clients with the usual “one child” battle cry. But lest anyone balk at treating adult women as children, there’s a Victorian answer for that as well; prostitutes are abnormal, defective “victims” of men who have to be protected from our own choices, which are clearly irrational. Similarly, trafficking fanatics classify brown people as “child races” who are too stupid and unsophisticated to move between countries on their own without being “trafficked” by gangsters, so by the Victorian “white man’s burden” philosophy they need to “save” these poor victims, whether they want to be “rescued” or not.
Like the Victorian “social purity” movement, the modern Puritanism exemplified by trafficking hysteria, prohibitionism and other anti-sex movements was formed from a mixture of Protestant Christianity and decaying feminism. And just as the voices of first-wave feminists (such as Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman) who espoused sexual liberation for women were drowned out by those whose minds were mired in typical Victorian prudery and therefore considered prostitution, pornography and masturbation to be “social ills”, so the original feminists who embraced the “sexual revolution” were shouted down by the anti-sex neofeminists who turned the feminist movement into a neo-Victorian campaign against sex; women like Catherine MacKinnon, Donna Hughes and Melissa Farley would have been right at home among the “social purity” advocates of a century ago who spread lies about “white slavery” and “diseased whores”. Some of these anti-sex feminists even consider male masturbation to be a form of marital infidelity; one commenter on an article about coffee stands with bikini-clad servers wrote: “Have you considered the women and children out there that have been hurt by their daddie’s [sic] affection for porn and worhtless [sic] garbage like this that they bring into their relationships, only to have them fall apart because the ol [sic] man can’t keep his eyes to himself or his hands off himself?!” and stated that her ex-husband “…had a history of this type of voyerism [sic] since before I met him and he promised he didn’t need it anymore after we were together. An addiction is an addiction and you guys apparently have one to this! Sow your seeds with a real woman and a real relationship…” And regular reader Sailor Barsoom reports that “Just before I let my subscription to Playboy run out, I saw, each month, one woman after another writing in to earnestly explain why masturbation is adultery.”
Nor are these Victorian attitudes limited to radical feminists and their followers; they even crop up in articles written by more mainstream types. I’ve previously mentioned the ambivalent attitude the staff of Jezebel has toward sex work; this pandering article about the recent Melissa Farley propaganda not only claims that sex worker rights have to be “debated” with those who have no stake in the issue, but also that they have to wait until men as a group regularly seek their wives’ and girlfriends’ approval to look at porn. And this New York Times article (which was called to my attention by regular reader Guilty Pleasures) about Slutwalks displays an attitude common among older feminists; the article appears to have been originally entitled “Clumsy Young Feminists” and simpers that:
To object to these ugly characterizations is right and righteous. But to do so while dressed in what look like sexy stewardess Halloween costumes seems less like victory than capitulation (linguistic and sartorial) to what society already expects of its young women. Scantily clad marching seems weirdly blind to the race, class and body-image issues that usually (rightly) obsess young feminists and seems inhospitable to scads of women who, for various reasons, might not feel it logical or comfortable to express their revulsion at victim-blaming by donning bustiers.
One can practically see the author, blouse buttoned up to her neck, fanning herself furiously to ward off an attack of the vapors.
No social trend lasts forever; the new Victorianism is as doomed as the old one was, and the young women who will help to bury it are joining Slutwalks, buying porn for themselves and shaking their heads at the prudery of their elders just as the young women of the Roaring Twenties did. Within a decade, the new Victorianism will start to die off along with the Baby Boomers who embraced it, and in the freedom of a new Jazz Age perhaps all of the laws which seek to restrict the sexual behaviors of consenting adults will be tossed out as the quaint, incomprehensible and useless relics of a bygone age.
One Year Ago Today
“How To be a Stupid, Greedy Whore” was my very first column based on a current news story, and also provided the first member of my Hall of Shame.
what about women who masturbate?are those unfaithful as well?i masturbate to porn,should i ask my boyfriend for permission?i thought those women are against males controlling female sexuality,so if my boyfriend tells me that i cant masturbate anymore i should do as he says?let him decide how i should express my sexuality?i guess that in that case those feminists would define my boyfriend as an opressor of women,then why it is ok for them to supress and control men?do those women actually think that women dont have sexual urges but those urges belong only to men and that only men masturbate?if thats what they preach how does it make them any different from the patriarchy that they dislike so much,thats what men who actually tried to supress female sexuality preached.many of theese women say that sexy looking girls are not real women,maybe thats the right term for them,since they are unable to feel a basic human emotion such as lust
If you just remember that radical feminism is a religion, and neofeminism the fundamentalist form, it all becomes clear. Religious dogma isn’t logical, and is often self-contradictory; religions don’t want people who think but rather people who believe in whatever they’re told even if it doesn’t make sense.
Well you see, laida, if you masturbate to porn it’s because some MAN has corrupted you. So no, your boyfriend shouldn’t give you permission to masturbate, nor tell you that you may not.
You need to ask Melissa Farley if it’s OK for you to masturbate. And where do you get off having a boyfriend, anyway? Don’t you realize that he’s MALE!?
flagged for the sarcasm-impared
Fuckers.
Look, what the hell is wrong with physical pleasure? Life is short, and then you rot in the grave. Get all the pleasure you can while you are capable of it!
I regret very, very few of the who knows how many people I’ve had sex with. Even the more “out there stuff.” I don’t regret the acid trips, the joints smoked, the gallons and gallons of booze consumed.
I will not apologize for having a good time.
I am not some sour-faced prude, clicking my tongue at everyone. One of the things that I enjoyed most in my early days in sex work was shocking those people. I grew up with shades of the Victorian era lingering, hell, every town in the UK seems to have a statue of her, or some memento. She wasn’t a prude. She loved her husband, and they had a lot of children. So her legs must have been open a lot.
If any of these moral reformers don’t want to enjoy their life, fine for them. But don’t tell me I can’t enjoy mine, however I see fit. As long as I’m not impinging in your space, doing a gang-bang in your living room or something, it’s not your business. It’s mine.
Don’t be so fucking afraid. None of us get out of here alive.
Hell, I’ve always joked that on my tombstone they will put “A good time had by all.”
Which makes me wonder why the hell prostitution is prosecuted so vigorously. Is an orgasm the worst thing I can give a man? Really? Geez.
My kind of gal. I always found that LSD seriously crimped my libido; I couldn’t make love on the stuff. Did you find your experience(s) to be true?
What do you reckon causes someone to buy into this warped Catherine MacKinnon prudery? I can’t fathom why any rational person would despise pleasure so much that they want to make sure no one else has fun either. Is it religion? A personal history of abuse? Parents who were somehow inadequate or embarrassing?
I’ve run across lots of these types of “masturbation and porn is infidelity” types on an Internet board run by a popular Christian psychologist who specializes in marriage relationships. They don’t want to fuck their husbands, but they don’t want anyone else to and they especially don’t want their husbands to do themselves either. Porn makes them cry.
I don’t recall anything in the Christian bible about pleasure being a sin. What drives these people to such moral purity and superiority?
Comixchik and Tonja, I think fear is a lot of it; another factor is rejection of their own femininity, and many of them probably add sexual trauma of some sort to the mix.
There is no such thing as “rejecting femininity” if there was no femininity to begin with.
What do you mean?
I think she’s referring to the fact that a large percentage of anti-sex “feminists” aren’t very feminine.
Hmm. I guess my question then becomes, define femininity?
This is more…cerebral. It doesn’t keep me up at night, but I do wonder (usually when confronted with trans-people issues) what is it that makes me a woman? Two X chromosomes? Breasts? Uterus? Other physiology and endocrine markers of “female”? Does a woman cease to be a woman if she loses her reproductive organs to disease or cancer?
or do you think I’m reading too much into it and Susan was simply making a joke that Neofeminists are so unattractive to begin with, they don’t bother with grooming, girly clothes and nice shoes?
I don’t think so; I don’t feel any less feminine for having had a hysterectomy, and considering that my entire career as a harlot came after the loss of my uterus I think my former clients would agree. It’s a tough question, though; I guess the best answer would have to be that most normal women share many physiological and psychological characteristics, and that being “off” on more than a minority of those characteristics puts one’s femininity in doubt (with the caveat that being able to get pregnant trumps everything else). Paglia wrote an essay about the difference between “female” and “feminine”; an ugly, mannish woman who has nonetheless had a number of babies is in a way more female than a childless beauty, though the latter might be far more feminine. See what I mean?
But yeah, I do think Susan was probably just kidding. 🙂
Yes, I see what you mean. It still makes me wonder however, which are men more attracted to? Femaleness or femininity? It seems, at least superficially that men gravitate to the beautiful and feminine.
However, it seems the most vocal, the most zealous, the most strident opponents of reproductive rights for women are men. When I worked at Planned Parenthood, the most frightening, foaming at the mouth protesters were men.
So…it makes me wonder if there is also a primal/biological attraction to that female fertility that only depends on her fecundity, not her beauty or femininity? and this leads me to ask what I asked in your most recent thread, and that is, do men really want children of their own?
The scientists who research the genetic origin of human behavior state that deep in our past the most attractive women were the ones who were healthy and who looked fertile – that is, young wide hips.
As for the first part of your question, I think men favor femininity from a female..
I’ve known lots of women I wouldn’t have sex with, much less mate with, because they weren’t feminine enough. Beauty is a strong element of perceived femininity.
Do men really want children of their own? Not necessarily. They do have a biological directive to have sex. Some men want to turn their trade over to a son. In the days when the infant mortality rate was so atrocious, getting children would have been rather urgent, I think. And before modern society introduced care for the aged, people wanted their families to be as large as possible (in general) to ensure that they would have care when aged
I understand that both sexes look for markers of health and vitality when they are checking out potential mates. Though, I’ve never heard a man describe himself as a “hip man” – usually its tits, ass or legs.
The other thing I wonder about is…well, there is a population of men who don’t necessarily want a feminine female. There are numerous porn films out there specializing in tranny or she-male actors and these are the exclusive provence of heterosexual men.
This is part of the reason why I am skeptical about male primary attraction to femaleness. Men, at least in my observation, seem to be more attracted to femininity and the trappings thereof: long hair, perfume, jewelry, high heels, skirts and dresses, and of course, beauty. It is also why I am skeptical that men really want children of their own.
I mean, I know some men seem to get nostalgic when they think of tossing a ball to a son, or teaching him to…I dunno, grill meat or other manly things. But in a western, industrialized nation where children are not a family’s retirement investment, I have to wonder why they would bother. Especially when the reality of male sexuality has a head-on crash with most women’s marriage fantasy (i.e. no porn, no variety, always on the 550 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, etc.).
Considering that it was a nation directly ruled by men, I have to wonder whether ancient Athens isn’t about as close as one could get to what most men really want. The Athenian man married a docile, uninteresting woman who kept house for him and produced children, but entertained himself with hetaerae who were interesting, exciting, feminine and intelligent. Roman knights, Renaissance Italian gentlemen and Japanese samurai had similar preferences. Perhaps men have competing drives, and marry to satisfy their attraction to the female but patronize whores to satisfy their attraction to the feminine.
As for “she-males”, though, I kind of think those are sort of “homo lite” for guys who have homosexual impulses but are repulsed by hairiness and other masculine traits. You know, kind of the way teenage girls and immature women are attracted to non-threatening “pretty boys” who present the appearance of being male in chromosomes only.
It seems I have run out of replies!
I’m not really sure what is going on there with the she-male/tranny porn fascination (or their popularity as streetwalkers for some straight men). I guess you get a sex partner who equals them in libido and drive, but appears to be female.
I think you might be right, Maggie about ancient Athens being the ideal society for men. It sounds like a nightmare to me though!
As for modern Western/industrialized societies, I have to wonder if men really want their own children, or if it something their wife presses for as a way to increase her security. Modern women then have a hell of a time trying to fulfill two roles which used to be performed by two or more women. She must fulfill her household duties, while also performing as her husband’s social secretary, ambassador, and sexy vixen in the bedroom. Gods help her if her husband isn’t financially able to visit a good harlot on occasion.
Hi Tonja,
Some people have a phobia about sex, or their shyness is so acute they could never be comfortable with another naked human. I can see people with slight autism falling into this category as well.
That pleasure is sinful stems from the Stoics of the Roman Empire, who thought excess pleasure was a waste of time and a deterrent to contemplating the higher life. St. Augustine of Hippo declared that sex was the cause of original sin. This was taken up with a vengeance by Calvinists, who thought almost everything was sinful. Calvinists more or less gave birth to Puritans.
The idea that extramarital sex for women is sinful is a great deal older than Rome; it derived from the need to know who a child’s father was, and thus occurs in every patriarchal culture.
It’s been awhile since I’ve read the Stoics (though I still pick up Epictetus regularly), but if memory serves, they promoted Aristotle’s philosophy of the Middle Way. Both the Stoics and Aristotle recognized that extremes resulted in a degraded human: poverty v. riches, power v. slavery, etc.
It’s a very different thing to promote moderation than to slander all pleasure.
St. Augustine said that “the deliberate sin of the first man is the cause of original sin” – which mentions nothing about sex. It is my understanding that Augustine admitted to being a lusty guy and that of all the vices he had sampled (which were many), women were his obsession.
Realizing he had some rather serious issues with sex, he chose for himself to be celibate as to gain some control over himself. According to the Jesuits I studied with, he never intended Confessions or any of his other writings to set the tone for the entire Church. In fact, he wrote, “If you expel prostitution from society you will unsettle everything on account of lusts.” I believe that the Church twisted Augustine’s personal gnosis for application to the entire priesthood and laity, unfortunately. Clearly from his quote above, he had no problem with sex other than his own demons.
Wow, Tonja, that changes my impression of the the man. I’ve read several books on the history of Christianity which stated his belief that lust was the source of original sin. I believe Luther taught the same thing. (I can’t find my sources.) Nevertheless, Christians already believed that sex was sinful. Here is a quote from the BBC:
St Augustine’s theory
St Augustine, who largely devised the theory of original sin, thought that original sin was transmitted from generation to generation through sexual intercourse. Augustine did not say exactly how this happened.
He said that it was transmitted by “concupiscence”, when people had sex and conceived a child.
Concupiscence is a technical theological word that Augustine used to refer to sexual desire as something bad in the soul that was inseparable from normal human sexual impulses.
Sexual desire was bad, he taught, because it could totally overwhelm those caught up in it, depriving them of self-control and rational thought. This disapproving view of passion was quite common among Christians of Augustine’s time.
Augustine thought that concupiscence was present in all sexual intercourse. He thought that it was just as bad and uncontrolled in a marriage as it was in non-marital sex, but that an excuse could be made for it within marriage because its purpose was to produce legitimate children.
This bad element in sex provides the means by which original sin is transmitted from father to child. It transmits both humanity’s guilt for Adam’s crime and the sickness or defect that gives human beings a sinful nature.
Dear guinevereschampion, check this out about Luther:
http://www.pbs.org/empires/martinluther/cheats.html
Luther’s 1 of my heroes. The things that people got from Augustine’s writings make me furious. It’s 1 of many examples of Christianity being infiltrated by stuff that isn’t in the Bible to begin with and these things have hurt so many it’s tragic. Islam is the other religion I see has been very hurt by the same type of thing. This stuff is used all the time by those who revel in making vicious, horrible blanket statements and stereotypes about Christians and Muslims. Examples: The Koran orders all the Muslim women to cover themselves and along with that to not even think about/look up why they cover. The covering practice came from what I call manmade teaching. It didn’t come from the Koran. With Christians 1 of them is: that horrible, evil Bible orders women to never enjoy sex even in marriage and that even sex in marriage is dirty and wrong. 1 of my personal “favorites”: the Bible says if you even think of having sex with a man (and you’re a man) that means you’re going to burn in hell forever and just thinking about acting on your desires is sin and you might as well have acted on your thoughts because you’re doomed for even wanting to have sex with someone of your sex, etc. Unfortunately, there’s people all over online and off who revel in this stuff.
Champion,
I’m not a Catholic theologian or a biblical scholar, but I’ll do my best to answer what you write.
There are huge differences between Catholicism, Calvinism and Luther, and it seems that this got a bit mixed up.
Let’s start with concupiscence. This bit of Catholic doctrine deals with the passions, usually sexual in nature that drive someone to be tempted to sin. It means that Adam and Eve were completely in control of themselves at all times because they lacked concupiscence. After they ate of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, their original natures (always in possession of self control) were wounded. Original sin has nothing to do directly with sex, but from eating from the tree that God forbade them to eat from. When Catholics discuss concupiscence, they usually mean it is human’s natural inclination to sin. It is important to note that Catholics do not believe concupiscence = original sin.
Protestants (perhaps not all – but many) have a different view of concupiscence – they believe that those passions and lusts are a sin in and of themselves. So, even thinking about sex or indulging in sinful acts is a sin all by itself, even if one never acts upon those thoughts. So, concupiscence is evil in itself and it is original sin because concupiscence corrupted human’s original god-given nature.
When Augustine was writing, Martin Luther wasn’t even a thought in his ancestor’s mind. He wrote a great deal on sexual impulses because he himself suffered from extreme sexual lust. I’ve read that if Augustine were alive today, he would probably be considered a “sex addict” by psychologists. I don’t mean the fake, David Duchovny likes to look at porn sex addiction, but Augustine said himself that he was so consumed with sexual passions that he could think of little else than pleasuring himself with women.
It is unfortunate that the Catholic Church took what Augustine discussed as his personal affliction and decided to use this rationale for a celibate priesthood. By making celibacy the law of the Church for the priests, they believed that priests could live a holier life less inclined to act in sinful ways. Many of the priests that taught at my university seemed to think that Augustine’s writing was unfairly applied to all priests. Though, they didn’t obviously feel so bad about it as to rebel against the tradition.
Dear Tonja, THANK YOU for much for this: It’s a very different thing to promote moderation than to slander all pleasure. It’s wonderful to see any POSITIVE about the Bible, etc. I’m so tired of hearing the evil lies about how the Bible orders you to never have any fun, etc. The Bible talks about balance in ALL things. It teaches that the extremes are harmful to us and others. I know this 1st hand being a recovering alcoholic (nearly 12 years sober). I could give many other examples from my life plus the lives of others. When people say if you ever drink ANY alcohol that makes you an alcoholic, a bum, no good, etc., it’s the same sickness (unbalance) as truly BEING an alcoholic. Thanks again for stating a positive as it’s very needed in regards to Christianity.
Sorry, it’s thank you so much…not for much…am typing this after working all day…lol.
Guineverschampion,
I snickered at the thought of fundamentalist Christians being autistic or mentally handicapped – it would certainly explain a lot! (Bad Pagan! No cakes or ale for you!)
Thanks for calling me a bad pagan. Are you a pagan too?
I went to the link for Luther and learned new things. I knew Lutherans drank a lot and there’s the answer. That he condoned adultery in cases of sexual inadequacy is very modern. I’ve read biographies that didn’t say these things about him.
Oh, I was referring to myself as a bad Pagan for laughing at the thought of fundie Christians being mentally handicapped. So, yes, I am too a Pagan.
“…fundamentalist Christians being autistic or mentally handicapped – it would certainly explain a lot”…what a wonderful compliment! This Christian fundamentalist and her fellow believers thank you!
You need to stop trying to claim the fundamentalist label while at the same time denying all it’s attributes. It’s like somebody trying to say, “Just because I believe in God doesn’t mean I’m not an Atheist!”
Well, yes it does.
Dear Sailor B, we talked about this again the other day and when I have time I’ll post the article I told you about which shows I fit what’s called the ORIGINAL definition of “fundamentalist” and NOT the new 1. It makes me sick there HAD to be a NEW definition because of so many ###*** infiltrating Christianity. These are the 1’s who literally do order others around (while having NO authority over them. Christians should only follow what their pastors, priests, etc., say if they CHOOSE to be under their leadership by church membership and if that ends up being abusive, etc., should break away), care only about themselves and material things, want to “get rich quick”, don’t do any charity work but do spend huge amounts of time listening to the HERETIC preachers they follow, etc.
Well, Laura, I guess I’ve insulted you already. I’m surprised that a F Christian would be on this site to begin with and even more that you support whore’s rights. I’m nuanced enough to know that the Quakers are nothing like the Pentecostals. Please look up “Dominionism” on Google. These fanatics have their own web site so I doubt their claims are untrue. They aim at: creating a theocratic state; expelling if not killing all gays, and for the real winner, they want to provoke a nuclear war in the Mideast. That would hasten the Apocalypse and then Jesus would come down to carry them all off in rapture.
I can’t listen to Pat Robertson or Anne Coulter without foaming at the mouth. I read a survey somewhere that said 40% of Americans believe the Bible is inerrant. I find this degree of ignorance frightening.
What kind of F Christian are you? You certainly seem liberal at least.
I have my take on this, but it’s probably best if I sit back and let Laura speak for herself. She is, after all, more qualified to do so than I am.
Dear guinevereschampion, I’ll be glad to answer your questions when I have time. Thank you for speaking to me decently also (without swear words, ASS-umptions, etc.) and it’s great you HAVE the decency and open-mindedness to give time to learning about different denominations and how some Christians really DO what they’re supposed to and not all of them are what I call fake believers (like Pat Robertson, who’s done a ton of damage).
Dear Laura, The only time I swear at people is when I’m under physical attack. I have never hit a woman and I don’t swear at them. Peaceful discussions are best. I didn’t realize that Christians like yourself regarded the likes of Pat Robertson as fake Christians. False prophets indeed.
When I was 17 evangelical Methodist divinity students had a big impact upon my life. I could see instantly that these were living a Christian life whereas my Catholic relatives had no discussions of religion in or outside of church or of the Pope’s declarations about racism and sexism being sins. They were too drunk to notice. I’ve also been deeply impressed by Quakers and St. Francis of Assisi.
Peace and love,
Gawaine
How right you are. Until quite late in antiquity it was normal for children to engage in sexual play. This remained true right up until 1900 ( in places like the Amazon basin, Micronesia, and Polynesia) when diseased missionaries harangued their new flocks with the idea that this was now illegal. Too bad for the Hawaiians, the saintly missionaries killed nearly 90% of the population with measles. Do you think this made them stop and think? Not a bit. Saving souls was more important than saving bodies, every missionary knows that.
I think missionary work should be illegal.
This is why:
Women have significantly lower sex drives, on average, than men do. But women are also programmed to seek to control access to (their) males, just as men want to control women. But the reasons are different. Women want to control men to make sure they’re not straying; emotional disloyalty is actually worse than physical disloyalty. Why? She’d lose his resources. For a man, though, emotional disloyalty is often better than sexual disloyalty. Why? Because of the rick of cuckolding. Women know their kids are theirs; men don’t. Being cuckolded is genetic death for men. The biosocial program is deep and there’s no way to rationalize it: Cheating is disastrous.
So: Women want sex with less frequency, and when they do it, they need emotional connections or great physical attraction, as a rule. Men are much more indiscriminate (as biology predicts). So women *project* their desires of sex onto men.
If a man is self-pleasuring, he’s “emotionally abandoning” her – seeking sex elsewhere. Women often think this way in reference to themselves.
But men have seed to spare, and energy to burn: women have trouble realizing this. There’s no biological equality here.
The sheer power of male sexuality, the agelessness of porn, the baudy nature of men seeking pleasure – versus women, who no matter how liberated
Men may have seed to spare, but they do not have energy to burn when compared to women – the real endurance champions. Most men are spent and passed out after they orgasm, while women can continue on for hours (and have multiple orgasms).
In the recent book, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality the authors posit that notions of paternity were irrelevant to tribal humans. In summary, early tribal humans didn’t seem to have a structured system of ownership (which was developed later in conjunction with the rise of agriculture). This lack of ownership either acted in tandem with or resulted in a lot of group sex, or what we would call polyamory. No one knew whose sperm created which children – which was good for everyone because children “belonged” to the tribe and it mattered not who actually contributed half their DNA; the entire tribe worked together to feed, shelter and protect each other.
They go on to mention some other interesting bits about the evolution of the shape of the penis, sperm competition and the reasons why some men get a charge out of cuckolding fantasies.
The question of paternity and access to resources only become an issue when humans began to settle in one area and till the land. Rights and privileges hinge on ownership. For instance, in the Ancient Greek city-states land ownership was synonymous with citizenship. In order to secure their family’s and land’s future, and to fulfill their biological directive, men needed an heir. There were all kinds of interesting Greek ideas about how men had to “tend” to their wives as women’s bodies were thought to be like farmland. Landscapes, Gender, and Ritual Space: The Ancient Greek Experience by Susan Guettel Cole discusses this in depth.
This need to not only ensure paternity, but to cultivate their wives’ sexuality like a brood mare lead to all kinds of other phenomenon. Women were essentially the livestock/incubators of future heirs – and why Hippocrates wrote that giving a woman a pessary was forbidden. Performing an abortion was essentially stealing from a fellow citizen.
This is also part of the reason that Catholics, Fundamentalist Christians, and even some mainline Christians despise contraception. Just look at the rhetoric around “getting knocked up” – pregnancy is viewed as a punishment for “bad girls” who couldn’t keep their legs closed. A bastard child is a scarlet letter; and now that Hollywood starlets are making single motherhood fashionable, the prudes have to find some other way to shame women into being good, virginal girls.
What you are saying absolutely applies when a woman can’t control her own fertility. Physical and emotional “cheating” are a catastrophe for a mother with dependent children who relies on her man’s resources to feed her family. However, a woman on the pill, or who has been relieved totally of her fertility (sterilization or hysterectomy) is a different kettle of fish altogether.
This assignation of overemotional irrationality to women is silly. If you’ve been paying attention to what Maggie says about women at all, you’d know that women are ruthless, pragmatic and tenacious. This is part of the reason some segments of society abhor the harlot who remains detached while performing her job; a job that popular myth would like us to believe causes women to become emotionally invested, clingy and hysterical.
The book A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion outlines why men rape. The theory is that men who don’t have access to women (for whatever reason: physical deformity, lack of resources, or other undesirable qualities) get so frustrated sexually that their biological imperative to make babies causes them to rape. Their research shows that it is almost exclusively women who are fertile (ages 14-40) are the victims of rape. From what I’ve read of Maggie’s experiences with cops, it would seem that rape is also a punishment for women who are “getting away with” having sex without consequences (i.e. they use condoms and don’t get pregnant).
Sorry for rambling, I’m not even sure any of this makes sense.
Dear Tonja, there’s also some who abhor the women who aren’t whores but are also able to have sex with no emotional attachment. The ###*** towards these women is very similar to that directed at whores. 2 of my favorites towards the non-whores (I call them “wild women” and I’m 1 of them): you’re literally stupid because you choose to NOT charge a cent for sex and you’re not brave enough to be a whore. Please note that not all fundamentalist Christians are against birth control (I’m 1 who isn’t and have never been against it) and many Catholic women use birth control besides rhythm method. If anyone wants links about this I’ll be glad to post them.
I realize that there are Catholics and other Christians that use contraception. They are privileged in that they can exercise choice to go to a non-Catholic hospital or physician to procure birth control (Catholic hospitals will not dispense the pill or other conceptive items). Simply because they use their freedom to use contraception does not mean that their priests/pastors/reverends/churches approve of the practice and they would in fact, be considered to be sinning and disobedient to God.
Furthermore, not everyone has such privilege to exercise – in many Catholic countries, there are no other options.
Dear Tonja, I think it’s an outrage that birth control isn’t available to ALL. The Catholic Church’s stand on birth control is 1 of the many reasons I won’t go to a Catholic church for any reason. In what I call the “good old days” because of the life span, not many cures for diseases, etc., people had to have more kids. But, once things got better in the world…yes, I know that when some Christians take birth control they’re going against their church, etc. I learned this years ago (I started reading up on my beliefs right after I accepted Christ). I find this very upsetting. I personally think it’s a sin to have kids you can’t afford (and then rely on the taxpayers) and/or bring kids into a home that has any kind of abuse going on and none of the adults are getting help to stop the abuse and/or are in complete denial of it.
Since I’m not a Christian, I don’t have a horse in this race. I know that many Christian women use the pill or other contraception in bold face disobedience of their religion.
I also know that the former Archbishop of San Francisco, Archbishop Quinn had recommended that the Church should research and prepare a definitive reason as to why the use of birth control was a sin. He said that priests couldn’t offer more than a “because we said so” when talking with their parishioners asking about contraception and sin.
Oh, and Archbishop Quinn was ignored. The Church still can’t offer you any more reason as to why you should not use contraception other than, “because we said so.”
Kinda like the way governments can’t give any valid reasons for most consensual crimes other than “because we said so.” Alas, authoritarianism is authoritarianism.
Indeed.
“Lips that touch liquor shall never touch ours”
Makes me want to find a bottle! Got to seal that deal quick!
LOL, Stephen! Everytime I see that picture, I wonder who the hell would *want* to kiss them, sourpusses all!
Oh good, so I wasn’t the only one who thought that immediately. 😛
In fact, I have my suspicions that the leftmost of the middle row is, in fact, a man.
Also note the rightmost of the front row, possibly among the earliest examples of “duckface” predating Facebook by, what? 100 years or so?
Hee hee hee!
FWIW, I’m an Iowan, and the age of consent here is 16, with an exemption for 14- and 15-year-olds, who may engage in sexual acts with partners no more than 4 years older.
However, we do have some of the most draconian laws about ‘sex offenders’ I know of. They’re effectively banished from almost all towns.
I would hazard that most “sex offenders” are people who have had de-facto consensual sex with someone under the age of legal consent, or those who are guilty of pissing in public or some other indecent exposure. In other words, they pose no real threat to the populace.
As far as the whole under-age thing: call me old-fashioned, but I think that the solution to adult men having sex with girls that they know are too young is a good shit-kicking by other adult males, rather than a lifetime on a sex-offender list.
Personally, I don’t buy the nonsense that “they can’t change”. The only constant in the Universe is change, and that starts with the offender being told that he knows what he did was wrong, followed by a good, sound beating.
Would advocate the same thing for adult women who have had sex with boys who are too young?
Yes, isn’t the thought of beating up women just wonderful?
…and just beating up the men without a trial 1st? Yes, punishing people physically without a trial 1st works great. This is 1 reason why torturing people has lead to so many confessions that are true, etc. It’s just great to punish those who have committed crimes by doing things to them that are on the same level.
Darling, your sarcasm’s showing. 😉
I know it’s showing and that’s on purpose.
I knew that! Note the 😉
Just noting it, and maybe flagging it in case anybody was so sarcasm-impaired that they didn’t catch it, though the folks who post here seem plenty capable.
Hi Beste
I have long insisted that the legal age of consent for boys should be lower. I can’t imagine any 14 year having a bad reaction to getting a bj or even a royal screwing. Boys would boast about it!
“Children are as emotionally fragile as soap bubbles and the merest hint of sexual imagery before puberty can cause irreversible trauma.” I wanted to share my own experience here and assure everyone that I was not traumatized. My first kiss was when I was six years old. We were at the beach. The houses had backyards with deck dividers. The family to our left had two kids, Trevor 10 and Betty, 6. One night, Betty was on her deck as was I. She asked me to climb over to her deck cause she wanted to show me a hermit crab she had received earlier that day. She had a grape lollipop in her mouth and I asked for one. She said yeah but I had to kiss her. I kissed her left cheek. She laughed, took out her lollipop and kissed my mouth. I was in shock, and she kissed me again. It was the typical way a parent kisses their child. I could taste grape on my bottom lip. Her mom saw us and busted out laughing. She asked if I was OK and I could not even speak. She lifted me back onto my my side of the deck, kissed my cheek and told me I would be fine. We were inseparable the last four days of our vacation. Meals, mini-golf, Ferris wheel and the ocean all with her family.
This was in 1975, but I am sure before sundown today a few children that are six will kiss. So is Betty to blame? Is her mom at fault? I did not plow through grades first through fifth trying to make out with classmates. I know that too many children had an awful correlation between sex and childhood. Three years later at nine I watched my babysitter Amelia get beaten by her boyfriend with his belt because my mom dropped me off at her house unexpectedly and that wrecked his plans for ‘afternoon delight.’ So is my mom at fault for dropping me off? Amelia? Her dick of a boyfriend?
In the first case, it would be Betty’s fault, but since she doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong, I at least would say that she’s at fault for nothing but cuteness.
In the second case, yes: Amelia’s dick of a boyfriend. Nobody likes getting cock-blocked, but life has a lot of disappointments, and you deal.
femaleness – The characteristic of being female.
femininity – The sum of all attributes that convey (or are perceived to convey) womanhood.
The above two definitions are from wiktionary and I just wanted to be sure they are in line with yours.
I should mention that I am 42 and have been married for 14 years, since both of those facts are very relevant. I also am a photographer. Not just of women, but everything. Granted it is much easier for me to see beauty in women than men, but it has always been easy for me to photograph men and woman nude. The feedback I have received over time is that the photos of men I take have been appealing to women and free thinking men.
A few things about women are attractive to me. I have always thought long skirts looked nice. I don’t start drooling at the site of a 72 year old woman wearing one while shopping at Wal-Mart, but I will usually look at a woman in one for a second or two. Hair length and color was never a factor, and neither was breast size. I never went for petite women, and I am 5’11” so maybe subconsciously I did check out hip size. But I see how there are ‘trappings’ I will always find attractive. I choose bare feet over heels and the faint smell of shampoo or suntan lotion will trump perfume for me always.As far as trappings that are not feminine, I always thought women who had a vein or two running up their arms is sexy. And I have dated three women who had arm hair, and even though some men see that as a turn off, I never saw it is a “homo lite” thing.
It is not always just the physical things. I know I get crushes on artists and musicians from seeing or hearing their creative sides. Years ago I was at a party where there was a piano and this woman sat down and played a few songs. Everyone stayed pretty quiet and I did not think much of her beyond that I liked how she played. The second she started playing Elton John’s “Blue Eyes” I was sucked in by the music. I saw her in a whole new light and she became so attractive to me, shameful as that might come across to those reading this.
As far as children I always liked the idea of having a few of my own. My wife did not, so we never did. In June a friend of mine since we were both 15 years old had a baby boy and named him after me. The baby’s father bailed a month into the pregnancy feeling the baby was “a trap.” So obviously a man who did not want children of his own. I cannot even tell you how compelled I am to be in his life. Yes, I am aware that my wife and I never having any is a huge factor in that. He has male relatives and a community to shape him, but I still want to be more than just the man he was named after. A few friends asked me if I saw him as an obligation. Mariko, his mother, was at our wedding. She was one of three to sign our license as a witness. So I highly doubt this is a play to have me leave my wife. And yes, I do feel an obligation to him and his mom as my friend.
[…] History, it is said, repeats itself. And while the parallels are never exact, they are often pretty damned close. Witness, for example, the new Victorianism which has engulfed Western society: […]