I’ve touched on this basic issue before, but it strikes me as important enough to create a separate post on it. One of the more bizarre beliefs of our time is that there is some moral value to the statement:
No sex before monogamy!
I see this everywhere, including from Christians. What this statement is really saying is that promiscuity is good so long as it is happening on the woman’s own terms. This is similar to the argument by the Christian women that the wife in Fireproof wasn’t being whorish because she planned on divorcing her husband and marrying the other man she was after before having sex with him.
There is no moral basis for serial monogamy, otherwise known as monogamy without a lifetime commitment. All there is are male and female preferred forms of promiscuity.
Men’s preferred form of promiscuity is to have a soft harem (which he is invested in but not committed to) along with one-off sex with women he isn’t invested in. We call men who act on this preferred form of promiscuity players, cads, pickup artists, etc.
Women’s preferred form of promiscuity is to have sex with the highest status man she can (at the time), while also securing investment and commitment from him (but without offering commitment herself). The confusion occurs because the woman is being selective about who she has sex with and at any given point in time the woman appears to be in something resembling a marriage. Even more confusing, many women go through the motions of having a wedding but leave out the actual lifetime commitment. However, seeing these women as anything but promiscuous is a foolish mistake. When you look at the big picture it becomes painfully clear that what they are doing is nothing like marriage. We used to have terms for women like this, but conservative women are now uncomfortable with them. Whatever term you use, it is essential not to mistake these women as being any more moral than players or pickup artists. They are acting on animal instinct just like the players are. The only difference is their instincts are different and therefore their expression of promiscuity is as well.
This is dead-on. “Til death do us part, or something better comes along.” It is not the least bit moral, but it hides behind “traditional” moral behaviors.
Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.
For the record…I am only,– EVER — going to have sex on my terms. I really don’t care what other people’s terms are, or how they choose to have sex. If you want to be a virgin at marriage, great. If you want to play the PUA game, great. Good luck with that.
Women don’t see this as promiscuous behavior because they believe that they are “cutting their losses,” while maximizing their successes. It’s not any different from PUA behavior.
“Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.”
.
A common solipsism. but not one that one might expect from an avowed Christian.
.
Interesting.
Gresham’s Law says that bad money drives good money out of circulation. People want to retain good money to save for a future use, and pass bad money off to others. So everyone winds up hiding good money and circulating bad money. Therefore, the only money in circulation becomes the bad money. Counterfeit paper notes are severely punished because of Gresham’s law; if the ordinary person is too much at risk of fraud by unknowingly accepting a fake paper money note, then the ordinary person will start rejecting all of the class of paper money notes, because the risk of loss is too great. This is the result of the perception that “too many” notes in circulation are fakes. There may be some way to quantify “too many” but I’ve not run across it; it’s psychological, clearly. But if a situation arose where banks on the one hand knew that counterfeiters were cranking out fake money, yet on the other hand insisted that everyone should nevertheless accept paper money notes without question “for the good of society” I do not think that would be very likely to last for very long. People would find other means to exchange value for value, and would in time ignore the paper money notes as much as possible.
In the sexual and marriage markets today, there are a lot of counterfeits being passed around as “real”. Players, cads, PUA’s can be considered counterfeits by women. Serial monogamist women are also counterfeits. One group is regularly criticized by socons and tradcons. The other group appears to get a free pass. Worse yet, there are those like BIll Bennett, Kay Hymowitz, etc. who insist that men should just “man up” and willingly accept counterfeits as real, and if they get harmed in the process, well, “just man up” anyway.
This is a situation that cannot go on. In the case of Gresham’s Law, eventually other means of exchange privately come into being, one way or another. Because absent some means of vetting “money” there’s no real way to tell bad from good. Something similar is going to happen in the marriage market. I do not have much of an idea what that will look like. But men are becoming more and more wary of women – all women – because we can’t tell at a glance which ones are entitled counterfeits, and which ones are the real deal. There are those who claim to have this ability, but they won’t reveal how it works…so men will just have to continue to assume that every woman they encounter is “counterfeit” until proven otherwise.
No, i don’t like this situation. But it is the situation that exists; reality does not care if I like it or not.
That’s Dalrock’s point laceagate and bravo to you for realizing it. You are a breath of fresh air among female commentators on Dalrock’s blog as of late I’ve been reading your other comments.
Dubious wonder
For the record…I am only,– EVER — going to have sex on my terms.
Ok. So? Why should anyone here need to know, or care, about that?
TFH…You raise some interesting points. I once said at a family dinner that I wish women weren’t allowed to vote because abortion would be outlawed if only men voted. Men are overwhelmingly pro-life. Women fail to realize the devastation abortion causes and that many future women are being killed in the process.
YBM, thanks. I appreciate the comment. I’ve been reading Dalrock for several months actually and have been more of a lurker, mostly because my level of understanding on a lot of the topics didn’t match the other commentators.
As my level of understanding has increased, my awareness of these topics gains validation through what I observe IRL. It’s quite sad, actually.
@ Dubious Wonder
Perceptions of morality change. Those of us who buy into the idea of Natural Law don’t believe that morality itself changes, just how much people adhere to it. The consequences of immorality will always find a way, no matter how much society “progresses.”
@ Lori
Moreso even than pro-life males are the men who believe they ought to at least have some legal choice in the matter of abortion and fatherhood. The biggest weakness of the pro-choice crowd, besides the obvious issues with supporting the murder of the unborn, is their inconsistency in “choice.” Namely, that because a woman chooses to fulfill her biological function for a few months, that a man now must fulfill his societal function for eighteen years, or else. Or, that a woman can murder a child the father wanted, even if he is her husband. And yet, pregnancy can still count as an “aggravating factor” in assault and battery cases against women (I thought it was just a lump of cells?). The fetus becomes a sort of Schroedinger’s Baby, either human or not depending on the whim of the mother.
On top of that, the mother can decide for the first month that the fetus is a baby, then change her mind, revoke its humanity, and kill it. The pro-choice crowd have, in essence, given half the population the right to decide by fiat whether or not someone else is even human.
As for serial monogamy… the conservative establishment has long since demonstrated its cowardice in the face of large-scale public opposition to its stated goals, especially the important ones. Why fight no-fault divorce when it’s so much easier to oppose the tiny gay minority? Why reduce the size of government when it’s so much easier to just spend money on the military? Why reform the tax code when it’s so much easier to just move existing tax burdens around a bit?
Same applies to serial monogamy. Why advocate for real sexual morals and restraint when it’s so much easier to just shame men for making the best of a bad situation?
At least the liberals are up front about being amoral commies.
Another classic from Liz Jones:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2056875/Liz-Jones-baby-craving-drove-steal-husbands-sperm-ultimate-deception.html
masculinity is good as long as it is done on woman’s terms.
let no man go untouched, gender sensitivity training for everyone.
@TFH
I think it started earlier than that, TFH. In the USA and England, it started when a man was presumed not to “own” his own children. This started with child labor laws, which, in an industrializing society, meant that large families could no longer support themselves by sending children off to work. (About 1840, if I recall correctly.) This destroyed the immediate economic value of children to a man. Shortly thereafter, (about 30 years) the divorce rules started to change so that children became the property of the mother. In short, the undermining of marriage began with the industrial age, where children were no longer needed as farm labor, proceeded through the child labor laws, and got progressively worse and worse. Social “insurance” schemes formed the death knell for families; the economic burden of children (they were now deadweight, economically, until self-supporting as adults) previously could be carried by parents who expected to live off their children in old age. Social Security (and other systems) broke that last link to the value of a man’s children; it is no wonder that men have fathered smaller and smaller families, and that divorce has focused ever more rapaciously on extracting wealth from men for these now serious deadweight children. (Germany was the first social insurance [probably due to universal male suffrage in 1871], but did not have female voting until 1919.)
Groups like the Amish, who can shun offenders out of the community, and who need children for farm labor, still have a VERY high birthrate (over 5 per woman, as I recall.) Strict social control maintains that society, despite all the misandrist laws in the USA. I do not think any amount of repealing feminism will work unless children can be made to pay, again. That will only happen with the repeal of social insurance, and that only with the end of socialism
Serial monogamy isn’t moral in a religious sense. For a lot of women though, they might not have much choice. This is one of the things that I have to contend with as a 42 year old divorced woman. I haven’t started dating yet, (though apparently dating is dead), but serial monogamy will probably be as good as it gets.
@Dubious Wonder
Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.
You cannot break the law; you can only break yourself against the law.
For the record…I am only,– EVER — going to have sex on my terms.
This sounds very reasonable, but isn’t, really.
By analogy: “I am only, –EVER– going to eat on my terms.” Of course, if my terms are: I eat what I want when I want where I want and never pay for it, then there will be both short- and long-term problems, for both myself and, if this ridiculous principle is somehow enforced by society, for the culture as a whole.
“My terms or nothing” is a silly, childish way to live. Normally it is self-correcting when society as a whole makes it clear that “your terms” are unacceptable, but if enough children get their hands on enough power …
I have to agree with this. If we’re lucky, an American Pinochet will overthrow the feminist police state.
Great Breakdown DalRock
“I do… until I’m not haaapy and someone bigger… er, better comes along.” Let’s call that like it is… ‘ho, tramp, slut. Conservative women oughta get comfortable with that and start shaming their looser compatriots again.
“Man up”? Heck, conservative women need to “women up” (or “lady up,” I guess) and start doing their part enforcing the female standard among women again.
Conservative as in neo-con/Christo-feminist women? Then yes, they are hypocritical. There is a differentiation between those women and traditionalist women who eschew Christo-feminism.
I honestly don’t know if there’s a way for traditional women to enforce the female standard amongst women again. It may require some killin’s.
Spot on, Dalrock. Good post.
@ just visiting, t visiting: do not hold out for serial monogamy There are decent divorced men out there. Find one who has repented and grieved for his sin in marriage and the marriage and then remarry.
@laceagate yes there are women who eschew feminism. The trick is finding them, because there are many churchly feminists having serial affairs.
@ Namae nanka. When you get to my age you have learned that Human Resources are the enemy and thus sensitivity training days are the best days to book you annual checkup.
@Dubious Wonder. No, you give up the right to have sex on your terms when you marry. from then on, your body is your husbands and his body is yours. And you are clearly taught to not withold sex unless you are both fasting and praying (and then, by agreement). You have sex on God’s terms — and the terms of your vow.
If we’re lucky, an American Pinochet will overthrow the feminist police state.
Well, be careful what you wish for. Democracies have a pretty good track record on scientific advancement–look at all the good stuff that’s come out of Japan since the end of WWII, for instance. Military dictatorships, on the other hand–at least sufficiently “pro-male” ones–aren’t really known for ground-breaking advances in science, and to the extent that they are, concentrate more on the military than anything else. If Western democracy really does go belly-up, a Pinochet-style dictatorship that replaces it will probably spend more on guns and bombs than research in sexbots, artificial wombs and all the other wonderful technologies guys like you assert will someday “liberate” men.
“If anything, the scientific research output of mature democracies vs. the rest of the world is narrowing and reversing?”
Can you provide statistics to back this up? Particularly, how do you define “rest of the world?” And how would you define “pro-male” societies? Even if the scientific output of the older Western democracies is declining, the rising stars of science–places like your native India or China–aren’t exactly Pinochet-style dictatorships either.
A common solipsism. but not one that one might expect from an avowed Christian.
Former Christian. Care to discuss the topic, instead of me?
By analogy: “I am only, –EVER– going to eat on my terms.” Of course, if my terms are: I eat what I want when I want where I want and never pay for it, then there will be both short- and long-term problems, for both myself and, if this ridiculous principle is somehow enforced by society, for the culture as a whole.
Exactly how do you think your ridiculous analogy applies to my decision when and how to share my own body which I already own? I am not talking about taking someone else’s body. I’m talking about choosing the conditions under which I will use something I already own and possess. And, people already operate like this daily. Analogy fail.
@Dubious Wonder. No, you give up the right to have sex on your terms when you marry. from then on, your body is your husbands and his body is yours. And you are clearly taught to not withold sex unless you are both fasting and praying (and then, by agreement). You have sex on God’s terms — and the terms of your vow.
First, I’m not religious. So, part of your comment is moot to me. However, the terms of sex are set as part of the marriage commitment. So, when I have sex as a married person, I’m still having sex on my terms, if those are the terms I agreed to when I got married. If I really don’t feel like having sex one night, I’m not having sex (though fiance can be very persuasive).
It’s interesting how there are actually men in this world who would like to deprive women of the right to vote (for our own good, of course), and would like to control how women choose to share our own bodies. And, feel entitled to do so. And, by interesting, I mean disturbing.
Hi Dalrock
You might be interested in this selling women divorce article from Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/mothers-divorce-and-the-hsc-itch-20111105-1n12u.html
[D: Good find. This stuff never ends. It is funny to see how hard they sell the late life divorce “trend” given the reality both their own prospects and the statistics behind this. Most women are clearly smart enough not to fall for this, but I don’t doubt that many still do.]
And, by interesting, I mean disturbing.
Lol, no offense, but you ought to get yourself a thicker skin. I may not necessarily agree with what some commentators or posters say here, but I’m not going to complain about being ‘disturbed’ by them. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen, as the old saying goes.
Men have no reproductive rights at all – women hold *all* the cards.
That’s another thing to note about military dictatorships like Pinochet’s, though–the situation isn’t that much rosier for men either. A lot of them place restrictions on abortion, for instance, not because they’re concerned with the rights of men but because they want high population growth to beef up the military (this was the case in Pinochet’s Chile, IIRC). To the extent that these dictatorships are concerned with making families appealing to men, it’s only in so far as they want more people to serve as cannon fodder, not because they’re concerned about men. They care about maintaining their own power, not ending misandry.
I remember bringing this up to PMAFT before, IIRC he said something along the lines of “well, a military dictatorship will just invent killbots and drones, so it won’t need cannon fodder anymore!” Maybe so, but again, as I mentioned above, regardless of the “life-cycle” of democracy or whatever, military dictatorships simply aren’t very good at fostering scientific and technological progress. Even if, as TFH says, our democracies are terminally and inevitably doomed, we won’t be particularly lucky if they’re replaced by Pinochet-style dictatorships. I would be hoping for something else to come and save us if I were you.
Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.
Damn Dalrock only took two.
@TFH,
You have failed to account for the stability and ongoing growth of the Amish family and community in spite of these laws. I think the problem is industrialization, and Western Civ has not come up with a way to address the problems it raises. It requires, I think, a religious approach, but we have had no progressive Western religious answer. The answers we have had: 1) Ignore it (Amish, muc of Islam) 2) Double down on white-knighting (Fundie Christianity) 3) Abandon religion (most mainline Protestants) as a matter of real faith 4) Replace religion with socialism. Only route #1 has worked, in my eyes.
I think the Catholic Church has begun to try to address the alienation that caused the problem. They’ve lost most of their American adherents, but the Traditionalists will eventually replace their essentially Protestant co-religionists. Mormons seem to have an approach that works as well, as do Orthodox Jews. Unless a group not at war with modernity can solve this religious quandary, society will continue down the road to collapse.
Democracy invariably devolves into a feminist police state.
Um, we have exactly one historical example of this (modern liberalism) so “invariably” isn’t quite the word.
Military dictatorships, on the other hand–at least sufficiently “pro-male” ones–aren’t really known for ground-breaking advances in science,
Don’t know much about the Nazis or the Soviet Union, do you?
@ Dubious Wonder
“Exactly how do you think your ridiculous analogy applies to my decision when and how to share my own body which I already own? I am not talking about taking someone else’s body. I’m talking about choosing the conditions under which I will use something I already own and possess. And, people already operate like this daily. Analogy fail.”
Actually, it is a very apt analogy, as large populations become insoluble(ex. in their rates of replacement, taken as a vector of instability) given a sufficient latitude of female choice.
First, we can resonably infer this from unifying historical precedence with the knowledge that male dominated sexual conflict in reproductive potential would favor greater population fertility in a greater dispersion of reproductive success(by focusing pressures that have historically weighed against elective maternity).
Second, A tendency to smaller male breeding populations will pose evolutionary problems in the form of large population replacement(incurring fertility losses through the overhead of increased female selectivity, and the time and energy costs that this entails) and inbreeding depression-type effects, which must ultimately reduce population viability(as deleterious
recessives will tend to combine at greater frequencies in smaller populations).
Eventually, this dynamic becomes unsustainable, as the population becomes evolutionarily unstable(indicated in tendencies to sub-replacement fertility – another symptom observed of developed world populations).
Thus, unperturbed female sexual choice can be the most pernicious agency acting upon the stability of density dependent human systems.
And, since the ‘problem’ I am describing is a systemic one, entangled in the most base and
selfish of evolutionary concerns(which mediate all human rationality), there can be no common solution – these problems must resolve systemically, over evolutionary time(where we should expect that the same invariant evolutionary forces that acted upon small populations in the past – tending to constrain female choice – will likewise hold, and reassert themselves in the future).
Dubious Wonder:
Firstly It is not about what you as an individual believe. Firstly, i don’t believe you are not religious. What you are is post-Christian. (athiesm and agnosticism have creeds, priests and sacraments, Ann Coulter named them. I’m not as rude as she is, so I will not). The law describes human behaviour like Newton described gravity. You don’t have to like it, but your actions have consequences for you and the people around you.
Secondly, a married person has made commitments to be with another person. The contract generally includes something around not f*cking anyone else, and so if you do that you are breaking contract law. It is like walking our on a mortgage, or not paying loans. Societies that tolerate oath-breaking fail.
Thirdly, you are a fool. You don’t understand the male of the species, do you? Very simple: he responds to respect, food, care and regularly having his brains f*cked out of him. Go read Athol Kay. Go read the Kama Sutra. It helps glue him to you. It keeps his oxytocin up, his testorone nicely down, and it does nice things to you as well.
Note: in real life I am not scared of the word I censored. But there are Squeamish Americans here, so an asterisk may help.
DW: “Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.”
Mr.A is Mr.A: “A common solipsism. but not one that one might expect from an avowed Christian.”
DW: “Former Christian. Care to discuss the topic, instead of me?”
—
My apologies for making an assumption of your current religious beliefs; I apparently conflated past/present comments you made in this and other posts.
Relative to my comment, it *was* about the topic (the solipsism of multiple moralities), not you. I am indifferent to the beliefs you hold. The statement caught my attention, as well as the dichotomy of it apparently being uttered by a member of an Abrahamic faith.
Allow me to correct my original response relative to the new data:
DW: “Morality is subjective and changes with the culture/location/era.”
Mr.A is Mr.A: “A common solipsism.”
Exactly how do you think your ridiculous analogy applies to my decision when and how to share my own body which I already own?
It’s not a hard analogy to understand, and I can only assume that your failure to do so is willful. In such a case there is little point in attempting to clarify it to you. For the benefit of anyone else, and so as not to appear to be abandoning the field:
Insisting on one’s own terms is not a reasonable course of action for all values of “one’s own terms”. If, for instance, you buy a house, and then the market drops by 25%, and you take the terms that “I will only — EVER — sell this house on my own terms”, where “my own terms” represents a 10% premium over what you paid, then the market will tell you to get stuffed, and you’ll be left with a house on your hands. If you find yourself in need of cash, you’ll be forced to choose between your precious terms, and keeping the creditors at bay in some other way.
Of course, if you lobby the gov’t to bail your feckless ass out, s.t. the taxpayers make up the difference between “your terms” and what the house is worth …
Dubious is a lost cause. She is a walking Dalrock special. She married the church alpha after getting her party in good and hard during college, he turned out to be a roissy-level douche, she divorced him, and now she’s giving up the old sex0rs to her ‘fiance’ without even getting to the marriage stage. It’s not clear whether the marriage part will happen, but certainly the fiance is getting to test drive the well-used merch as much as he likes, apparently while the kids are up and about, as well.
That she was a church attender is a bagatelle, and almost incidental to her parade of proving Dalrock right in every detail of her life she’s stated here. If I didn’t know better, I would swear it was a sock account of Dalrock’s set up just to fool us all.
“where we should expect that the same invariant evolutionary forces that acted upon small populations in the past – tending to constrain female choice – will likewise hold, and reassert themselves in the future).”
such as…?
“For the record…I am only,– EVER — going to have sex on my terms. I really don’t care what other people’s terms are, or how they choose to have sex. If you want to be a virgin at marriage, great. If you want to play the PUA game, great. Good luck with that.”
What makes you think a PUA would want to have sex with you any way? Your comments are very telling. You comment from such strength and education and character and a total lack inner joy. I don’t think any body in your gets any joy either. not from interaction with you they don’t. And you are so proud of it as a display of how great a woman you are. I don’t expect you to see or understand a thing I’m saying but some man on the margin may see things and see a woman by blue pill standards as a high value good catch maybe is a venus fly trap in reality. You have made plenty of comments from a strong equal women that a guy could really learn to pick up some ques when he comes across a woman like. Hell just bring up some of these Dalrock articles as casual conversation topic and find out who you are talking to.
That comment above says run and very fast.
A PUA might want to have sex with her, if she doesn’t give him too much trouble or try to wheedle her way into his social circle.
Besides, it’s easy to brush off older women trying to shame PUAs as “party was last decade, grandma” (heh, heh).
After all, PUAs looking for easy sex aren’t going to care where it comes from as long as it doesn’t interfere with their long term plans. I figure the interaction would fall under the classification of “moped”. Fun to ride until your friends see you on it.
For men, Promise Keepers.
For women, Promiscuity.
With regard to the former Christian, in my experience there are no former Christians.
There are people who thought they were Christian but were wrong about that fact all along. If someone is willing to abandon faith in the one true God, the depth and truth of that belief is highly questionable.
The formerly “faithful” usually abandon their faith due to some inability to resolve the fact that life does not go as they had desired or expected. Famine, floods, deaths of loved ones; these events are the usual cause.
“When you look at the big picture it becomes painfully clear that what they are doing is nothing like marriage.
We used to have terms for women like this, but conservative women are now uncomfortable with them. Whatever term you use, it is essential not to mistake these women as being any more moral than players or pickup artists.
They are acting on animal instinct just like the players are.
The only difference is their instincts are different and therefore their expression of promiscuity is as well.”
Sorry ladies, but you married women are hundreds of times worse then a PUA …
Pua’s dont destroy a persons life, by stealing her children, her house, & you know the rest … lol
Pump & dump is one thing, what women do to men is hundreds of times worse, through modern day promiscuity
Whatever value “no sex before monogamy” has is pragmatic, ostensibly to prevent women from racking up partner counts and getting pumped & dumped. The statement has no Judeo-Christian moral component.
actually, NSBM has no moral component or value whatsoever.
TFH says:
November 5, 2011 at 3:46 pm…
“But remember that abortion is would not even make the top 5 in a list of damage that feminism causes. In fact, a lot of Christian women think they are different from atheist feminist only due to a differing view on abortion, while otherwise agreeing with 99% of what atheist feminists want. Abortion is a downstream effect from many other problems that happen before that. …”
The fact is that all too often pro-abortionists do not want to know the truth about what they are doing. Perhaps if more went to this site http://www.InvisibleInfants.org and had a look at the video “My Little Room” there would be less abortion, and more women woulod realise, in the words of the poem that a child is not a tumour.
deti-
In isolation, you are correct. If a woman is refraining from sex before marriage in order to have the strongest possible bond with her husband, I am comfortable with the idea that this is a moral principle.
If a woman holds NSBM as a principle in order to fully ensnare a man legally, well, I have no problem calling her a whore.
What is important to remember, in my opinion, is that morally neutral concepts like NSBM serve a vital function as a means of helping people avoid making disastrous decisions when they may not yet have understood or internalized the moral foundation of that principle.
Locked jewelry cases in a store will not stop the determined thief, but they probably keep “honest people honest”, as the saying goes. Many people take their moral cues in relative terms from society around them. However, when the foundations of NSBM are forgotten, but the principle remains, you eventually have people rebelling against the principle because they do understand or accept the basis for it.
This is why all civilizations eventually fall – the young insist on relearning the painful lessons of their ancestors. Seems like you cannot transfer the lesson effectively more than one generation beyond the one that learned the lesson.
NRFS
@Deti
Whatever value “no sex before monogamy” has is pragmatic, ostensibly to prevent women from racking up partner counts and getting pumped & dumped. The statement has no Judeo-Christian moral component.
To be even clearer about it, “No sex before monogamy” is indeed completely arbitrary, but “No sex before marriage” (and no sex outside of one’s marriage, and marriage as an ontological reality that is binding until death) has arguably strong Christian teachings and tradition behind it.
eti says:
November 6, 2011 at 9:57 am
“actually, NSBM has no moral component or value whatsoever.”
It doesn’t if you mean “No Sex Before Serial Polyandry”
Interestingly, some of the modern Calvinist scholars, like John Piper, are coming round to the ‘old fashioned’ (ie Catholic) view that Christian marriage is for life, with no remarriage for divocees whether “guilty” or “innocent” in terms of the reason for their divorces. If Piper is correct, then any man can understand why Jesus’ disciples said that it was better for a man not to marry under Jesus’ teachings. With the double standard in society that allows women to do what they want and waltz off into the sunset with the vast bulk if not all of the man’s worldly goods, they do have a point that carries into this time and this culture.
Why has the comment section now been taken over by dubious wonder? The replies to her aren’t going to change her mind. Responding to her just allows her to control the direction of the comments. Just ignore her. I don’t even believe she/he is who she/he claims to be.
Actually, it does, deti. The reason it has moral value is that it is not a good thing for women or the culture they live in to be pumped & dumped’ Nor is it a good thing for men to be “married & dumped.”
Calling having a guy say “uh, yes, well I guess that we are boyfriend and girlfriend and I won’t sleep with anyone else if you sleep with me” by the term “monogamy” is like calling Chaz Bono a “man” because she underwent a double mastectomy and takes male hormones – all meaning has been stripped out of the word. Might as well put it as being “no sex before monotony.”
She kind of reminds me of the creature who went by the name of Jeana who single-handedly used to keep Glenn Sacks’ entire forum tied down with her machine-gun fire of feminist talking points and misandry.
I would almost agree that she is a sock puppet that Dalrock has set up to illustrate his points except for the fact that I have dealt with and dated hundreds of women like her in real life. In another thread, he even called her a “manosphere cliché.”
I am quite glad that she is here and dominating the forum the way she is because she saves a lot of men the hassle of trying to describe women like her, and dealing with the endless chanting of “NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT, NAWALT.”
Every time she posts she attacks the denial system which has kept men stalled, and saves one of us the trouble of getting into an argument of “YBSWRALT” – “Yes, but some women REALLY ARE like that.”
People trying to make the argument that DW “RILT” – Really Isn’t Like That – will show themselves as real fools if they try.
Sooner or later the deniers will have to admit that there really is a problem going on, and every post by DW moves us one step closer to that time.
“For the record…I am only,– EVER — going to have sex on my terms. I really don’t care what other people’s terms are, or how they choose to have sex.”
And then, a little later on:
“Care to discuss the topic, instead of me?”
Not very funny, but funny enough.
@lace: “I honestly don’t know if there’s a way for traditional women to enforce the female standard amongst women again. It may require some killin’s.”
😆 😆
I guess maybe we can hope that they don’t breed, which, in theory, could effectively “kill” their line(genes) and not perpetuate their (collective) mindset. This is one of the reasons I am pro-birth control, especially for those that don’t want children but feel pressured to have them, all the while knowing their clocks are ticking…….
Chris says:
November 6, 2011 at 12:11 am
“What you are is post-Christian. (athiesm and agnosticism have creeds, priests and sacraments, Ann Coulter named them.”
I take umbrage at this. I am an atheist. I haven’t become one because I read about it somewhere and thought that the thing for me. On my own , I realized I have no faith and for good reason. I developed this by myself. I am a Man Going My Own Way.
Coulter is certainly clever, but I would not be so dumb as to say all christians are alike.
@laceagate
I don’t think dire measures are needed. Women have the power to enforce values over their own social structure. Women who won’t live up to the standard get booted out. This happens all the time. All it would take is for conservative women to uphold conservative values. Instead of booting Sally for not wearing the right brand of shoes, boot Cindy for going EPL on her husband and kids.
I would love to see a group of women counter-protest the slut walks, for example. This would get great media attention, and would drive the slut walkers absolutely nuts. They are terrified of being judged, which is the whole point of the slutwalks.
The missing component in all of this of course is men who have a clear moral vision and are willing to lead. If they existed in any numbers the women would follow in the ways I describe immediately above.
BTW, laceagate, welcome to the forum. It seems to me that women who have woken up to how much harm feminism has done to their lives are beginning to crawl out of the woodwork these days.
I think you comment may have been intended to be sort of funny, but I think there is some truth to it. If you look at Sharia cultures, people who promote ideas which destroy the social order and harm lots of people are removed from the culture – NOT given tenured faculty positions.
I have semi-jokingly observed that if women wanted to make a gesture of good faith toward men over wanting to end the gender war, that two feminists hanging from every lamp pole would be a great start. Imagine how many women’s lives would be better today if Mary Daly, Betty Friedan, Germaine Greer, and Gloria Steinem had never been given the bully pulpits to spread their own mental illness to naive trusting young women.
@ Legion. I love Stross on this. He has a fictional universe where the Lovecraftian aliens enter the world via mathematical alogrithms. He introduces his last book by saying he used to have the standard English Athiest faith, but he has now seen God, and God is coming back. And the God is evil… he would rather be an athiest.
To a certain extent you are right. Coulter said the faith of liberals is atheism, the sacrament is abortion, and the high priest is Richard Dawkins. Not all atheists are that tasteless, and stupid.
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@ zed
The only way I can see a reverse in the harm that’s been done to society is if the religious institutes step up. I don’t see that happening. I don’t know what it’s like in the states, but I fell away from church where I live because the church fell away from the faith. I grew up religious because of my grandparents, but I have a very good understanding of new age and druidic ideas because that’s what my mother follows. I became very uncomfortable seeing the cross over into the church.
So, what to do. I’m secular, though incorporate as much of my early upbringing into my life. (Though I’ve stumbled.) I’m divorced, and the “dating” scene is grim. I’m leary of joining a church because my last few attempts have left me feeling like a pagan, but I’m not sure how else to find traditionally minded men. I’m an outlier in the secular and religious worlds.
Meth
I tried. Even after losing EVERYTHING, I spent another 18 months trying to get through to him. In 24 years of marriage, I’d only given him an ultimatum one time before. I suppose I’d hoped that ending things would shock him into getting help. It’s not just the addiction that required the marriage to end, it was the criminality and sociopathy that goes with it. After our break up, he broke the law one time too many, and no longer has his freedom.
So, what would posses a middle aged man to do something so destructive? I have a couple of guesses, but since he wont confirm, your guess is as good as mine.
Oh, JV, you need to learn to not say things that just invite you to get kicked in the same way a geeky boy walking down a HS hallway wearing a sign that says “kick me” is asking to get kicked.
Men who are really, authentically,”traditionally minded” don’t generally seek to court (“date”) or marry divorced women. A woman who has spent many nights warming another man’s bed, and perhaps born his children, has very thin justification to hold out for many pre-conditions for sex.
TFH is probably getting read to beat you up pretty badly over your expectations, so all I’m going to do is point out that the last bus for the night probably already left, and you weren’t on it.
I haven’t been “warming the bed” of anybody. And yes, I’m an outlier religiously and secularly. I think I mentioned that already.
Yes, you have, JV – your ex-husband.
I’m going to spell this out for you – in a very uncharacteristic act of kindness for me. It looked to me like TFH was sharpening his knives to go after you. It looks like he is going to cut you some slack, which is nice of him because your story sounds rather plausible on its face.
My comment about “traditionally minded” was to point out that extremely traditionally minded men do not believe in divorce for any reason. Let’s take a 100 point scale of traditional mindedness – 0 being not at all, and 100 being slightly to the right of the pope. Picking some arbitrary numbers, let’s say the top 25% of scorers on TMness would not marry a divorced woman and would only marry a previously married woman if she was a widow. The 50th to 74th percentiles would marry a divorce woman depending on 1) the circumstances of her divorce, 2) why he was single, and if single because of divorce, then 3) how bad his divorce was and how much the divorced woman resembled his ex-wife.
To summarize it bluntly – it appears to me that you are fishing in a pool 1/2 inch deep, 12 inches across, with hundreds of other women fishing in it, using the same bait.
Personally, I think it really will require divine intervention for you to hook someone and be able to land him.
Personally, I think it really will require divine intervention for you to hook someone and be able to land him.
Very possibly.
@ just visiting
JV start with a smile and be cheerful and complimentary. Notice the things you are looking for and openly praise those characteristics. Don’t put so much on what you want or demand in a man but realize what you have to offer a good man that will make it worth his while . Remember you are a used older woman. You may not have the pretty face and fresh vagina to go with the bitch attitude most of your competition brings to the party. Get learn and live with the attitude you are looking to be an ally and join his team. Smile.
Will keep it in mind.
[D: Given the grace with which you handle yourself on this blog, I think you have nothing to worry about.]
I think somebody needs to translate Paragonese into Dalrock speak:
“Second, A tendency to smaller male breeding populations will pose evolutionary problems in the form of large population replacement(incurring fertility losses through the overhead of increased female selectivity, and the time and energy costs that this entails)”
I think it relates to Dalrock’s posts on the SMP searching costs and courtship fantasies because women delay mating and some end up as spinsters.
“and inbreeding depression-type effects, which must ultimately reduce population viability(as deleterious recessives will tend to combine at greater frequencies in smaller populations).”
Of course, incest leads to less genetic variability which makes species apparently less fit to fight off parasites according to the red queen hypothesis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_Hypothesis
“Eventually, this dynamic becomes unsustainable, as the population becomes evolutionarily unstable(indicated in tendencies to sub-replacement fertility – another symptom observed of developed world populations).”
This observation is surely very popular with the human biodiversity crowds who are worried that they are specific racial group becomes outbred.
@TFH:
“If anything, the scientific research output of mature democracies vs. the rest of the world is narrowing and reversing, mainly due to males being disincentivized, and government research being cut in favor of propping up transfers of money to women.”
You should encourage more flyer posting, otherwise we may come late for the 2050 singularity party! 😀
@ Anonymous
“”“where we should expect that the same invariant evolutionary forces that acted upon small populations in the past – tending to constrain female choice – will likewise hold, and reassert themselves in the future).”
such as…?””
Paternal advantage(sufficient ecological selection pressures will pose paternal investment advantages in offspring success, favoring females who mate with strategically inclined males).
The prevailing latitude of female sexual choice(ie. following from their economic/political independence in developed world populations) is only possible through a complex, density dependent(on population) system of mediated prosperity, which compensates for inferior female aptitudes/contributions by expropriating male contributions for the unequal benefit of females.
But, once these density dependent systems are destabilized(through indicated tendencies to sub-replacement fertility, and increasing marginalization of paternal advantage through welfare state dynamics), paternal advantage once again becomes a determinant factor in exerting pressures on female sexual choice, with evolution(given the opportunity) selecting for systems
which render higher population fertility in outcompeting rival systems.
And this is precisely why every nascent civilization has been intolerant and unforgiving of a general latitude in female sexual choice: because civilizations entail systems of co-operation and specialization that are highly density dependent, and thus have always followed from populations that exceed a rate of replacement(and eventually demand a sufficiently large male breeding population), while encouraging high numbers of male participation and co-operation through an inclusive male breeding population(by imposing systems that limit on female sexual latitude)
None of this is reconcilable with female selectivity run-amok, which is the inescapable consequence of female sexual liberation.
Haha, paragon, seems to jargon-ize TFH’s 1K repeated statements:
“which compensates for inferior female aptitudes/contributions by expropriating male contributions for the unequal benefit of females.”
TFH also complains about male to female transfer via government transactions, and goes on and on about comparing average female aptitude to teenagers, and pointing out their supposedly diminished strategic, long-term thinking!
@UK Fred
I don’ think this is likely to be adopted, but I think there is some logic to it. Right now all a woman needs to do is spin a plausible enough yarn about how unhaaappy they are, or if they want to go for extra points how abusive, etc their husband was. The rest of us are forced to either risk looking like an ass by questioning women like just visiting, or assume they all really had good reasons to divorce. Additionally, the promise of remarriage (which is what it is today) along with cash and prizes in the event of a sudden loss of marital satisfaction allows women to feel totally safe marrying men they don’t love or should reasonably have known were unfit for marriage (excuse #6). It creates a sort of marital moral hazard. At the very least, no fault divorce should rule out the option of remarriage for the person who filed.
I guess I should comment since I think I introduced NSBM to the Susanosphere. I advised that to women as the single biggest measure to screen out cads. Sure, LTR “commitment” is not really a commitment, but swearing off dating other people (on both sides) is about the best one can get prior to marriage in this society.
I had never thought of it as suborning a female-friendly promiscuity, but you are correct that’s what it is. Susan spoke of a focus-group member, just out of college, with a history of seven sexual partners. According to Aunt Sue, she “has sex like a rabbit,” but…only in the context of relationships. I don’t mean any ill will to this woman in particular, but there’s really no way she’s had long-term committed bonds with seven men in the ~6 years or so she’s been sexually active. This goes to your point that a portion of alleged LTRs are really just extended hookups, and we actually have a term for an extended hookup – a fling, which I suppose you could argue at least has the presumption of monogamy but doesn’t have even the whiff of commitment that makes LTRs respectable.
What I think Susan is finding out at her blog, and what the rest of us are seeing around the Internet and in real life, is that you really can’t go halfsies on this issue. Women cannot ride the carousel in college and then complain no guys want to be their boyfriends in their 20’s. They can’t eschew commitments and then expect men will be eager to wife them up when they want to commit again. Kate Bolick found this out even as she pines for the “fun, running-around period of being single.” Either you strictly bind sex to real commitment, or you open the barn door to recreational sex in one form or another. Our society has torn down commitment and so has gone the latter route. In other words, it’s the sluts’ and players’ world and we’re just living in it, trying to make do in the black market they’ve created. In Susan’s time, she says there was the relationship market and the casual sex (“having fun”) market, and one could choose which to play in. That has obviously been blurred in my generation, and the byproduct of that is that instant sexual attraction has been pushed to the fore – relationships have to start as hookups, which lives the naturally, instantly attractive out of the game.
“Relationships have to start as hookups”
And that hilarious paradox is the reason so many college women have become the leftovers Solomon wrote so equivalently about. Past 25 they are placed securely into the refrigerator, waiting to be dressed up with some fresh alpha vegetables, but all they get is another piece chopped off the side and given a quick microwave.
What a pity for college women. I’ve spent every year since my early 20s devouring the best reproductive years of many “wife-material” girls, now in their late 20s, lost, and cold at the back of the refrigerator shelf next to the old lemon juice.
How did those flings work out for you girls? I don’t care. I’m taking a look at a trip to the Sunday Morning Night Club next week, after all, I’m not even 30 yet!
@ just visiting
Since I’m divorced… if you shared faith, and lived in the poor country I live in, I’d get to know you. Most decent men who have been thru the wringer try to screen out the “not Haaapy” but will accept and forgive those who really tried and failed.
Mainly because we are more caring than cad. Some women are not like that, but you better be able to pass Dalrock’s tests.
And I agree the dating scene is dire.
Chris says:
November 6, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Thank you for your consideration. Of course if she was talking about liberal atheist, she was closer to that mark than I imagined.
I can’t believe I forgot to respond to this.
You’re confusing freedom with democracy. By some definitions calling post WWII Japan, “democratic” is questionable since Japan was effectively ruled by one party from 1955 – 2009 by the Japanese Liberal-Democratic Party.
And let’s not forget our options will likely end up being the following:
1. A Pinochet style dictatorship
2. A Totalitarian Feminist Matriarchy (What we’re heading towards)
3. An Islamic Theocracy (It’s clear to me that Islam is on the same path of feminization that happened to Christianity so this is really a variant of option 2.)
Option 1 should really be something akin the Roman dictators before the time of Julius Caesar but Pinochet was the closest thing I could come up with in the modern world.
If we’re dealing with a Pinochet style government the private sector won’t be interfered with, and they can invent all those things.
This isn’t something that will magically happen in the future. This is something that is already in the process of happening. For instance, UAVs are just the beginning. Congress back in 2001 set a goal of making the military one third completely robotic by 2015, and we’re well on our way to that goal.
If we’re dealing with a Pinochet style government the private sector won’t be interfered with, and they can invent all those things.
Well, look at Chile under Pinochet. You’d think that free of feminism and with a wonderful unbound private sector Chile would have become a scientific powerhouse. That obviously hasn’t happened. I wouldn’t pin my hopes too highly on an American military dictatorship being any more successful at ushering in the Singularity than a Chilean one. The thing to remember with *right-wing* dictatorships is that they’re very often tied to either religion or “traditional values.” This was the case in Chile; though Pinochet ended up having an unpleasant relationship with the Catholic Church (yet another reason many men wouldn’t be too keen on supporting a dictator like him–I doubt folks like Dalrock would take too well to “disappearing” if they happened to worship at the wrong church), he was quite cozy with Pentecostals (Anthony James Gill’s “Rendering unto Caesar: the Catholic Church and the state in Latin America” goes into this in more depth). Given how much the religious right in the US harps against pornography, contraception, and other such technologies, if they managed to acquire a large deal of influence in a military dictatorship–and given the religiosity of the military, this is quite likely–they would very likely be able to put a stop to research in sexbots and artificial wombs. Thus, you may still want to look for someone aside from Pinochet or a military dictatorship to save us from the feminist matriarchy and/or Muslims.
Congress back in 2001 set a goal of making the military one third completely robotic by 2015, and we’re well on our way to that goal.
Yes, and that’s a “democratic” Congress. Who’s to say our American Pinochet will necessarily share those goals? Remember, one of the reasons Congress is pushing for robotic armies is out of electoral self interest. Massive amounts of casualties in war lead to politicians not being elected, so they’d want to replace human soldiers with robots. A military dictatorship, not having to worry about elections, might not be as enthusiastic about robotizing its army, because Mr. Dictator doesn’t have to care about running for re-election.
But, for the purposes of argument, let’s assume that our hypothetical military dictatorship manages to come up with its killbots to replace cannon fodder. Even then, who’s to say it’s going to be “pro-male?” I believe I also mentioned this on your blog–it’s more likely than not that any military dictatorship that arises will resemble a woman’s most lurid apex fantasies, with the generals and the high-ranking officers at the top monopolizing all the resources while the lower men get shafted. You replied that if this happened, a dictatorship would “lose its popular support” and collapse, but on the other hand, if, as you hope, it’s a dictatorship with killbots and drones, it doesn’t have to worry about popular support–automated factories and T-800s will just crush any and all resistance. Men being enslaved by machines sounds little more appealing than men being enslaved by women.
Hell, even from the perspective of a *military* dictatorship, one could argue that there are just too many manginas and too much misandry in the U.S armed forces to make it practical. There’s the USMC general who gloated about killing “men who hit their wives, the growing numbers of military men in the occupy wall street movement (which, if I understand your postings on it correctly, is a misandrist feminist leftist parasitical movement Pinochet certainly wouldn’t approve of), and so on. Once again, if there’s any hope for men, I wouldn’t place too much of my bets on a military dictatorship being the best one, at least in the U.S.
For myself, if I had to choose any of these, I’d go with TFH’s fourth option. Reminds me of Ian Banks’ “Culture,” though on a planetary rather than a galactic scale. Just libertarian enough for my tastes, too.
Hi Dalrock!
Sorry I didn’t get back to your email and comment on your post on Fireproof last week–I was out at a conference and I’m just really behind.
But I just want to clarify: I do believe that she had grounds for divorce because of his pornography addiction. I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement comes in. I don’t think she SHOULD have divorced him, anymore than I think a woman should leave a guy because of a one-night stand. Jesus never said that we SHOULD divorce. He only said that in cases of affairs, divorce is permitted.
And so in the movie Fireproof, she was in a relationship where divorce was permitted, and she was planning on divorcing, and planning on remarrying. Thus, I wouldn’t say that’s whorish. He’s the one who cheated.
I’m just uncomfortable with you saying that Christians are allowing people to “whore” around because we’re permitting divorce, when I don’t think that’s the case. I believe there are very narrow grounds for divorce: abuse, affairs, and in some cases, addictions. In many of those cases, I’d argue that they should separate and not remarry, such as the case of addictions. Do you not think that if someone has grounds for divorce, that this does put behaviour in a different light? Again, I’m not arguing that she SHOULD divorce; just that he had violated the marriage repeatedly and was continuing to do so, and so she was going to leave.
I find that you talk a lot on this blog about how people should never divorce (which I more or less agree with), and that women shouldn’t expect so much from their husbands (which I also agree with), and that women are asking their husbands to be both betas and alphas at the same time (which I also agree with), and that women leave their husbands too much (again, in agreement). But what I don’t find is you dealing honestly with genuine problems that couples have with communication, with distance, with betrayal of trust, with porn, etc. I agree with everything you’re saying, but I don’t think marriages can be fixed with a simple “suck it up and put on your big girl panties”. That might make someone STAY in the marriage, but it won’t make the marriage thrive, and what I’d like to see is couples who are genuinely attached and intimate. I’m not saying that if you aren’t intimate that’s grounds for divorce; not at all. But I’d like to see couples thrive. And that means that sometimes you actually have to work at problems, not just say “you’re expecting too much, get over it”. You have to learn how to communicate, and how to give, and how to understand the different ways that men and women approach sex, parenthood, life, etc.
And I do think that while you talk about all the bad stuff women do, you haven’t really given a lot of attention to some of the things that men do. Like porn, for instance, The research on how porn contributes to completely sexless marriages, how it kills the sex drive for your wife, and how it destroys intimacy, is immense. The number of emails I get everyday from women saying, “my husband won’t even look at me because all he wants to do is watch porn on the computer” is so heartbreaking. They’re trying everything; lingerie, new sex positions, everything–and the guy can’t get it up anymore.
I’m just saying that there’s more to a marriage problem than just saying, “stick it out.” Yes, you should stick it out. No, I don’t think you SHOULD leave because of porn, or a one-night stand, or an emotional affair (though I do believe that people have grounds, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea or the right thing). But I think these people also need real solutions or they WILL leave, and I guess that’s the stuff I’m trying to tackle. Does that make sense?
Sorry to hijack the thread and leave such a long comment!
Sheila from To Love, Honor and Vacuum.
“The research on how porn contributes to completely sexless marriages, how it kills the sex drive for your wife, and how it destroys intimacy, is immense.”
I doubt it. Care to provide links? There might be correlation, but causation is (always) a matter of speculation in complex dynamic situations/relations as the ones you are talking about. “contributes” is a weasel word. There are a lot things contributing to everything, and few things can be totally excluded as contributing factors to anything.
Sheila,
“But I just want to clarify: I do believe that she had grounds for divorce because of his pornography addiction. I think that’s where the fundamental disagreement comes in. I don’t think she SHOULD have divorced him, anymore than I think a woman should leave a guy because of a one-night stand. Jesus never said that we SHOULD divorce. He only said that in cases of affairs, divorce is permitted.
And so in the movie Fireproof, she was in a relationship where divorce was permitted, and she was planning on divorcing, and planning on remarrying. Thus, I wouldn’t say that’s whorish. He’s the one who cheated.”
With all due respect I find your whitewash fatuous. As Dalrock has pointed out, the husband’s porn “addiction” is not a clear point in the film. There are people who are addicted to porn (the Sex And The City-obsessed girls come to mind in fact) but, like alcohol, there are many who can use it to enhance their lives without it becoming a problem.
Frankly, I think we’re in a serious state of denial about healthy male sexuality if we regard looking at other women sexually (e.g. porn) as “cheating.” I laughed out loud when I read that, it’s just such a silly concept. I’m not quite sure how that squares with Moses and Jesus, but the male programming for variety means men are going to have sexual thoughts about other women. Almost every young man I know has viewed pornography at one time or another to aid his sexual release and none of them are spiritually damaged because of it. The comparison to promiscuity is ridiculous.
But in any event, the women Dalrock has been debating on this topic appear to be playing a childish “gotcha” game – the wife can make the husband’s life as miserable as possible, including denying him the sexual release that the marital contract entails, but he’s the one in the wrong because he steps out to get his sexual needs met (not even with a real person). And then that makes her right to flirt it up with Dr McDreamy. Like a company that, instead of terminating an employee, moves him around and makes his working life hell until he quits so they don’t have to fire him. Then she says “AHA! Now I can leave you, sucker!”
Putting aside that the film is itself emotional porn for women, while it criticizes visual porn for men.
You still haven’t addressed why a woman, even if she was planning a “permitted” divorce, is in the right behaving as a single woman before she has actually divorced her husband. It’s akin to a couples that is “planning on getting engaged” engaging in sexual behavior spiritually reserved for married couples. And because she _didn’t_ end up divorcing, she engaged in wrongful behavior herself. As Dalrock has said, how come the husband is the only one who is supposed to seek forgiveness for his faults?
@Sheila Gregorie
I think the conflation of viewing porn and adultery is very problematic. Grerp has written about women looking for a “get out of marriage free card”, and I think this is a poster child for it. This isn’t to say that porn is good, or not a sin, or even harmless. But to jump from there to adultry is a huge jump. Marriage just became an even riskier proposition for the average man. I guess it is good that men should understand that Christian women will receive the message you are giving here. This is just another reason men should be weary of marrying a modern Christian woman. Not only will she leave the moment she thinks she can get a better deal, but she will have other Christian women condoning her choice if she can find the flimsiest of pretense.
On the movie itself, they went out of their way to make all of the issues murky, then went out of their way to show the resolution of the conflict as him winning over her heart. The movie grinds in the point that the only reason he keeps his marriage together is to make her love him more than the other alpha she is lining up. In the same scene they tell us he is viewing porn, she tells us she has been denying him sex and will continue to do so. As I mentioned in the review, no one uses the term addiction until later in the movie, and this is never fleshed out. My sense is the movie was saying any amount of porn viewing is essentially addiction. Also, as I pointed out in my review, the whole “mother needs a new hospital bed” issue is very suspect as well. The authors had the chance to make these issues clear, but instead opted to make them suspect. The only thing they were clear on is that marriage is about love, not vows, and it is the sole job of the husband to keep his wife haaaapy (remember the opening scene which framed this for the whole movie).
“The only thing they were clear on is that marriage is about love, not vows”
Wow, that is a brilliantly succinct way of summing up the mess we’re in.
I’m going to wade in here and hope I survive, LOL.
One of my biggest problems with the wife’s character in Fireproof is that I think it’s wrong for a person to be acting as if they are a free agent when they’re married to someone else. I don’t care WHAT that person has done or is doing. If you’re married you’re married. Further I think people are far less likely to do the work required to salvage their marriage when sights are already set on someone else. And both the husband and the wife had some work to do here IMO.
All that said, I think the issues in the movie were murky but I think that’s partially due to the fact that this movie was produced by a pretty conservative church and they were trying to present the pornography addiction with a light touch so as not to be offensive to a certain segment of the church community. But I have no doubt they meant to convey that the husband had a pornography addiction. I agree that a pornography addiction is sinful, but it’s not the same as actually having sex with another person. And yes, I’m well aware of what Jesus said in Matthew 5. I think it was meant as a check on our own hearts, not to be used as an equivalent to actual adultery to bail on marriage.
I think Sheila is right about being solutions oriented rather than a simple restating of the obvious problems.That’s one of the things she spends a lot of time doing on her blog and she calls women to account with grace but unflinching truth. She doesn’t excuse selfish female behavior or offer women a get out of marriage free card. I’ve never gotten that from her. From what I can tell, Dalrock largely appreciates her efforts even if they disagree on a few points.
What needs to be understood here is that from what I can see, this is a matter of the same ultimate values, goals, and perspective from two different vantage points. And that’s okay.
@Terri
I do (or have), but right now I’m trying to distinguish her voice from just another whisper. This is very troubling to me, given that she is an opinion leader on the topic of marriage speaking specifically to Christian women. If she is telling women their husband viewing porn is a get out of marriage free card, this is deeply troubling. I’ve always tried to warn men that they shouldn’t assume a Christian woman will take marriage vows seriously. The bright side of this is now it is fully out in the open.
[D: Given the grace with which you handle yourself on this blog, I think you have nothing to worry about.]
Thanks Dalrock.
@ Chris
Your comment gives me hope. Thank you.
I almost fell out of my chair laughing over this. As Badger says, this whitewash is completely fatuous. If a woman loses any sexual desire for her husband, it because he doesn’t have enough game. If a man loses desire for his wife, it must be because he looks at porn.
I have a male member of my family who has been married about 30 years to a woman who used to, in the early days of their marriage, call up all members of his family so she could bitch to them about him wanting her (HIS WIFE) sexually. She seemed genuinely bewildered that all his male relatives and even his mother did not share in her outrage that he expected his wife to at least pay lip service to honoring her side of the marital agreement.
After hearing so many stories from men about how their wives starved their marriage of physical affection and intimacy, to hear women weeping and wailing about it seems totally surreal.
What is even stranger is to watch all the shifting winds of opinion on the topic of male-oriented visual porn. Of course we know that Team Woman stands staunchly in favor of woman-oriented emotional porn. It reminds me of that old joke – “Erotica is what turns me on, porn is what turns you on.”
Thirty years ago Andrea Dworkin was running around screaming “The sky is falling, porn will make every male rape every female he lays eyes on.” – “pornography is the theory–rape is the practice.” But, wait, the problem with “porn” is not that it creates too much desire in men which makes them lose all control, but rather that it decreases men’s desire, lessening the value they place on sex from their wives and lessening the bargaining position for wives to withhold (or threaten to withhold) it from them.
Now, let’s also talk about the walking porn that the slutwalkers shove in our faces every day – AND ABSOLUTELY DEMAND THAT MEN NOT REACT IN ANY WAY to it. Point out to women that no, I’m not particularly interested in having her saggy boobs shoved in my face, and watch the avalanche of shaming language about men being unable to “control themselves.”
So which is it, grrls? Does it bother you more when we “think with our little heads” – which gives you all the ammunition you can handle to clobber us from your assumed moral high ground which is above all these “base sexual needs” – or when we don’t – which takes away the value of this sex that you don’t want except to hold over our heads as something to take away from us if we don’t make you haaaappppy.
I really do feel sorry for you ChI rristian men. Secular women have their problems too, but their claim on the
I really do feel sorry for you Christian men. Secular women have their problems too, but their claim on the moral high ground is not backed up by an army of White Knight manginas in the same way that so-cons pedastalize Christian women.
@Terri
One of the more tedious aspects of the debate about the movie is how everyone just knows that the authors of the movie meant something different than what they said. This means no one can criticize the movie for what it actually was, because others reserve the right to make up whatever moral message they would have liked the movie to have conveyed and then claim it did. I watched the movie and took many pages of notes. No one has shown me where my analysis of what is actually in the movie was wrong. I can’t rebut arguments of “but what if the movie wasn’t really bad, then you would be wrong”. As I said in response to a previous comment from Sean on the movie, I think for some viewers this is a case of them projecting their own goodness onto the movie. I have no doubt that this is true in your case.
None of this changes the fact that the message of the movie itself is very different than the good Christian message so many are desperate to attribute to it. If they had wanted to show him as having a true addiction, they could have done so without having to show explicit porn. They could have shown him with classic addictive symptoms (interfering with work, etc). Also note that Sheila isn’t making a distinction as far as I can tell between viewing porn and a chronic porn addiction.
Dalrock – my respect and admiration for you has been growing since your started this blog, but now they have soared through the roof. As an “insider” you can point out what needs to be addressed for the religious community to put its own house in order. I can count the number of times I have been inside a church in the past 50 years on one hand, but what I hear from a lot of formerly devoutly religious people is that even the most faithful of men are having a hard time holding on while so many other men are willing to throw them under the bus, and women attempt to drown them in the flood of obligation masculinity – (H/T to Badger for the phrase).
Jesus didn’t say divorce is permitted in cases of affairs. He said:
Whosoever shall put away his wife, and marry another, committeth adultery against her. And if a woman shall put away her husband, and be married to another, she committeth adultery.
@Zed
I very much appreciate the kind words. I’m not sure I would call myself an insider though. I do get very troubling glimpses into the inside however. My wife has taught at multiple Christian private schools, and roughly half of the children in her classes were from broken homes. When women frivolously divorced there was absolutely no censure, even of women who later realized on their own that they had divorced frivolously. What I will say is that Sheila does provide this insider view. She writes books and a blog on the topic of marriage for Christian women, and also as I understand is frequently invited to speak at churches in Canada. That she harbors such a hair trigger for wife initiated divorce and serial polyandry should be very sobering for any man thinking Christians have his marriage’s back. They don’t (in general).
Ok I find this whole excuse making for the porn thing disingenuous. From the post I’ve seen, you seem to infer that b/c the wife wasn’t putting out it was okay for the husband to look at porn. I’m sorry, just b/c your wife is not putting out does not give you permission to look at porn. Just like you not fulfilling her feeling needs does not give her permission to flirt with the nearest doctor. You guys seem to agree porn is a negative thing hence naming women vices “divorce porn” or “emo porn” otherwise why not call it “emo fantasy” b/c that does not give it the serious negative connotations it deserves. If porn is no big deal, then concede that women being saturated w/ emo and divorce porn is no more dangerous than men being saturated with regular porn.
A few points:
1. Viewing porn, or even becoming addicted to porn, should not be a get out of marriage free card for the non-addicted spouse. Women should be careful about this. If that standard is applied to men, then women can and should expect their emotional pornography addictions being used as divorce grounds. It’s pretty clear that emo-porn addiction has reached epidemic proportions among the female population.
2. The biblical injunction against men committing adultery in their hearts if lusting after a woman was intended to convey man’s obligation to God. Many Christian women believe it to be an obligation men owe to women, or to their wives. It is no such thing. (And leave aside the issue
3. Zed: One of the most difficult realizations I’ve had is that there really is no difference between Christian women and secular women when it comes to dating, relationships and marriage. And it’s particularly jarring to come to that recognition because the church sells Christian women as being different, more “holy” and “Godly” when in fact most are not.
(And leave aside the issue of theology.)
deti:
How can you reference a Scripture for your argument and then leave aside the issue of theology?
I agree with the point you made but I found that part confusing. What is the Bible if not theology?
And I agree with Sean in part. You can’t diminish porn anymore than you can diminish the things that pull a wife away from her husband. Hard line for both sexes, please.
terri:
I said “leave aside the issue of theology” because theology is beside the point. I did not want to confuse the point with any discussion whether one believes in the God of the Bible.
This isn’t a theological blog and didn’t want to hijack the thread with what often presents as “Yeah, but I don’t believe in God so it doesn’t apply to me” or “you’re a Bible thumper” or some other such irrelevant matter.
“Ok I find this whole excuse making for the porn thing disingenuous. From the post I’ve seen, you seem to infer that b/c the wife wasn’t putting out it was okay for the husband to look at porn. I’m sorry, just b/c your wife is not putting out does not give you permission to look at porn.”
I’m going to go one step further – I think it’s ok for a man to look at porn even if his wife is satisfying him sexually. Does the Bible has prohibitions against pornography that aren’t in the same section as the bans on eating pork and farming every seventh year? Where other than the inherited Victorian puritanism of mainline America Christianity does it say that pornography is irredeemably sinful?
There’s nothing wrong with using your imagination. It’s one of the great gifts we have. The key is to keep fantasy separate from our expectations of reality. As deti says, “It’s pretty clear that emo-porn addiction has reached epidemic proportions among the female population.” Women by and large do seem to have a more difficult time compartmentalizing the fantasy than men do. Perhaps this has to do with psychological differences with gender, but the cultural messaging that Dalrock constantly points out certainly doesn’t help. Do I not want my lady to watch Gone With The Wind so that she not be charmed by the fictional Rhett Butler? No, as long as she understands it’s a movie, but given the sources Dalrock is quoting I am unnerved by the number of women who can’t seem to make that distinction.
It’s wrong if a woman comes home and tells her husband he needs to act like a romance-novel hero or rom-com lead. Just as it’s wrong if a man insists his wife allow him to bust on her face or whatever extreme sex act she’s not down with. But which do you think happens more often? Do you think a large portion of married men are demanding wacky sexual kink to the point they are considering or threatening divorce of their wives for not measuring up to those fantasy standards?
Oh, okay. Got it. Sorry for introducing that since I was the one who first mentioned Scripture overtly. Although I think Shelia alluded to that verse when she said the Fireproof husband cheated.
I’ll tread more lightly from here on out, Dalrock if you’d like.
[D: Not at all. The bible is clearly on topic given the issue. I think Deti was acknowledging that in his own way as well.]
@Terri
I’ve never argued that Christians are wrong for preaching against porn. I’m very troubled though to see it presented as a get out of marriage free card. Even worse when it is presented as a practice serial polyandry free card. Fireproof went out of its way to show a man viewing porn and a wife witholding sex for means of control and lining up husband #2. It then made a point of showing that the only one who was in the wrong was the husband, who then had to win the bidding war for her heart. Watch the movie again with my post in hand. Show me any mistakes I made. I took the challenge from Christian women. Who will take the challenge back?
terri:
Is looking at porn cheating? Is porn addiction cheating? I’m not sure we can equivocate a man’s actual sexual conduct with a woman (which IS adultery) with viewing, or even being addicted to, pornography. There’s a big difference between watching videos of porn, on the one hand, and actually doing what’s depicted, on the other.
The objective being discussed by many women , it seems, is that the wife married to a porn addict get her divorce with no moral or societal judgment affixed to her, while diverting all the blame to the husband.
With all due respect to Sheila Gregoire, the “He’s viewing porn! Bad, bad man!” is quite akin to the shaming language of “you Peter Pan overgrown boys need to stop playing those icky video games and man up!”
I don’t think porn would have reached nearly the saturation levels it has if women seemed to actually want and care about the men around them, weren’t constantly complaining about and judging them, and weren’t divorcing them, bankrupting them, isolating them and destroying them in the process.
We wouldn’t have a porn epidemic if more women showed interest in average men. Because women by and large are interested only in the top men, the rest, it appears, are increasingly settling for virtual women.
Whoa, Dalrock. I’ve already stated repeatedly that I agree with your assessment of the wife’s character in the film. And I felt that way when I watched it initially, no promptings required. I found her selfish, insipid, and far too willing to entertain another relationship while married. I’ve actually considered watching the film again to see if perhaps I was too hard on the wife, LOL. But I’ve never seen it the way many Christian women saw it.
I also said above that porn is no “get out of marriage free card.” I actually have a very hard stance on divorce and remarriage. I believe that when a person leaves their spouse for anything short of adultery or clear, unambiguous abandonment, then that person should either work to reconcile with their spouse or remain single and celibate the rest of their days. I think separation for addictions fail to rise to the standard of releasing one from their marriage vows.
I’m not saying everyone has to agree with me on the remarriage issue, but I’m simply making it clear to you that I am not on the “trade up to a better husband” bandwagon, even in the most heinous cases.
That said, I do think we have to be balanced. Just as we acknowledge the damage done by Eat, Pray Love we have to acknowledge the damage done by porn. That was all I was attempting to convey.
As for the “bidding war for her heart”, my feelings are mixed. On the one hand, I have no problem with a man taking the lead in making things better since I believe men are uniquely suited to leadership. On the other hand, I don’t know if the point was that God had changed His heart and he was attempting to woo her with a pure and godly love or if he was attempting to win back her heart on the strength of his manliness and romantic ability. If the former, I’m good. If the latter, this poor guy would be in divorce court as soon as she got bored in real life.
@ deti, from my comment above at 9:47AM:
I agree that a pornography addiction is sinful, but it’s not the same as actually having sex with another person. And yes, I’m well aware of what Jesus said in Matthew 5. I think it was meant as a check on our own hearts, not to be used as an equivalent to actual adultery to bail on marriage.
I have already conceded your point on that.
@Terri
The problem is a woman who is prone to frivolous divorce is highly unlikely to interpret the movie in your more favorable vein. She will see the pounding of the message that if she isn’t haaapy her husband must not love her enough. Threaten divorce and let two high status men compete for your heart. Again, look at the critical framing moments of the film:
1) The opening scene where her mother explains that she will be happy if her husband loves her enough.
2) The scene where the husband confronts the doctor. He doesn’t warn him off because he is separating what God has joined. He states that he will win the bidding war for his wife’s heart.
3) The conflict resolution scene, where the wife goes from pining for the doctor to realizing her husband won the bidding war for her heart. Watch this scene closely, it is really amazing.
The movie is like a fire extinguisher charged with napalm with a wholesome bible verse printed on the outside. If all you do is read the bible verse, it can be seen as positive. If there is ever an actual fire it will guarantee disaster.
@terri: There is a difference between Scripture and theology. Scripture is Scripture- the words in the Bible; theology is our interpretation of those words. This is also known as “church spin.” 🙂
If it weren’t for theology, the Reformation wouldn’t have happened; there would have not been a split from the Roman Catholic Church; there wouldn’t be Protestants.
Interpretation/theology is a pretty big thing. It’s a good idea to know where a church stands on issues; what’s its theology- what does it believe Scripture to be saying- because then you’ll know what’s behind the message its sending out.
I’ve known more than one person who came home from their church service completely miffed (and shocked) because they didn’t like the sermon, and my response is always “What does the church believe about that?” If you have fundamentally different interpretations (personal theology) of Scripture from your church, I’d hazard a guess and say it might be time to go shopping….. 🙂
Well, if the topic has returned to the perennial “porn” thread, I have one thing to add. I suggest that all concerned retire to the nearest chain bookstore – Barnes & Noble will do fine – and proceed to the “romance” section. Pick up some books and skim them. I doubt that it will take 100 pages before an explicit sex scene – porn in text form – will be found. It will be embedded within a social and emotional matrix of some sort, but it will be explicit – often quite anatomically accurate – in a manner that is clearly calculated to cause sexual arousal, not just “Lord Rod swept Virginia off to the hayloft”, either. Pick out another book, do he same exercise. Repeat a few more times, so that you can be sure it’s not just one authoress or one product line or one publisher.
Now step back and estimate how many books are on a shelf, how many shelves in an aisle, and how many aisles of “romance” novels there are. That’s the total amount of “porn” you are standing in the middle of. And none of it is condemned by anyone – not by feminists, not by White Knights, and for sure not by any preacher, pastor or priest. It is all perfectly acceptable, because it’s textual and written for women – who as we all know, never look at porn in any form, ha ha ha.
Now, why should such books be popular? It is finally easy for me to state, thanks to Game. Just as visual porn provides men with the illusion of a harem, textual / emo porn provides women with the illusion of an Alpha “on the side” or ready to be moved to in the next stage of serial polyandry. And that is why it is popular. Because it appeals to women’s sexual response, and women are the leading money-spenders in the US. That’s where the money is, so satisfy the market. Yes, I know, not all women are involved in reading these books – but golly, not all men are looking at porn online, or buying glossy skin mags, but somehow every man gets hit on the head from time to time with “Porn bad! Porn bad!” from churches, from editorials, from “relationship experts”, and so forth. Where’s the criticism of rom-porn? There isn’t any.
Because, of course, “harem bad, cuckolding not”, and “looking at other women, bad, fantasy about other men not” are notions that have been deeply embedded into our increasingly feminized culture. It’s tied up with the pedestalization of women, too, IMO.
Part of the demonization of men is the claim that male sexual urges are somehow “base” or “animalistic” while at the same time women either don’t get those urges (hah!) or they somehow approac sex from a higher, more spiritual plane. The fact of the matter is, women can and will engage in any sex act a new man wants, in order to nail down his resource commitment. Hence the many reports of wives who, when cheating, will do things with their new man they flatly refused to do with the Herb who committed to them in the past. Men and women are different from each other. Women are not “men who can have babies”, and men are not defective women. I argue that the different styles of sexual simulation (that is not a typo) are proof of how deep the differences really are.
PS: For those who do not have the time to go to a chain bookstore and inspect emo-porn / romance novels,but who do attend a church I suggest instead that you go and peruse your church library. I know a woman who tells me she regularly has conflicts with some women in her church over the fiction section of the library. She’s the librarian, and she’s old fashioned enough that her idea of a “romance novel” is something written by Georgette Heyer (I know the name because my mother read a few of them) or the equivalent. So she’s constantly coming into conflict with modern, Christian women who want to put “romance” books on the shelves that in the librarian’s opinion are softcore porn. Therefore, I bet that just about every church library contains one or more fictional works that would have been definitely considered pornographic a mere 50 years ago, when Jaquie Susanne was turning out her potboilers that some called porny. And nobody, but nobody, bats an eye at that, because it’s one-handed reading for women, rather than one-handed web surfing by men. Perhaps those who attend churches, and who post here, can go search the fiction section of their church libraries and report back? The results would be interesting.
The time is long, long past to accept the differences in sexual response between men and women do not, repeat, do not mean that women are not just as prone to sexual cheating as men. They just do it differently, and often hide it better.
Don’t lose hope, jv. You sound like me a year ago and you seem like a decent enough person. Divine intervention does happen. 😉
So it seems that between Sheila and Terri, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is grounds for divorce, but meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation is not grounds for divorce. How very sanctimonious and totally bizarre. While using porn in a marriage isn’t very good, it’s not the same as actual cheating, and if the wife is denying sex, what’s a man to do? In the vast majority of cases, if the man was having regular, frequent sex, porn would lose its appeal.
Christ says that if a man even looks on a woman with lust in his heart, he has already committed adultery. But of course, in actual fact, while said man is guilty of sin, he hasn’t actually cheated on his wife.
Should we then allow women to divorce their husbands if their husband so much as confessed that, when an attractive women walks by, occasionally his thoughts go in a direction they ought not, and that he has to fight to pull himself back and stop thinking such things? Because that is the logical, though absurd, extrapolation of the view that viewing porn is Christian grounds for divorce.
I can’t tell you how dismayed I am to see this attitude promulgated, and its promulgators, defended – though I can’t say I’m altogether surprised, alas… Lest anyone think I am defending a husband looking at porn, I am not. But neither am I in favour of divorce, rather than working out marital problems, over issues short of actual adultery, or physical / sexual abuse, or alcoholism, and the like. Pornography is NOT alcoholism, actual adultery, or physical / sexual abuse; I’m not minimizing it, but I AM saying, it cannot seriously be compared to those circumstances, for which, IMO, valid Scriptural arguments for divorce can certainly be made (or at least, over which, arguing the case for or against divorce is reasonable to do).
Exactly Will. Furthermore, as in that asinine film, if the wife is denying her husband his right to her body, she must shoulder some of the blame for his pornography habit. (A habit is not an addiction). The focus always ends up on the husband’s supposed “problem” while the wife gets to sit all sanctimonious and is then made the keeper of her husband as an “accountability partner”! WTF! Wrong!
Damn straight, CL; the marital covenant is a two-way street. But oh, how so many forget that, even Christian women! Appalling and disgusting, in the extreme.
Then they wonder why some of us don’t ‘man up’ and rush off to get married to the first sweet girlie that bats her eyes at us…
(And spot on: re addiction. Only chemicals are addictive, because only drugs induce a physiological need for themselves in the addict, such that withdrawal causes physiological harm to the addict. That’s what addiction is; withdrawal from a bad habit like porn or gambling or overeating may have some impacts, but nothing like that of a junkie missing his or her heroin, for example… The word addiction is much abused, and misused…)
I am disturbed at the fact that people who put on a front of compassionate and caring Christianity have more sympathy for a withholding, cold wife than for one who tried her best and reluctantly left a terrible situation. That just boggles my mind. ::head reeling::
Indeed, CL, that is mind-boggling, indeed.
“Promiscuity is good, so long as it is done on the woman’s terms.”
I would only ever enter a relationship, or any agreement for that matter, on my own terms. Who’s else terms should I enter it on? Never compromise your principles. You may have to by-pass a lot of folks, but there will always be some people out there who share your values.
@Dalrock and zed
I agree that traditional women need to be more firm with the expectations of marriage with other so-called “traditional” women, and even if they are not traditional. We see women constantly running to the defense of other women when it comes to situations that they can see them selves in. If Cindy leaves her husband, Sally won’t call Cindy out on her bull because she can see herself in the same shoes that Cindy’s in. Instead of personalizing, Sally should objectively analyze the situation and let it be known that Cindy’s behavior is unacceptable. This would be a for of shunning, and yes it’s not the most palatable course of action, but is IS effective.
I am disturbed at the fact that people who put on a front of compassionate and caring Christianity have more sympathy for a withholding, cold wife than for one who tried her best and reluctantly left a terrible situation. That just boggles my mind. ::head reeling::
From what I have observed IRL and also on the blogosphere, it’s because a wife who “tried her best” is seen as not doing enough. I’ve talked to enough older Christian women who believe the nonsense of practically killing yourself all in the name off being a “self-sacrificing wife,” when really this creates a martyred wife, and no man truly respects a woman who martyrs herself. I also doubt that most women believe another woman when she says that she reluctantly left a bad situation, as sad as it is. It also doesn’t help when many women are divorcing their husbands because they want an “Eat, Pray, Love,” too.
Then there’s also the issue of morality. Porn is a morality issue, so the first response is to say that when a husband is looking at porn it’s his moral issue and the wife has grounds to divorce him because it’s his issue. I agree that a wife should take a look at what she is– or isn’t– doing to encourage her husband’s use of porn. While this may not be PC or “nice,” if that includes losing weight to be more attractive, being more sexually adventurous in bed, and showing the tatas a bit more around the house, why not?
Most women cannot see them selves in JV’s situation and even if they could, they would stop thinking about it because it is such a complex issue. It also required that JV exhaust all her options. This is too much to bear for most women, so the compassion is shifted to the other women who issues are much easier to personalize.
Most women cannot see them selves in JV’s situation and even if they could, they would stop thinking about it because it is such a complex issue. It also required that JV exhaust all her options. This is too much to bear for most women, so the compassion is shifted to the other women who issues are much easier to personalize.
In other words, they have no empathy, nor, apparently, the ability to think about complex issues.
Dalrock, “At the very least, no fault divorce should rule out the option of remarriage for the person who filed.”
Then you’re anti-liberty and pro-big government?
IMO, the empathy is given when the woman can personalize. Personalizing is compassion but empathy means setting aside you for the other. That is extremely rare.
You heard it here folks, dal rocks a dirty red! 😉
So it seems that between Sheila and Terri, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is grounds for divorce,
CL, I said NO SUCH THING. You need to go back and rad my comments thoroughly. I in fact said the exact opposite of what you are accusing me of saying. Why you went out of your way to include me in Sheila’s assessment (and Sheila is well aware that I disagree) is beyond me. Can you read?
Don’t start with me without at least doing me the courtesy of reading what I actually wrote.
IMO, the empathy is given when the woman can personalize. Personalizing is compassion but empathy means setting aside you for the other. That is extremely rare.
Your opinion doesn’t matter. Empathy is not so rare, but it’s getting rarer in a culture full of narcissists and otherwise personality disordered people. Just because all women can do is “personalise” (whatever you mean by that)… Oh, wait, of course it would be impossible to imagine that men could empathise, on the whole, better than women, if women lack the capacity in the same grade as men in the first place. You are talking about sympathy, which is not the same as empathy, and which women only give to those who are like herself. Hence my consternation at this ability of some Christian women to sympathise with a fictional cold bitch, but not a real life woman with actual feelings.
Terri said: “I believe that when a person leaves their spouse for anything short of adultery or clear, unambiguous abandonment, then that person should either work to reconcile with their spouse or remain single and celibate the rest of their days. I think separation for addictions fail to rise to the standard of releasing one from their marriage vows.”
This statement was the basis of the second part of my “between Sheila and Terri” statement.
That should have said, “You need to go back and read my comments thoroughly.
But seriously CL, I’m disappointed. Whatever we differ on, I gave you credit for being on the up and up rather than just blatantly twisting and misrepresenting (dare I say lying?) my words. I guess I need to paste and re-post my comments:
One of my biggest problems with the wife’s character in Fireproof is that I think it’s wrong for a person to be acting as if they are a free agent when they’re married to someone else. I don’t care WHAT that person has done or is doing. If you’re married you’re married. Further I think people are far less likely to do the work required to salvage their marriage when sights are already set on someone else…
I agree that a pornography addiction is sinful, but it’s not the same as actually having sex with another person. And yes, I’m well aware of what Jesus said in Matthew 5. I think it was meant as a check on our own hearts, not to be used as an equivalent to actual adultery to bail on marriage…
I also said above that porn is no “get out of marriage free card.” I actually have a very hard stance on divorce and remarriage. I believe that when a person leaves their spouse for anything short of adultery or clear, unambiguous abandonment, then that person should either work to reconcile with their spouse or remain single and celibate the rest of their days. I think separation for addictions >b>fail to rise to the standard of releasing one from their marriage vows.
And that’s just part of what I had to say up above. Reading comprehension, please.
Dalrock, “At the very least, no fault divorce should rule out the option of remarriage for the person who filed.”
— Then you’re anti-liberty and pro-big government?
Yaboymatt, “You heard it here folks, dal rocks a dirty red!”
— Not dirty. Not red. But it certainly sounds very blue!
My view is that the government has no business in our personal relationships.
I said, between you and Sheila, not that you and Sheila agreed on the first point. Reading comprehension indeed!
Yes, CL. In other words an addiction or habit of any kind (take your pick) in my opinion does not release anyone from their marriage vows. It should be clear that this includes the fictional character in the movie Fireproof.
Break it down for me, CL. How do the words you just quoted from me translate into pornography “when the wife is withholding” as grounds for divorce?
And I’ve written enough about sex on my personal blog that I don’t have to even address whether I think it’s okay to withhold but I’ll play along. I’ll only put in two links to avoid getting sent to moderation:
http://terrybreathinggrace.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/sex-and-marriage-go-together-right/
http://terrybreathinggrace.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/the-caveat-post-sex-and-marriage/
I said, between you and Sheila, not that you and Sheila agreed on the first point. Reading comprehension indeed!
You are full. of. crap. You clearly meant to make it seem like I thought it was okay for the wife to divorce her husband after he started in on adultery even though she was withholding from him. Don’t try and pretend as if you weren’t trying to lump my words in with Sheila’s opinion of the movie and the dynamics we’re discussing.
“I think separation for addictions >b>fail to rise to the standard of releasing one from their marriage vows.”
What would you say about the alcoholic wife who makes her husband’s life a misery?.. So, should he stick with her, and lead a miserable existence for the rest of his life himself? Particularly if she refuses to seek help? And if he separates and meets a loving caring woman afterwards, should he eschew all personal happiness like some martyr and refuse to become involved with her with a view to re- marriage.
It is easy to pontificate when one has never before been in such a situation.. Confronted with the reality of such a situation one sometimes tends to think and act differently.. (to what they normally would)
@Aqua
“My view is that the government has no business in our personal relationships.”
Ummm, sounds nice, but when you ask for a marriage license from the state, you are getting government involved. When you ask for a dissolution of marital property at the point of a gun (effectively), you are getting government involved. And government has really no choice but to get involved with child custody.
Now, if you’re willing to get government out by stipulating to (i) all separate property, (ii) no alimony, spousal support or child support and (iii) automatic joint custody absent abuse or neglect or an inability of one spouse to provide a basic level, then you might have a point.
Well Terri, you can think what you like, but you’re still wrong. I’m perfectly willing to admit where I’m mistaken, but in this case, you have read me wrong.
CL:
It seems to me you are trying to take two people’s opinions here and conflate the worst of each onto one person to create an inconsistency
It seems to me that Sheila thinks both cases are grounds for divorce, and Terri thinks neither are grounds for divorce, but either way both women would probably have more sympathy for the wife of the meth addict.
Also, even Terri might say the meth addict wife had grounds for divorce on the basis of abandonment (as to opposed to mere addiction). At some point, a typical meth head who is never home and is always out on the street doing his thing has abandoned the marriage (other than as a means to occasionally extract more resources from the wife so he can buy more meth).
I also said above that porn is no “get out of marriage free card.” I actually have a very hard stance on divorce and remarriage
Very, very few women would play the “get out of marriage free” card, if they could never remarry. Except in cases of actual physical danger or disappearance, I’d bet that most women would rather “stick to the devil they know”, if they knew for sure he’d be the only man they could ever have.
As it happens, the traditional Protestant interpretation of the “exception clause” is almost certainly wrong, so even if porn = adultery, it’s still not grounds for remarriage. Divorce followed by lifetime celibacy (absent reconciliation)– maybe. Remarriage — no.
The “no remarriage” rule would also discourage single women from attempting to poach other womens’ husbands, since he would be unable to marry them after leaving his wife without cause.
But I think the rule of unintended consequences would apply, and we might get some very undesirable consequences that we can’t now foresee, such as, for example, a woman leaving her husband to ‘find herself”, later getting pregnant by another guy, and, even if he wants to marry her and be a father, he is not able to do so. Well, I guess that one is no longer unforeseeable since I foresaw it, but you get the idea.
It is not so much the porn that is the problem as it is dissociation of individual sexual expression away from the other and to an image of an anonymous person. Use of disassociated porn compromises the unitive nature of sexual intercourse between a husband and wife. The one-flesh bonding and binding between husband and wife is deficient or absent
Terri,
It might be beneficial if you would clearly state that a husband’s use of dissociated porn is also in no way a justification for a wife withholding sex or taking control of her husband’s sexuality. Such action by a wife will only make things worse and sympathy from other women serves to pander to those wives that commonly take this action, to the detriment of their marriage. In fact it is likely a significant part of the problem that the wife was controlling the expression of sexuality between husband and wife that contributed to the porn problem.
Also it would help to acknowledge that many women have a dissociated romance-novel, emo-porn problem that is equally destructive to a marriage.
Oh and by the way, I have a comment in moderation where I actually linked to two of my posts (and that’s just a sample) which clearly demonstrate that I do not agree with a wife withholding sex from her husband. Period.
Maybe Dalrock will fish it out later when he sees it. I just thought I needed to get that on the record since I’m being accused of saying it’s fine for a wife to leave her husband after she pushed him to porn by withholding sex.
Such action by a wife will only make things worse and sympathy from other women serves to pander to those wives that commonly take this action, to the detriment of their marriage. In fact it is likely a significant part of the problem that the wife was controlling the expression of sexuality between husband and wife that contributed to the porn problem.
Okay 7, maybe I should have done that, but what I did express I expresses clearly and without ambiguity. And I never once said anything that indicated that I thought the hypothetical wife in question had grounds for divorce. I repeatedly stated the exact opposite and came back to find myself accused of saying something else.
Also it would help to acknowledge that many women have a dissociated romance-novel, emo-porn problem that is equally destructive to a marriage.
That’s the thing, 7man. I already did that up above. I even included an example (EPL). I just can’t figure how i ever got painted with the brush of cheering on this wife and her decision to divorce.
Terri, again, that’s not what I said or meant to imply at all.
I’ll illustrate the structure of the sentence to see if that clarifies a bit:
between Sheila and Terri, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is grounds for divorce, but meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation is not grounds for divorce
See what I mean? passer_by may have a point, but that wasn’t really the intent either.
OK, things were getting wonky (between Terri & CL), so it was my attempt to de-escalate the kerfuffle.
It would be helpful if people didn’t rush to conclusions about someone else’s intent.
between Sheila and Terri, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is grounds for divorce, but meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation is not grounds for divorce.
Except CL, I don’t think that either is grounds for divorce. Have I not made that perfectly clear from the outset?
An example. If my husband suddenly decided to become addicted to some substance or porn, (take your pick) and I found it intolerable to live with him under the same roof, I might separate myself and my children from the situation physically, but I would remain married to him. I would just be going it alone until he repented. If he never did, then it would just e my lot in life to live without a man.
Is that clear enough?
Yes Terri, and that is what I said – that you said meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation is not grounds for divorce. I thought, given the nature of living with someone like this, it was an uncompassionate stance to take.
CL, terri –
Could you two please cool off? I have a lot of work to do and it’s getting me hot and bothered.
Okay, I’m glad we understand each other a little better.
For the record, I feel the same about the porn addiction though you keep leaving that part out. Given that Sheila felt the porn addiction was grounds for divorce, I’m still having trouble understanding the nature of your initial comment.
As for the lack of compassion in my stance: maybe. But I will say that I am open to the fact that others believe the Bible offers more latitude. I don’t think that everyone who remarries is committing a sin.
My understanding is that the allowance for remarriage is pretty narrow. I was simply conveying what I would do. Not insisting that everyone else see it my way. There are good and godly people, many of whom are much more Biblically literate than me, who have reached a different conclusion.
“Very, very few women would play the “get out of marriage free” card, if they could never remarry.”
Who’s to say women should never remarry? Certainly not the government. Individual Churches can preach that and cultural messeges can encourge that, but we are a free nation and our participation in a church, culture or marriage is VOLUNTARY.
@CL
You said:
“I’ll illustrate the structure of the sentence to see if that clarifies a bit:
between Sheila and Terri, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is grounds for divorce, but meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation is not grounds for divorce”
But, you could have just as easily chose to turn it around and written the opposite, like this:
“between Terri and Shelia, “pornography addiction” in a case where the wife is not giving the husband sex is NOT grounds for divorce [Terri], but meth addiction in which the wife has apparently done her best to help the situation IS grounds for divorce [Sheila]”
It’s just not helpful to conflate two people’s opinions on two situations and then marvel at the contradiction and castigate this combined person with a statement like this:
“I am disturbed at the fact that people who put on a front of compassionate and caring Christianity have more sympathy for a withholding, cold wife than for one who tried her best and reluctantly left a terrible situation. That just boggles my mind. ::head reeling:::”
You have accused them of putting on a FRONT. That’s a gratuitous insult, especially since, by any reasonable reading of Sheila’s and Terri’s posts, BOTH women would probably have at least as much (if not more) sympathy for the meth addict wife then the witholding cold wife.
passer_by, I’ll concede that point. I should have thought more carefully before doing that. My apologies. I do stick by my assertion that I wasn’t trying to make out that Terri thought a porn habit was grounds for divorce – I was honestly NOT trying to do that (I’m not that stupid!)
Oh, and at one point did drug addiction enter the discussion, LOL? My mind is the one that reels.
I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt but no matter how I read these comments it appears just like passer_by interpreted: That you are deliberately trying to paint me in the worst possible light.
I never even mentioned drug addiction. We’re discussing the movie Fireproof which had pornography and a cold, withholding wife at its center.
Terri: “That you are deliberately trying to paint me in the worst possible light.”
Terri, take a moment for an irony self-check. You are seeing CL’s statements in the worst possible light, when she has disavowed any ill intent. For your perception to be correct, CL must be flagrantly lying.
Terri:
Turning to other topics, what’s up with those toes? Are you trying to turn this into a foot fetish site? How would you feel if you found out foot fetishisizing men were using your avatar as porn and ignoring their spouses? 🙂
Actually Passer_by, it never occurred to me that my red toenails were anything other than a cute and unique avatar.
How would you feel if you found out foot fetishisizing men were using your avatar as porn and ignoring their spouses?
If I knew that for a fact, I’d probably be inclined to change my avatar…or not, LOL.
Thanks for the laugh though.
“We’re discussing the movie Fireproof which had pornography and a cold, withholding wife at its center.”
Yeah but didn’t the wife come around to be a loving, reciprocal partner once the husband changed his ways? A friend of mine was having difficulties in her marriage and a therapist recommended this self help book which was titled something like, “It Only Takes One To Turn a Relationship Around” or something like that, and it really helped her. We are under the influence of “it takes two to tango” but sometimes all that really needs to happen for a partner to wake up is for the other partner to start living right. There’s also another book, “Way of the Superior Man” which advises men to be the solid rock in the winds of the feminine storm, or some such thing. Sounds hokey but appearantly it works.
It Only Takes One To Turn a Relationship Around
LOLZ Sounds like something a marriage “therapist” would recommend. BTDT as the only one making an effort; doesn’t work. It only works if the other responds to your efforts, otherwise, it’s a dead loss.
@ Anonymous Reader
“The fact of the matter is, women can and will engage in any sex act a new man wants, in order to nail down his resource commitment.”
If this was true, then such strategies would tend to net material benefit for the female.
But, this is rarely the case, hence why men engage in ‘affairs’ preferentially over purchasing the services of a prostitute(ie. because ‘affairs’ generally incur less direct costs for the male).
The reason why women generally engage in affairs, is to mate with males who are more physically attractive than their husbands(which represents gains in genetic quality).
“Hence the many reports of wives who, when cheating, will do things with their new man they flatly refused to do with the Herb who committed to them in the past. ”
Again, that’s because females tend to engage in short-term mating(ie. affairs) with physically attractive males – explaining a greater sexual inhibition and enthusiasm.
Remember females don’t marry for sex, which is why females will marry physically sub-par men, whom they would *never* engage in an affair with.
Big differences here.
@ CL
“Hence my consternation at this ability of some Christian women to sympathise with a fictional cold bitch, but not a real life woman with actual feelings.”
Which may be telling us that they are actually empathizing with cold bitches because they are, in fact, cold bitches themselves(contrary to pretense).
advises men to be the solid rock in the winds of the feminine storm, or some such thing. Sounds hokey but appearantly it works.
Yes, it does work Aqua Net, hokey as it sounds.
“LOLZ Sounds like something a marriage “therapist” would recommend. BTDT as the only one making an effort; doesn’t work. It only works if the other responds to your efforts, otherwise, it’s a dead loss.”
Well its a given that the other partner isn’t too far gone – like a junkie or physcial abuser or anything like that. An environment or relationship can often change when just one person shifts their energy.
Paragon,
“Anonymous Reader
“The fact of the matter is, women can and will engage in any sex act a new man wants, in order to nail down his resource commitment.”
If this was true, then such strategies would tend to net material benefit for the female.
But, this is rarely the case, hence why men engage in ‘affairs’ preferentially over purchasing the services of a prostitute(ie. because ‘affairs’ generally incur less direct costs for the male).
The reason why women generally engage in affairs, is to mate with males who are more physically attractive than their husbands(which represents gains in genetic quality).
“Hence the many reports of wives who, when cheating, will do things with their new man they flatly refused to do with the Herb who committed to them in the past. ”
Again, that’s because females tend to engage in short-term mating(ie. affairs) with physically attractive males – explaining a greater sexual inhibition and enthusiasm.
Remember females don’t marry for sex, which is why females will marry physically sub-par men, whom they would *never* engage in an affair with.
Big differences here.
— I agree with some of this but fail to see why men would rather have affairs than go to prostitutes and how having affairs incur less direct costs. Remember, men pay prostitutes TO LEAVE.
It can happen. but it seems that more often than not, people get locked in a dance and can’t get out of it. It can be exceedingly hard to do much about it once the pattern is set. If an otherwise good marriage is just in a bit of a funk, then maybe, but most of the time it isn’t even a case of one partner being “too far gone” but of the dance they are both doing – 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s like when you get together with the fam at Thanksgiving and everyone reverts to their familial roles. I can’t help suspecting that a marriage that was “turned around” by a book with a title like “It Only Takes One To Turn a Relationship Around” had real problems to begin with. People have a lot of imaginary problems these days.
What it is that bothers me about that title is that it may take one to get the ball rolling, but one cannot turn a relationship around alone. It just doesn’t work. So it’s basically a lie, and coupled with denying the reality by saying we are under the influence of “it takes two to tango”, which implies that this is a false notion that we are inebriated with, compounds the lie.
@ Aqua Net
“I agree with some of this but fail to see why men would rather have affairs than go to prostitutes and how having affairs incur less direct costs.”
Attractive prostitutes are prohibitively rare, and then, can be prohibitively expensive.
Also, consider the different experience posed by an enthusiastic lover, and an automaton on a stop-watch?
Which experience sounds preferable to you?
“Remember, men pay prostitutes TO LEAVE.”
Classic cognitive dissonance – it is trivial(and far more self-validating) to claim that you wanted them to leave, when they were scrambling to get out the door early.
“Classic cognitive dissonance – it is trivial(and far more self-validating) to claim that you wanted them to leave, when they were scrambling to get out the door early.”
LOL. That’s true. But affairs can get sticky.
Which experience sounds preferable, an enthusiastic lover, and an automaton on a stop-watch?
Considering how enthusiastic many folks in the manosphere are about VR sex and sexbots, good Paragon, don’t be surprised if more than a few people here would say the latter.
And I graciously accept Terri’s apology for calling me a liar and saying my reading comprehension skills were lacking.
Me
“The fact of the matter is, women can and will engage in any sex act a new man wants, in order to nail down his resource commitment.”
If this was true, then such strategies would tend to net material benefit for the female.
That seems to be the case, especially now in the world of theft by divorce.
But, this is rarely the case, hence why men engage in ‘affairs’ preferentially over purchasing the services of a prostitute(ie. because ‘affairs’ generally incur less direct costs for the male).
This is self contradictory. You are saying “it is rarely the case the women will engage in any sex a new man wants, hence men engage in affairs vs. purchasing the services of a prostitute, which simply doesn’t make sense and as a bonus is not borne out in reality – in reality, we have report after report of cheating wives who do sexual acts with their new man that they refuse to do with the Herb they are married to. We have the PUA community reporting as the “new man” who induces women to cheat on their husband, we have the bitter men in the process of divorce – we have both sides of the story.
Whether it is a cuckolding affair to obtain sex from an Alpha, or it is an affair that is the next step in serial monogamy, the same pattern is seen. And IMO it is intended to nail down commitment, which is spelled “resources” or “money” or “security” depending on the situation.
@ Anonymous Reader
“This is self contradictory. You are saying”
I am saying it is rarely the case that women will net material gain from the male she is engaged in an affair with(and she need not engage in an affair to divorce her husband, so affairs are clearly not strategic on that basis).
advises men to be the solid rock in the winds of the feminine storm, or some such thing. Sounds hokey but appearantly it works.
terri
Yes, it does work Aqua Net, hokey as it sounds.
For some men, that’s going to depend on just what the “winds of the feminine storm” entail. Screaming and yelling like a toddler? Ordering me around like a child, or a peon, or a servant? Throwing things? Breaking my property? Hitting people? Threatening with weapons? I can’t imagine wanting to be any kind of rock to anyone who did any of that stuff.
What is being referred to, here?
@ Anonymous Reader
“This is self contradictory. You are saying”
Paragon
I am saying it is rarely the case that women will net material gain from the male she is engaged in an affair with(and she need not engage in an affair to divorce her husband, so affairs are clearly not strategic on that basis).
i’m using the term “resources” more broadly than you are. It’s not material gain necessarily; divorce theft enables a woman to harvest resources from Herb, and Alpha sexual benefits from her “new man”. This is a known pattern.
@ Anonymous Reader
” We have the PUA community reporting as the “new man” who induces women to cheat on their husband”
Yes, but merely being the “new man” is a confounding dependent variable – it says nothing about those variables which are determinate in conjugating the affair.
So, we must reasonably infer them.
“Whether it is a cuckolding affair to obtain sex from an Alpha, or it is an affair that is the next step in serial monogamy, the same pattern is seen. And IMO it is intended to nail down commitment, which is spelled “resources” or “money” or “security” depending on the situation.”
And yet there is no data to show that ‘affairs’ tend to be strategic in achieving those goals(which should be obvious, given the accepted transient connotation of ‘affair’).
Thus, female infidelity could not have evolved under that assumption(begging what other unit of gain, is in fact, the true basis – something I have already spoken to).
“We have the PUA community reporting as the “new man” who induces women to cheat on their husband”
Pfft! Boisterous online keyboard peacocking. By the way many of them write, its obvious at least half of them have nothing at all to do with women in real life. Remember, this is called “virtual reality” for a reason.
@ Anonymous Reader
“divorce theft enables a woman to harvest resources from Herb, and Alpha sexual benefits from her “new man”. This is a known pattern.”
Consider that a married female already has de facto possession of her husbands wealth and assets.
An affair may induce her to divorce, but it is not a necessary factor and thus breaks any causal link your argument is relying upon to make your case(that affairs – rather than divorce – is the essential premise for reaping material benefit).
Thus, I would argue that material gain is clearly not a motivating factor, as the opportunities for divesting her husband of wealth and assets exist *independently* of an affair.
The idea of sexual substitutes for women seems to have really gotten under your skin.
2 Will S.
===================
Christ says that if a man even looks on a woman with lust in his heart, he has already committed adultery. But of course, in actual fact, while said man is guilty of sin, he hasn’t actually cheated on his wife.
===================
This interpretation doesn’t make any sense. What if “a woman” is the man’s wife? Is it still adultery?
What if that woman is his fiance and they will marry tomorrow, is it still adultery? “A woman” in the context of adultery is a woman married to other man, and it’s sinful to covet her (adultery of the heart could lead to real adultery).
CL,
I apologize if you were offended by the way I interpreted your comments, 🙂
Seriously, it was wrong of me to assume the worst but the conflation was so strange I couldn’t see what else you were attempting to say.
Bygones…
The idea of sexual substitutes for women seems to have really gotten under your skin.
A simple statement of fact is hardly an indicator of anything under my skin, good sir.
@ Anonymous Reader
“divorce theft enables a woman to harvest resources from Herb, and Alpha sexual benefits from her “new man”. This is a known pattern.”
Consider that a married female already has de facto possession of her husbands wealth and assets.
Ok. Consider that considered. So?
An affair may induce her to divorce,
Whose affair? Hers? Her affair often precedes the divorce. The affair makes it clear to her that the “next branch” is ready and waiting, and all she needs to do is get swing over. A woman having an affair is very often signalling the end of her previous commitment, be it LTR or marriage.
but it is not a necessary factor and thus breaks any causal link your argument is relying upon to make your case(that affairs – rather than divorce – is the essential premise for reaping material benefit).
I don’t recall making that argument, or anything even close to it.
Thus, I would argue that material gain is clearly not a motivating factor, as the opportunities for divesting her husband of wealth and assets exist *independently* of an affair.
You seem to be conflating a number of things. I stated the well known and demonstrated fact that women will engage in sex acts with “new” men that they had previously refused to their previous, or “old” man”. I opined that this is to get commitment, i.e. “resources” in a broad sense, from the “new” man. You seem to find this controversial, or somehow it bothers you. I don’t understand either, or your objections.
It’s as if I said “women often change their hair style after a divorce” (which they do) and you chose to disagree on the grounds that hair styles are not relevant to evolutionary fitness, a non sequitur.
@PMAFT
Why wouldn’t it? Absent the male birth control (which sooner or later will appear, and finally liberate men from the gallows of women dominant conceptual choice) VR sex is the total game changer women and white knights dread.
Until my male birth control pill arrives and I can finally say my body my choice, I’ll look forward to a safe VR alternative for my periodic dry-spells.
You just keep bringing it up everywhere like you can’t stop thinking about it.
@ Anonymous Reader:
For some men, that’s going to depend on just what the “winds of the feminine storm” entail. Screaming and yelling like a toddler? Ordering me around like a child, or a peon, or a servant? Throwing things? Breaking my property? Hitting people? Threatening with weapons? I can’t imagine wanting to be any kind of rock to anyone who did any of that stuff.
What is being referred to, here?
Just the general tendency of moodiness we women are susceptible to. The refusal to allow oneself to be manipulated and swayed by fickle emotions and hormones is a powerful thing. It keeps the seasons of instability very short, I think.
Screaming, yelling, throwing things and threats are never acceptable behavior. Ever. This is not what is being referred to. At least I don’t think so, as I haven’t read the book referenced.
Well, like TFH mentioned elsewhere, you have to repeat a meme quite a lot for it to really stick. Surely making more people in the manosphere aware of the wonders of technology can do nothing but good, right? I’d best keep bringing it up as much as I can–and you should, too! :]
That said, I must confess that you and Ya Boy Matt are actually on my side, in this conversation, at least. My intent with my original comment was solely to point out that Paragon’s assessment of prostitution was incorrect, and I quite sincerely thank you for assisting in that endeavor. In addition, he mentions prostitution being “prohibitively expensive;” depending on where you live and how much you make, this isn’t the case. Aqua Net’s question remains quite valid, in my view. Cheers to both of you for helping us prove that point. I would be interested to see if Paragon will concede it.
“Absent the male birth control (which sooner or later will appear)”
Didn’t that already come and go back in the 80s? I remember reading about it a long time ago, and the reason it never took off beyond the initial studies and sample group was because when they interviewed and polled men, they got a thumbs down. Appearantly men thought it would make them infertile for life or something. Or they just didn’t want to fool around with mother nature.
VR and sex robots. Considering how much women love their vibrators, I’m willing to bet they might be the bigger clientele base.
You are more than welcome to whatever goal post moving and backward rationalization your hamster desires but it does not change the devastating affect spinsters and carousel riders will experience when trying to compete. After all, how many VR men can pay for cupcakes trips to Jamaica? How many VR men can you extract alimony and child support from? How many VR men can you show off to your friends? How many VR men can you get slapped around by?
How many VR women can give you a mind numbing orgasm in 30 seconds? How many of them will shut up afterward?
After all, how many VR men can pay for cupcakes trips to Jamaica? How many VR men can you extract alimony and child support from? How many VR men can you show off to your friends? How many VR men can you get slapped around by?
Cats can’t do any of those things, but women herd ’em anyways. It wouldn’t surprise me if VR men (and perhaps VR children) replace cats in the homes of the future’s spinsters.
Or maybe just VR cats.
They don’t CHOOSE to hoard cats is the point that I’m making. Men and women don’t want the same things from one another, anyone who has read a single article by Roissy, and Dalrock would know that. VR men will never progress beyond a novelty because a VR man can’t PROVIDE resources for a woman, and sex is cheap for a woman to begin with, unless she is socially dysfunctional or busted,
a VR man can’t PROVIDE resources for a woman,
Well, it may be able to provide VR facsimiles of those resources. For instance, a woman might be able to take a VR trip to a computerized illusion of Jamaica, and of course if VR is capable enough to approximate sex even better than the real thing, a VR bodysuit would very easily be capable of replicating the feel of a slap to the face the ladies so love. Predicting the future is a tricky business, my boy Matt. But people who say something will “never” happen often find themselves proven wrong given enough time.
As I said, unsuitable men will find their release in VR women (including me occasionally! thank goodness for Game 🙂 ), while inferior women will find their release in the VR man. The difference is that an inferior man leaving the SMP extinguishes the chance of gaining resources for a woman and her offspring. No such loss of “equity” happens when a spinster’s barren womb is left without.
Aqua net:
The other half are banging married women then?
And to your question about divorced being ineligible for remarriage, that is not anti-liberty/pro-big government because it would be enforced by the church. You could always leave the church, of course.
You gals – always trying to wriggle out of accountability.
The difference is that an inferior man leaving the SMP extinguishes the chance of gaining resources for a woman and her offspring. No such loss of “equity” happens when a spinster’s barren womb is left without.
Sort of, but not quite. A barren womb by necessity implies it hasn’t received any sperm, i.e some guy out there isn’t going to pass on his genes to the next generation. Even if all the men enjoy themselves with VR women, regardless of whether or not the actual ladies are happy with VR men or miserable and resource-less with cats, none of the “unsuitable/inferior” men are going to leave anything to future generations. As time passes, ironically enough, we’ll likely see fewer and fewer of these ‘unsuitable’ men, because the only men who’ve sired sons and daughters are the ones who prefer or at least tolerate actual women rather than robogirls for whatever unfathomable reason. The white knights and manginas will inherit the earth, it seems. 😦
Sort of. The resources of the white knights and manginas will inherit the earth. The genes and values of the alpha males and the thugs and cads, on the other hand, will pass on blissfully.
The equity of the gamer and the ghost will be gone by the time we hit the grave, while the mangina rats who hoarded their funds for cupcake’s (unknowing) thugspawn will lose.
Sounds like a good deal to me. 🙂
@hurpadurp:
The main point around VR sex (though a “real” sex bot isn’t far off, it’ll just be expensive for a while) is that it’ll give a guy all of his biological “wants” without risk or work. If most women are to the point where a “normal” guy would choose 85% from a Sexbot over a “real” woman, then that says a whole lot more about women than men.
And, you don’t really need to worry about the White Knights & Mangina’s inheriting the earth. We are headed back into a far more violent era as Europe and most Industrial countries collapse, both morally and demographically. The social forces that will come to the front by 2050 will be far more proactive and far more violent in dealing with problems. A “more peaceful” time won’t continue when there are few willing to do violence to protect it.
The equity of the gamer and the ghost will be gone by the time we hit the grave, while the mangina rats who hoarded their funds for cupcake’s (unknowing) thugspawn will lose.
*shrugs* Can’t argue with that, I suppose. But whether or not it’s the mangina’s or the thug’s descendants who inherit the earth, the genes and legacies of the gamers and ghosts will be just as dead as their equity. Not much of a victory from an evolutionary standpoint–in purely naturalistic terms, I guess it’s the thugz and badboyz who’ll be the real winners, then.
Now, of course, you can’t get an ought from an is, and all that. Guys like our gracious host, who I believe is religious, would disagree, I assume. From a purely secular, evo-bio perspective, though…in the short term, it may be better to be a gamer/ghost/whatever than a mangina, but in the long term, both are evolutionary dead ends.
We are headed back into a far more violent era as Europe and most Industrial countries collapse, both morally and demographically. The social forces that will come to the front by 2050 will be far more proactive and far more violent in dealing with problems.
That would render the whole discussion irrelevant, though. Nobody’s gonna be enjoying virtual girls when there’s no electricity to power the VR set and barbarians keep trying to break into your house and steal it. Not to overuse an emoticon, but
seems accurate in this case as well.
Looking Glass-
Wrt: Your comment on violence.
Since women have a difficult time with violence, they will continue the push for maximum constraints on good men using violence judiciously to enforce peace, while secretly getting turned on by thugs who care nothing for laws.
Think of the law-and-order person who desires speed limits at 55 mph (strictly enforced), yet drives at 80 himself.
This describes the mind of many women: They desire maximum control over all OTHER men except their own. THEY, of course want to be with the alpha male who follows rules selectively, ensuring that they can play both sides of the game. Rule-following is beta behavior and turns women off completely. Demands for massive government and over-regulation is just another form of the female shit test.
The judicious and deliberate use of violence to maintain peace makes sense to most men. To most women, they will hear that concept and think of it as a contradiction in terms. This is because most women are not practiced in the use of violence. By the time a woman reaches the threshold of violence, she is usually past the point of rational control (slapping, scratching, throwing vases, etc.)
Men (especially men who are well trained such as soldiers and cops) can cross the threshold of violence well before they are past the point of rational self control. I mean, when is the last time you saw a cop shriek and throw a vase at a fleeing criminal? Maybe in France, I don’t know…
As far as passing genes goes:
I do not want to leave behind a daughter who I would have to train to be a lone holdout against players and thugs.
And I do not want to leave behind a son who would have to be a player or thug to get laid.
I am quite happy to deprive future generations of humanity the opportunity to throw my descendants into the cultural grinder.
Why is pornography being shouted against,
while romance novels aren’t?
I figure a woman who looks at a man with lust in her heart, has already committed adultery.
After all, going by the idea that we are all equal in the eyes of God,
We are therefore capable of committing the same sins, amirite?
On the violence bit, let me clarify one thing:
I don’t view the coming changes as “good” or even “necessary”, but the demographic collapse and cultural suicides of Europe and other modernized countries (China counts too, here) will make the world a far more violent place. Mostly as there’s no one to enforce any sort of order. As much as people complain about the USA being the “World’s Cop”, there’s a reason it happened and a lot of benefits (and serious downsides) to that current status quo. The USA will be retrenching, mostly as we’ve never had much taste for adventurism (minus Teddy) and as a result of the coming cuts to the budget over the next few years.
Don’t take the Demographic point lightly, either. This isn’t something “over the horizon”. It’s already started. Japan should tip over into population decline this year (though depends on how many Japanese nationals return). Then continue to decline. Over 1/2 of their population is 35 years or older. If the current trends hold roughly, their population will likely be 80 million (down from the current 120 million) by 2050.
Russia is also losing population. It’s the largest country on the planet and it will continue to lose total population.
Western European populations are only held in rough check, for the moment, by immigration, but in 10 years, when the Baby Boomers start dying in droves, that will drop very rapidly. We’re talking about racial groups and their cultures that have existed in these places, for the most part, of the last 1200 years (much of Europe) or 1500 years (Japan). Their populations aren’t just “settling”, but will collapse by self-inflicted suicide. This really hasn’t happened before, on a large scale. (These are pretty mono-racial cultures, so that’s why I bring it up. A dominant, massive majority racial group suddenly disappearing outside of war, famine or disease, on the scale of millions of people, just isn’t something that I think has happened before.)
This means massively lower economic output, higher demand of intense services (old aged care) and an unsustainable drain on public coffers (because heaven forbid you don’t touch a pool of money). Lots of countries will go bankrupt, pension plans across the world will collapse and all hell will break lose. And that’s just the likely outcomes in 2012. It gets worse the further you go out.
And then there is China. The property bubble has started to burst in the last month. Expect carnage in about 4 months, when the major city properties have lost 60%+ of their value. And their “massive graying” starts now. It’s 2011 and they have roughly 100 million “college aged” people. By 2019, that number drops to around 55 million. Which means a collapse in their education system is coming. (They’ve overbuilt colleges as much as we have, lol) Havoc is all that can be assured, nothing else is a given.
We live in crazy times.
Not to mention that the one-child policy leaving so many men without any chance for marriage means that they will probably “gap down” at some point.
I’m guessing that this is a throwaway smartass line, but it brings up a good point – particularly since it uses the word “love.” If a woman has grounds for divorce if her husband has a “pornography addiction”, does a man have grounds for divorce if his wife “loves” her vibrator?
To me the situation seems identical – a married person is sexing sexual satisfaction from an object, not a person, outside their marriage, and depriving their spouse the benefit of their sexual desire.
I think we have a real problem on our hands if both sexes are starting to prefer the sexual stimulation they get from a lifeless object to what their spouses provide for them. To me it indicates that the entire set of ideas that their sexual relationship is based upon needs to be seriously reexamined.
” a married person is getting sexual satisfaction from an object”
Good grief, oh for an edit function, or at least a preview key.
Looking Glass, Japan went into population decline in 2007. There are fewer Japanese today than there were living in November of 2010. They seem to have decided to manage their decline with automation. You are correct, demographics matter, and not just in the long run.
Aqua Net:
Yaboy Matt
Actually, Dalrock’s showing himself more and more to be a Catholic, despite his protestations of adherence to heresy. The Catholic Church will not allow a divorced person to remarry, and this seems entirely appropriate. Of course, IF you can obtain an annulment, you can remarry, but otherwise, no.
Come on over and smell the incense, Dalrock!
Evo-bio is for nerds on the Internet, in the real world care about as much about genetic legacies as nerds care about hygiene. If evo-bio is your thing hurp I would suggest you start reading in mala fide or stormfront where those debates are endlessly going.
If a woman has grounds for divorce if her husband has a “pornography addiction”, does a man have grounds for divorce if his wife “loves” her vibrator?
Only if she doesn’t let him watch.
I think we have a real problem on our hands if both sexes are starting to prefer the sexual stimulation they get from a lifeless object to what their spouses provide for them.
“Prefer” is too strong a word. If a wife wants it once a month, and the husband wants it every day (an extremely common situation), and/or if she lets herself get obese and unappealing (also common), then, despite the husband’s strong belief in the moral wrongness of porn, almost inevitably, almost inescapably, and, eventually he breaks down and porn fills the gap. But in almost all cases he’d rather his wife stayed in shape and put out.
Likewise, if the husband is the one with the low drives (used to be rare, but now increasing), or is diverted by a true porn addiction (one that wouldn’t just fade away if he got more real sex), or is impotent or obese or both, the wife’s vibrator or other toys fill the gap. But that doesn’t mean she prefers the toys. Actually, in a lot of cases she’d prefer to play with BOTH the toys AND the husband, but if the husband doesn’t show up for the party for some reason, toys will have to do.
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“Why is pornography being shouted against,
while romance novels aren’t?”
Are they as huge as porn is? Porn is a multi-billion or multi-trillion dollar global enterprise.
“You are more than welcome to whatever goal post moving and backward rationalization your hamster desires but it does not change the devastating affect spinsters and carousel riders will experience when trying to compete. After all, how many VR men can pay for cupcakes trips to Jamaica?”
Interesting that you mentioned Jamaica. That’s exactly where the spinsters and carousel riders are going for sex tourism!
PMAFT wrote:
The idea of sexual substitutes for women seems to have really gotten under your skin.
It’s enough to make one think Hurp is really a chick. Here’s Exhibit A for that theory – look how starry-eyed the man is in the video over the prospect of boinking a hot sexbot. Now contrast that with the woman’s reaction.
http://blackdragonblog.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/female-sex-robots/
According to the Romance Writers of America (http://www.rwa.org/cs/the_romance_genre/romance_literature_statistics/industry_statistics) it has a very good market niche for itself.
Aqua Net
=======================
Are they as huge as porn is? Porn is a multi-billion or multi-trillion dollar global enterprise.
=======================
What does it have to do with anything? Porn is shouted against, because most consumers are males
(about 70%, and about 30% are females). Romance novels industry is a multi-billion dollar industry
and about 90% of consumers are women (that’s why they are not criticized). What about mainstream Hollywood movies? They show extremely attractive males and females in sexually suggestive poses, skimpy closes and scenes of lovemaking (without showing genitals, but with showing breasts and asses). The only difference between porn and mainstream Hollywood is showing genitals. This difference doesn’t have any biblical or moral meaning whatsoever. So anyone who condemns porn on moral grounds without condemning romance novels and mainstream Hollywood on the same grounds is either a person with agenda (feminist or white knight/mangina) or a brainwashed person
“Romance fiction sales remained relatively steady in 2010, though dipping slightly to $1.358 billion from $1.36 billion in 2009. ”
But, but, compared to porn?
“Here’s Exhibit A for that theory – look how starry-eyed the man is in the video over the prospect of boinking a hot sexbot. Now contrast that with the woman’s reaction.”
Compare vibrator use to fleshlight use. Women have “toy” parties (like Avon or Tupperware parties) but I’ve never heard of men having the same. I will say this. Most of the videos I’ve seen with men that have “dolls” are lonely men who crave female companionship. They have the doll sitting next to them on the couch while they eat and they talk to her and brush her hair and do all manner of loving caregiving acts for her. Women are NOT going to do that with a male doll or robot. We only want the part we can utilize for our pleasure, hence vibrators and dildos.
We don’t give two hoots about simulating a boyfriend and “caring” for him.
Aqua Net
=======================
But, but, compared to porn?
=======================
Any revenue differences don’t have any moral meaning. Porn is usually condemned from “moral” point of view, not from “excessive or insufficent revenues” point of view
“Why is pornography being shouted against,
while romance novels aren’t?”
Because its a much, much larger industry. Hence many, many more people are into it. And if scientific studies are to be believed, it has a greater affect on the brain and behaviour, simply due to the type of electronic medium used.
2 Aqua Net
=====================
Because its a much, much larger industry. Hence many, many more people are into it.
=====================
That’s not true. Total porn US revenues were 2.6-3.9 billion in the US in 2001. If you take romance novels in book sales (more than a billion) and add there romance TV and movies, you will get a comparable number. And that’s today, 40 years ago porn was much smaller than romance, in 1970 total porn revenues were about 10 million dollars. Porn was comdemned by some people for a long time
=====================
And if scientific studies are to be believed, it has a greater affect on the brain and behaviour,
simply due to the type of electronic medium used.
=====================
There are no studies like that
Because most consumers of romance novels are women, and Team Woman always shouts down any comparison between their human weaknesses and men’s human weaknesses with “But, that’s different.”
So why isnt a woman using a vibrator grounds for divorce, or considered adultery …
“So why isnt a woman using a vibrator grounds for divorce, or considered adultery”
People can divorce for whatever reasons they want these days. Adultery? Its masterbation. Want to consider masterbators adulterers?
I thought we had no-fault divorce in just about every state these days. (Did it pass recently in New York?) Who needs grounds? All it takes is willingness.
“Why is pornography being shouted against, while romance novels aren’t?”
Because there have been hundreds of studies conducted on it. Just google “porn studies” or “porn effects brain study” and you’ll get page after page after page of studies.
2 Aqua Net
===============
Because there have been hundreds of studies conducted on it. Just google “porn studies” or “porn effects brain study” and you’ll get page after page after page of studies.
===============
Can you show just one reputable study which clearly demonstrates great harm from porn watching?
It’s enough to make one think Hurp is really a chick. Here’s Exhibit A for that theory – look how starry-eyed the man is in the video over the prospect of boinking a hot sexbot. Now contrast that with the woman’s reaction.
Didn’t you accuse another commenter called davver of being a woman too? I’m starting to lose faith in your ability to discern the gender of faceless Internet personalities.
The odd thing is, you’re reading negativity into my comments which isn’t there. I’d probably be, if not first, at least second in line to buy a sexbot if they ever come out with one. I was just ribbing Paragon about the supposed superiority of “enthusiastic partners.”
hurpadurp wrote:
Didn’t you accuse another commenter called davver of being a woman too?
Yep. In his case, it was due to his obsession with form over content. But you’re right, I should be more careful in my gender determinations. It’s certainly possible for men to acquire that kind of flakiness for a variety of reasons.
I’m starting to lose faith in your ability to discern the gender of faceless Internet personalities.
Well, only you would know for sure.
The odd thing is, you’re reading negativity into my comments which isn’t there I’d probably be, if not first, at least second in line to buy a sexbot if they ever come out with one. I was just ribbing Paragon about the supposed superiority of “enthusiastic partners.”
A quiet, compliant one would be fine with me. Of course, there’s a certain threshold of interaction that needs to be met before mostt men will shell out the big $$$ for them. Otherwise every man would have a RealDoll.
Aqua Net wrote:
Compare vibrator use to fleshlight use. Women have “toy” parties (like Avon or Tupperware parties) but I’ve never heard of men having the same. I will say this. Most of the videos I’ve seen with men that have “dolls” are lonely men who crave female companionship. They have the doll sitting next to them on the couch while they eat and they talk to her and brush her hair and do all manner of loving caregiving acts for her.
That’s because male sexuality doesn’t work the same way as women’s. Due to their visual orientation, they can’t be satisfied with part of a women, they need the entire body.
The maker of RealDoll once said that if the dolls only cost $200-$300, most men would be willing to get one. That price would make it economically impossible to make a profit from them but I think he’s right. If a certain threshold of interactivity was crossed, they would be willing to spend far more – in the range of a car.
only you would know for sure.
Well, we’re all identity-less, ambiguously-gendered entities of mystery here. Those of us with nothing but Gravatar icons, at least, heh heh.
Of course, there’s a certain threshold of interaction that needs to be met before most men will shell out the big $$$ for them. Otherwise every man would have a RealDoll.
To an extent I agree. How high that “threshold of interaction” is, though…I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. Me, I’m more concerned about how much they cost. Hell, even at the present-day level of technology, I might have gotten myself a real doll by now if they didn’t cost 6,000 dollars (plus shipping).
“A quiet, compliant one would be fine with me.”
Vibrators are both 🙂
The term “threshold of interaction” is very insightful into the male psyche.
We women don’t require “interaction”, we just want the big O.
We women don’t require “interaction”, we just want the big O.
SPIN HAMSTER SPIN
http://www.cerebromente.org.br/n18/history/stimulation_i.htm
I think that it dawned on me that the battle had been lost for both sides of the gender war when I started seeing members of both sexes who preferred dead things to interact with sexually.
I’m not going to argue with anyone about it – it is what it is, it is where the gender war has pushed people. People are going to do it no matter what I say. \
But, it still strikes me in a way that makes me understand those old movies about the townspeople storming Dr. Frankenstein’s castle with torches in hand – as being psychologically equivalent to necrophilia.
Ya Boy Matt says:
November 8, 2011 at 12:58 am
Just copy and paste this into every thread on the internet. It’s a winner.
I think that it dawned on me that the battle had been lost for both sides of the gender war when I started seeing members of both sexes who preferred dead things to interact with sexually.
I’m not going to argue with anyone about it – it is what it is, it is where the gender war has pushed people. People are going to do it no matter what I say.
Whoah, man, don’t take me as indicative of anything. I’m not an exemplar of any large social trend or anything about a gender war, I’m just horny and lazy. I still wouldn’t have gotten married or whatever even if I was alive when we had marriage 1.0 or a good ol’ “patriarchy” or whatever, I probably would have just made do with my imagination, right hand, and whatever served as lubricant back in those days (apologies to Dalrock if anyone’s offended by the mental image). There may be people for whom their desires for sexbots and/or realdolls is indicative of how bad things have gotten, but I ain’t one of ’em.
Zed, maybe toys are more sexually satisfying than humans? There’s a movie coming out “Hysteria” about how it used to be a medical practice for doctors to manually stimulate the c, sometimes behind a curtain to preserve modesty, in order to relieve women from “hysteria”. I’ve read the history on this and it appears that sexually satisfying a wife was not a priority in marriage, hence “hysteria” and the need for a doctor to get them off, although at the time it was not considered getting them off or sexual, I guess.
Whoah, man, don’t take me as indicative of anything. I’m not an exemplar of any large social trend or anything about a gender war,
I’m not talking about you, hurp. I saw this 10 or more years ago. I remember when I saw some young man saying that men needed “reproductive independence from women” – I went apoplectic.
I have a lot of respect for TFH, but I don’t agree with him on everything. I, personally, do not think VR sex or artificial wombs are the answer to anything. However, in the face of women who would self-stimulate themselves to “the big O” completely disassociated from men, what choice do men have? Maybe Aqua Net could just have herself wired up with an electrode implanted in the big O center of her brain and quietly slip into the matrix while she self-stimulates into oblivion.
Just as the Cold War degenerated into Mutually Assured Destruction, I think that the Gender Cold War will eventually descend into mutually assured nihilism.
Just as the Cold War degenerated into Mutually Assured Destruction, I think that the Gender Cold War will eventually descend into mutually assured nihilism.
Quite an apt turn of phrase. I can see why you’re so highly respected in the manosphere.
That said, TFH, PMAFT, and others might tell you that men will have sexbots and that sort of thing which are far superior to anything which could ever come out for women, which means men will be the final, absolute victors in the great Gender War which has raged since time immemorial.
Then, out of curiosity if you’d forgive me for asking, why are you suspicious of VR/sexbots and artificial wombs? Considering your gravitas–you’re at least as respected as TFH, Roissy, or other MRA ‘sages,’ at least in the minds of some people–it would be very interesting to hear why you’re so suspicious of these technologies which are so commonly held as ticket to male liberation. At the very least, regardless of your answer, I doubt anyone is going to wonder whether or not you’re a woman/white knight/mangina 😉
Hurpadurp wrote in response to Zed :
Whoah, man, don’t take me as indicative of anything. I’m not an exemplar of any large social trend or anything about a gender war, I’m just horny and lazy.
Same here, plus I like variety.
Zed wrote:
But, it still strikes me in a way that makes me understand those old movies about the townspeople storming Dr. Frankenstein’s castle with torches in hand – as being psychologically equivalent to necrophilia.
No offense, but sexbots/interactive VR are simply porn taken to the next level. I think you’re seeing an equivalence that really isn’t there.
“However, in the face of women who would self-stimulate themselves to “the big O” completely disassociated from men, what choice do men have? ”
Masturbation. Can you really be that dense?
I understand the appeal of sexbots and VR for men, but artifical wombs? Really? Whatever for?
You guys actually WANT to have kids and be single parents? Why? Why? Why?
Really? In that case, I apologize for misrepresenting your views. I am curious as to why you’d say robots wouldn’t work, though.
“Because the average man’s chances of getting a real 8 or 9 will be much higher than than they are today. ”
Ah well, don’t feel too bad. The average woman’s chances of getting a real 8 or 9 inches isn’t all that high either.
😉
Aqua Net wrote (about Zed):
Masturbation. Can you really be that dense?
Zed may be a lot of things, but dense isn’t one of them. I can understand his upset at the disengagement that’s going on, but don’t see any going back. It’s the culmination of social and technological forces that have been building for decades.
Anyway, your masturbatory toys don’t do anything to replace men. The same won’t be true for VR porn and/or sexbots – I agree with TFH it’ll probably be VR porn, at least initially. Either way, it will greatly reduce the sexual leverage women have over men in the next few decades.
I understand the appeal of sexbots and VR for men, but artifical wombs? Really? Whatever for? You guys actually WANT to have kids and be single parents? Why? Why? Why?
Reproductive independence from women. Much the same can already be achieved by fathering a child with a surrogate mother. I haven’t heard of it happening too often, although Cristiano Ronaldo and Ricky Martin took that route. If you think about it, it’s an ideal way to avoid the possibility of divorce and anyone using a man’s children to extract financial resources from a man.
Ok well, artificial wombs for gay male couples I can understand. But why on god’s green earth would a single heterosexual male want to be a single dad????
1) Cost.
2) Basic appeal (I hope I don’t have to elaborate on this further).
3) Ability for the feminist government to ban it.
4) Ability to sample multiple types of women via the same system (blonde, Asian, Latina, and black can be experience in the same night in quick succession), rather than be locked to the type that the robot is.
So robots, no. VR, yes.
A lot of men are addicted to internet porn even now. Very few are addicted to mannequins. That alone tells us the future.
Ah, I see. Thanks muchly for your response.
Aqua Net wrote:
Ok well, artificial wombs for gay male couples I can understand. But why on god’s green earth would a single heterosexual male want to be a single dad????
Obviously, because it would prevent him from being plundered in divorce court via child support or from anyone taking the child away from him. He can have it via a surrogate, then enlist the help of his parents or other relatives to help raise it.
The argument then is that men are biological driven to want kids?
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Aqua Net:
The argument then is that men are biological driven to want kids?
What a foolish question. Of course they want kids – their own kids. Historically men do not have a good record for tolerating cuckoldry. That should give you a hint about their biological imperatives.
It has to do with a basic orientation toward life which is way beyond the scope of a blog comment to try to explain. If someone isn’t basically on the same page to start with, tons of explanation won’t make any difference, and if they are, it won’t be needed. It’s something I don’t think can actually be explained, only experienced.
There is a fundamental, characteristic, difference between sharp cheddar cheese, and “pasteurized process cheese food.” “American cheese” isn’t really cheese. Boone’s Farm, Annie Green Springs, Ripple, and other “fortified fruit juices” are not wine. Go to the “snack foods” section of a store and pick up a product called “Funyuns.” Read the ingredients. There is not one thing even vaguely resembling “food” in them.
Instead of the term “virtual reality” I think of the modern western mentality – particularly American’s – to be more like “simulated reality.” The corporatocracy creates some product vaguely shaped like, and having some sensual experience which is vaguely similar to, something else, and claims that they are equivalent. We produce a simulation of something, and people who never have had the experience of the real thing cannot realize the fundamental difference between the simulation and the real thing. How many people have eaten “Funyuns” who have never had a real onion ring? Lots.
Becoming intimate with a human being who has a soul is an experience which goes into entirely different dimensions than the purely sensual aspect. In the old film “Body Heat” there is a scene in which the female lead has teased the male character in feeling such desire for her that he shoves a chair through a plate glass door to get to her. It is the stuff of romance novels – the woman has inspired such desire in the man that he can no longer contain himself. No mannequin, no matter how realistic, can bring a man to that level of desire – the satisfaction of which is what makes many people view sex as the closest they will get to god.
“Junk food” food makes people physically obese – it has empty calories with no other nutritional value. I believe that “junk food” sex makes people spiritually obese – it has empty physical sensations with no other nutritional value to the soul.
To me, it is “zombie sex” and I react to even the idea in a completely visceral manner with the same horror and revulsion I would imagine that I would feel if I suddenly became aware that I was fucking a dead body.
I have always had the philosophy that Bert Munro expressed in “The World’s Fastest Indian” – that it is possible for some people to live more in 5 minutes on the edge than some people live in an entire lifetime. I heard it expressed years ago as living life “deep in.”
It is the same aspect of temperament that made me enjoy being forced off Trail Ridge Road a month ago by a snowstorm with winds strong enough that it made me think it was going to blow me and my motorcycle off the road, a lot more than I would have enjoyed taking the trip in my nice, safe, warm motor home.
Personally, I think the biggest problem with western culture today is that so many people have forgotten what really feeling alive feels like. I don’t think that is liberating at all for men. In fact, I consider it walking death.
“Becoming intimate with a human being who has a soul is an experience which goes into entirely different dimensions than the purely sensual aspect. In the old film “Body Heat” there is a scene in which the female lead has teased the male character in feeling such desire for her that he shoves a chair through a plate glass door to get to her. It is the stuff of romance novels – the woman has inspired such desire in the man that he can no longer contain himself. No mannequin, no matter how realistic, can bring a man to that level of desire – the satisfaction of which is what makes many people view sex as the closest they will get to god.”
Zed, I agree and get the point you’re trying to get across however often times “beings with souls” are more trouble than they’re worth.
Very, very thoughtful response, Zed. I don’t think there’s much I can say to add to it, other than that while I may not have chosen to live my life in that way, I can certainly see why you have. Once again, I can see why you’re so highly esteemed. Thanks!
I’m glad, hurp. Apparently I did exactly what I set out to do – not to convince you to make the choice I did, but to convey understanding of why I chose that path.
We all have to decide, and to pay the price of our decision. Even if we choose not to decide, we still have made a choice (H/T to Rush.) We live in a world filled with people pressuring us to choose the way they want us to, but they are not the ones who pay the price if that turns out to be a bad decision for us.
In my own life I have found that if I ask the questions “What will this person gain if I chose the way they want me to, or lose if I don’t?” – that the ones who have done me the most good to listen to are the ones for whom the answers to both of those questions are “nothing.”
I hope that the way you have chosen to live your life works out as well for you as the way I have chosen to live mine has worked out for me.
“We live in a world filled with people pressuring us to choose the way they want us to, but they are not the ones who pay the price if that turns out to be a bad decision for us.”
Most humans are highly irrational and live according to the whims of their feewings, biological drives, kooky metaphysical teachings, and the latest trends in their surrounding cultures.
But why on god’s green earth would a single heterosexual male want to be a single dad????
The desire to have your lineage live on for thousands of years after you’re gone, is not limited to natural alphas who can get any woman they want at the drop of a hat.
What’s missing here is the Christian teaching on marriage, which is:
1. No sex except in marriage;
2. One cannot divorce; one can only separate into sexless life with a constant ongoing intent to reconcile should reconciliation ever become possible;
3. You can only marry again in God’s eyes if your first spouse is deceased (and not because you murdered him/her, of course!).
The addictions, the abuse, the adultery: In the Christian religion, these are grounds for separation, not for divorce, because as Jesus taught, “in the beginning it was not so”; and, “Moses gave you divorce because of your hard hearts, but I say to you…”; and, “Christian marriages really are ‘until death do us part’ in the eyes of God, and if a person obtains a civil divorce, and then remarries, having sexual relations with one’s new pseudo-spouse is really just adultery against one’s real, original spouse.”
Yes, I know, not really a standard translation of that last passage. But the history of the teaching among the early Fathers show that this is the understanding of Jesus’ words among the early Christians, and that they received this view as a tradition handed down from the apostles themselves. They already looked at Christian marriage this way even before the New Testament canon was ever finalized, which is pretty good evidence that they looked at it this way even before the New Testament was finished being written, and that when it was written, this was the message intended to be understood.
The modern take permitting divorce and remarriage was adopted by many Christian churches because their hearts are every bit as hard as those of the Hebrews in Moses’ day. As an unscriptural fig-leaf, they qualify that is that it is only permitted in cases of adultery, pointing to Matthew 5:32 (and Matthew 19:4-10) and hoping that nobody reads Matthew 5:32 (and Matthew 19:4-10) closely enough to realize that that’s not what Jesus says.
What Jesus actually says is: If a man divorces his wife, he makes her into an adulteress. Why? Well, because a first-century unmarried Palestinian woman usually had no plausible source of income except through a husband or prostitution. But Jesus is clearly stating that marriage is permanent in Matthew 5:33 and 19:6. Jesus is contradicting and formally revoking the permissiveness of the Mosaic teaching when He describes Moses’ teaching and then continues, “but I say to you….” So a woman who is forced to re-“marry” or to become a prostitute is having sex with another man while still married to her first husband. She has become an adulteress.
What is the exception to this? The exception is if the husband divorces her for “porneia,” a word which is often translated “sexual immorality.” But please, notice what it is an exception to. It is not an exception to whether the husband (or sexually immoral wife) is allowed to remarry. No exception is listed for that. No, it is an exception to the judgment of whether, by civilly divorcing his wife, the husband has “made her an adulteress.”
Jesus is saying that if the husband is divorcing his wife for “porneia,” then, for that reason, he is not forcing her to become an adulteress. Why not? Because she already is one, through her own willful sexual immorality.
That’s what the phrase “except for sexual immorality” means, folks. It doesn’t mean he’s allowed to divorce her and remarry if she was unfaithful. That’s not at all what the passage says. Go read the passage again, in as many translations as you like, and with special focus on the word-for-word translations. Read it in the koine Greek if you like, or use an interlinear Greek-English Bible if your Greek is not so hot. Go ahead, I’ll wait.
The passage says that the husband, by divorcing her, forces her into adultery unless the reason he divorced her was “sexual immorality.” He forces her into adultery unless she’s already in adultery. But he is still married to her, and she to him (or else it wouldn’t be adultery!). Their marriage lasts until death parts them, period: You must fulfill your oaths (Matthew 5:33) and what God has united, no man is permitted to separate (Matthew 19:6).
All Christian churches used to teach this, for about 85% of the history of the Christian religion.
They don’t teach it any more, at least not in the West, because we’re in a sexually immoral society and our attitudes are corrupted. They don’t teach it any more because our hearts are hard, and they don’t want to lose members. They want to have “divorce ministries” and “singles ministries.” Nothing wrong with that — provided you aren’t watering-down the teachings of Jesus Christ when ministering to those folks. If you are; well, better that you had a millstone around your neck, as the saying goes!
Now what does this have to do with Dalrock’s post?
Easy: Women who divorce their husbands, and marry another man, are committing adultery against their first husband. And if he, for lack of a wife, lapses into pornography or finds another woman and remarries, the woman who divorced him forced him into “porneia” or sexual immorality. Because the first Christian marriage, if it was a valid marriage to begin with, lasts until one person dies, period. The civil divorce is not a spiritual divorce. That’s man’s law, but God keeps His own counsel about such things.
Dalrock is therefore quite correct to say that serial monogamy is sexual immorality for a Christian. That is what Christianity teaches. Even some of the most “conservative” Christian churches in modernity have become markedly “liberal” on this topic, but history and the text remain plain.
Aqua Net wrote:
Most humans are highly irrational and live according to the whims of their feewings, biological drives, kooky metaphysical teachings, and the latest trends in their surrounding cultures.
This is particularly true of women. Men have at least some capability of straying far from the madding crowd.
“This is particularly true of women. Men have at least some capability of straying far from the madding crowd.”
I was told that but yet to experience it. Most men believe in a personal deity and are highly conditioned by the culture they grew up in.
@ Anonymous Reader
“Whose affair? Hers? Her affair often precedes the divorce. The affair makes it clear to her that the “next branch” is ready and waiting, and all she needs to do is get swing over. A woman having an affair is very often signalling the end of her previous commitment, be it LTR or marriage.”
While there are exceptions over time, affairs(at their inception) do not indicate any kind of benefit beyond short term sex(this is because short-term mating is indicated in short-term sex, a conflicted evolutionary strategy with long-term mating – and its investment/long-term benefit implications).
And I do not expect that most females are so naive as to think otherwise(without rare justified indications).
“You seem to be conflating a number of things. I stated the well known and demonstrated fact that women will engage in sex acts with “new” men that they had previously refused to their previous, or “old” man”. I opined that this is to get commitment, i.e. “resources” in a broad sense, from the “new” man. You seem to find this controversial…”
But, it is controversial – affairs do not have a reputation of being a reliable means for securing any kind of long-term benefit(hence their transient and discreet nature).
While the dynamics(and expectations) of a relationship may change during the course of an affair, I would argue that few individuals enter into one with such naive expectations of anything more than a sexual liason.
True, there is a subset of affairs that spring-board into a new LTR, but there is no way to control for those affairs which remain unobserved to third parties.
And there are further reasons to assume that affairs in general do not lead to new LTRs in the sense that the female receives some kind of long term benefit, beyond frequent sexual interludes.
Aqua Net wrote:
I was told that but yet to experience it.
Then you must have a very deficient education or refuse to see the obvious. Nearly all the great pioneers, inventors, and scientists have been men. They were the ones who laid the foundation of our modern technological world. How else could it be?
“Nearly all the great pioneers, inventors, and scientists have been men. ”
Most men are not pioneers, inventors or scientists. But hats off to those who are.
Aqua Net:
Most men are not pioneers, inventors or scientists. But hats off to those who are.
Which of course completely (I would say wilfully) misses my point. Men’s greater capacity for individualism is what allows at least a small number of them to be pioneers, invent, or be great scientists. Women, probably for evolutionary reasons (it’s safer to stay with the crowd) have very little of this capability.
“Men’s greater capacity for individualism is what allows at least a small number of them to be pioneers, invent, or be great scientists.”
Reread my original comment. I move in ordinary circles so my association is limited to the average personal deity and woo-woo believeing man who is highly influenced by the culture he grew up in and rarely, if even, travels beyond his national borders. Even basic atheism is rare in the circles I move in.
R.C.: What’s missing here is the Christian teaching on marriage….
Awesome post! I came to the exact same conclusions on my own (including rejecting infidelity as an excuse for remarriage). I was planning on writing an essay explaining it all, but you beat me to it. Thanks!
@Zed
I have read quite a bit about the same “simulated reality” we live in and I would reccomend “simulacra and SImulation” by Jean Baudrillard if you are able get an English version of it.
“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/08/science/08tier.html
Aqua Net wrote:
Reread my original comment.
Already did, and it didn’t make any more sense. Your explanation fails since you’re surrounded daily by the artifacts produced by the minds of men. Even if every man you every personally met is a nondescript cipher, your comment reveals a stunning lack of awareness.
I move in ordinary circles so my association is limited to the average personal deity and woo-woo believeing man who is highly influenced by the culture he grew up in
Everyone is highly influenced by the culture he grew up in, even if he chooses to rebel against it or ignore it.
and rarely, if even, travels beyond his national borders.
That much is certainly true for a large number of Americans. Its status as a huge isolated country and a superpower has created a certain level of provincialism.
Even basic atheism is rare in the circles I move in.s
Is that so? Is it equally rare for you to see basic religious disengagement by men? As in them simply not showing up for church? I suggest that even the average man on the streetcorner has far less woo-woo embedded in his mind than you think he has.
van Rooinek:
Thanks for your support.
It amazes me that on blogs dealing with Christian marriage, the fact that it is a serious sin to remarry after a divorce is so rarely brought up. In the eyes of God, “remarriage” is a concept which simply doesn’t exist.
But I suspect that so many folk have never heard this from their pulpits, and know so many divorced-and-“remarried” Christians, that they just assume Christianity permits remarriage after a divorce. It doesn’t.
Indeed, I was happy to see you reply, van Rooinek. I’d have been almost as happy if you’d replied negatively. Because when this topic is raised, the reaction of many folks is to say, “La la la, I can’t hear you.” Or they’ll say, “Oh, that can’t be right. God wouldn’t be that tough on us.” Or, “but what about grace and forgiveness…?” (by which is meant “what about permitting sins I haven’t repented of?”, not “what about forgiving sins from which I have firmly turned away?”).
Anyhow, the serious sinfulness of remarriage after divorce (unless there was something unChristian and thus invalid about the marriage to start with, like one party being compelled or crazy or a close relative of the other party) is rarely discussed. It’s the elephant in the room.
But Dalrock’s thesis that a woman divorcing her first husband in order to “marry up” is being as immoral as any serial philanderer is perfectly in accord with this ancient Christian doctrine.
R.C. says:
“Christians…just assume Christianity permits remarriage after a divorce. It doesn’t.”
Really? Let’s have some scriptural citations backing your claim.
RC — It amazes me that on blogs dealing with Christian marriage, the fact that it is a serious sin to remarry after a divorce is so rarely brought up. In the eyes of God, “remarriage” is a concept which simply doesn’t exist.
Well… in all fairness, most Evangelicals, even the serious ones, are taught that if the divorce is caused by adultery, that remarriage is allowed. I have come ’round to rejecting this view — i believe, as you do, that it is a misreading of those Matthew passages — but it is widely held. People who hold such a view, and remarry after divorcing an adulterous spouse, are not committing intentional rebellion, but are the victims of **wrong teaching**. That said, in a culture such as ours, where free sex is available just about everywhere, it’s pretty hard to find a separated couple where at least one of them hasn’t slept with someone else, either before or after the separation — thus giving a convenient excuse to “remarry”.
Indeed, the “causeth her to commit adultery” passage, may not only refer to the woman’s economic dependence (preindustrially) on men, and the concomitant “need” to either remarry or prostitute herself to survive, but also to certain facts of a woman’s sexual nature. Men’s sex drive is “on” from the moment of puberty and unless we want to be jailed for rape, we learn to handle it at an early age. For many women, however, the drive has to be cultivated through experience. A virgin male knows automatically that he’s going to love sex. long before he has a chance at it, but a virgin female (or one whose initial experiences have been bad or even just clumsy) may be unaware how much pleasure there is to be had in it. However, after she marries, the security of that commitment gives her the freedom to “get into it”, and over the course of marriage, if the husband is at all concerned about taking care of her needs too, she’ll eventually learn to like it… a lot. THEN if she’s divorced, she’s suddenly thrown out (or has thrown herself out) onto the single world with a raging sex drive that she doesn’t know what to do with. As a consquence, nearly all divorced women of my acquaintance, have gone through a period of promiscuous “acting out” after the separation. It seems that they can’t help themselves. Hence, the man who divorced her, “causeth her to commit adultery”.
It is also taught, in some Protestant churches, that even if going into “remarriage” is wrong, once done it’s irrevocable, a fait accompli, based on the Deuteronomy prohbitiion of a divorced/remarried woman ever returning to the first husband, even after being divorced or widowed of husband #2. (Assuming divorce were legitimate in the New Testament era in the first place, that would be a reasonable deduction.) So if a divorced/remarried couple shows up on the doorstep of the church, they are typically treated as if their current marriage is legitmate, and are not told to separate or return to spouse #1. This poses an enormously difficult pastoral problem, especially when they’ve had a family together.
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Me
“Whose affair? Hers? Her affair often precedes the divorce. The affair makes it clear to her that the “next branch” is ready and waiting, and all she needs to do is get swing over. A woman having an affair is very often signalling the end of her previous commitment, be it LTR or marriage.”
While there are exceptions over time, affairs(at their inception) do not indicate any kind of benefit beyond short term sex(this is because short-term mating is indicated in short-term sex, a conflicted evolutionary strategy with long-term mating – and its investment/long-term benefit implications).
Paragon, you appear to be assuming that women are the same as men in their reproductive strategies. That’s simply wrong. Women are not naturally polyandrous, they tend to be serially polyandrous. Therefore, your statements about affairs don’t hold up under scrutiny.
Me
“You seem to be conflating a number of things. I stated the well known and demonstrated fact that women will engage in sex acts with “new” men that they had previously refused to their previous, or “old” man”. I opined that this is to get commitment, i.e. “resources” in a broad sense, from the “new” man. You seem to find this controversial…”
Paragon
But, it is controversial – affairs do not have a reputation of being a reliable means for securing any kind of long-term benefit(hence their transient and discreet nature).
Again, you are assuming that women and men have affairs in the same way for the same reason. My own observations of people around me tells me this is not true. I have seen married women who want to become pregnant seek affairs – the cuckolding mating strategy. I have seen married women attempt to have affairs with both single and married men because they want out of their marriage. And I’ve seen women who are bored have affairs – and wind up wanting out of their marriage until they come up the actual brink of divorce, and then blink and retreat.
There could be women out there who have affairs as men do, i.e:
While the dynamics(and expectations) of a relationship may change during the course of an affair, I would argue that few individuals enter into one with such naive expectations of anything more than a sexual liason.
But they appear to be few and far between.
True, there is a subset of affairs that spring-board into a new LTR, but there is no way to control for those affairs which remain unobserved to third parties.
I suggest that in terms of female psychology, this is the most common form of affair, however it may not always work out as planned.
And there are further reasons to assume that affairs in general do not lead to new LTRs in the sense that the female receives some kind of long term benefit, beyond frequent sexual interludes.
Why do you assume that? What evidence do you have to support such a conclusion?
van, ” Men’s sex drive is “on” from the moment of puberty and unless we want to be jailed for rape, we learn to handle it at an early age. For many women, however, the drive has to be cultivated through experience. A virgin male knows automatically that he’s going to love sex. long before he has a chance at it, but a virgin female (or one whose initial experiences have been bad or even just clumsy) may be unaware how much pleasure there is to be had in it”
I disagree. Girls begin masturbating before boys because puberty for us comes earlier. We discover very early on that there is much pleasure to be had in our nether regions and other erogenous zones. Where you are correct is that a clumsy, uncomfortable or painful first time with another person could make us inhibited with other people, but not with our ownselves. We will simply continue to masturbate a lot until we meet someone who can get it right.
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On point.
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caballarius1:
Caballarius, you quoted me when I said,
…and then responded to me, saying,
The answer to your question is my entire previous comment-post. (Not the one you were replying to, but the one before that one.)
In it I said it was important to look at the word-for-word meaning of the relevant passages in Matthew 5 and Matthew 19 where Jesus says, “except for porneia [sexual immorality].”
The Matthew 5 and 19 passages are the most important ones because they are the only places in the New Testament where any hint of an exception is made to Jesus’ primary teaching about divorce.
That primary teaching is: “For a Christian marriage, divorce is impossible; it simply does not exist. Christians are married until one of them dies. Period.”
You can see this primary teaching of Jesus in Mark and Luke:
and,
These are straightforward, there is no gray area or hint of exception in these passages. Jesus is saying that divorce is not only a moral evil, but a moral non-reality. A man may choose to “divorce” his wife in terms of the civil law, but it won’t change the fact that in God’s eyes, they remain married. If he sleeps with another woman, he is committing adultery because he is really still married to his first wife. If she gets married to another man, and sleeps with him, she is committing adultery because the second marriage is a spiritual non-reality, and she is actually still married to her first husband. That is what the Scripture says.
And the historical record is clear, by the way, that Christians understood the Scriptures this way from the time of the apostles straight into the 16th century. Clement of Alexandria, for example, related this teaching in a kind of ho-hum, “as everyone knows” kind of way, in his Stromata, in A.D. 202. The teaching was clear and well-known for one thousand five hundred years or more.
(There are a couple of early Church writings showing some early Christian teachers, e.g. Ambrosiaster, made exceptions for apostasy. That is to say: If Christian A, who is married to Christian B, becomes apostate, and if No-Longer-Christian A then divorces Christian B, Christian B may remarry. This is understandable, inasmuch as it is consistent with what the Apostle Paul taught about if a Christian is married to an unbeliever, and the unbeliever divorces the Christian. See 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.)
Anyway, the Gospel of Mark is clear. The Gospel of Luke is clear. The testimony of the early Christians is clear, dating back even to the years before the New Testament was canonized! Not much room for argument.
So, why, then, did some Christian churches begin to imagine that there were exceptions to be made which permitted remarriage?
Well, I think it started with the idea that there were exceptions to be made which permitted divorce (though divorce is not quite the same thing as remarriage), which exegetes justified from Matthew 5 and 19. That’s why these are the most important passages to this whole discussion.
I’ll deal with them one at a time:
Here we see that he who divorces his wife, unless it’s for “porneia,” forces her into adultery or “makes her” commit adultery. This is consistent with the passages in Luke and Mark, because if she’s not already an adulteress, and he divorces her, and if her economic circumstances force her either into prostitution or remarriage (as would be typical in those days in Palestine; an unmarried woman could not merely go get a job and make a living for herself), then it is the husband’s act of divorcing her which has “made her an adulteress”; that is, forced her to be unfaithful to her husband (to whom she is really still married) in order not to starve.
This is an overturning, by Jesus, of the earlier Mosaic teaching which permitted divorce. Jesus explains this by saying that the earlier teaching was the best that Moses could get the Hebrews of his time to obey, “because your hearts were hard.” But Jesus says that time is past: “You have heard it said…. But I say to you….” Under the New Covenant, Jesus’ teaching, not Moses’ permissiveness, holds sway. No more divorce.
So much for Matthew 5. But Matthew 19 is the tricky one:
This is the passage around which the whole debate arises, and it centers on what the word “porneia” actually means.
Everyone agrees that it means some kind of sexual immorality.
But there is some question as to whether it includes adultery, or not.
First, the definition of adultery must be spelled out: A sex act between two persons, of which at least one of them is married to someone else. If Person A and Person B have sexual relations, and Person B is married to Person C, both A and B are considered “adulterers,” not just B. Person A is morally responsible for respecting the marriage vows of B and C, and not encouraging B to sin.
Secondly, we must remember that in the first century, we know that many of the things considered “sexual immorality” were what we would today call incest. Brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, sometimes had sexual relations or even “got married” among the pagans. Creepy but true. In I Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul excommunicates a man who “has had his father’s wife”; that is, who had taken up with his stepmother. No such marriages are considered valid among Christians: a marriage is null and void if it involves persons who were married against their will, or who were drugged or crazy or underage and thus unable to consent…or who were already close kinfolk through birth or marriage.
When Jesus says in Matthew 19 that a man who divorces his wife and remarries commits adultery unless the reason for the divorce was porneia, there are two interpretative possibilities:
(a.) “Porneia” in this passage is meant to include such things as the wife being unfaithful to her husband. In this interpretation, the husband may divorce and remarry without being guilty of adultery against his first wife, because his first wife’s adultery somehow made this okay.
(b.) “Porneia” in this passage is meant only to include such kinds of sexual immorality which would have invalidated the marriage between husband and wife to begin with. In this interpretation, if there is porneia (meaning incest), the husband may divorce and remarry without being guilty of adultery against his first wife, precisely because his first wife wasn’t really his first wife…because their marriage was never a real one, on porneia (incest) grounds.
I think there are excellent grounds for using interpretation (b.):
– Interpretation (a.) seems to say that one wrong makes another wrong morally permissible: The man is let out of his “until death do us part” vow by the sin of his wife. If two wrongs don’t make a right, how is it that one wrong can make a wrong become right?
– Doing so prevents Matthew 19 from contradicting Matthew 5, Luke 16, and Mark 10. (Does Scripture contradict itself?)
– “Porneia” is treated differently from adultery in the New Testament. It is a different word from the word used for adultery in the Matthew 19 passage, for example. In Matthew 15:19
(“For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, porneia, theft, false witness, blasphemy”) and in Mark 7:21-22 (“From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, porneia, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly”) the term is used as distinct from adultery, getting a separate mention in these lists of sins.
– “Porneia” is the Greek term used for illicit (because incestuous) marriages in the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Old Testament…and that’s the version the New Testament writers are quoting or paraphrasing 85%+ of the time when they quote or paraphrase the Old Testament, which shows that they used it as their standard for explaining Christian teaching to the Greek-speaking world around them.
– For example, Acts 15:28-29, which lists the practices forbidden to Christians, is a sort of abbreviated paraphrase of the four things forbidden in Leviticus 17-18: meat sacrificed before idols, blood, that which is strangled, and porneia. But in Leviticus 17:7-18:6, a definition of “porneia” is given: “None of you shall approach a close relative to have sexual intercourse with her. I am the LORD.”
– Interpreting the Matthew 19 “porneia” as incestuous intercourse prevents Matthew 19 from contradicting the plain understanding of all the earliest interpreters of Matthew 19, including folk who learned their Christianity from the disciples of the Apostles…men who had been raised to church leadership by men who had been raised to church leadership by the Apostles.
This last item should really be taken seriously. Jesus said that He, upon returning to the Father, would give us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. If most or all Christians were entirely mistaken about the permissibility of remarriage after divorce for the entire period from the death of the Apostle John until the first few churches started relaxing their views about remarriage some sixteen hundred years later, then what on earth was the Holy Spirit doing for all those years? On vacation? Taking a nap? It’s one thing to say that a few sinners were disobeying because of their hard hearts; it’s another to say that the entire Christian world was dead wrong about one of the central moral doctrines of Christian marriage for well over three-quarters of the history of the Christian religion.
That’s my argument, caballarius1; and not just mine, but a view consistent with the a large majority of what most Christians believed in most times and places for the last 2,000 years.
Our age, and its permissive views, constitute a minority view, a great big exception.
Which is right, do you think?
Do you think it more likely that all our forefathers in the faith were right, and that we, in this age, have unintentionally been corrupted by our non-Christian culture?
Or do you think it more likely that all our forefathers in the faith were wrong, and that we, in this debauched and corrupt and sexually confused era, have suddenly discovered what it was that Jesus was really teaching all along, when His own contemporaries and their students (and their students, and their students, for centuries and centuries on end) somehow misunderstood it?
I know which option I think is more probable.
Oh, and I should probably add a few more passages from the Apostle Paul:
Paul says to the Ephesians: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church, and delivered Himself up for it, that He might sanctify it. . . So also ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. . . For no man ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as also Christ does the Church; because we are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great mystery [alternatively, ‘sacrament’]; but I speak in [alternatively ‘in respect to’] Christ and the Church.”
That is pretty significant: A direct parallel is drawn between the love of Christ for the Church, and the love of the husband for the wife. These mysteries are bound into one another in the Christian faith, and the individual believer who is married, by living a Christian marriage, is living either the role of the Church towards Christ or the role of Christ towards the Church. So, let’s ask the question: Does Christ ever give up on his unfaithful bride, leave her, and find another Church? No? How about this: Is it ever morally licit for the Bride of Christ, which is the Church, to give up on Christ and go find another husband? No?
And what about the teaching that the Church is also the Body of Christ, which is parallel to the acknowledgment that the body of the wife is not her own, but also her husband’s, and the husband is the head of the woman, et cetera. Feminists get distracted from the significance of all this by the immature and immoral abuses of husbandly headship of which some men in traditional marriages have doubtless been guilty, but let’s not get distracted and focus on why the New Testament authors wrote such things during theological discourses about Christ and the Church, or why they kept jumping from practical discussions about marriage into waxing rhapsodic about Christology and ecclesiology. If the Church is the Body of Christ and He is her Head, then for the Church to “divorce” from Christ is to sever the head from the body, producing death. Is it not clear from this that C.S.Lewis was correct when he said that the orthodox Christian view of divorce was not that it was like ending a contract, but rather like “severing a limb from an organism?” Indeed, because of his ecumenical sensitivity on this topic (this was in Mere Christianity) Lewis was, if anything, understating the teaching.
Paul says elsewhere: “To those who are married, not I, but the Lord commands that the wife not separate from her husband; and if she does depart, that she remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.” (I Corinthians 7:10-11) And again: “A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband die, she is at liberty.” (1 Corinthians. 7:39)
I think that this, added to my original note, should make the case pretty dispositive: Christianity does not, as a religion, include moral permission to divorce. It includes only permission to separate, with a desire if possible to be reconciled. It calls sexual relations with any other person adulterous, because the original marriage was a union created by God and inseparable by man, and for that reason accompanied by vows using the phrase “until death do us part.” Christians are admonished by Jesus not to make vows but merely to let our yes mean yes and our no mean no…but He does this in a series of teachings in which He is not relaxing our moral code, but strengthening it (Matthew 5). He is saying that vows ought not be necessary. But this is only to further emphasize that if we make a vow, we must keep it, period.
The sole exceptions to this, in Apostolic Christianity, do not involve “if one spouse has an affair,” let alone “if one spouse is abusive” or “if one spouse is an addict.” No, the sole exceptions to this in Apostolic Christianity can be summed up as, “unless it was never a real Christian marriage to begin with, for whatever reason (e.g. because one or both parties were unbelievers, or they were close blood relatives).” These exceptions are permitted not because divorce from a Christian marriage is possible (it isn’t, which is the whole point of what the New Testament says on the topic), but because nobody can commit adultery if they were never married to begin with.
Porn isn’t about lust, it’s about getting off so I can get on with my day. Five minutes after getting off I couldn’t pick out the actress in a lineup. When my wife is sick and she’s spent a half-hour fondling me in bed in the morning I slip out to the couch and spend five minutes rubbing one out. Do you think that’s my preferred option?
Adultery, the actual lusting to be with a particular woman other than one’s wife, weakens the social bonds between men. It creates an environment where men have to continually be on guard lest their woman be poached by another man. That’s got nothing to do with porn.
My wife watches porn. She loves it. She loves watching one man pound another anally while giving him the ol’ reach-around. Why in the world should I find this threatening? Like me, five minutes later she would be incapable of picking any of those guys out of a lineup.
@ Anonymous Reader
“Paragon, you appear to be assuming that women are the same as men in their reproductive strategies. That’s simply wrong. Women are not naturally polyandrous, they tend to be serially polyandrous. Therefore, your statements about affairs don’t hold up under scrutiny.”
The accepted prevalence of affairs refute that females are not ‘naturally’ polyandrous – they enagage in them, discretely, so that they can mate with more physically attractive males than their husbands, while minimizing the risks of discovery(this behavior is adapted from when indiscretion posed more dire risks for female infidelity – some of which will always remain, despite
efforts to systemically indemnify errant females from all liability).
But, I take it you have never heard of strategic pluralism?
“Again, you are assuming that women and men have affairs in the same way for the same reason. My own observations of people around me tells me this is not true. I have seen married women who want to become pregnant seek affairs – the cuckolding mating strategy. I have seen married women attempt to have affairs with both single and married men because they want out of their marriage. And I’ve seen women who are bored have affairs – and wind up wanting out of their marriage until they come up the actual brink of divorce, and then blink and retreat.”
We can both only speculate on the motives behind female infidelity, but there is no indication that females reap long-term benefit from affairs, in the way that they do with reproductively successful LTRs(ie. where they can leverage paternal liability, for long-term gains).
Thus, with affairs, we must deduce that some other quantity of value must be operating on their short-term goals.
@ hurpadurp
“That said, I must confess that you and Ya Boy Matt are actually on my side, in this conversation, at least. My intent with my original comment was solely to point out that Paragon’s assessment of prostitution was incorrect, and I quite sincerely thank you for assisting in that endeavor. In addition, he mentions prostitution being “prohibitively expensive;” depending on where you live and how much you make, this isn’t the case.”
In relative terms I don’t think it is at all controversial to say that an equivalent measure of service from a professional can end up being prohibitively costly(even if just in monetary terms).
But, you are also thinking of cost in very narrow terms – consider that the reputation of high-status males are particularly vulnerable to these kinds of taboos, and you will begin to appreciate a new dimension of risk.
The accepted prevalence of affairs
Accepted by whom? What is the rate of affairs per unit of marriages, say # of affairs per 100,000 married couples per annum, or some other definable metric?
refute that females are not ‘naturally’ polyandrous
You refute a strawman.
– they enagage in them, discretely, so that they can mate with more physically attractive males than their husbands, while minimizing the risks of discovery(this behavior is adapted from when indiscretion posed more dire risks for female infidelity – some of which will always remain, despite
efforts to systemically indemnify errant females from all liability).
I’ve already discussed cuckolding as a reproductive strategy multiple times in this and other threads.
But, I take it you have never heard of strategic pluralism?
I take it that you don’t actually bother to read what I’m writing?
We can both only speculate on the motives behind female infidelity,
We need not do that, when a wealth of information exists that can be examined. The Game community is one source.
but there is no indication that females reap long-term benefit from affairs, in the way that they do with reproductively successful LTRs(ie. where they can leverage paternal liability, for long-term gains).
There is abundant evidence, but apparently you can not, or will not, see it. One more time: women’s affairs can provide genetic variation via cuckolding, and women’s affairs often constitute serial monogamy. Divorce theft enables women to reap material benefits, such as money, from one man while enjoying sexual benefits from another man whom the woman perceives to have higher Alpha status – hypergamy unleashed. The legal structure of “men’s fault” divorce merely encodes female reproductive preferences (cuckolding, serial monogamy via “branch to branch” swinging) into the law while punishing men’s preferences.
Do you have any kind of point to offer, or are you just here to engage in simple disagreement via negation and attempted obfuscation?
@ Anonymous Reader
“Accepted by whom? What is the rate of affairs per unit of marriages, say # of affairs per 100,000 married couples per annum, or some other definable metric?”
I hardly think it can be argued that infidelity is not widespread(the relevant sense of prevalent), because the biases which mediate these choices are abundantly common(ie. the dominant operating variable is ‘opportunity’) – thus correlated female tendencies cannot have evolved as a special case.
“We need not do that, when a wealth of information exists that can be examined. The Game community is one source.”
Information, yes, but hardly meaningful or reliable.
The game community is not an authority on anything, beyond the extant to which a fool’s errand can take.
“There is abundant evidence, but apparently you can not, or will not, see it. One more time: women’s affairs can provide genetic variation via cuckolding, and women’s affairs often constitute serial monogamy. Divorce theft enables women to reap material benefits, such as money, from one man while enjoying sexual benefits from another man whom the woman perceives to have higher Alpha status – hypergamy unleashed. The legal structure of “men’s fault” divorce merely encodes female reproductive preferences (cuckolding, serial monogamy via “branch to branch” swinging) into the law while punishing men’s preferences.”
Yes(and I’m not sure that we’re just mostly in violent agreement), but potential genetic contributions are the only reliable benefit to be reaped from an affair(in no small part, due to a female’s facultative role in reproductive success – whether or not she get’s pregnant), and thus can be argued is the evolutionary strategic basis of an affair.
I would like to quote an article here:
“Marriage is a divorce waiting to happen
Love is, literally, a drug, and a highly addictive one at that. And like all addictions there is a law of diminishing returns. The positive effects wear off after a certain period of time. After the initial intense period, your brain starts to pump out endorphins – brain opiates that are more like morphine than speed, serving to calm the mind, kill pain and reduce anxiety. Why do we appear to be preprogrammed eventually to lose interest in a sexual partner? The evolutionary psychologist Helen Fisher [Ref : Audio “Primitive Streaks” {Love}; H.Fisher Loving &Loathing.rtf] suggests that humans pursue a similar strategy to animals such as foxes. Foxes are serially monogamous: they pair up for just one breeding season and stay together long enough to help raise their young before splitting up. Fisher argues that humans, too, are designed to be monogamous only for the time it takes to raise a single child through infancy – about four years. In the UK, between 40 and 50 per cent of marriages end in divorce. After conducting research in nearly 60 countries, Fisher has backed up her claims by showing that divorce rates peak at around four years into marriage. According to this theory, every marriage is a divorce waiting to happen. Some understanding of the reasons for this may be found by studying the habits of contemporary hunter-gatherer societies – the closest modern-day comparisons to ancient human life on the savannah. In traditional societies such as the Australian Aborigines and the Nersilik Eskimos, there is a much longer period of breast-feeding than in the West – until the child is around three or four years old. After this four year period the mother gives birth to another child. The whole point of monogamy is, to be harshly utilitarian, that a partnership provides protection and resources for is own biological children. There’s one huge stumbling block for men, though. How do they ever know for certain that the children are their own? Homo sapiens is an unusual species in that the female’s monthly period of fertility is hidden -unlike species such as baboons or bonobos, who are not shy about broadcasting their fertile condition to the entire troop: during their period of “oestrus”, their entire genital area swells and turns a bright shade of pink. Human females do no such thing. They themselves often tend to be unaware when they are ovulating. Concealed ovulation is a clever ruse. It goes hand in hand with internal fertilisation. Just possibly, both concealed ovulation and internal fertilisation evolved as mechanisms to ensure that a woman’s mate was attentive all month long. They reduce the risk of desertion by the male, which itself reduces the risk of the male forging relationships with other women. Were these, perhaps, the very beginnings of a trend towards monogamy in human culture? I once came across an extraordinary clinical situation at my infertility Clinic at Hammersmith Hospital, London. Margaret B came for investigation of her infertility in her early thirties. Exhaustive tests failed to find the slightest thing wrong. I could even find sperm in her uterus on examination many hours after intercourse. Her husband too,seemed in good health, with an apparently excellent sperm count. One day, some years after she had first come to me, I said that perhaps the problem could be with her husband. She looked at me for a long time started crying and said, “No, it must be me.” Eventually, her story poured out. She had been sleeping regularly with her husband, but for the past six years she had been having regular intercourse, sometimes on the same day and even when she was being treated by me, with her long-standing lover. “And he has three children, so I know he’s fertile,” she told me. Three months later, Margaret came to my clinic to tell me that she and her lover had taken a momentous decision. She had just seen him off at London airport – he had decided to emigrate. Only five weeks after her final farewell at the airport, she phoned to say that she had just missed her period and the pregnancy test was positive. And this time there was only one possible father. At the University of Manchester, Robin Baker and Mark Bellis have argued that human spermatozoa come in different shapes and sizes precisely because they may face a baffle against a competing. male’s. According to their studies, the most common sperm are the standard-issue “egg-getter”, with conical heads and long tails, designed to swim for their lives. But a different type of sperm is also ejaculated: these have coiled tails, so swimming certainly isn’t their forte; instead they act as kamikaze sperm, wrapping themselves around the foreign egg-getters and hampering their progress. These researchers are convinced that sperm competition has been the main force to shape the genetic programme that drives human sexuality. I believe their views are fanciful – most of the unusual-looking sperm in human ejaculates are simply abnormal. But whatever the truth of all this, it is possible that adultery is an evolutionary adaptation that has grown up alongside monogamy and long-term commitment. Some estimates suggest that around 50 per cent of British married men and women are having extra-marital affairs. We already know some of the genetic reasons why men want to have affairs. They’re programmed to spread their genes. If a man has a chance of impregnating another female – especially one who is already married and would not have to be provided for -then he may well have stumbled across the ultimate evolutionary bargain: all the benefits of of continuing his genetic legacy with none of the work involved in bringing up a child. What for a woman is evolutionary advantage of taking on a lover? We now know that women in all societies regularly have affairs. Indeed, genetic studies in rural parts of the UK suggest that up to 15 per cent of children are not the offspring of their “official” father. One way of explaining female infidelity is that it’s a woman’s way of hedging her bets. The security of knowing there is more than one “provider” for you and your children cannot be taken lightly. In addition, a lover provides an extra insurance policy: if your husband dies or is killed, there is someone else to help you take care of the children. Adultery, for a woman, is also about dipping into the genetic pool. Your current husband may be infertile, or may simply carry poor genes. Taking a lover is one way of introducing different DNA into the litter without destroying the stability of the family structure. A man’s libido has a darker side, too, especially when sex is accompanied by physical coercion. Sociologists have traditionally viewed rape as a pathological form of behaviour, a crime committed by dysfunctional individuals. It is difficult to conceive of rape being described as “useful” from the point of view of human evolution, yet that, controversially, is what some researchers have recently suggested. While making it very clear that their theory does not provide any moral justification for rape, they argue that, historically, it is possible that it could have been in a man’s interest to force a woman to have sex. Rape, a useful male strategy? No normal man wants to know he may instinctively harbour a desire to rape women. But there are some studies which bizarrely indicate that, for some unknown reason, the chances of a woman conceiving from a single act of rape are more than twice those of a woman who engages in a single act of consensual sex. Some scientists have suggested that rape increases secretion of stress hormones in the body and that these may, if the rape takes place somewhere near the middle of the menstrual cycle, trigger ovulation. Is this some throwback to the time of the caveman? Certainly, if true, this statistic provides a possible evolutionary reason for rape – and suggests that certain feminists might not have been so wrong when they said every man is a (potential) rapist. My own research has come up with some very different results. I wondered whether sex that the female partner found pleasurable improved the chances of her having a successful conception We asked several hundred infertile women about their regular sexual experiences. Two hundred women with a known cause for infertility (about half of them had blocked Fallopian tubes) were compared with a group of 200 women who had no known cause for being infertile. In all cases their partners had sperm counts within the normal fertile range. We found that women who were infertile with no apparent cause reached orgasm less regularly or reported experiencing less pleasurable sex. The control group, with a clear cause for infertility, generally reported more sexual satisfaction. One possible explanation for this is that female orgasm assists the transport of sperm through the uterus and into the Fallopian tubes. More work needs to be done, but this study raises interesting questions. If sex that is pleasurable to the woman does improve the chances of conception, it must be in the man’s interest to ensure that his partner reaches orgasm. This may explain why most men seem to enjoy sex more when their partners do too. Men of all cultures tend to find younger women more sexually attractive. A woman who is young and healthy has a better chance of bearing a number of children, who in turn will be successful and go on to reproduce. For some men the combination of the loss of sexual interest often found in a long-term monogamous relationship, combined with the ageing of their partner, prompts a so-called ”mid-life crisis”. A small minority of men who are sufficiently attractive, or who have high-status jobs, end up marrying a younger woman; in some cases, a succession of younger women. Men who marry these women are catching them in their fertile prime; on an unconscious, biological level they may be striving to maximise their genetic legacy. In fact, they are practising a kind of polygamy: even though they don’t keep more than one wife at a time, they’re marrying women in their prime and then discarding them, so the principle holds. Polygamy, monogamy, marriage, children – all these relationships are inextricably, bound up in our genetic heritage. Shadows of the savannah will always be present, cast over modern mores and ways of life. Slowly, we are starting to grasp the very basic truths about human relationships, and not all of them are easy to accept. ”
Human Instincts by Professor Robert Winston (Bantam) is available for £16.99 plus £1.99 P&P.A BBC1 Series starts in late October
[The Sunday Telegraph Sep 15 2002]
that was awesome.
The difference with animal corollaries, is that humans have a evolved systems of life-long paternal investment, leading to greater frequency of extra-pair mating.
Funny, it wasn’t foxes that built the Roman aqueducts. Or was it?
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R.C., I apologize for being late here with the response. I didn’t see your reply until today.
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R.C. says:
“That primary teaching is: “For a Christian marriage, divorce is impossible; it simply does not exist. Christians are married until one of them dies. Period.”
Sorry, but I can’t find your quoted text above in any scripture. What’s your passage?
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R.C. says:
“You can see this primary teaching of Jesus in Mark and Luke:
Luke 16:18: ‘Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery. And whoever marries her who has been divorced by her husband commits adultery.’
and,
Mark 10:11-12: And he said to them: ‘Whoever dismisses his wife, and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if a wife dismisses her husband, and is married to another, she commits adultery.'”
For some reason, you don’t include Matthew 5 and especially Matthew 19, which relates the exact same incident as Mark 10, but with more detail. Matthew takes up the story: “The Pharisees also came unto him, tempting him, and saying unto him, Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?… They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Notice the line “from the beginning” here, He’s talking about the pre-fall, running around naked in the garden, no work, no sickness, no death era of earthly perfection. That was all done away with by original sin.
Back to Matthew, “And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.”
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R.C. says:
“These are straightforward, there is no gray area or hint of exception in these passages.”
Again, Matthew 19 and Mark 10 relate the same synoptic story. Matthew 19 gives the full details, Mark gives the highlights.
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R.C. says:
“Jesus is saying that divorce is not only a moral evil, but a moral non-reality. A man may choose to “divorce” his wife in terms of the civil law, but it won’t change the fact that in God’s eyes, they remain married.”
Here’s where your argument falls off the rails: the punishment for adultery was execution. There was no need to divorce an adulteress if the law was in force. Interestingly, God portrayed Himself in the Old Testament as a righteous polygynist who wrote out a bill of divorcement for Israel, one of His “wives” along with Judah. Of course, in the end the kingdom of Israel was obliterated, much as an adulteress would be.
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R.C. says:
“If he sleeps with another woman, he is committing adultery because he is really still married to his first wife. If she gets married to another man, and sleeps with him, she is committing adultery because the second marriage is a spiritual non-reality, and she is actually still married to her first husband. That is what the Scripture says.”
No, the scriptures never say that. A man does not commit adultery “if he sleeps with another woman,” as you put it. A man commits adultery by one of three means: the physical adultery whereby he lies with another man’s wife (the wife’s marital status is what makes it adultery) in Lev.18:20, Lev.20:10; the spiritual adultery of coveting and “lusting” after a married woman in Ex. 20:17, Duet. 5:21, Matt.5:28; and Jesus’ new adultery teaching in Matt. 5, Mark 10, Luke 16, where a woman is divorced from the harem (remember the Hebrews were polygynous until 1000 AD) without cause and her place is filled by an added wife. Merely having sex with another woman is not enough to make it biblical adultery.
Now, in the case of a woman, she commits adultery by having sex with any man other than her original husband, so long as he is still alive. Of course, in case of a believing woman who is divorced by her unbelieving husband she is no longer bound to him, I Cor. 7:15.
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R.C. says:
“And the historical record is clear, by the way, that Christians understood the Scriptures this way from the time of the apostles straight into the 16th century. Clement of Alexandria, for example, related this teaching in a kind of ho-hum, “as everyone knows” kind of way, in his Stromata, in A.D. 202. The teaching was clear and well-known for one thousand five hundred years or more.”
Clement of Alexandria? Platonist teacher of the self-castrated Origen? Exalter of Greek philosophers? Why would you pay attention to such a half-pagan when you have the Bible before you? Clement lived over a century after the apostolic age and he was ignorant of the Hebrew cultural context of scripture, he was a pagan Greek after all, and made lots of stuff up out of whole cloth. Sola Scriptura, baby. Next, you’ll be trying to sell me pieces of the True Cross or an indulgence to get an early release from purgatory. Or maybe I should scourge myself and crawl up some steps on my knees. Ancient churchian traditions, indeed.
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R.C. says
(There are a couple of early Church writings showing some early Christian teachers, e.g. Ambrosiaster, made exceptions for apostasy. That is to say: If Christian A, who is married to Christian B, becomes apostate, and if No-Longer-Christian A then divorces Christian B, Christian B may remarry. This is understandable, inasmuch as it is consistent with what the Apostle Paul taught about if a Christian is married to an unbeliever, and the unbeliever divorces the Christian. See 1 Corinthians 7:12-16.)”
Correct.
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R.C. says:
“Anyway, the Gospel of Mark is clear. The Gospel of Luke is clear. The testimony of the early Christians is clear, dating back even to the years before the New Testament was canonized! Not much room for argument.”
They are clear in their context of Hebrew culture, which is that women should not be cast out of the harem and replaced with another tasty morsel. There is no prohibition to merely adding more wives, but you can’t add a wife at the expense of kicking an earlier one to the curb. This is especially true for the “wife of thy youth”, which was one’s first marriage at puberty.
Also, your “early” Christians were actually johnny-come-latelys strongly influenced by the pagan backgrounds, unconnected from apostolic teaching and the Hebrew context of the New Testament.
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R.C. says:
“So, why, then, did some Christian churches begin to imagine that there were exceptions to be made which permitted remarriage?”
The Bible.
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R.C. says:
“Well, I think it started with the idea that there were exceptions to be made which permitted divorce (though divorce is not quite the same thing as remarriage), which exegetes justified from Matthew 5 and 19. That’s why these are the most important passages to this whole discussion.
“I’ll deal with them one at a time: Matthew 5:31: But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of porneia, makes her commit adultery, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. [emphasis added]
“Here we see that he who divorces his wife, unless it’s for “porneia,” forces her into adultery or “makes her” commit adultery. This is consistent with the passages in Luke and Mark, because if she’s not already an adulteress, and he divorces her, and if her economic circumstances force her either into prostitution or remarriage (as would be typical in those days in Palestine; an unmarried woman could not merely go get a job and make a living for herself), then it is the husband’s act of divorcing her which has “made her an adulteress”; that is, forced her to be unfaithful to her husband (to whom she is really still married) in order not to starve.”
So far, so good….
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R.C. says:
“This is an overturning, by Jesus, of the earlier Mosaic teaching which permitted divorce. Jesus explains this by saying that the earlier teaching was the best that Moses could get the Hebrews of his time to obey, “because your hearts were hard.”
Looking good…
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R.C. says:
But Jesus says that time is past: “You have heard it said…. But I say to you….” Under the New Covenant, Jesus’ teaching, not Moses’ permissiveness, holds sway. No more divorce.”
Oops! That ellipsis hides a key phrase. And your phrase “no more divorce” does not appear in the passage.
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R.C. says:
“So much for Matthew 5. But Matthew 19 is the tricky one:
“Matthew 19:3-8: Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
“Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for porneia, and marries another woman commits adultery, and whoever marries the divorced woman commits adultery.” [emphasis added]
“This is the passage around which the whole debate arises, and it centers on what the word “porneia” actually means.
“Everyone agrees that it means some kind of sexual immorality.
“But there is some question as to whether it includes adultery, or not.
First, the definition of adultery must be spelled out: A sex act between two persons, of which at least one of them is married to someone else. If Person A and Person B have sexual relations, and Person B is married to Person C, both A and B are considered “adulterers,” not just B. Person A is morally responsible for respecting the marriage vows of B and C, and not encouraging B to sin.”
This is not the biblical definition of physical adultery. See what I wrote above concerning the three types of adultery discussed in the Bible.
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R.C. says:
“Secondly, we must remember that in the first century, we know that many of the things considered “sexual immorality” were what we would today call incest. Brothers and sisters, mothers and sons, fathers and daughters, sometimes had sexual relations or even “got married” among the pagans. Creepy but true.”
As did the patriarchs like Abraham (half-sister), Noah (daughters), Jacob (two sisters at the same time), etc. This is why it was addressed, defined, and prohibited as a sex crime by the Mosaic Law.
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R.C. says:
“In I Corinthians 5, the Apostle Paul excommunicates a man who “has had his father’s wife”; that is, who had taken up with his stepmother. No such marriages are considered valid among Christians: a marriage is null and void if it involves persons who were married against their will, or who were drugged or crazy or underage and thus unable to consent…or who were already close kinfolk through birth or marriage.”
Paul never says they are married in any way. He says the man “has his father’s wife”, meaning copulation is ongoing, which we know is an express violation of Leviticus 20:11, part of the sex code of the Mosaic Law.
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R.C. says:
“When Jesus says in Matthew 19 that a man who divorces his wife and remarries commits adultery unless the reason for the divorce was porneia, there are two interpretative possibilities:
“(a.) “Porneia” in this passage is meant to include such things as the wife being unfaithful to her husband. In this interpretation, the husband may divorce and remarry without being guilty of adultery against his first wife, because his first wife’s adultery somehow made this okay.
“(b.) “Porneia” in this passage is meant only to include such kinds of sexual immorality which would have invalidated the marriage between husband and wife to begin with. In this interpretation, if there is porneia (meaning incest), the husband may divorce and remarry without being guilty of adultery against his first wife, precisely because his first wife wasn’t really his first wife…because their marriage was never a real one, on porneia (incest) grounds.
“I think there are excellent grounds for using interpretation (b.):
“- Interpretation (a.) seems to say that one wrong makes another wrong morally permissible: The man is let out of his “until death do us part” vow by the sin of his wife. If two wrongs don’t make a right, how is it that one wrong can make a wrong become right?”
What is the punishment for the adulteress and the adulterer (her paramour) under God’s Law? Death. If the wife is into bestiality, incest, and marriage virginity fraud, all violations of the same Mosaic Sex Codes as adultery, the punishment is the same; death. All remarriage problems are solved for those in the Hebrew culture of Jesus’ day. The most likely reason Mark and Luke, books written for 70 AD Gentile audiences, were concise with regards to “porneia” in their retelling of Jesus’ divorce teaching was the for simple fact that cuckolded Roman husbands were forced to divorce under Roman law or face pimping charges. Greeks and other subject peoples dwelling within their own lands (like the Jews in Judea) were generally allowed their own domestic legal codes, usually involving the death of the adulterous wife and her paramour, but the death penalty, at least as issued by a court, for adultery was evidently somewhat suppressed by the Romans.
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R.C. says:
“- Doing so prevents Matthew 19 from contradicting Matthew 5, Luke 16, and Mark 10. (Does Scripture contradict itself?)”
Then stop looking for synoptic contradictions and pay attention to the harmony of the Gospels. Mark and Luke were written for the Gentile audience, but Matthew was addressed to a Jewish readership with knowledge of Hebrew scripture and culture. That’s why Matthew is concerned with including the full quotes from Christ, which show how the sexual violations banned by the Mosaic Law (“porneia” in the LXX and NT) which merit the death penalty are grounds for divorce in the absence of the implementation of said death penalty.
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R.C. says:
‘“Porneia” is treated differently from adultery in the New Testament. It is a different word from the word used for adultery in the Matthew 19 passage, for example. In Matthew 15:19
(“For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, porneia, theft, false witness, blasphemy”) and in Mark 7:21-22 (“From within people, from their hearts, come evil thoughts, porneia, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly”) the term is used as distinct from adultery, getting a separate mention in these lists of sins.”
“Moicheia” is the word for adultery. It’s one of the sex crimes covered by the special NT usage of the word “porneia,” along with incest, male homosexuality, etc. Porneia means prostitution in Greek secular writings. The LXX (Septuagint, which was a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek widely used by Greek speaking Jews at the time) uses it for the Hebrew words translated as “harlotry”, “whoredoms,” etc., basically all the words that derive from “zonah” (prostitute) so the usage in the LXX works well. The NT writers use it in a slightly different way, including all the sex crimes of the Mosaic law under the word “porneia.”
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R.C. says:
“Porneia” is the Greek term used for illicit (because incestuous) marriages in the Septuagint (Greek) version of the Old Testament…and that’s the version the New Testament writers are quoting or paraphrasing 85%+ of the time when they quote or paraphrase the Old Testament, which shows that they used it as their standard for explaining Christian teaching to the Greek-speaking world around them.”
Actually, “porneia” is used mainly in the LXX as prostitution.
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R.C. says:
– For example, Acts 15:28-29, which lists the practices forbidden to Christians, is a sort of abbreviated paraphrase of the four things forbidden in Leviticus 17-18: meat sacrificed before idols, blood, that which is strangled, and porneia. But in Leviticus 17:7-18:6, a definition of “porneia” is given: “None of you shall approach a close relative to have sexual intercourse with her. I am the LORD.””
Once again, you are editing out the parts of the Bible that don’t fit your pretext, namely the rest of your quoted passage from Leviticus 18 which includes the other sins the Council of Jerusalem included in “porneia.” They’re all there in the same chapter you cite above; menstrual sex 18:19, adultery 18:20, male homosexuality 18:22, bestiality 18:23. With the exception of menstrual sex, these all five of these, including incest, get the death penalty. That’s the full meaning intended by the Council, they weren’t just picking out incest.
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R.C. says:
– Interpreting the Matthew 19 “porneia” as incestuous intercourse prevents Matthew 19 from contradicting the plain understanding of all the earliest interpreters of Matthew 19, including folk who learned their Christianity from the disciples of the Apostles…men who had been raised to church leadership by men who had been raised to church leadership by the Apostles.”
Why do you need to “interpret” the quotes of Christ in Matthew when the plain meaning is right there, any of the Mosaic sexual sins in the Leviticus list? Which men are you referring to that were raised to church leadership by the apostles? The apostles were already off the scene by 90 AD and early writings on the subject don’t crop up until around 150.
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R.C. says:
“This last item should really be taken seriously. Jesus said that He, upon returning to the Father, would give us the Holy Spirit to lead us into all truth. If most or all Christians were entirely mistaken about the permissibility of remarriage after divorce for the entire period from the death of the Apostle John until the first few churches started relaxing their views about remarriage some sixteen hundred years later, then what on earth was the Holy Spirit doing for all those years? On vacation? Taking a nap? It’s one thing to say that a few sinners were disobeying because of their hard hearts; it’s another to say that the entire Christian world was dead wrong about one of the central moral doctrines of Christian marriage for well over three-quarters of the history of the Christian religion.”
Why not? Is sex with your wife adultery? The Church said it was. There was completely unbiblical false teaching on marriage from the Church starting at least as early as the Montanist apostate Tertullian right on up until John Wycliffe started blowing the lid off the establishment in 1350 something. By 200 AD virginity was being exalted by the church as a higher state to be maintained for life. Totally not scriptural. But if you just had to have sex with your wife, you could if it was only for the purpose of procreation. Otherwise, passion (lust – epithumia) would be introduced in the marriage, making the sex adulterous, and for this reason the church tolerated and profited from actual “porneia” real prostitution, by encouraging men to find passion outside the home, saving the pure marriage from pollution. I like that, the church encouraging prostitution, courtly love, and official mistresses to save one from adultery. Pure comedy gold.
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R.C. says:
“That’s my argument, caballarius1; and not just mine, but a view consistent with the a large majority of what most Christians believed in most times and places for the last 2,000 years.
Our age, and its permissive views, constitute a minority view, a great big exception.
Which is right, do you think?”
Sola Scriptura. The earliest extra-biblical writings from “Christian” authors concerning divorce are over a century removed from the lives of the apostles and being written by men unacquainted with the Judaic milieu of Christ’s life and times, their opinions are formed by their prevailing Roman culture, which unlike the Jews, was monogamous (at least with regard to full legal wives). For example, the earliest writing on the topic is supposed to be Hermas, who claimed divorce was absolutely required when a woman committed adultery. Of course he would say that being Roman, since that was part of Augustus’s family law code.
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R.C. says:
“Do you think it more likely that all our forefathers in the faith were right, and that we, in this age, have unintentionally been corrupted by our non-Christian culture?”
No, they were corrupted by their own Greco-Roman pagan dualist culture.
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R.C. says:
“Or do you think it more likely that all our forefathers in the faith were wrong, and that we, in this debauched and corrupt and sexually confused era, have suddenly discovered what it was that Jesus was really teaching all along, when His own contemporaries and their students (and their students, and their students, for centuries and centuries on end) somehow misunderstood it?
I know which option I think is more probable.”
If you want to take your cues from the Churchian Fathers, like Jerome, Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Augie, etc, sex with your wife for pleasure equals “adultery.” Chew on that one for a while. They got that one very wrong, as they did with so much else. All these men were heavily influenced by Greek Platonism, dualism, Manicheanism , pagan asceticism, Roman law and culture, gnosticism, etc. Jerome even claimed “women are the root of all evil.” I’ll take the Bible over that lot any day.
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@ dubiouswonder
DubiousWonder, your behavior is unspeakably arrogant! It’s making me feel a bit embarrassed that you and I are involved in the same discussion. In other words it’s difficult to witness someone conceited and overconfident of knowledge but so poorly informed and unintelligent. I mean, it’s cute and all, but you’re presenting yourself as a high school freshman taking her first ethics class (if such a thing even exists anymore!).
Tell you what: here’s an “Us” magazine, a “Sex In The City 2” DVD, and a pair of skinny jeans to keep you occupied. In a few years you can come back and join us at the adult’s table. Okay? That’s a good girl!
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“Men have no reproductive rights at all – women hold *all* the cards.”
I wouldn’t say “all”. Men do have the right to not have sex with a woman thus not creating a child. However, once another human being has been created a man has no choice but to take care of it. Period. He should have to pay child support for the child. He agreed to the sex which means he also agreed to the risk of pregnancy. Once the sperm is deposited the woman pretty much does everything else. So in this case the power is tilted in the womans direction.
I feel like this whole issue goes awry when the woman shove this “power” in men’s faces. Its a real bitch move. You don’t have to brag about it, okay girls? Men overall need to be more selective with who they have sex with and they can definitely minimize the risk involved. I find it funny that a lot of guys in the gamesphere have random meaningless sex with women who would rape them for all they are worth if they accidentally got knocked up. They are taking HUGE risks. Before birth control didn’t women have to be ultra selective about who slept with because they had to ensure the father wouldn’t abandon the child. Now men need to be selective with who they sleep with or else they could be suck raising a illegitimate child with a neurotic woman.
I guess this is also boils down to whether men have power over whether a child is aborted or not too, right? Im going to say no on this as well. A man can’t tell a woman she should get an abortion or not. That would be ridiculous. If he doesn’t want to be the father of the child he shouldn’t have slept with the woman. If he does want to be the father of the child he should have avoided a careless woman that would get an abortion because of an unplanned pregnancy. Can any of this be risk free? No. You can never be 100% sure about anything.
This is why I wish both men and women would stop discounting the value of sex. Though we have condoms and birth control the risks are still there. People become so comfortable with the fact that the risks have been substantially lowered that they don’t know how to react when they get a child or STD out of it. No one is really mentally prepared for the ramifications.
What if people had to seriously consider “what if this ends up a pregnancy” or “what if I catch something” every single time? I think a lot less people would be screwing around.
Erm charm you should read what dalrock has to say on men having to pay child support for children women accidentally lost the birth control for
& men not having any say in aborting a child … Let’s just say forcing to pay men for children they dont want, is exactly the same as paternity fraud
Today women have NO excuse for getting pregnant, if they dont want children, as they literally have hundreds of contraceptives & birth control available to them …
Women have No excuse for getting pregnant, unless they want to get pregnant, in fact you could argue it’s impossible for a woman to get pregnant, with the MASSIVE amounts of contraceptives & birth control pills & clinics available to them
Basically today, ALL women who get pregnant against the will of a man, get pregnant precisely BECAUSE they want to get pregnant
AS it’s impossible to get pregnant, for a woman in todays pill & after morning pill, as well as abortion world
So essentially ALL women who get pregnant against the mans, permission are committing paternity fraud
Also If you read the more recent articles, you’ll realise it’s men who decide if a woman has a right to reproduce or not
Basically women only have a short window of fertility of about 5 years from 25 to 30, if men decide not to have a relationship with her for the sake of a family, within that short period, she will be childless for the rest of her life
While men can have children, all the way upto the age of 80, making men the ones who have reproductive control over the NUMBER of children conceived
@Charm
“I find it funny that…”
Full-stop. Until you can deal with these issues in a mature and sensible way you are part of the problem. Is a man having his penis cut off by a woman funny to you as well? Think honestly. If you find that in the least “funny” you are a long, long way from having anything of value to add to this corner of the internet.
I should also mention that there are something like 20 different identified methods of non-permanent birth control for women and
ONE
for men.
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@Sheila Gregorie
Have you noticed the New Testament never gives a wife the right to divorce her husband for adultery? Jesus said that if a man divorced his wife, except for fornication, and married another, he committed adultery. Whoever marries her that is divorced commits adultery. That’s in Matthew 19. Matthew 5 talks about a man divorcing his wife and marrying and other and causing his wife to commit adultery.
None of those verses even say a woman can divorce her husband for adultery. Matthew 19 is commentary on the Law of Moses, wherein a man could give his wife a writing of divorcement. It didn’t work the other way around. If a woman were married to a scoundrel, she couldn’t get a legal divorce under the Law of Moses by giving HIM a writing of divorcement. It didn’t work that way.
Yes, men and women were treated differently when it came to marriage in the Old Testament. There are even laws regulating polygamy, polygyny, not polyandry. The later would be considered adultery.
Paul’s commentary on marriage under the law, perhaps informed by Christ’s teaching, says that “if, as long as her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress”.
The book of Mark mentions the idea of a woman divorcing a man, but only to forbid it. Nowhere does either New or Old Testament permit a woman to unilaterally divorce her husband– even for adultery, abuse, or otherwise.
Instead, the wife is told “Let not the wife depart from her husband. But if she depart, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.” Compare that to Paul’s commentary on the law that if, as long as her husband lives, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress.
Also notice that the exception clause in Matthew is for fornication–for ‘porneia’, not for adultery per se. One can debate whether fornication refers to extra-marital sex or premarital sex (as in the case of the bride not being a virgin on her wedding night) or a broader meaning that includes the various sexual crimes listed in scripture. But the New Testament does not list ‘adultery’ as grounds for divorce in any passage.
The Bible does not call viewing porn adultery. If a man were able to view porn or go to strip clubs without looking at the women with lust, he wouldn’t be committing adultery in his heart. (That’s probably not possible for most men.) Porn is not a sin. Looking with lust is.
What is the relationship of husband and wife. Genesis says ‘one flesh.’ Paul describes sexual relations as making a man ‘one with her in body’ with a woman. If a man looks with lust on a woman, where does he commit the sin? In his heart. The heart belongs to the Lord. A wife cannot look into her husband’s heart. The Bible says that man looks on the outward appearance, but that God looks on the heart. Committing adultery in the heart is a sin against God. It may affect’s one’s spouse, but it is not grounds for divorce.
If looking with lust is grounds for adultery, is harboring hatred in your heart grounds for the death penalty?
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An interesting discussion on several levels. Before I took the Red Pill and saved my marriage, for now at least, I saw Fireproof and it was a terrible disaster. I knew it was bad but now see the femocentric doctrine through the amber glasses.
The statement from the wife complaining about his porn and then refusing to put out is so enraging. The man was taking NOTHING away from her and she was practically BRAGGING about not fucking him (“and you won’t get any because you care more about saving for your boat than you do about me”). I felt he was the wronged party in the movie at the time and now I know it. In fact, she reminds me of my own wife in my Blue Pill days (i.e. almost my entire life) before I started lifting weight (again), took over several household chores, learned game, started praying the Rosary weekly, resolved to give the family only positive energy, got a better job, took control of the kids, and ultimately started flirting with hot girls in public and dropped the hard dread. In a way I did the same thing as the guy in Fireproof except for the dread and some specific demands: Sex twice a week at a minimum, Captain/First Officer is our new arrangement (pursuant to Biblical principles), you respect me as a man and the head of the home (ditto) or I am gone. You may not be able to “negotiate desire” but women respond to dominance and sexual aggression and once you start having sex more frequently, if you are improving as a man it just might snowball. Disarming my wife’s sexual power was the game changer and she has never been happier in her life- or more sexually responsive.
The divorce/remarriage problem, especially with second families where we are demanding the break-up of a second family as well is one of the most difficult Ecclesiastical questions. To the hard-core marriage is forever crowd: Isn’t it possible the just Son of God might distinguish His blanket statements when more facts about particular cases are given to Him? This does not limit the serious issue with the growth of divorce excuses Dalrock points out to us such as addiction or a man viewing porn. These are not grounds for divorce, clearly and the fact leading Christian women otherwise is chilling. However, there are grounds for Divorce such as the before-mentioned married to an unbelieving, non-Christian, abusive Meth Addict. You can’t tell me the Lord will not provide special dispensation in a lot of cases. Certainly NOT the I’m not haaaapppyyy divorces but in a lot of them. I think as many as 10% of Divorces filed by women today might be justified on the Day of Judgement.
On the Fuckbots: This is going to decrease women’s sexual power and there will be hell to pay. More important, because of the addiction and the resulting decrease in children and declining population, societies that survive will heavily regulate or ban them. Nations that allow these devices will eventually collapse.
On Porn: The argument that looking at a porn star in lust is different than looking at another woman in lust as prohibited by the Lord makes a lot of sense if you think about it. The Porn Star is an icon or a set of holes if you prefer. She is not a “woman” in the sense you are going to pursue her and lust after her. Jesus point was basically not to start down the road towards sin whatsoever and he purposely chose an extreme example to also make the point that all men are sinners.
On Democracy and Dictatorships: The Ancient Greeks placed a time limit on democracies of about 250 years. That time limit is still in effect. Dictatorships arise from the ashes of the previous system and as noted, they are typically not very creative, have slow economic growth, and oppressive conditions for most subjects. That said, a male oriented dictatorship that wipes clean the divorce laws and puts in a new, fair system (perhaps restoring marriage 1.0 with public floggings and executions for hypergamous sluts and delinquent assholes) might be the only way to restore sanity.
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I’m in a tough situation that I know my wife is cheating, but she along with her family talks to me in terms of an animal with confusion, what are they trying to do to me…. I’m constantly feeling overwhelmed
Eric – you’re waking up – go slow – I suggest you let your family believe they are still your masters as you’re realizations unfold – and while you explore outside your cage when nobody’s looking, I suggest you get a PO box and then apply for a few credit cards. Have the statements and the purchases sent to your PO box or some place where only you can pick it up. Congratulations on your new found humanity and masculinity. Go slow and minimize your panic, feelings of helplessness and rage – if your wife is cheating on you, it’s time to go. Start planning your life accordingly. I hear Kawasaki’s ZZR 1400 is a lot of fun on the interstate at 3am doing about 120 with a green light on your Dove radar/laser detector.
Kawasaki’s ZZR 1400,
Highwasp, I would have that wrapped around a tree inside a week. That’s one reason why I ride one of these instead:
Surprisingly, it will do around 85-90 mph at redline, although I’ve only had mine up to 65 – which is terrifying on a bike that size.
_____________________________________________
Eric,
I feel for you, man, and I’ll pray for you. I don’t know the details of your situation so I won’t give any advice other than to pray yourself, seek the guidance and support of Christian men who are not of the blue-pill persuasion, and be ready for things to end (either by your decision of hers). “Be ready” may well include making discreet arrangements to protect yourself and your kids, if you have any. I think that if I discovered that my wife was cheating I’d kick her to the curb and leave her with as little as possible, but I understand some guys who want to try to make it work for whatever reasons. I won’t say either is the right answer for you.
Eric – I’m sorry to hear about what hell you’re going through. I agree with Highwasp about keeping things close to the vest around her family and those in your own family who don’t ‘get it’…
Point #1 is to quietly go about commencing due diligence in finding the best, most vicious divorce attorney you possibly can find. My attorney is a pitbull of an ex-military man who will wage nuclear war for his clients if necessary. Find someone like that. Put yourself first.
Listen to this attorney and listen to nobody else regarding brass tacks of what to do specifically. Hopefully you also have or can seek out a few men in your community with whom you can relate, regarding this challenge you face. All the best, and stay strong. Strength is everything in matters such as these.
haha – yeah Lyn87, your bike looks a lot more safe, practical and much less expensive… besides, all the trips to the school, the grocery store and the gym would be a lot more fun on that scooter instead of a car. I agree and didn’t necessarily mean to put Eric at physical risk – however – an empty interstate in the wee hours of the morning, after everyone is asleep and before anyone gets up, is a thing of technological and engineering beauty – and well built for excessive speeds.
Yeah – careful with that. A close friend of mine died at age 26 due to a sneaky black ice scenario on an early-spring night. Though I hadn’t spoken with him for a week beforehand, I just know that he was racing his car in anger over a particular one-itis (one of several he’d had). From the crash details (and his life situation at the time), it’s clear that he was driving from her city to his father’s town, 20 minutes away.
About 2 months before that, he and i had gone out drinking. He offered to drive after leaving the bar. It was the dead of winter, but no ice on the road thankfully. Because he revved up the speed to about 90 miles an hour on a backroad, and I screamed at him to cut the sh*t. Eerie stuff.
So be careful.
Steve – oh – black ice – no bueno – (and one-itis is a killer too)
I guess we could take the above late night interstate scenario and preface it with;
~ In The Summertime ~
Dear Eric:
No personal advice to give (I’m single); but, aside from this blog, many have had good results at Athol Kay’s “Married Man Sex Life” site, and also at Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” forums. Google them.
Otherwise, keep being smart. There are men around here who went off half-cocked and ended up in jail (even shouting at princess can get you a night there, as I understand it) or in the poorhouse. Don’t make any rash decisions, and start building a network of solid men who can keep you grounded.
Regards, Boxer
Your attitude is refreshing. It’s disgusting how people play games with language to try to deny their wrong behavior. If only these people had some deeper philosophical insight maybe the world wouldn’t be so screwed up.
Personally, I believe all marriage begins at first sexual contact (I.e. the genitals), whether or not there is a piece of paper from the government or an official wedding ceremony. The fallacy of modern sexual promiscuity is that people are basically committing divorce over and over again without admitting it.
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A woman can choose either to be beautiful to one man for a lifetime, or beautiful to many men for a few years.
The catholic church say no sex before marriage and only one marriage in your life. Many protestant churches are more indulgent on that subject.
Was part of Christianity are you writing about on your website?
Here we are again, with these fantasies and teories about how monogamy.
For start, no sex before marriage is dumb but not that dumb. It at least prevents STD.
But I am sick and tired of these fantasies about polygamy or promiscuity. But ask yourself have you ever been really promiscous? I mean really, not in your own mind but in reality you know had alot of women? You know its far more dangerous than you can imagine, to be promiscous especially in these days.
Sadly I was promiscous, I am not proud of my past, but past is past. At start I thought I was the alpha dog, I was at my height of life, but then reality kicked in. The more women you actually have, the more boring regular sex becomes and the more perverse you start to be. From start its just teenage wet dreams + ego trip coming to life you get fuffilled but as every addiction you want more, you start becoming hollow slowly decaying, losing your morals, losing your mind after every single women you had, it just becomes a mechanical thing. Then when you get into some perverted stuff, you just stop and look at yourself and you ask yourself what the heck am I doing, this is not me.And you know it has to end, you know deep inside its wrong utterly wrong, even though Hollywood and every middle aged crisis and teenage guy dreams about living the single life. Luckily I have found the line where it had to stop, luckily I only got some minor STD.
I was against monogamy too, heck I couldnt be in long term relationship longer than 3 months. When I finnally found the charm of one night stands and single life, I thought to hell with this I am never going to get married, goodbye relationships wich only hurt me in the long run. It was a mix of teenage dreams and pain from past relationships + some pinch of ego drive….but now I understood that there is only monogamy, building a life with someone you care about, with someone who supports you is 1000x more fuffilling and beautifull than some cheap drug driven orgies. Some dreams should never come to reality. Believe me after seeing the shit I have seen, finding a good hearted faithfull woman is almost impossible these days. But you losers that have found that miracle woman who has golden heart and faithulness, you will leave her because of some one night stand, because of your pathetic little ego.Lets not think about STD, imagine if you would contract HIV, would you be happy?
So please, dont go the road of promiscuity, its a trap seriously. I know your ego down there burns, wants to be the alpha male to be like in the movies. But in reality you are pathetic promiscous monster. If you are teenager, heck go away in my opinion you should get experience before you get married, thanks to mine past I have such self consciousness + I got some experience with how to deal with women psychology wise and well psychically too. But dont sacrifice something worthy for something that doesnt have value and mainly find a line where it has to end, its addiction.
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