Reframing Christian marriage part 5: sex as a weapon.

Denying sex is the modern Christian wife’s go-to method of maintaining her control of the marriage.  Judging whether he loves her sufficiently is effective as emotional manipulation, but it lacks the raw power that withholding sex has.  In this sense, judging him as not sufficiently loving her is as much a rationalization for her use of sex as manipulation as it is manipulation in and of itself.

In 1 Corinthians 7 Paul neatly frames the morality of sex and how it relates to marriage.  As he explains, marriage is the one and only safe harbor for sexual desire.  It is the Biblical answer to those who burn with desire.  Because of this, he makes it clear that neither spouse is to withhold sex, and that each spouse has authority over the bodies of the other in this regard.  This is very different than the modern view that sex is moral if it involves “love” and/or (serial monogamous) “commitment”.  As Paul describes it there is nothing wrong with burning with sexual desire so long as it is directed towards your spouse, and so long as you don’t defraud your spouse of the marital sex which is their due.  He states that to deny sex to your spouse is to invite Satan to tempt your spouse with sexual sin.

But as you can imagine this presents an obvious problem.  How can a Christian wife exercise control of her husband by withholding sex?  How is she supposed to make him submit to her if she lacks this powerful tool in her arsenal?  In fact, as Paul explains it she actually is commanded to submit to her husband sexually!  Clearly there must be a mistake.  If there is one thing she knows, it is that she isn’t really supposed to submit to her husband, despite the clear language and the frequency of the command.

So she goes to work looking for a rationalization.  Certainly there must be a loophole.  What if she isn’t in the mood?  While no other commands from God require that we be in the mood to fulfill them, certainly this one is different.  Otherwise she would have to submit to her husband in a very profound way, in a way which the Book of Oprah explains should only be reserved for the heroes of romance novels.  Her husband is her help meet, her holy kitchen bitch, not a gallant knight on a white steed!

But all of this sounds so arbitrary.  If one isn’t careful it could sound like manipulation.  And she is of course a submissive Christian wife, just not in that way (or any other meaningful way).  There must be another test, something which only she can be the judge of.  Luckily she already has one, in the form of testing the purity of his love.  With a slight adaptation, she can combine the concept of judging the purity of his love with the non Biblical idea that sex gains moral purpose if it is expressed only out of love, not out of that dirty lust that men have and women don’t.

Behold the modern Christian wife’s frame regarding sex in marriage.  Sex in marriage is good, so long as it is on her terms (she isn’t submitting) and so long as it is strictly romantic in nature.  If her husband wants sex when she isn’t in the mood, well it probably is because she is too tired.  Surely he would have better chances if he did more of the housework so she would be fresh and rested when he made his advances.  Also, his need for sex must not actually be a need for sex.  If he burns with the passion the Bible tells us marriage is a safe harbor for, his thoughts are impure and she will turn him away.

I’ve referenced Sheila Gregoire previously in this series, but this really is her area of specialty.  Sheila has written multiple books on sex aimed at Christian wives, and has devoted large segments of her blog to the topic.  Sheila’s frame is very much the non Biblical frame I describe above.  When prodded she will at times acknowledge that denial of sex is an act of defrauding, but her overall tone is to validate the idea that sex will happen on the wife’s terms.  Her fundamental approach to wives denying sex to their husbands is to find ways for the wives to decide they want it.  This of course leaves the Christian wife safely in the driver’s seat.

The idea that husbands have to prove the purity of their sexual intent is a common theme from the women who read her blog, and I’ve never seen her bat this down.  In her post How A Marriage Changes she quotes a commenter named Timbreldancer from a previous post confessing about why she denied sex to her husband (emphasis in original):

What made the biggest difference for us, in the long run, was that I began to realize that my husband wasn’t the big, selfish “jerk” I thought he was, just because he wanted to have sex on a regular basis. I give 100% credit to God for the change that saved our marriage. On a practical level, though, it came down to the fact that I didn’t really believe my husband loved me like he said he did. Despite all of his selfless service to me, I always felt he was doing it either because (a) he wanted to anyway or (b) he was trying to manipulate me into doing something he wanted (like have sex, for example). Because of that, I either didn’t recognize the basis of his caring acts, or I assumed they had a completely selfish basis and I resented him. Resentment turned to bitterness turned to hatred turned to almost divorcing him.

Note the threatpoint of frivolous divorce weaved in there as a caution;  don’t push your rebellious wife men if you know what is good for you.  Elsewhere in the quote she reinforces this in reference to a husband commenting on another thread:

I think George is doing an awesome job of being caring and thoughtful, and having him become uncaring and unthoughtful (or demanding) is not likely to have the kind of effect he would hope for. It may, however, wake his wife up, but possibly at the expense of his marriage. My husband chose the route of becoming uncaring and unthoughtful, and it did eventually wake me up, but it also greatly endangered our marriage and also caused some serious problems with our children. If I hadn’t been extremely committed to staying married and if I hadn’t had numerous friends who were willing to pray for us, I’m fairly certain we would be divorced now.

There is only one way to deal with a wife denying sex, and that is compliance.  Husbands must prove to their rebellious wives that their intentions are pure, that they aren’t like all of those other men.  Sheila reinforces this in her commentary:

I strongly agree with the idea that this commenter put forward, about having an honest talk where you ask what you can do to help your spouse feel more loved. I know this sounds backwards; you, after all, are the one who doesn’t feel loved. But the truth is that neither of you is connecting, and by showing her (or him) that you realize this, then your spouse will probably start to feel more positively towards the relationship, too.

A reader named Toni commented with the same message:

It’s taken some time, but my husband and I have learned the very fine art of having a wonderful sex life. We both had to let go of expectations and misunderstandings along the way. One of the things I had to learn and accept about my husband is his absolute desire to please and satisfy me. I now understand that he doesn’t just want sex, he wants sex specifically with me! And the same goes for me! This helped me understand the difference between just having sex and the beauty of love making.

The larger comment received Sheila’s enthusiastic stamp of approval:

Exactly, Toni! Great point. Thanks so much for sharing.

Another commenter weighs in with the same frame:

I was like Toni for a long time, in that I didn’t understand that my husband wanted to make love to me – I thought he just wanted sex because he’s a guy, because that’s the message we get everywhere. That made me resentful. I still desired him – I have always desired only him – but I eventually started to feel disconnected when we had sex. I didn’t know why until I started reading your blog, Sheila.

Commenter Phyliss weighs in with a success story about how her withholding sex ultimately lead to the husband she had always wanted.  Her happy ending involved the “Love Dare”, from the movie Fireproof.

I suggest reading the entire post and comment section, but I will warn you that it is a flat out rationalization hamster stampede with a great deal of random darting back and forth.  One of the commenters actually recognized that her not submitting to her husband was causing her to not feel attracted to him, but she framed this as strictly his failure.  He needs to learn game to please her;  he doesn’t need to be restored to his rightful position as head of the household.

While the last wife I mentioned had part of it wrong, she definitely was on to something.  Sheila herself brushes against this truth in her book Honey, I Don’t Have a Headache Tonight: Help for Women Who Want to Feel More In the Mood.  Chapter 7 is tantalizingly titled “Who Wears the Pants in This Family?”.  In that chapter, Sheila explains that the origins of Feminism were good and pure, but that it was corrupted by non Christian women in the 1960s.  She does criticize the war on men/boys, and at one point suggests that women “wave the white flag” in the war of the sexes.  But all of this strikes me as just touching on the surface of the issue.  In the same chapter she tells us that while women should embrace their femininity, there are limits:

There’s also no need to become what he thinks is pretty.  Some men, like my husband, have a preference for women in long hair.  Keith, however, is oblivious to all of the mousse and blow drying that would be involved in making my long hair do anything other than hang there limply.  I think it’s difficult for most women over thirty to pull off long hair with panache.  Cut my hair and highlight it and I look much more sophisticated, and I feel far less frumpy!

One thing she does describe is how when she lets her husband lead her she feels attracted to him.  On those occasions where he is twirling her around instead of twirling around doing chores for her, she feels a sudden increase in libido.  For that brief moment, he leads and she follows.  Instead of quoting the book I’ll let her husband describe it to you in one of their promotional videos:

Christian wives employing denial of sex have another problem, however.  The Bible is very clear that this creates an opening for Satan.  Yet if the husband isn’t kept sexually unsatisfied she will lose much of her power over him.  This means not just denying him the sex which is his due as her husband, but ensuring that he doesn’t have any other outlets of release.  And what of her own culpability for creating sexual temptation in her husband contrary to specific Scriptural injunction?  The answer here is to invert the meaning of the command to not deny sex at risk of creating temptation for sexual sin.  In this new twisted version of the Scripture, wives are commanded not to deny their husbands sex unless their husband is tempted by sexual sin.  As Sheila explains in Chapter 4:

If your husband uses pornography, Marnie Ferre advocates refusing to have sex with him.  Think of it like an alcoholic;  you wouldn’t offer an alcoholic a drink, so you shouldn’t offer a pornography addict something that will feed his addiction, either.  That may sound drastic, but he is committing adultery because he’s lusting after somebody else (see Matt. 5:28).  And the more he has sex with pornography in his mind, the harder it becomes for him to change.

Aside from conflating viewing porn with porn addiction and adultery her analogy is simply not Biblical.  Denying a husband who is tempted by porn the healthy sex which is his due as your husband is better compared to denying someone clean water because they are so thirsty they are tempted to drink out of the sewer.  The rebellion of wives in this area is very clear, and Sheila knows it.  Yet when Paul’s warning comes to pass, she takes that as reinforcing the wife’s justification for rebellion.

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321 Responses to Reframing Christian marriage part 5: sex as a weapon.

  1. thanks! says:

    I am not a Christian, but I’ve been reading your blog for a few months, and this series hits the nail on the head with regard to my experiences with the cohabiting (mistake) “modern Christian” (mistake) woman I’ve been with for several years. She’s tried most of the tactics you’ve mentioned to control me in the relationship — guilting me about my needs, withholding sex, etc. — and she can’t understand why a marriage proposal isn’t in the works. Even for a non-Christian man, a wife who won’t submit is a nonstarter. What I’ve found is that even though I’ve asserted my will and retaken control of the relationship, my newly found extra value and the resentment toward her prior treatment of me has made it impossible for me to consider moving things forward. I can do better, and she’s pushing 30 (in age, and in pounds gained since we moved in together) as a mimosa-sipping ladies’ brunch devotee. I’m just glad I found this corner of the web before I compounded my mistake. My new job starts in a few months, and it looks like I’ll be flying solo.

  2. CL says:

    I think it’s difficult for most women over thirty to pull off long hair with panache.

    That’s odd; when I lived in the south of France the majority of the women over 40 I saw had beautiful long hair and dressed nicely to boot. If you saw them from behind, you could easily mistake them for women half their age. That dumpy cut Sheila has is more work than long hair (take it from a woman who has had every hair length imaginable). She openly admits she is not interested in pleasing her husband with this stupid rationalisation.

  3. The moral godless says:

    In general, it seems like women have collectively decided it doesn’t matter if men get any benefit from being married. It doesn’t even seem to matter what ideological or religious background they come from.

  4. Columnist says:

    Muslim sources are more and more railing against pornography, so expect these things to happen in Muslim marriages, too.

  5. Cane Caldo says:

    @TMG

    It’s actually worse than that. Feminism sees happiness as a zero-sum game; just as socialism does wealth. Whatever money you have is money someone else doesn’t have. Therefore, you’re impoverishing them. Whatever happiness the husband has is, therefore, happiness that is not the wife’s. We must redistribute the happiness.

    Moreover, feminists take it as fact that since the dawn of man, there has been an enforced wealth imbalance with men hoarding wealth from women. Until that is totally reversed and women have everything, and men nothing, can men be safe. They refuse to accept that actually, when I become wealthy, and hire others, I give them a chance to be so, too. They’d rather be the boss, and run the whole thing into the ground.

    On the post itself:

    What a lot of Christian women key on (from 1 Cor. 7) is verse 5: “Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

    A limited time? How long is that? Why, it must be as long as it takes for her to feel in the mood! They’ll dispense with the prayer, and–with that freed up time–double-down on self control. See, in her mind, she doesn’t lack self control, so that part is really about him. Now she has a case: she’s allowed to call an approved sex time-out, he lacks self control, and he’s working with Satan. Surely God agrees with her that the deprivation time should continue. She’ll feel it when the coast is clear, after he prays for forgiveness. It’s all right there in the Bible!

  6. CL says:

    @ Cane Caldo

    Of course, it seems that “limited time” is not meant to happen because she’s not in the mood, but in order to dedicate themselves selflessly to prayer (say, during Lent).

    (I know you were being sarcastic, ftr).

  7. Suz says:

    I feel sorry for Keith – his grovelling, self-effacing gratitude (and stunned surprise) because his wife actually wanted to have sex with him, is pathetic. She has him well trained.

    …and speaking of training,
    thanks!,
    On the one hand, your GF is merely living by her lifelong feminist training, and you can expect that from most women. On the other hand, if her response to your RE-training, is half-hearted and resistant, they by all means, dump her sorry backside! Asserting your will and maintaining control of the relationship is your job as a man, but once learned (by her) the lessons SHOULD STICK. Evidence of that might come in the form of spontaneous and unsolicited acknowledgement/support of your leadership.
    If her heart hasn’t changed, why waste your energy being a slave to “educating” her? Dominating your relationship shouldn’t be a constant uphill battle.

  8. elm says:

    My husband is a great dancer and dancing is a fantastic turn-on. Dancing is something very primal and natural to humans.

  9. Joe says:

    Nothing is going to change until there is a collective change of behavior regarding the issue of pre-marital sex. Almost everyone indulges in pre-marital sex, which was always traditionally seen as being un-Christian behavior.. After indulging in pre-marital sex and being unChristian in that sense, one is not automatically turn into an old-fashioned Christian just because one is now married.
    Men who indulge in pre-marital sex cannot expect their wives to act Christian,when they themselves indulged in immorality.
    It’s a two way street. Both sexes need to start behaving in a Christian way long before they ever get married, or nothing is going to change.Men were in the forefront of the sexual liberation movement, and the women tagged along.
    Women are not the only ones who need to get their act together.

  10. MarkyMark says:

    TGIS, Baby! Thanks for reminding me why I am SINGLE…

  11. The moral godless says:

    Joe: The sexual liberation movement was initiated and led by the “women’s liberation movement” not by men. It is true that many men rushed headlong in to join the fray. But only the most attractive and powerful males, and young attractive females, really get a lot of great sex out of sexual liberation. The rest of us don’t even get that, and we bear the brunt of the consequences.

  12. The moral godless says:

    Cane: I agree with you that most women take great pleasure in seeing men unhappy, and there has been much BS spouted about men’s supposed domination in the past.

    I’m imagining a soldier slowly dying of a gut wound in the trenches, and thinking “Well this sucks but thank GOODNESS i’m not sitting at home raising my children! Women are so oppressed!”

    Women perceive men as tools, and a happy, self-sufficient tool is harder to control than a tool that is looking to women for approval and happiness. Unfortunately, this is a part of female nature, not something caused by feminism.

  13. Joe

    Thats a massive bit of nonsense you just wrote. You did manage to talk all balanced and fair and stuff you know, but thats just goofy…..that men and women have premarital sex is a sin against a standard. That a wife refuses sex to husband is a sin against another, separate standard, to say men cannot expect women to “start acting Christian” is simply amazingly off.

    Lets see Joe….how about this, wife had premarital sex, hubby was a virgin…..hubby then starts looking at porn daily…….
    Is it mitigating or exculpatory that she had premarital sex?

    You have so many things conflated and confused and all of it is for one big white knight fest reason.

    These standards are GODS. The standards are between the individual and God, not between each other.

  14. Justin Bieber says:

    Shelia and the women of her echo chamber (read blog) are struggling to protect their interest, maintain their market dominance and control the discussion/debate about their industry association: abritators of sancitioned sex ala “the pussy cartel”.

    Just like the MSM, govt entities and just about all industries; the internet and it’s ability to transmit and transfer truths, experiences and dialog that current cartel stakeholders deny and marginalize will make them irrelevant and unable to cope or create positions of strength in the “readjusted” new world order of unintended consquences. Ex. All former major newspapers and television and movie studios.

    Just saying…I wouldn’t worry.

  15. Comment_Whatever says:

    I think it’s difficult for most women over thirty to pull off long hair with panache.

    She is being lazy. All women know that long hair is sexier and she simply can’t be bothered to do it.

    Oh yeah, she is swell.

  16. Comment_Whatever says:

    Nothing is going to change until there is a collective change of behavior regarding the issue of pre-marital sex. Almost everyone indulges in pre-marital sex, which was always traditionally seen as being un-Christian behavior.. After indulging in pre-marital sex and being unChristian in that sense, one is not automatically turn into an old-fashioned Christian just because one is now married.
    Men who indulge in pre-marital sex cannot expect their wives to act Christian,when they themselves indulged in immorality.
    It’s a two way street. Both sexes need to start behaving in a Christian way long before they ever get married, or nothing is going to change.Men were in the forefront of the sexual liberation movement, and the women tagged along.
    Women are not the only ones who need to get their act together.

    So basically you are like a woman who never forgives anything… unless it is to her advantage of course!

  17. CL says:

    Long hair is also cheaper if you don’t use a load of chemical junk on it. You can trim the ends yourself and there is little maintenance. I haven’t paid for a haircut in close to 9 years and all I use on it is shampoo, conditioner and if it’s really humid out, a little bit of anti-frizz serum (or you could use a tiny bit of coconut oil, that works too). I don’t even blow dry (which isn’t good for hair anyway). Women ruin their hair with dyes and chemicals and heat. If you must dye it, use henna (it comes in all sorts of natural colours these days, not just bright orange).

    Unless you have totally crazy hair, long hair is easier than short to maintain. It’s best to just work with what you have though, rather than trying to force curly hair to be straight. I’m not sure where this myth that long hair is so difficult comes from but if a woman says this, she is most likely lying. It’s really a simple thing to do to make yourself more attractive. Men don’t notice if it isn’t all ‘styled’ fancy; they only notice long or short, and the vast majority prefer long. It’s quite easy to stand out when everyone else is either flashy or slovenly.

    Why wouldn’t a woman want to please Her Man? Why would she do the opposite of what he wants and then complain that he looks at other women? Then denying him sex to top it all off! ::facepalm::

    Sheila’s advice twists and turns all over the place to avoid the simple fact that a wife is supposed to submit to her husband in everything. Yet here we have wives who won’t even keep their hair long, because it’s “difficult”? I’m sure loving a woman “as Christ loves the Church” can be difficult too, but Lord have mercy, asking a woman to have long hair is beyond the pale!

  18. john2.0 says:

    Re:video

    You can really tell who wears the pants in that family, tragic they are presenting themselves as a model to emulate. You can tell he is under the cosh in everyway. I’ve been in a marriage like that before and it was utter hell.

    Just imagine a woman being able to submit to a man, and him being able to love her. The joy that could be created in that situation would be amazing .

    It always amazes me when simple biblical instructions are followed and the results of that, its something you rarely see these days. And possibly impossible to implement in our culture going forward.

    Also, the movement that co-joins looking at an erotic ‘image’ of a woman as equivalent to looking and lusting at a actual woman, is again, just a distortion of scripture. Jesus mentioned this to hit the Pharisees who were skirting around the law while fulfilling any and all desires that they had, hmmm kinda christian feminist when you think about it. Are they the new Pharisees ?

    Do women – fundamentally try and control everything about a man’s sexuality I wonder ?

  19. john2.0 says:

    @CL

    I really enjoy reading your comments.

    “I’m sure loving a woman “as Christ loves the Church” can be difficult too” – I think this is something that needs to be fleshed out, what does God mean by this ?

    Christian feminists have reinterpreted this to mean “love your wives as they want loved in everything” in actuality Christ loving us is in nothing like that.

    God disciplines those whom he loves, how many wives would be up for that ??

  20. Shlomo Seltzer says:

    A wife who does not have frequent and regular sex with her husband is worse than useless. I am currently in that boat but, since I have kids with my wife, I’m stuck until they grow-up. What my wife can’t seem to figure out is why I’m withdrawing emotionally from the marriage. If an opportunity were to come my way, I don’t know if I would want to resist, never mind if I can resist.

  21. ballista74 says:

    This is one reason most young men, especially those that can get pre-marital sex if they want it, don’t marry. Most men, especially in pulling out the wedding cake sexual inhibition joke, realize that marriage is a sure end in most all cases to any reasonable sexual access. It’s not hard to see in reading such stories that it’s a means of control the woman uses over the man. Not to mention, seeing things like Fireproof where the wife denies her husband sex, and then cries even more when he turns to porn.

    One would go crazy in this world if they were searching it looking for sanity.

  22. ballista74 says:

    And to go on, it can’t even show that there is a minor indulgence with most, such as comes to the hair thing. In a way, it seems consistent overall with feminism. That is something I see overall, and read overall as doubts for considering marriage from many men. Something so small, yet such a dividing point that comes from women. Really to be successful, each person in the marriage has to give some of these little indulgences to the other, and if a woman can’t give on something so small, how can she follow when it comes to the big issues which make or break a couple such as finances, how to raise the children, and so on?

  23. Miss_Fu says:

    Very interesting post (as always). Gregiore’s position about what to do with a husband who views pornography perplexes me. DENY him sex? Really? Isn’t that like trying to put out a fire by pouring in gasoline?

    I’m not a Christian, but I am finding this topic of the modern Churchian view of marriage helpful in analyzing my own views in preparation for wifehood. I’m a Muslim and I see the seeds that give birth to this type of convoluted thinking being planted by Muslim liberals and some of our leaders.

    Anyway, keep up the good work, Dalrock.

  24. Brendan says:

    On the long and the short of it, I know quite a few women over 30 who have quite lovely long hair. Over 40 even. Go figure, eh? I also know quite a few women who threw in the towel about having long hair within a few years of being married, and have relatively unattractive/generic short hair (not the dramatic shorter styles that can also be sexy, but are apparently much more high maintenance). It isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but it is disrespectful of her husband’s attraction triggers, to say the very least. But, hey, he’s just supposed to deal. Not like being attracted to your wife is important at all, and if it is, well, you just have to will yourself into it. That’s the ticket.

    Very interesting post (as always). Gregiore’s position about what to do with a husband who views pornography perplexes me. DENY him sex? Really? Isn’t that like trying to put out a fire by pouring in gasoline?

    It’s quite counterproductive, as you point out. The idea behind that approach, I think, is that watching porn makes men sexually perverted, and addicted to orgasms, and so when they are having sex with their wives, this orgasm addiction is being indulged in, and he’s probably thinking of porn when he’s doing so. So, the approach is to go cold turkey on the real sex until he goes cold turkey on the porn and masturbation orgasms because he wants real sex back. It’s manipulative and uses sex as a weapon, but there it is, all out in the open for everyone to see. It’s not at all like an alcoholic, because for an alcoholic, there is *no* appropriate use of alcohol because they are prone to addict themselves to it — cold turkey is the best way in 99% of the cases (only a minuscule number of truly problem drinkers or alcoholics are ever able to drink “in moderation” after overcoming their addiction). Sex and orgasms are not like that at all — there is a legitimate place for them, and going cold turkey is no solution — it will not bring about moderation in most cases, but will generate a heap of guilt followed by resentment against the inflictor of that.

    It’s Fireproof in spades, really — almost to the tee.

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  26. CL says:

    @ john2.0

    Christian feminists have reinterpreted this to mean “love your wives as they want [to be] loved in everything” in actuality Christ loving us is in nothing like that.

    God disciplines those whom he loves, how many wives would be up for that ??

    Exactly. In this femDOM Churchianity, wives decide what “loving them” means and if a husband doesn’t live up to their unreasonable standards, she feels she is right in rejecting him sexually (i.e. rejecting him) and the herd rallies around her. Any kind of correction of her on his part is deemed “unloving” or even “abusive”.

    See 7man’s post today for a great example of this kind of thought: Quasi-Christian WK (self-loathing man).

    (I guess he should buy her some Haagen Daas, massage her shoulders and say “It’s OK dear, I love you just the way you aaaare. I’m sorry for being the Worst Husband Ever™ for looking at a naked woman on the Internet once.” And then go flog himself like Paul Hegstrom).

  27. Joe says:

    I am not a white knight. Both sexes are indulging in sexual immorality of all kinds-including a lot pre-marital sex.People don’t stop their immorality on a dime just beacuse they get married.
    Discipline and constraint have to start before marriage. That holds true for both sexes.
    Women are playing a lot of games now and are on a sexual power trip, to speak in general. If men constrained themselves more as per pre-marital sex, the women would follow, and wouldn’t play as many games.
    When abortion was legalized in 1973, the great bulk of those celebrating were men. I was 16 at the time and was amazed at how much abortion was celebrated by men. It got them “off-the-hook” and they were now free to indulge in pre-marital sex.
    In the world that I grew up in, a working-class,middle-class suburb of New York City, some women were very upset about the legalization of abortion. Some actually cried about it . The great majority of women that I knew seemed confused and dazed by it. I personally didn’t know any woman at the time who actually celebrated the legalization of abortion, but I knew many men at the time who did celebrate it.
    Morality is morality. To be immoral in one aspect of life affects the other aspects of life,as well. In the meantime,men need to reflect on their own behavior while trying to figure women out. It’s all connected, all of our collective behavior.
    This doesn’t make me a white knight trying to defend women’s lousy behavior. All standards of sin are connected one way or another and sin in one area will cause an unbalance and a restlessness in other areas.
    A return to discipline and constraint for those who are single and before they get married would greatly benefit the institution of marriage.

  28. Miss_Fu says:

    @Comment_Whatever
    “I think it’s difficult for most women over thirty to pull off long hair with panache.

    She is being lazy. All women know that long hair is sexier and she simply can’t be bothered to do it.

    Oh yeah, she is swell.”

    I agree with you that long hair is sexier, but I always hear older women telling one another to chop it off because they believe long hair doesn’t look good on women over 40. Either they don’t know or they’re just sabotaging one another the way only women can.

  29. Suz says:

    @ Shlomo:
    As you (understandably) withdraw emotionally from you marriage, I hope you are also quietly withdrawing assets. Chances are your wife doesn’t feel nearly as “stuck” as you do; she feels that sticking around is currently her best option. When she decides that your emotional withdrawl amounts to “ignoring her,” she will take you to the cleaners in revenge. My first suggestion is to try to fix your marriage if it’s not too late. But if there’s nothing left to fix, be prepared.

  30. Opus says:

    Ballroom Dancing is a woman’s answer to Safe Sex. It is an attempt to emasculate men whilst giving women Gina Tingles. It was one thing in the days before reliable female contraception and where men and women would enter marriage as virgins and at young ages, but now it is merely an attempt to control men and that is what I see Gregoire doing to her compliant husband. No wonder she looks so proud as her husband confesses to the congregation his emasculation and door-mat status.

    You could not pay me to do it now (and I learned how to do it at school – compulsory, I seem to recall). At fifteen (as I was) that was probably just as well as I was only too happy to get my hands on the girls (from another school) who we practised upon. Funny thing is; no two women dance alike, and all feel different as one dances with them. That was a useful lesson! I also learned that if one girl turns you down, they all will. Another lesson learned young. Leave dancing to women as they prance round their handbags. Better that way, as one sizes up the talent; which is the purpose.

    The attempt to reframe sex within marriage as Rape is something I utterly deprecate. It is no more possible to Rape ones wife than it is to be a Married Bachelor. Paul was right.

  31. ukfred says:

    There is one female Christian blogger who seems to have a slightly different take on denial of sex, certainly in this posting

    http://intimacyinmarriage.com/2011/03/19/would-you-be-fine-with-your-husband-having-sex-with-someone-else/

    It really does make a change for a Christian blogger to agree that denial of sex within marriage is infidelity towards your partner every bit as much as adultery.

  32. okrahead says:

    It would be interesting to find out how many of these womyn who withhold sex from their husbands while condemning pornography are themselves big fans of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” and its ilk. Just saying.

  33. James K says:

    Women have always used sex as a weapon. English Common Law took a biblical view of marriage, and decided that sex between a husband and wife could never constitute rape – a situation that persisted in England and some US states until the late 20th century. I am glad that we no longer have this archaic law.

    Loss of sexual desire is a miserable condition. A woman who lies still while her husband masturbates into her body might be following biblical guidance, but she is not going to become less miserable.

    This is a subject that we should all approach with humility, in the knowledge that as we get older, the tables are often turned: it is the husband who cannot match his wife’s desire. To make matters worse, if a woman is afraid of becoming less attractive as she ages, her husband’s loss of desire may come across as a personal affront. Conveniently for him, he has a get-out-of-jail-free card: if his wife cannot arouse him, he cannot give her her “conjugal rights” in the full sense.

    It is particularly unfortunate if a wife objects to her husband masturbating when she has lost her desire for him. What does she think she will be doing when he loses desire for her? Female masturbation is celebrated in women’s magazines and TV shows. Why should she disapprove of male masturbation? If a woman insists on this double standard, it suggests that her loss of desire is enmeshed with the idea of hurting or controlling her husband.

  34. Jason says:

    Hi Dalrock,

    Thanks for the excellent post. A good read and one that should probably be taken seriously by more women.

    What really struck me is that the advice is _so_ dangerous and _so_ bad for wives. I guess somebody really needs to sit these women down and explain to them the unavoidable reality of male sexuality. If he takes an interest in you then he will want to have sex with you, and rejecting him will cause him to withdraw and lose interest. The two go together. If you want a husband who pays attention and is interested in you, then you can’t simply ignore the sexual interest this generates and if you _do_ reject his advances regularly, then in the interests of not being rejected the guy will withdraw and lose interest. Then as Paul notes, he will be ripe for falling into sexual sin with the first pretty girl who does show an interest in him. This is all just so foolish for wives to do. And then when the guy does do the wrong thing (no excuses for adultery, it is wrong), the wife is the completely innocent party, even though she deliberately setup the circumstances.

    I thought the last part about pornography was interesting. I guess like much of this sort of advice there is a tiny nugget of truth buried in all this awful advice. It would not seem unreasonable for a wife to say to a husband who is using porn that he needs to choose. If he wants to be a lover to her then come on in, but that she wont reasonably compete for his affection with the computer. Some might disagree with this, but then again they might also presume porn is harmless and the data would seem to be pretty convincingly against them on that point.

    The really foolish part it seems about all of this is that in reality husbands and wives are deeply complimentary. Wives are the gatekeepers of sex (actually women in general) and husbands/men are the gatekeepers of commitment. Each wants what the other has to offer, and yet women are given all the horrible advice that denies the reality of the situation and just ends up making everybody miserable.

    When will we ever learn?

    Jason

  35. Cane Caldo says:

    A woman who lies still while her husband masturbates into her body might be following biblical guidance, but she is not going to become less miserable.

    Good point. She should bend over.

  36. Jason says:

    I think i’d have to agree with Joe a bit. I think his overall view is confused but he is right about premartial sex. Learning to control your sexual drive (both men and women) is an important discipline and is part of what growing up is all about. IF you never learn to say no to your sexual desire(before getting married) remaining faithful in marriage is going to prove problematic because you have never learned to say no.

    Although where I Think he is mistaken is in saying “men should avoid premartial sex”. Although entirely true and not necessarily bad advice, the problem with it is that as has always been the case, women are the gatekeepers of sex, and that has been what they have to bargin with when it comes to getting commitment from a man. However upsetting that probably sounds to many women, or how “coldly calculating” it is still true and needs to be explained to women.

    Men will be willing to pay for sex, and are willing to trade what they have to offer (commitment) for it, but many will be reluctant to do so while the asking price for sex from so many women is zero or nearly zero.

    And lets not get into the criminal fraud aspect of refusing to have sex with your husband. This, IIRC in the OT was a legitimate grounds for divorce. Certainly if modern women want to say that “porn == adultery/unfaithfulness” then men should push back with “denying sex == sexual unfaithfulness/fraud”. If anything the men have the stronger case it would seem.

    Jason

  37. Ariane says:

    Long hair is MUCH easier to take care of, and cheaper too. My last “haircut” was courtesy of a friend who relieved me of a couple inches of damage right before a big event. Total cost = zero. It does take a few extra minutes to dry it in the morning, but my husband likes the way it looks when I blow it out. A good conditioner and drying on low-and-slow will minimize the damage.

  38. infowarrior1 says:

    Joe next time when you make a claim please back it up. Otherwise we can only assume that by saying men are at the forefront of the sexual revolution is bunk and an example of blue pill thinking.

  39. Jason

    Sure Joe is right about premarital sex. 90% of the stuff white knights say specifically about me is in fact correct. Its the context that badly misguided. He is basically buttressing the sexual deniers position, whether he intends to or not.

    The framing of things is crucial. We live in a society where pointing out and admonishing mens proclivities is de rigueur while even a mention of womens proclivities ALONE AND UNIQUE are rare indeed. His post was what would pass as female acountability. IOW its as balanced as the church would dare get, because regardless the intent, it allows the women to find conditionality, and have that conditionality endorsed. He simply added to the list of reasons she will reject and justify it, that could have been written by Dalrock right into his post as yet another rationale.

    Seriously, I can name lots of things men do wrong. But frankly the point here isnt to self efface or mea culpa as men, there is more of that than can be imagined. If that same dynamic already existed among the women, then fine, lets us men get together and hold each other to account, lets talk about us men being better men, and all that. But today we talk about us men, and THEY talk about us men, and we wink and say they are helping us

  40. Dalrock says:

    @James K

    A woman who lies still while her husband masturbates into her body might be following biblical guidance, but she is not going to become less miserable.

    If your frame is that beta then I guess you are right. In that case, maybe she can make you a list of chores so she can reward you with sex from time to time. For men who don’t suffer from this frame, women find being owned by their man very arousing. It is the stuff of female fantasies.

  41. john2.0 says:

    @Jason

    I think (although disagree) they are trying with the porn=no sex point, is more like the junk food methodology,i.e. you are deny them junk eventually they will want the “real” thing.

    I think they are avoiding the real issue which is – what if this is something to do with her and his porn “addiction” is a reaction ? Only men with absolutely true addiction issues would really turn down sex in a perfect relationship. I would guess they are a small minority.

    I have known men being labelled as addicts, but generally they started to use because their partner let them-self go so badly they felt disgusted when they saw her and therefore had no desire to have sex. And porn use was the least harmful way of meeting their own needs as their partner refused to deal with the issue. Men do also have a large need to be attracted to their spouses, which then leads to sexual desire. One does not lead to the other unfortunately.

    They seem to label any porn use at all as “addiction”. You also state that you think that porn is harmful, as almost all men (and many women) have viewed this at some point if fleetingly, what evidence do you have for this ?

    Im interested in your statement that the lack of sex was in the OT legitimate grounds for divorce, so you have the verse ?

  42. CL says:

    Perhaps Joe is referring to the fact that the “women’s movement” was funded by the Rockefellers.

  43. Happy Wife says:

    You know, I really had not realized how widespread this type of thinking was until I rejoined the workforce at an all guy construction company. I am appalled at the hoops they jump through to appease their wives as if it’s just normal life. These men, who run million dollar jobs and command men each day as a matter of course, are at the mercy of the women who rule over them. And then they assume I understand and that my husband, who is also in construction, does all of these things too. I finally just started laughing and asking, “Have you met my husband?!? He would laugh in my face if I demanded he do any of that.”

  44. A few quick comments. I don’t much like ballroom dancing, but it does have some good points. Learning does give one an entree into the world of dance and, while not like learning a new language perhaps, does give you a new perspective.

    I can see that men might find it kind of faggy. But the faggy looking guy who runs the studio is married to a very nice looking girl. And if you appreciate legs, like me, dancing females tend to have good legs. My wife has good legs, and she would have looked great in one of those little Latin outfits once.

    Also, it is fundamentally male dominant because the man explicitly “leads”. Even the pretty but bitch-faced woman who teaches us keeps emphasising that. Also, my wife loves “twirling”. Maybe there is something about being twirled around that speaks to female fantasies.

    Another point. Never bargain with your wife for sex. What works for me is simply promising her a cuddle afterwards. She is not a prostitute and you are not her john. If the bitch expects you to do some domestic chore to “earn” sex, it is simply payment-in-kind and she is a whore, and a stupid one at that.

  45. Kel says:

    Dalrock,

    I think it’s time to state the obvious: these women are complete idiots. There’s no avoiding it at this point. The absolute stupidity in those comments is amazing.

    It’s one thing to discuss and debate with an intelligent person. But no one would begin to debate another person who flatly rejected reality. That’s what those women are doing.

    This comment takes the cake: “I didn’t understand that my husband wanted to make love to me – I thought he just wanted sex because he’s a guy, because that’s the message we get everywhere. That made me resentful.”

    Seriously… women are upset because their husbands WANT to have sex with their wives? What the hell!?!? I thought the timeless complaint was that husbands would want to have sex with other women instead of their wives. Now, wives are upset when husbands want it? With them? And they’ll only put out if it’s clear that the husband wants to have nice little romantic sex, with flowers and pillows (but possibly no erection), instead of ravaging her because she looks so damn hot when she wears her hair long?

    If they’re not complete morons, then those women MUST be lesbians. Maybe that’s it. Almost every teenage girl on the planet understands the rules of attraction and knows what turns men on, at an instinctual level. Long hair, showing skin, no fat, and flattery and a coquettish nature. A 12 year old girl knows this stuff attracts boys. That these women don’t know it either means they never had the brain chemistry to begin with, or they’ve doped themselves up anti-depressants and other crap (possibly birth control pill poisoning for decades?).

    Listen, all idiot women everywhere: MEN LIKE SEX. We don’t find it attractive when you act like a cold, frigid bitch. Wear your hair long, put some thought into your appearance, don’t pig out and become a walking land-whale, and you’ll find that you like it when your husband ravages you occasionally.

    At a fundamental level, these women are ENTIRELY about power. They care nothing of their husbands, men, boys, or anything else, except themselves. They will never trust anyone because to trust someone means to relinquish control, and God Forbid they actually engage in sweet surrender to their husbands and submit to his authority and leadership. “Screw that”, they think.

    I will never get married in America because to get married these days means CASTRATION.

    And Dalrock, once again I salute you. I only wish all of this actually made a difference in the long run.

  46. Jason says:

    @john 2.0

    Thanks for the comment john.

    Let me start at the end. You wont find a specific verse about it. Deuteronomy 24:1-4 is the covering of grounds for divorce in the OT and it is vague about what constitutes legitimate grounds. However your question did inspire me to try and get an interview with Dr David Instone-Brewer on the topic. It was him I originally learned about (IIRC) no sex (for a prolonged period and for no medical reason basiclly) as a grounds for divorce because it was part of the marriage contract.

    I don’t disagree with you that porn usage/addiction (porn does seem, from a biochemical stand point and the human brains reward system to be similar to heroin and other drugs) can be a response to a wife that refuses to hold up her end of the marriage contract. Although guys often go into marriage with years of porn usage under their belt already, and it does cause problems.

    Actually the phenomena of men preferring to masturbate and use porn instead of have sex with their wives is not entirely uncommon. Along with various other problems like an inability to rise properly to the occasion.

    Likewise I agree there are probably plenty of guys who have taken to using porn in response to wives letting themselves go etc. I have mixed feelings about this. I can understand the impulse and even sympathize but this is not really a good solution to the problem and will likely only cause more problems. I’m not sure porn use is every going to be the “least harmful” approach to solving the problem and it will likely exacerbate it further. Plenty of people become alcoholics and drug addicts as a means of dealing with some trauma they have experienced. Is this really the best/least harmful approach?

    As for evidence of porns harmful effects. I work in a ministry that seeks to help people with unwanted same-sex attraction and also heavy usage of pornography. I’ve seen the wreckage porn usage causes in peoples lives, problems it causes in marriages (even to guys married to some pretty hot women who may no longer be perfect after a few kids, but still by no means having “let herself go” to the point you probably have in mind).

    Also there is plenty of evidence from various parts of the biological sciences that points to the effects of porn usage on the brain, although I would not that when speaking of “porn usage” in this context we are talking about using pornography for the purposes of masturbating orgasm. Not simply the odd girly pic you might find up around the place in workshops and the like that is basically intended to be basely artistic.

    I wouldn’t recommend porn usage to anyone just because it is destructive and sex is not intended as a solo activity. The science appears to be in on the issue. I hate the term “settled science” but the negative side effects of porn usage and brain changes associated with pleasure and reward in human beings are pretty well documented. I’m open to new data, but the data that has been collected does line up with the damage I’ve seen working with people in these circumstances.

    Make of my comments what you will.

    Jason

  47. kel, agree in general. But some men, like me, prefer short hair on women. Just a minor point.

  48. Paul L. says:

    CL:
    Wow, that is a really powerful video. It’s amazing how much of our recent history has been re-written and glamorized, and how much of it was actually planned, and used for nefarious means.
    Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it, and every time they do, the price goes up.

    On longer hair, I find it much more attractive. I’m an 18 year old Homeschool grad, and my mom is over 50, and still has hair that’s well below her shoulders. It’s beautiful! She gets compliments on it all the time, and my dad really likes it to. I personally also find long hair much, much more attractive than short hair. My cousin has hair that’s almost down to her waist, and (when not in a braid, which I think is just slightly less attractive) is beautiful.
    I have never been addicted to porn or any vice like that, but, living in the culture that I do (American), it’s hard to not ever see a glimpse of the darker side of our culture (or the world of warcraft ads online, blech), the ‘2D prostitutes’ almost ALWAYS have long hair. The men running those despicable businesses know what men are attracted towards.

  49. Paul L, I think it depends on what a man imprints on. And I think a lot of men imprint on their mothers, fancying women who look like her in later life. This might make genetic sense. My mother had short hair. Perhaps that is the reason I married a girl who looks nice with short hair. In your case, it was long hair.

  50. Kel says:

    David, I’m sorry my comment was derailed by a debate about long hair. I find it very attractive but I don’t want to get this discussion on a different track because of long hair.

    Forget long hair. Those women won’t even look attractive with hair down to their ankles, because they are all about POWER, which is why they invent ridiculous mechanisms in their brain to believe that a husband wanting to make love to their wive is acting like a jerk. That way, it will give them CONTROL.

    I think some people are just broken. Those women are. I wonder if there’s any hope for them at all. And worse off are their husbands, who have to live in loneliness with such frigid bitches until they decide they can’t take it anymore and either get raped in divorce, or eat a bullet.

    Those women need to turn off the goddamn television, quit listening to flaming gay preachers, and stop thinking so damn much about themselves. Seriously. The entire point behind Christianity is “Love God, and Love another as yourself, because Jesus did.” Those women only love themselves! They’re really not Christian at all.

  51. john2.0 says:

    @Ken – great post.

    @Jason
    Thanks for the reply. By “least harmful” – I meant instead of extra-marital affairs etc.

    As you say – “(porn does seem, from a biochemical stand point and the human brains reward system to be similar to heroin and other drugs)”, thats true, but so is all good family interaction and life in general, it is what makes us do what we do – we all seek – affection, comfort, food, fufilling work, friends, exercise, sex etc.

    It is hard to argue the case for a porn free for all, but you also are dealing with the “addicts” whereas some others are rather consumers or use it to augment their life rather than destroy it.

    I always get worried when I see someone talk about an “activity” and then associating it with heroin, alcoholism, drugs, ruined life’s.

    By all means you can state that : heavy incessant porn use will screw you up, but that does apply to everything. I know workaholics too who have ruined many life’s including their own and can’t stop.

    I am not encouraging anyone to use porn, any addiction generally is precipitated by a deeper generally not fully known issue, the surface addiction being the painkiller.

    I wonder if you can answer this, Im currently investigating the effects of mercury poisoning on the limbic system, how many of those that you minister too would you say have mercury fillings ??

    One interesting thing I have noticed, is that some people find their sexual desires change within 2 years of mercury fillings being placed. And have reverted back after mercury removal treatment.

    An example one subject stated: when did you 1st feel gay:8, when was your 1st mercury filling placed:6, etc.

    This seems to affect a wide variety of behaviour – some legal others not. It would really help my investigations in this matter if you were able to help.

  52. john2.0 says:

    *@Kel – great previous post – you hit the nail.

  53. kel, they are unhappy women. They are married to men they find unattractive.

  54. Paul L. says:

    (Just to re-derail the conversation real quick) I agree with you David, our tastes and preferences are greatly influenced by our families. Though my mom did go through quite a few ‘short’ stages. But also all of the moms whom I admire in our homeschooling communities usually have long hair, so that’s probably also influenced my tastes.

  55. john2.0 says:

    @Paul, well they do say generally boys look for their mothers, girl their fathers.

  56. ballista74 says:

    Kel wrote:

    Forget long hair. Those women won’t even look attractive with hair down to their ankles, because they are all about POWER, which is why they invent ridiculous mechanisms in their brain to believe that a husband wanting to make love to their wive is acting like a jerk. That way, it will give them CONTROL.

    The truth is, in thinking on the women that are available for marriage today (along with those that are married), they always focus so much on outer beauty. That said, they ignore the fact that typically a 10 in looks with a trashy personality (1 or 2) will always be passed on eventually. Better a 5 or 6 in looks with a personality and moral deportment that rates above that.

    This goes for sexuality as well. The draw I think for most in partaking in pornography is the idea that they are willing and interested in sex more than their looks, especially since a lot of men just aren’t finding this within their marriages. I think most women lose sight of this, especially when men “check other women out”. It’s noticing physical attractiveness, yes, but be reminded of the fact that you are the one he is with and is interested in. For women, acknowledging that interest of her one man gets them in the door and much farther besides if they are willing to indulge him a bit in his interests. I think most women close to their own age are physically attractive in some way, as long as they try to take care of themselves and are willing to indulge a bit (Sheila’s haircut is terrible). I gather this is true of most all men.

    Paul says it this way (1 Peter 3:1-4, NASB):

    In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and [a]respectful behavior. Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

  57. Kel says:

    Shlomo Seltzer: “A wife who does not have frequent and regular sex with her husband is worse than useless. I am currently in that boat…but, since I have kids with my wife, I’m stuck until they grow-up. What my wife can’t seem to figure out is why I’m withdrawing emotionally from the marriage. If an opportunity were to come my way, I don’t know if I would want to resist, never mind if I can resist.”

    The next time you’re out to dinner with your wife (if you’re still doing crap like that with such a cold woman), openly flirt with the waitress in a very salacious manner. Then when your wife gives you hell about it, tell her she should feel lucky to have married a man who can turn women on like that. At the minimum, it’ll get her thinking. Do it unapologetically.

  58. Jason says:

    @john 2.0.

    Hi John 2.0,

    Thanks for the reply, let me see what I can do to answer some of your questions.

    You are right, I am dealing with people who are often really really broken and damaged, and this will colour my perspective. I come out of a similar background myself, so my experience with this is not perfectly objective.

    You are also right that lots of things stimulate our reward system, although I think the website http://yourbrainonporn.com makes an excellent case for why porn is uniquely problematic in the way it stimulates the reward system, in no small part because the human orgasm is involved.

    It should also be noted that there are plenty of reasonably functional heroin addicts and alcoholics who can hold a job and function to a reasonable degree. Many of them would probably also say they don’t have a problem, that there choice of recreation “enhances” their lives, even though those looking in would likely disagree. so I am skeptical of your observation of the augmenting power of pornography in someones life when used for the purposes of masturbation. I would agree there is a profound distinction between looking at pictures of naked women and enjoying the visual spectacle and using it for the purposes of masturbation and fantasy. Lets say for the sake of future discussion “Anything used for the purposes of stimulation (visual or auditory) and use in masturbation to orgasm counts as pornography, and anything else counts as art”. Otherwise we’ll just end talking past each other I suspect.

    I don’t know how to answer your question about mercury fillings. No idea really. Not all fillings are mercury after all, so just asking if they have fillings is going to be inconclusive. I’d be interested to see the results of such research..

    You might want to be careful with the example you cited. Homosexual behavior in males does seem to be a developmental disorder that occurs as a child develops and you might get very confusing results asking for self reporting on this score as the child of 8 would likely recognize they felt different and years later would attribute that “feeling different” as the first inklings of their later homosexual orientation, but it is unlikely that they really “felt gay” in the sense you are likely assuming at the time. It would be interesting to see the results of the removal of amalgam fillings from such a subject and the results over time.

    In any such research be careful of ignoring data points that conflict with your theory as human sexual behavior, and distortions of it in particular can be complex to understand, and unfortunately have become deeply politicized to the point that even suggesting that something is a deviation from the ideal will result in name calling and attempts at slander from people whose ideological ox is being gored.

    Jason

  59. john2.0 says:

    @Jason
    I checked that site, what an eye opener, I had never realised that it can affect some so badly, it is one of extreme dysfunctional addiction.

    Not sure I understand your reference “Anything used for the purposes of stimulation (visual or auditory) and use in masturbation to orgasm counts as pornography, and anything else counts as art”, well I guess then for me, looking at a woman with clothes on ? So then everything is porn by that measure.

    As to the mercury issue, that was one example, I have others – some in the teens, with various changes that I wouldn’t want to go into here. If you can keep it in mind for the future as some people often have found specific alterations to their personality upon mercury placement (this may be widespread), it can cause many symptoms relating to depression\mental health as well. It might help you in your endeavours.

    God bless in your ministry.

    @Dalrock – Bless you too for starting this blog, this will be having a sway in the fight against the principalities and powers of the age – as they say.

  60. Professor Ashur says:

    A woman who lies still while her husband masturbates into her body might be following biblical guidance, but she is not going to become less miserable.

    As long as she wears the Jennifer Aniston Mask, it’s all good.

    I’m sure that plenty of men do their “duty” in other ways, even though they might not feeeel like it.

    Marriage is almost entirely about duty to the other person. Otherwise, there would never have been any need for vows and to restrict divorce.

  61. Jason says:

    @john 2.0,

    The point was that when it comes to pornography and it being a problem there is inevitably masturbation involved. The bulk of porn is used for that purpose it would seem, and that is where it causes serious problems. Looking at a girly picture in a workshop or something isn’t really what is at issue. If whatever is being used isn’t being used for masturbation then it is unlikely to cause a problem, but if anything is being used for masturbation then, at least from the “may cause a problem” perspective it counts as pornography. Do you sit around with binoculars and spy out pretty girls and masturbate to what you see? Then it probably isn’t pornography for the purposes of the argument. If you do, you might have more serious problems!

    Thanks for the tip on the mercury stuff. It sounds interesting, i’m just cautioning that human mood and personality is a tricky and complex thing that is probably not reducible so easily. Who knows maybe it is, just remember that data is not the plural of anecdote.

    Thanks for the blessing. The ministry goes well, and God willing it will continue to do so.

  62. Since when did wives start withholding sex? Ridiculous. I have been married 26 years, and I think I can count on the fingers of one hand (obvious joke not included) the number of times she has said, no.

    What on earth is wrong with modern women?

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  64. Cane Caldo says:

    just remember that data is not the plural of anecdote.

    Pet peeve: A datum is an anecdote of information. When you get enough, you have data.

  65. I don’t follow the peeve as response to that. His statement is true, your statement is true.

    I guess two anecdotes can comprise SOME data…..but other statistical parameters make data DATA. His comment doesn’t contradict yours, nor the converse yours his

  66. James K says:

    @Dalrock: “If your frame is that beta then I guess you are right. In that case, maybe she can make you a list of chores so she can reward you with sex from time to time. For men who don’t suffer from this frame, women find being owned by their man very arousing. It is the stuff of female fantasies.”

    Your ad hominem attack suggests that you cannot find any better reasoning. If you want your ideas to propagate any further than the manosphere, you will need to do better than this.

    If you read the sentence before the one you quoted you will see that I am talking about a genuine loss of the wife’s libido. This is a real problem that couples sometimes face, particularly after the birth of a child. It is not a question of the wife telling lies in order to control her husband.

    If you honestly do not care how your wife feels when you have sex, then you have a basic lack of respect for her as a human being made in the image of God, and yes, the act does then amount to masturbation.

    You have also fallen for the Apex Fallacy. You are trying to give Bible-based advice for all marriages, but – at least according to manosphere consensus – no more than 20% of men are alpha. For those 20%, a wife lacking libido might indeed find her desire magically restored if her husband insists on immediate sex. For the other 80%, it’s a bit more problematic. Coercive sex will not be the stuff of her fantasy, because her husband is not alpha enough.

    Experience tells us that the solution is for the man to become more alpha, more desirable.

    Yet this raises two issues. Firstly, the solution has nothing to do with the wife submitting to her husband. Secondly, the Bible tells us nothing about the alpha/beta distinction, even though this knowledge is essential in the context of marriage. These issues suggest that, even though the Bible is crystal clear on the most important truths, it cannot be a complete guide to marriage. In other words, a call for churches to return to “Biblical marriage” leaves a great deal unspecified.

    For example, consider the Bible’s approval of polygamy (polygyny), which is entirely consistent with manosphere wisdom. If you are serious about a return to biblical principles, then you must insist on provision for formal polygamy. If you do not, then you are making concessions to our culture. Fringe groups such as breakaway LDS churches are sticking to Biblical principles, while mainstream Christianity discarded polygamy when it adapted to the cultural norms of the Graeco-Roman world.

  67. Comment_Whatever says:

    If you read the sentence before the one you quoted you will see that I am talking about a genuine loss of the wife’s libido. This is a real problem that couples sometimes face, particularly after the birth of a child. It is not a question of the wife telling lies in order to control her husband.

    If you honestly do not care how your wife feels when you have sex, then you have a basic lack of respect for her as a human being made in the image of God, and yes, the act does then amount to masturbation.

    I predict with 100% certainty that 1 second after “genuine loss of libido” is accepted as an excuse for not having sex, many women will become “not in the mood” whenever they feel like it and begin doing the “Can you PRROOOOOOOOVVVVE that I am just withholding sex to get power over you, can you PRRROOOOOOOOOOVVVVE it! I bet you can’t PPPPRRRRRROOOOOOOOOVVVVVVE IT! So I get a free pass!”

    The poster knows this, he is just being a deliberate retard. That is he is acting with MALICE and not stupidity.

    If you honestly do not care how your wife feels when you have sex, then you have a basic lack of respect for her as a human being made in the image of God, and yes, the act does then amount to masturbation.

    If you don’t care how you husband feels working his 60 hour soul-crushing job so you can have a bigger SUV and keep up with that thinks-so-much-of-herself Karen living next door, then you have a basic lack of respect for him as a human being made in the image of God, and yes, that does amount to acting based on Envy and Avarice.

    Of course, I’m referring to far less morally neutral behavior and the infliction of actual suffering… not “I had to do something pleasant when I sort of didn’t feel like it”.

  68. Dalrock says:

    @James K

    Your ad hominem attack suggests that you cannot find any better reasoning. If you want your ideas to propagate any further than the manosphere, you will need to do better than this.

    Nope. You projected your own unhealthy shame of your male sex drive onto the rest of us. I simply pointed out how weak and unattractive your own self loathing is.

    If you read the sentence before the one you quoted you will see that I am talking about a genuine loss of the wife’s libido. This is a real problem that couples sometimes face, particularly after the birth of a child. It is not a question of the wife telling lies in order to control her husband.

    If you honestly do not care how your wife feels when you have sex, then you have a basic lack of respect for her as a human being made in the image of God, and yes, the act does then amount to masturbation.

    Husbands and wives should both care about the needs of the other, even if satisfying that need doesn’t result in sexual pleasure for themselves. A wife wanting to satisfy her husband’s need for sex, something she forbids him to satisfy in any other way, is healthy and natural even if it provides her with no sexual pleasure. You projected your own shame onto this and made it something ugly. I can’t help you there.

    Experience tells us that the solution is for the man to become more alpha, more desirable.

    If the husband is pathologically beta, this is the case. For example, if he is ashamed of his male sex drive, this would be a good place to start. When talking to the husband this would be my advice, although if he is doing it simply to please his wife he is hopelessly lost. Either way, if we are talking to the woman our advice would be different. The woman should submit to her husband, therefore reducing her need for additional alpha.

  69. One of the primary tenets of my Game philosophy is the idea that true genuine, passionate desire cannot be negotiated.

    https://rationalmale.wordpress.com/2011/08/25/the-desire-dynamic/

    The main difference between single (premarital) sex and married sex is the element of negotiation that evolves from what is essentially an exchange of provisioning on his part, for sex and intimacy on her part. The urgent, passionate (lustful), organic, biochemically-driven genuine desire to bang each other sore, is gradually (or surreptitiously) replaced with negotiated sex based on obligation and mitigated by varying degrees of what is perceived as an equitable exchange and modified by intentional deprivation.

    One of the most common definitions of rape is a woman having sex against her will. When a woman has desireless sex, on a root level, the association is with rape. Quote Paul all you’d like, but I’m reasonably sure most married men, Christian or other, would prefer to knock it out with a wildcat who’s into it because she’s hot for him, than a dead lay of a wife who patiently looks at the clock while you’re fucking and then returns to folding laundry afterwards. Submission may be a Biblical imperative for women, but genuine desire doesn’t come as a result of obligation.

    Wives can put on a good show, fake orgasms and convince you they’re into the act, but so do prostitutes – and for the same exchange, albeit more directly. This is the crux of the rebellious Christians woman’s constant hamster wheeling – she has to find a means of control (social and psychological) to reconcile her status in becoming what amounts being a whore for her husband. That may not be the case everytime she has sex with her husband, but the Biblical mandate is that she submit to his desire, whether she wants to or not.

    The control that follows then is a further demonizing of his sexual response into marriage via christianized social conventions.

    Is it any wonder that modern, ubiquitous pornography would be the first resort for a christian husband’s sexual release in the face of those social controls that tell him he’s not good enough to expect any kind of sex from his wife? He doesn’t need to qualify for porn. Porn doesn’t care if he makes it feel sexy or if he earned it by loving it the way christ loved the church. Porn submits to his sexual desires unconditionally. Porn is a better Christian wife than the one he married.

    ,..and porn doesn’t cut her hair or hyphenate her last name after marriage.

  70. Some Guy says:

    I’ve been teaching my kids from the bible lately and my wife has been complaining that she wasn’t invited. Finally we were all together and I invited her to read 1 Samuel 15 with us… but only on the condition that she remain silent. (I’ve noticed lately that she has an entirely different frame on the bible than I do… and that she always has to have the last word in order to set her spin on it. Also… she uses the bible mainly to shame and guilt the children– then when she is unreasonable, they reject God in order to get out from under *her*. I tend to be more of a mind just to get across that the truths of the bible correspond to reality in meaningful and useful ways.)

    So I’m reading and I can tell she hates being quiet. She blurts something out as if by accident. I ignore it… but then she pipes in more and more with increasing levels of snark in her tone. So I stop and tell her that she is not only disobeying me, but Christ as well… and that she was a fool if she thought that the children should obey her cheerfully after seeing her example in this. She argued with me vigorously but finally let me finish. (Use of the word “let” there is intentional.)

    Then I read 1 Samuel 22-35 out loud to her and the children: “And Samuel said, Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king….”

    These verses took on a new meaning for me then. Strangely, my wife was completely silent as I read them. Many people strain to come up with what sort of idolatry it is that we commit today… usually settling just on our desire for wealth and riches. No one would dare to mention that the rebellion of our wives is as bad or worse than the idolatry of the Israelites.

  71. Cane Caldo says:

    “according to manosphere consensus – no more than 20% of men are alpha.

    This is better understood, James, as: “According to manosphere consensus, no more than 20% of men are consistently demonstrating alpha characteristics within any given woman’s sphere.”

    Change your behavior. Change her sphere.

    @empath/Jason

    Yes, his point is good. I didn’t mean to contradict that. It’s that phrase I have an issue with…a very small issue. I just try to point out that it’s nonsensical.

  72. Dalrock says:

    @Rollo Tomassi

    One of the most common definitions of rape is a woman having sex against her will. When a woman has desireless sex, on a root level, the association is with rape. Quote Paul all you’d like, but I’m reasonably sure most married men, Christian or other, would prefer to knock it out with a wildcat who’s into it because she’s hot for him, than a dead lay of a wife who patiently looks at the clock while you’re fucking and then returns to folding laundry afterwards. Submission may be a Biblical imperative for women, but genuine desire doesn’t come as a result of obligation.

    I’m troubled that you have bought into the feminist definition of rape*. I agree that husbands shouldn’t shoot for desireless sex from their wives. But the frame of shame for having a sex drive is absolutely toxic. It is very common for wives to find that “wifely duty” sex is in the end very arousing. Even Sheila and her commenters have stated this. Maybe not so if he is so beta in her eyes that she despises him, but this is also at least partially a function of her taking over the lead role in the marriage.

    *Edit: I also disagree strongly with the comparison of a wife with prostitution. If she is in it just for her own gain then I would agree. We will see the proof of this with her “I’m not haaaapy” divorce if she feels divorce would be more to her advantage than honoring her vows. But this isn’t marriage, even though it starts with a wedding ceremony. It is something entirely different. I think this is likely the source of our fundamental disagreement. If the success of the marriage rides on the man’s game, then the simple answer is don’t marry or you are turning a whore into a wife. Marriage for a man who wants to have his game be the foundation of the relationship is foolish; he only loses by marrying. I’m not challenging the concept of game or the strength of your alpha frame. I’m just saying that marriage is something fundamentally different than an LTR, even though most husbands would benefit greatly from learning LTR game from you and others.

  73. Cane Caldo says:

    @ Rollo

    Your last paragraph:

    Is it any wonder that modern, ubiquitous pornography would be the first resort for a christian husband’s sexual release in the face of those social controls that tell him he’s not good enough to expect any kind of sex from his wife? He doesn’t need to qualify for porn. Porn doesn’t care if he makes it feel sexy or if he earned it by loving it the way christ loved the church. Porn submits to his sexual desires unconditionally. Porn is a better Christian wife than the one he married.

    is a refutation of your earlier paragraphs. Porn starlets are–ostensibly–enthusiastic about their work whether they’re desiring the actual act, or not. Being a wife is work, too; with the notable difference that it is holy.

    A wife’s sexual rejection of her husband (in addition to the other evils already noted in this post and comments) is a form of sloth. Flip that script. “Look, honey, I just didn’t feel like paying the electric bill today, so I emptied the account into my personal savings. Look, I’m just feeling greedy, today. Maybe next month I’ll feel like turning the lights back on.” Sure, you can live without electricity, but…dude, that sucks.

    Plus as Dalrock pointed out: work is sometimes its own reward. Everyone who works out has said: “Man, I did not want to go the gym today, but I felt so much better after I did.”

  74. hurp says:

    Totally random question, but out of curiosity, James K, do you have a blog of your own, or, if not, are there any other blogs you often comment at? I haven’t seen anything from you aside from what you’ve posted in this thread, but from your comments you have an attitude towards religion I find interesting. If you’ve written more on other subjects elsewhere, I’d be happy to read it.

  75. Suz says:

    Rollo,
    Your analysis, while correct, hinges on the modern (and shallow) understanding of “submission” as passive. A wife who submits to sex is a “dead lay” because she’s being passive. A wife who submits to her HUSBAND is a good lay (granted, maybe not a wildcat) even when she’s “not in the mood.” She may not be burning hot for him 24/7, but she is “into” him.

    “Surrender” is a big part of hot passion, and nonstop Game is the only way for a married man to maintain the dynamic. Surrender is the exciting first step toward submission. Most women want to keep surrendering, but they don’t want to submit. Occasional Game adds spice to a marriage by upping the ante, but a woman who must be constantly Gamed, is refusing to submit and demanding to be courted and seduced. If she doesn’t get her way, she will be a dead lay, and a martyr to boot. A submissive wife doesn’t need to be courted non-stop; she understands that her husband has more important things to do with his energy – like provide for his children, which is pretty much the purpose behind the sex drive.

    To an immature woman, sex is all about being won over; it’s a game (albeit a fun one.) A mature woman revels in sex without always requiring the ego boost of being pursued. And when her husband DOES “pursue” her, she’s all the more appreciative.

  76. Suz, very complicated.

    I have always used a simple test. If she is wet, she is OK. Quickies too.

  77. I’m troubled that you have bought into the feminist definition of rape*

    Don’t worry, I don’t, but I am saying that this is the root association feminism and the Book of Oprah have insinuated into christian marriage.

  78. Dalrock says:

    I get it now Rollo. Thanks for setting me straight.

  79. Suz says:

    David,
    When she’s “not really in the mood,” if she’s wet, she’s submitting to you. If she’s rolling her eyes and checking the clock, she’s submitting to sex.

  80. greyghost says:

    kel, they are unhappy women. They are married to men they find unattractive.

    This is an arrogant ass talking. no different than some thug player talking shit about you lesser sucka’s cause you can’t get no ass.

  81. Dalrock says:

    @Suz

    David,
    When she’s “not really in the mood,” if she’s wet, she’s submitting to you. If she’s rolling her eyes and checking the clock, she’s submitting to sex.

    Well put Suz.

    The other corner case that people love to bring up is the wife who truly can’t become aroused. It isn’t because she sees herself as above her husband (she won’t submit, he’s too beta), but something medical. She wouldn’t get wet for the most alpha man in the world. In that case the husband still is prevented from turning to anyone else as an outlet for sex, and she still has the obligation Paul states in 1 Cor 7 to meet that need. In this extreme case even then it is an act of lovingly honoring her marriage vows and caring for her husband. This doesn’t make her a whore, and it doesn’t make him “masterbating into his wife”. It is something loving and beautiful, and shouldn’t be sullied. I wouldn’t want to be such a husband (and hopefully I never will), as sex is far more pleasurable with a wife who enjoys it. But I still object very strongly to those who would project something dirty or shameful into what is not.

  82. James K says:

    @Comment_Whatever

    It is interesting that you believe you have the power to read my mind.

    It is also quite revealing that you have made a Faustian bargain, that instead of correcting your hypothetical wife’s avarice and envy, you go along with it, work as a slave, and then expect sex in return. That is hardly a good example of Christian leadership, but it illustrates the principal problem with the idea of male leadership and female submission: if the husband’s leadership is both unChristian and boneheaded, you expect the wife nevertheless to submit, and you quote some verses of scripture to justify your right to lead even if you do so in an unChristian way.

    It’s the behavior of a little man who asserts dominion over his wife, because he has no dominion over anything else. We can see this tendency to an even greater degree in some Muslim marriages.

    @Dalrock

    I agree absolutely that husband and wife must consider each other’s needs, and should do so to a fault.

    I am bothering to comment here because I agree with most of what you said in the earlier parts of this series. If the most persuasive response you can give me is along the lines that there is something wrong with my head, then you are quite unprepared for the much more difficult task of persuading a more hostile audience, such as the congregation of a fem-church.

    You have also studiously avoided commenting on the issues that I raised, which are essential if you wish to present your ideas as a return to biblical values:

    1. “Biblical marriage” leaves a great deal unspecified – including knowledge that we all agree is essential.

    2. Support for “biblical marriage”, stripped of cultural baggage, must allow formal polygamy. If you fail to do so, then you are agreeing with the fem-doms that marriage must combine biblical precepts with the values of the prevailing culture. The difference between you and the fem-doms is merely haggling over which cultural modifications to accept.

  83. Anonymous Reader says:

    James K., the original posting is about women who withhold sex from husbands as a means to control them. There is nothing, nothing at all, about medical issues. Re-read the posting. There are the words “post partum”. It might be an interesting thing to discuss; what husbands and wives should do in cases where due to medical issues * a woman is unable to perform any sexual activity. But that would be a different thread, separate and distinct from this one. Trying to pretend that Dalrock wrote something he did not could be a form of the strawman fallacy, or it could be just plain dihonest, but either way it is no germaine.

    *”Medical” in the sencse that a physician determines a problem or condition exists, be it post partum depression, physical harm from labor, a yeast infection, and so forth and so on. “I just don’t feel like it” is not a medical condition, and there are better ways to dweal with long term mood issues than Xanax, Prozac, etc. which are known to kill sex drive in some people. Furthermore, women who are willing can work around some medical conditions. For eample, sojme years ago, one relation of mine had a hip replaced, and part of her physical therapy included talking to a middle aged nurse about how to make intercourse work with her new “bionic hip”. She initiated the conversation with the PT / nurse on the topic. Because to her, it was part of marriage and she did not want to give it up, even in her 70’s.

  84. greyghost says:

    I am bothering to comment here because I agree with most of what you said in the earlier parts of this series. If the most persuasive response you can give me is along the lines that there is something wrong with my head, then you are quite unprepared for the much more difficult task of persuading a more hostile audience, such as the congregation of a fem-church.

    That is for the non-believers to handle. A hostile fem-church is a church that is in need of a PUA and thug to come in and fuck your wives and maybe even cockold a couple of men there to into CS to those christian women. No need to waste time with the nice guy stuff the preacher they have is feeding them. How in the hell do you think they got to be a hostile audience and a fem church congregation in the first place.
    Stay hard Dalrock You are a cultural leader wether you like it or not.

  85. Dalrock says:

    @James K

    You have lost the argument and now you want to take us into the weeds. If your argument were simply “I don’t believe in biblical marriage so this post doesn’t apply to me” you would have a leg to stand on, but I would question why you would bother stating something so inane. What you are trying to do is conflate very clear biblical commands regarding marriage with what you feel are ambiguities regarding what is permitted. Even if your argument on polygamy in the NT were correct, I still wouldn’t be commanded to practice it. So your whole gotcha game falls apart on casual examination. This post and series is about biblical commands for Christian marriage. The Christians I’m addressing aren’t denying the biblical commands in question, they are twisting them beyond all recognition. This isn’t a simple case of disagreeing on an ambiguous verse or two either. What they are doing is pretending to accept the commands as stated, but then rationalizing themselves into a practical situation which is upside down. Sheila and company are of course free to correct the record here. She/they can come forward and state that they deny the biblical command not to withhold sex, for wives to submit, for husbands to lead, etc. But they won’t, because they know what it says they just don’t like it.

  86. Anon123 says:

    Dalrock,

    i just have to say, your blog posts just keep getting better and better. whenever i find the time, i try to go through your earlier blog postings, though its become a hassle of late. you really should think about writing a book, or at the very least, thing about putting all your blog posts together into an ebook.

    [D: Thanks! I’m giving a book serious consideration. Welcome to the blog.]

  87. Anonymous Reader says:

    Well, I surely made a mishmash of that posting, including uncommented text and generally messing up. I’ll sum up for the benefit of James K et al:

    * A genuine medical issues thread would be interesting, but it is not the topic here.
    * Medical issues are not germaine to this thread.
    * Women who are willing can make sex “work” in a variety of ways despite medical issues. The key word is ” willing”and the word “submit” is implied strongly.. This thread is about the issues of “willing” vs. “use of sex to control men and thus the marriage”.

  88. Suz says:

    “you are agreeing with the fem-doms that marriage must combine biblical precepts with the values of the prevailing culture.”

    No, not the “prevailing culture.” Biblical Marriage must combine biblical precepts with the values that created civilization, allowing culture to develop. Polygamy may have been a necessary part of the development of culture, but it’s no longer very relevant. In a more primitive culture it served a vital and moral purpose, so why wouldn’t it be condemned in the Bible?” The fact that it’s no longer necessary, doens’t make it immoral. It means polygamy can be viewed as a historic cultural artifact, neither supported nor condemned. The same cannot be said of the feminist-inspired models of marriage that currently dominate the prevailing culture.

  89. Suz says:

    *…why WOULD it be condemned…”

  90. deti says:

    Marriage is, at bottom, a series and exchange of rights and obligations.

    The wife is entitled to her husband’s provision. In exchange for this she provides companionship, keeps his home, and sexual congress. More crassly, she provides society, services, and sex. She is to live with him, sex him and feed him.

    When you look at it closely, the man’s role in a marriage consists almost entirely of obligations. He must provide for her and the children. He must protect them from harm. He must teach and train up the children. He is responsible for their natural and spiritual education and upbringing so they become responsible, contributing members of society. Perhaps the wife does much of the work in teaching; but the husband and father is responsible for it.

    The only “right” or benefit the man gets from marriage is plentiful sex at reasonable intervals while expending a minimum of effort. He shouldn’t be required to date her, game her, entice her or seduce her. Most men not only don’t want to “game” or date a wife constantly; they’re incapable of doing it. It requires too much effort, or at least more effort than it is worth. It is her obligation to be ready, willing and able to have sex with him on command. To deprive the man of the sole benefit he gets from marriage is to destroy marriage altogether.

    That’s why Gregoire and her fellow travelers are wrong in suggesting that women control sex. Clearly in marriage it is the man who is to control sex. Why? To satisfy that sex drive, so he is freed up to contribute to society and perform his other duties, and to produce children. I suggest that this is why the biblical commands are the way they are.

  91. Suz and Dalrock; well that is encouraging. I think.

    Greyghost, you may have misunderstood me. They find their men unattractive because feminism has denigrated the average man so much. Husbands in general have lower status, hence they are less apparently attractive.

  92. Suz says:

    Deti,
    Awesome, as usual.

    (Wow. Once again,”rules” in the Bible make perfect sense because they match up with the imperatives of moral, productive people! Who knew?)

  93. Anonymous age 70 says:

    I have been married over 36 years. I am not going to hold my wife up as a paragon of biblical wifely virtue. But, there are things a woman can do when she has medical problems, including but not limited to the third trimester of pregnancy. I am going to be rather explicit. KY takes care of many technical issues, and is assumed in these examples. Also, one must assume small towels for the mess you are guaranteed to make. She may hold them in some cases.

    1. Using KY, have her place her thighs over your member, if necessary for the medical reasons, from the back. She doesn’t move, you do very gently, it works. There are hormonal and psychological things which happen with your wife that do not happen in other procedures. Also, many wives enjoy producing extreme pleasure in their husbands, as strange as that sounds in our current society.

    If she is into sweet perversions and is chesty, use her KY’d breasts wrapped around your member. Also works well. She doesn’t move; you do.

    2. Mount pillows, and bang her KY’d hand which is a totally different sensation from a standard hand job. The hand doesn’t move; you do. There is something especially good about thrusting during sex. We men enjoy it.

    Those two should give you ideas for any issues. If your wife cares, she will enjoy your excited reaction to whatever it is you do. And, she will also know she is taking care of your needs. A woman who truly cannot for medical reasons fill your physical needs in the usual manner, but refuses to do something like this really doesn’t care much about you.

  94. Cane Caldo says:

    1. “Biblical marriage” leaves a great deal unspecified – including knowledge that we all agree is essential.

    It is in the weeds, but I cannot allow this horseshit to pass uncorrected, if at least for others.

    You have confused truth with facts. Worse, you’ve confused it with your own knowledge. Not all facts are in the Bible, but it contains all truth.

    Further, it is very foolish to assert that this particular book lacks essential information–no other in the world has as much information, insight, and wisdom on male and female relations as the Bible. It is the one book that proposes that male and female dynamics are at the very center of the reason for existence. From cover to cover, it is one story after another of men and women choosing to either submit to The Husband, or suffer. Of men choosing to lead women, or suffer. Of women choosing to submit to men, or suffer.

    Where have you been, son? The very first story of mankind in the Bible* is so complete a story of male to female relations that almost nothing else can be said about them except it be repetitive. I challenge you to come up with one scenario of sexual dynamics that is not covered in the Bible.

    *And there’s only one wife in it. I have to wonder who is writing the book you’re reading from.

  95. bskillet81 says:

    A couple points:

    I strongly agree with the idea that this commenter put forward, about having an honest talk where you ask what you can do to help your spouse feel more loved. I know this sounds backwards; you, after all, are the one who doesn’t feel loved.

    1) So let’s see how this works: Wife denies sex to husband, probably because (as evidenced by all the other quotes) she believes that any man’s desire for sex is wicked and sinful. Then, suddenly she notices that she doesn’t feel loved by him. Yeah, maybe it’s because it’s very hard for a man to show love to a woman who is a total and complete bitch and refuses to live up to her end of the marriage responsibilities. Then, someone has the audacity to tell her she needs to see what she can do to make him feel more loved, even though the problem is secretly that she doesn’t feel loved. Yeah, maybe letting him tap that more than once a month might make him feel more loved, and maybe then he won’t despise you for being a frigid and unloving harpy.

    2) Anyone notice the absurdity of the fact that women are being taught that a husband’s desire for sex with his wife is wicked until proven innocent, at the same time that American Christianity is actively going down the road of mainstreaming and endorsing active male homosexuality? I mean, nailing your wife = bad. Two guys at a bathhouse = good.

    On the other hand, perhaps like in prisons without conjugal visits there is a cause and effect relationship between women denying sex to husbands and increased homosexual activity.

  96. Cane Caldo says:

    @Deti

    Marriage is, at bottom, a series and exchange of rights and obligations.

    I think I have to disagree with you, depending on what you mean by “at bottom”. If you mean, “at its worst”, then I do agree–one should be able to expect at least a skeleton of rights and obligations.

    If you you mean “what it is fundamentally”, then I strongly disagree. I’m going to try to state what I think it is, but I’m going to fail; approaching it, at best. Corrections and elaborations are encouraged.

    Marriage is a state of being entered into by–and particular to–one man and one woman, where they become one entity. From this, there can be no healthy separation anymore than a head can be healthily separated from the body. The cares of one are the cares of both; as the head revels in the beauty of the body, and cannot ignore its pain. Though, these forces are experienced differently in that the head might understand that some pains must be endured for the good of the whole; while other seemingly pleasurable sensations must be avoided. Within this context, sex and all its rewards are the physical and symbolic manifestations of the truth of their spiritual unity.

  97. Comment_Whatever says:

    James K asks me if I can PPRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVE IT:

    It is interesting that you believe you have the power to read my mind.

    Well, you are either stupid or malicious, and I don’t believe you are stupid. No need to read your mind at all, little Miss PPRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOVVVVE IT. Not that I think you are a woman, I just think you act like one.

    How stupid do you have to be, James, to think that having women “decide for themselves” whether they have “a genuine loss of libido” is a good idea? Cause women are a good judge of their own feelings? And then have to “report honestly to their husbands” whether they have a “genuine loss of libido” or not when they clearly have a genuine interest in lying about it or making themselves “feel” what is convenient at the moment to feel. So just think about how you didn’t get that marble countertop for a good thirty minutes chickies! Then you can turn him down till your hearts content!

    The only way it could be more retarded is if you just said “only when she says you can have sex”, but that would give the game away, wouldn’t it? So you can’t take that final step.

    I severely doubt anyone is stupid enough to actually believe this BS. So that makes James malicious.

    It is also quite revealing that you have made a Faustian bargain, that instead of correcting your hypothetical wife’s avarice and envy, you go along with it, work as a slave, and then expect sex in return. That is hardly a good example of Christian leadership, but it illustrates the principal problem with the idea of male leadership and female submission: if the husband’s leadership is both unChristian and boneheaded, you expect the wife nevertheless to submit, and you quote some verses of scripture to justify your right to lead even if you do so in an unChristian way.

    It’s the behavior of a little man who asserts dominion over his wife, because he has no dominion over anything else. We can see this tendency to an even greater degree in some Muslim marriages.

    I haven’t made this “Faustian bargain”. I wasn’t talking about any bargain at all. As the woman who demands 60 hour work weeks from the slave animal will often withhold sex as well. Meanwhile, people like James K will stand there tapping their foot at the male-animal telling him he is a “little man” for wanting to be paid for his slavery.

    IE:
    James K demands more of the male-animal than even the Faustian Bargain would while at the same time demanding nothing of the woman.

    A fool would think this was an accident.

  98. deti says:

    Cane:

    Look at the bright side. At least it isn’t a list.

    “At bottom meant what marriage is fundamentally, but also what is a foundational necessity before the two become one. The two can’t become one flesh until the rights and obligations are attended to and honored.

  99. Chaz345 says:

    “In exchange for this she provides companionship, keeps his home, and sexual congress. More crassly, she provides society, services, and sex. She is to live with him, sex him and feed him. ”

    Part of the problem is the thinking that leads to the idea that sex is something that she does for him. Last time I checked, women get something for themself out of sex too. Certainly it’s commonly a more urgent need for men but unless they’ve bought into societal nonsense, women should want and need sex almost as much. Even if the only thing she gets out of it is a happier easier to be around husband who has less of a likelyhood of cheating or seeking out porn, she’s still gained from having sex. IOW, it’s something she does for herself as much as it is something she does exclusively for him.

    Also in terms of the whole needing to desire it before they’ll start it, a large percentage of women have little to no active desire for sex until things have gotten started. So the whole ” I shouldn’t do it unless I really want it” is nonsense.

  100. MaMu1977 says:

    I have to co-sign on David Collard’s comment, re: women finding ways to make sex “work” when they’re disabled. In my first decade of working in medicine, I’ve met and ministered to close to 100 women with sub-optimal sexual function (mostly of the post-partum disability/dysfunction spectrum.) In one memorable case, a woman in my care was found to be in the first stage of uterine/ovarian cancer post-Caesarean section. Within less than a week, she went from being a mother of four (with plans for trying one more time for a son) to having a total hysterectomy/ovarectomy/cervical excision (adding insult to injury, she wasn’t even 34 years old at the time. Given their prior levels of fecundity and her post-diagnostic egg count, they would have had at least 5 more years {70+ available, but cancer-ridden ova in total in both ovaries} to meet their objective.) A year later, during a Halloween party, I happened upon the two of them on one of their rare nights out. The two of them, despite her situation, were all smiles. Jokingly (and drunkenly), I asked the husband about the source of his happiness (suffice to say, his wife’s post-surgical parts allowed for about 5 inches of penetration. His parts, to be blunt, weren’t compatible with hers after her recovery. Yes, exactly.) Without missing a beat, she entered our conversation and simply said, “I’ve gotten a lot better at holding my breath.” His face went pale, she continued to grin at him, and I again cursed the willingness of laymen to tell all of their health secrets to anyone wearing a hospital badge.

    Tl;dr-my patients don’t understand the idea of TMI. Because of this, I’ve met a lot of sexually incapacitated women who admit to doing a lot of things to keep their husbands happy when their main parts are off the menu.

  101. MaMu, I think that was another commenter, not me.

  102. Chaz345 says:

    The willingness on a woman’s part to find something sexual that works is sort of the opposite mentality as the using sex to control him. In our marriage we’ve gone through some pretty lengthy non-medically necessitated “dry spells”. During some, especially earlier in our marriage, she had taken a sort of “this is just how I am and you need to deal with it” attitude. The disregard for my wants and needs was actually far harder to deal with than the lack of sex itself. They were actually a lot harder for me to deal with than the medically necessitated ones because I know they were an intentional choice by her. 2 or 3 weeks of that was a lot worse than the 9 weeks after her total hysterectomy. In short, a sincere willingness to make it work, or a sincere desire to be doing something that she honestly can’t usually goes a long way towards making the lack of sex a lot easier.

  103. James K says:

    @greyghost

    “That is for the non-believers to handle. A hostile fem-church is a church that is in need of a PUA and thug to come in and fuck your wives and maybe even cockold a couple of men there to into CS to those christian women. No need to waste time with the nice guy stuff the preacher they have is feeding them. How in the hell do you think they got to be a hostile audience and a fem church congregation in the first place.”

    It doesn’t take much to make you drop your pretense of discipleship and start breaking Commandments in order to teach heretics a lesson.

    “Stay hard Dalrock You are a cultural leader wether you like it or not.”

    He’s not a leader in Christ unless he rebukes you for proposing adultery in the name of the Lord. Shame on you.

    Sadly (and I really mean that, because there’s a lot to like about this blog) our host will never be a leader outside the narrow confines of the manosphere. He’s already blown it. The reason is that he has made it so easy for his future opponents to rubbish his delusions of religious and political competence. All they need to do is look for the things he and his followers have recorded for posterity on this blog.

    It doesn’t matter much because someone from the next generation will learn from our mistakes, take the best of these ideas, and quietly ignore the duds.

    I’ve said my piece. It’s time to go. Thank you for the freedom of speech and for reading and replying to my comments.

  104. ray says:

    Anon123 — i just have to say, your blog posts just keep getting better and better. whenever i find the time, i try to go through your earlier blog postings, though its become a hassle of late. you really should think about writing a book, or at the very least, thing about putting all your blog posts together into an ebook.

    once money and celebrity enter into God’s work, the results ALWAYS go downhill fast (for many reasons to which we are all susceptible)

    one of the reasons this blog is favored is precisely b/c the site owner isnt in it for the notoriety or dollars or approval from his soft harem . . . like most of the teachers and preachers riding the Career Christianity gravytrain

    if what youre doing pleases God, dont change it, and dont try to magnify it, while telling yrself youre just tryiing to reach a larger population to “better serve the Lord”

    let Christ magnify it, if it is worthy — he will do it at the time, and in the way, that is in YOUR best interest (and in the interest of his authentic followers, few tho they be)

    my dvds/workshops/conferences/speaking engagements/books are Serving the Lord is the bullshit the jackals tell themselves — when theyre not hearing it from their wives, that is! (oh yes honey you really SHOULD organize a Prayer Cruise thru the Caribbean! the congreagation would ADORE that . . . it would Serve the Lord ever so much! and I’ll help you voice-over the advertising!)

  105. MikeDiver says:

    Let me interject a little counter intuitive information. It is not always the woman that wants sex less, and it is not always a woman that has medical issues. My wife is much younger than I am, and as we have aged my libido has decreased while hers has increased. We are fairly even now in our desires (it took a few years to reach that). However, I am having heart trouble and am on several medications that make it more difficult to perform, and truthfully even to desire. I do still enjoy meeting her needs, with alternative methods.

    The issue here is that you enetered into marriage promising to care for each other. That means giving with grace even when you don’t feel like it.

  106. hurp says:

    Well, I at least am sorry to see you go, Mr. K. I am still wondering if you’ve written elsewhere or comment regularly at other blogs, though. Thanks for dropping by, at least.

  107. ray says:

    James K — “He’s not a leader in Christ unless he rebukes you for proposing adultery in the name of the Lord. Shame on you.”

    it’s not dalrock’s responsibility to rebuke every error (or even contention) appearing on his pages

    aint no white throne here

    yeah the p.u.a. stuff is way off, but dont dump the truckload on one guy’s lawn eh?

    you’re leaving if dalrock doesnt immediately decry this guy’s inflammatory comment? you might want to give dalrock a couple minutes to actually read and respond? instead of an ultimatum?)

    dalrock’s relationship with Christ is NOT dependant on whether he rebukes those you deem rebukable (ok might not be a word, where’s The Group?)

    i find the behavior of females (and pastors) in the churches FAR more offfensive than greyghost’s satire — is dalrock unfit for Christ b/c he hasnt fixed that too?

    “Sadly (and I really mean that, because there’s a lot to like about this blog) our host will never be a leader outside the narrow confines of the manosphere. He’s already blown it”

    never’s a long time, and you are wrong, twicely

  108. Opus says:

    I have just been reading James K’s first comment, where he asserts that the concept, until the end of the twentieth century, that it was impossible to Rape ones wife, was, archaic.

    I have had the misfortune to represent (successfully, I am relieved to say) a man accused of raping his wife when the two of them were naked, and in bed, and living together at the time of the alleged ‘Rape’ and where I need hardly add the evidence amounted in its entirety to the assertion of the wife – a wife I hasten to add who was twice her husband’s size. My man naturally denied he had not so much as even touched her, and you cannot blame him as touching is either attempted rape or a sexual assault and certainly sexual harrassement. This is what marriage (now a platonic relationship) has come to at the beginning of the twenty-first century in the West, as a result of the new non-archaic law, where as Bskillet81 observes it is now more acceptable for a man in a homo-sexual bathhouse to have sexual congress with one (or probably considerably more than one) man than it is for a man within monogamous matrimony to have sexual intercourse with his wife. In the light of the present law my advice to any man must be, never cohabit with a woman, and always pay a prostitute should you want sex with a woman: thus western morality.

    Incidentally, in England, the law was not changed: the Court of Appeal merely decided that the law (such as I and every other lawyer these past thousand years had understood) was being taught wrongly and that no such law had ever existed. Words fail me.

  109. Opus says:

    I thought I would add at the time they were thinking of extending , by way of definition creep, the concept of Rape to Marriage, the case they had in mind was: a man and woman are separated and then the man returns to his home, forces his wife to have sex and then leaves again. It was never considered that a man living with a woman he was married to, would be treated as a Rapist. The posited case is however pure fantasy, for as we all know it is women that leave men not the other way round (usually) and the case is simply a straw man example, for I have never come across a case where a man separated from his wife returned to ‘Rape’ her. When men leave it is because they have another woman in tow and could not be paid to go near their now ‘Ex’. The change in the law is outright Misandry, for no woman can Rape a man, and even if she did, no man (usually) would ever even consider reporting the matter to the Police – and then women wonder why men are unwilling to man-up.

  110. George Booth says:

    For Christ’s sake, let civil marriage go. It’s not worth saving. The large majority of Christian churches are destroying themselves trying to frame this secular screw-up as a moral thing and politicize themselves protecting it.

    No, I did not begin with a profanity. I meant it exactly as I wrote it: forsake one for the other.

    We can let homosexuals marry now and, if Romney is elected, maybe we can get polygamy too. Since Feminists have succeeded in eliminating sex as a duty, we can do away with consanguinity restrictions. Civil marriage will become either an insurance co-op/group or a new form of limited liability business. Good riddance!

    What Christians need to do is legalize prostitution. Yes, I’m serious. Then a man could contract a woman, and vice versa, just as 1st Cor Chpt 7 describes, and each would enjoy *better* protections for their contract than either has under current marital law.

    By the way, the plain meaning of that chapter isn’t that sex is OK as long as directed towards one’s spouse. He clearly says it is a inferior situation to celibacy, but if two are so joined, they are responsible for each other’s needs so that they may both focus on a God-focused life.

    I think that there is too much emphasis on “submission” and not enough on “responsibility”. We are not to be slaves to each other, no more than we are to be slaves to God. A sexually manipulative wife isn’t failing to submit, she’s being irresponsible. Roll those two ideas around and see which one chastises more firmly in the offender’s heart and mind.

  111. Anonymous Reader says:

    I think that there is too much emphasis on “submission” and not enough on “responsibility”. We are not to be slaves to each other, no more than we are to be slaves to God. A sexually manipulative wife isn’t failing to submit, she’s being irresponsible. Roll those two ideas around and see which one chastises more firmly in the offender’s heart and mind.

    Modern Western women don’t recognize the word “responsible” or “responsibility” as applying to them. It only applies to men. This is true for a lot of Churchian women, and so I don’t see where the word would have any sting or chastisement at all.

  112. Cane Caldo says:

    By the way, the plain meaning of that chapter isn’t that sex is OK as long as directed towards one’s spouse. He clearly says it is a inferior situation to celibacy, but if two are so joined, they are responsible for each other’s needs so that they may both focus on a God-focused life.

    Let’s check that out.

    Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. 1 Corinthians 7:1-5

    The church at Corinth struggled with sexual deviancy. There was a guy who had to be removed from the congregation for sexual predation. There was an intermingling with a cult of Dionysus. There was divorce. There was marrying of family. It was a mess. At some point, the elders of the church said “Enough”, and wrote to Paul saying “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” Paul responds: “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. There is a reason for marriage, and within marriage let them have free reign of each other’s body.”

    6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. 7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. 8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion. 1 Corinthians 7:6-9

    He goes on to say what he thinks, and begins a process where he carefully delineates what he thinks, and what God commands. “As a concession…I wish that all were as myself…To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single as I am.” A couple important points: 1) This is Paul’s view, not God’s. God’s view is that each has his own gift, one of one and one of another. 2) When Paul says: “I say that it is good for them to remains single as I am.” he is not saying that there is a good choice, and a bad choice. He is saying: “It’s perfectly healthy for you to remain single.” He is not saying that it is better to remain so. Both marriage and celibacy are legitimate paths of chastity.

    10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11

    Again, he clearly delineates what God commands from what he personally thinks–this time in the positive. Don’t divorce. And he says it about the wives first; which is important because he separates the issue of divorcing over doctrine (covered in the following verses) from the issue of divorcing over general unhaaaapiness. (EAPs in the Early Church!)

    12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you[b] to peace. 16 For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

    We’re back to Paul’s considerations, and not God’s commands. These verses deal with a spate of divorces within the church at Corinth caused by one spouse converting to Christianity, and the church teaching a doctrine of discord; that they were now unevenly yoked, and it is better for the men to divorce their wives. Remember, these moves toward divorce are happening in the context of the elders of the church of Corinth advising everyone (wrongly) to be celibate. It is interesting that he cautions the men first, in that it is men making bad decisions based on bad teachings; not bad feelings.

  113. Comment_Whatever says:

    Lest people think I give men a pass, my father once explained to me that even though he had done only the absolute minimum, or less… or even nothing… and that with extreme resistance, to every request for money for something I had made in my youth, he seriously asked, “How would you know I wold have turned you down if you just asked?”

    In other words, the clever liar in full “Can you PPRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOVVVVE it?” mode. I find it equally distasteful when done by a man as a woman.

    It is a vile habit and I am tired of listening to Americans use it so very much. Oh sure, sometimes you really do misunderstand something. But when every complaint is met with a dancing clever retard smirking at you “Can you PPRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOVVVE it?” it becomes a very difficult to take any such claim seriously. Which creates other problems.

  114. Cane Caldo says:

    Almost forgot this part:

    I think that there is too much emphasis on “submission” and not enough on “responsibility”. We are not to be slaves to each other, no more than we are to be slaves to God.

    Now, this statement is true. Feminists should be no more slaves to men than to God. Paul says it this way:

    15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 16 Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 19 I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

    Whom do you serve, George? The one who says to be lawless (that is: masterless) free from God; or the One who says present yourselves as slaves to righteousness, free from sin? Because that God says the husband is to be slave to Christ as the body is slave to the head. That God say the wife is slave to the husband as the body is slave to the head*. Because that God says that our bodies are slaves to our spouses, but free from sexual impurity.

    *A person suffering a body that does not obey its head is very sick indeed; from the utterly embarrassing bowel incontinence to the horrifying “locked in” syndrome.

  115. The Antigrrrl says:

    “Part of the problem is the thinking that leads to the idea that sex is something that she does for him. ” and ” Also in terms of the whole needing to desire it before they’ll start it, a large percentage of women have little to no active desire for sex until things have gotten started. So the whole ” I shouldn’t do it unless I really want it” is nonsense.”

    I think these are both points worth repeating. Seriously a woman who is saying “no, I don’t feel like having an orgasm tonight” has something wrong with her. Oxytocin is better than any manmade drug out there. I have found it to be the best physical pain killer and antidepressent there is. Also it is the only thing that would take away morning sickness for me. Oxytocin is also a major factor in bonding to the person who stimulates it.
    There is the power aspect of it, but Christian parents can seriously screw up their daughters in this area . If they are telling their daughters “nice girls don’t want to have sex” and “boys are just out for one thing” while ignoring the fact that girls may actually(and probably) WANT that, it just sets them up for failure. So unrealistic.

  116. George Booth says:

    @Cane Caldo

    First, I’m not going to argue with scripture. My “plain meaning” should have been qualified as my reading of it. As long as I’m opining, though, I see “unequally yoked” to be a warning improperly applied to marriage.

    You reference material that I don’t have.

    @Anonymous Reader,

    Such women, rejecting responsibility, are unfit for any sort of “marriage” and Christianity is just one in a crowd. If there is a circumstance for “unequally yoked” to be applied to marriage, this would be it, and claims of faith are worthless.

  117. George Booth says:

    @Cane Caldo

    Who do I serve? Uhhh … Who are you to ask?

  118. greyghost says:

    Dalrock, Tell me I’m a bad greyghost for saying those mean and hurtful things. So James K will allow you to go to heaven.

  119. GKChesterton says:

    @James,

    Support for “biblical marriage”, stripped of cultural baggage, must allow formal polygamy. If you fail to do so, then you are agreeing with the fem-doms that marriage must combine biblical precepts with the values of the prevailing culture. The difference between you and the fem-doms is merely haggling over which cultural modifications to accept.

    No it must not. Even Luther agreed that saying anything of the kind was a horrible mistake. What on earth are you arguing for?

    @Caldo,

    Marriage is a state of being entered into by–and particular to–one man and one woman, where they become one entity. From this, there can be no healthy separation anymore than a head can be healthily separated from the body. The cares of one are the cares of both; as the head revels in the beauty of the body, and cannot ignore its pain. Though, these forces are experienced differently in that the head might understand that some pains must be endured for the good of the whole; while other seemingly pleasurable sensations must be avoided. Within this context, sex and all its rewards are the physical and symbolic manifestations of the truth of their spiritual unity.

    Very well stated. There is a tendency in the manosphere to reduce everything to neo-Libertarian market-speak. This is fundamentally un-Christian.

    Now if only we could all agree that the Christian perspective of sex for nearly two millenia up till the Lambeth Conference in 1920 was one that actively encouraged the production of children:
    http://anglicanhistory.org/gore/contra1930.html

    And then all hell broke lose as the Age of the Flappers tilted mainline Christianity into the 1950’s/1960’s and full consumption of feminism (Catholicism held out a bit loner…)

  120. @ Some Guy, what this society idolizes the most often, in my opinion, is our own opinion. We want to be independent and autonomous, not realizing that we need to be yoke to Him to get anywhere. Autonomy and independence live in the same house as rebellion, they are both selfish motivations,

  121. Cane Caldo says:

    @GB

    I forgot to reference the second body of scripture: Romans 6:15-23; also written by Paul.

    I try very hard to not reference other material. Though there is certainly a use for external sources, it seems like cheating. I don’t believe the truth is so hidden. Everything I wrote can be gathered from the 1 and 2 letter from Paul to the Corinthians.

    “Unequally yoked” is another Pauline term; from 2 Corinthians 6:14-16

    14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial?[b] Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God;”

    This was written in response to more bad doctrine. Paul addresses the mass divorce in the first letter by telling them that the husband sanctifies the wife, and the wife sanctifies the husband. The church in Corinth took the ball and ran with it, straight into error: they started marrying unbelievers. When he said not to divorce unbelievers, he specifically was addressing those who were married before becoming Christians.

    What right do I have to ask you? I, a fellow slave of Christ (though a very bad one) have every right. Our man Paul, again in the first letter to the Corinthians.

    1 When one of you has a grievance against another, does he dare go to law before the unrighteous instead of the saints? 2 Or do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? 3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels? How much more, then, matters pertaining to this life!” 1 Corinthians 6:1-3

    In all seriousness, George, the Bible does not say the things you seem to think it says. If I had an outside reference, it was my upbringing. When I was growing up, my father was a pastor. Most kids get grounded/restricted. My restrictions included activities: physical labor, reading scripture and C.S. Lewis essays (near-scripture in our household), and my own 500 word essays on what I thought it meant, which we would discuss.

  122. Jason says:

    Interesting discussion on headship and submission. I wonder if occurs to women who rail against this arrangement so much that there is a really simple way to never ever be subject to your husband and never ever have to offer any form of submission to him in a way that is perfectly Godly.

    Just don’t get married, problem solved.

    Seeing as they don’t seem to like sex anyway, the reason Paul says to get married, it shouldn’t be an issue for them.

    I’m sure i’m being to rational for this to be able to be applied to them, but it is just my male brain and its desire to “offer a solution” at work 🙂

    Jason

  123. Jason says:

    An additional thought sparked by the conversation about a wife being “unable” to have sex with her husband.

    Let me offer another radical solution to the problem.

    There are lots of ways to have sex that dont require vaginal penetration (oral sex and hand jobs come to mind here). Is it a perfect solution? No probably not, but if each spouse has a duty to the other then a wife who loves her husband (and that is what seems to be the general case here) should be willing to offer him a helping hand even in the case of medical incapacitation (from the perspective of vaginal penetration). The reverse would also hold for a husband unable to rise to the occasion for his wife I guess, but that doesn’t generally seem to be an issue as such.

    Jason

  124. Chaz345 says:

    “Seriously a woman who is saying “no, I don’t feel like having an orgasm tonight” has something wrong with her. ”

    The typical retort to this idea in some quarters is to go off on the statistics of how rare it is for some women to have orgasms. IOW simply another way to blame her failure to meet her responsibilites on him. Because if he were better at sex, she’d want it more. Are there cases where her wanting sex is because it rarely if ever does anything for her? Sure. But I bet for every one of those there’s five where there’s little to so sex and a man who would be willing to do litterally whatever it takes to give her an orgasm.

  125. freebird says:

    @George Booth-
    So you disagree with scripture and yet continue to argue as a christian.
    You’re either trolling or seriously in need of integrity.

  126. George Booth says:

    @Cane Caldo,

    Re: Who are you to ask?
    “a fellow slave of Christ”
    Exactly so. Therefore you will request, not demand.

    Re: other sources
    “The church in Corinth took the ball and ran with it, straight into error: they started marrying unbelievers”
    Let’s start with this assertion. Where did you get this? I’m not saying is isn’t true, but neither can I independently confirm it. In this you ask my faith that you present it correctly. Well I don’t have “faith” in people, only trust, and I have reason to doubt your presentation.

    I note your emphasized phrase from above: “now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification” is from one of several more recent translations of scripture. My preferred translation of this reads: “even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness”.

    My preference is based on my experience. Following the guidance from scripture, I measure my reading of scripture with the world. My *experience* in following Romans 6:19 is that I *yield*, not that I “present”. I am no slave, but conflicted. My regenerated spirit compels me as much as my body. That may go to answer your question of who I “serve”.

    Either translation will do, but yours tempts one to command, and I am not commanded by men. My faith and my fate is between me and God. Your opinion on scripture is noted, but carries no special weight. Make your case for your opinion and I’ll read it.

    Your father was a Pastor. Huh. I doubt I’ve met him. I don’t know a thing about him.

    I know about Pastors though. They are one of a class that I call “professional good guys”. I have only met one of that class that didn’t present himself as better than the next guy – he had been an professional engineer and could return to it at will. They are anxious men put in an unholy and impossible position. They acquire “blessing” from a church institution, seminary … through works. They sell themselves, enslave I suppose, to congregations for money. Their duty is to shepherd … while attracting and entertaining an ever larger congregation. If they are, in fact, called to preach the Word, the inherent conflict wears on them, driving them either towards imperiousness and condescension, or bitter cynicism.

    I’m sorry to hear about your father. I’m sure he did his best.

  127. George Booth says:

    @Freebird,

    If you can find any instance I have disagreed with scripture, quote it.

    I have disagreed with the opinions of mere men who think that quoting scripture makes their opinions Holy, or at least holier than me.

    I shouldn’t have lashed out in frustration at your advocacy of cruelty. Where before you couldn’t understand me, now you can’t hear me.

  128. Suz says:

    “A sexually manipulative wife isn’t failing to submit, she’s being irresponsible.”
    They are one and the same. Someone must be the head of the marriage, and it’s been proven (and then some) that it should be the husband. Submitting to the husband is submitting to the marriage. To refuse to submit IS to deny responsibility. This applies both Biblically and in the secular world.
    Of course, as AR suggested, most women don’t grasp the concept of responsibility. Or submission.

  129. Cane Caldo says:

    Re: Who are you to ask?
    “a fellow slave of Christ”
    Exactly so. Therefore you will request, not demand.(…)

    Gird up your loins like a man.

    1) I ask “Who do you serve?”
    2) You ask by what right do I ask.
    3) I say as a fellow slave of Christ.
    4) You agree that we are fellow slaves.
    5) You fail to recognize that “ask” and “request” are synonyms, and fail to comprehend a curly line with a dot at the end of a sentence.
    6) You comically demand that I not demand; based on our shared state of slavery to Christ.
    7) You deny you are a slave to Christ; against what you agreed earlier.
    8) You fail to understand what the words “yield” and “servant” mean.
    9) You proclaim that your scriptural interpretation is based on your own experiences, alone; sneering at the very 2,000-plus years tradition that bequeathed you the book in the first place.
    10) You denigrate the office of pastor; one of the very few official roles specifically outlined in the New Testament in a pathetic attempt to shame me via shaming my father, whom you admit not knowing.
    11) You admit (in recent previous comments) that you’re divorced, and have raised rebellious daughters, but you do not hesitate to proclaim on marital matters–matters in which you have spectacularly failed. Notably, you failed by practicing those same teachings you continue to espouse; though no one espouses you.

    Bitch, please. I expect this sort of thinking from divorced mommybloggers. Don’t you have a CafeMom column that needs attending to?

  130. Dalrock says:

    @George Booth

    I think that there is too much emphasis on “submission” and not enough on “responsibility”.

    Are you arguing with me or with scripture?

    • 1 Peter 3:1-6 has two instructions to wives to submit to their husbands, and another to obey their husbands.
    • Ephesians 5:22-24, two more commands for wives to submit to their husbands.
    • Colossians 3:18, another verse telling wives to submit to their husbands.
    • 1 Timothy 2:11 commands women (not just wives) to learn in silence with all submission.
    • Titus 2:5, wives are to be obedient to their husbands.

    I’m sure I’ve missed some, but this is certainly a recurring theme in the New Testament. It seems to be the primary command to wives. I’m not aware of a biblical call to wives to be “responsible”, but if you can share some I would be in your debt for educating me.

  131. George Booth says:

    @Dalrock,

    Your post here is on “sex as a weapon”? And you’re all about submission? Well, everybody to their own kink. I don’t handle jute rope in my business, but I could.

    What happens when she doesn’t “submit” sexually? Do you propose that she should be forced to? One can force submission, certainly. You can’t do that with responsibility.

    In any case, I was addressing sex in particular and It goes to being effective. Tell any person to submit and, oh yeah, you’re going to need ALL those verses, especially if s/he doesn’t believe you’re worthy of submitting to. Tell her a wife being irresponsible, which is true in particular on this issue, and you have her self image working for you and your own deficiencies aren’t a part of the discussion.

    I can see it now. Some man demanding submission over and over and over, and one of the things she is to submit to is to never question his kindness or lack of it ?

    Actually, I have seen it. She was terrified by his righteousness and she ought to have been.

    As to whether responsibility is scriptural, I suppose it’s not – specifically – but when the admonition is about defrauding one’s husband (KJV) and rendering due benevolence, I chose to cast it that way. Have you a better word? I don’t quite see how ‘submission’ would work here. The essence of submission is to do what one is told, and only what one is told. Proactive submission sounds like an oxymoron to me.

    Of course, if the wife at issue isn’t going to respond to one, I don’t think she will to the other. I could be wrong.

    You’re the resident expert. Does one catch more flies with honey than vinegar? Does the the demand for submission generally work better than a call to responsibility?

  132. Chaz345 says:

    @GB,

    The problem is that by and large today’s Christian feminist categorically rejects any and all calls to responsibility directed at her. We’ve even got so called ministries devoted to the idea that anything and everything that she may do that’s wrong, up to and including having an affair, is ultimately his fault for not loving her as he should.

    Of course demanding submission(which is so far from what anyone here has suggested that it’s laughable that you raise it) isn’t productive either.

  133. goodfoot says:

    “Proactive submission” isn’t an oxymoron. It means working toward a goal without having to be told what to do. This is a line from the Army NCO Creed– I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders. An NCO is still being submissive to his superiors, but he doesn’t need his hand held. He doesn’t need to be told HOW to do something, just what needs to be done. In the instance of sexuality, I would say that submission would mean servicing your husband without having to be asked.

  134. MackPUA says:

    @George Booth

    You’re basically drawing fictitious straw men

    Men who ask & expect women to be submissive arent in anyway abusers

    Also a woman isnt imprisoned in a relationship, it is HER responsibility to leave if she finds herself in an abusive relationship

    Assuming women are somehow victims & trapped in abusive relationships, against their will, is highly misandric AND you’re WHITE KNIGHTING for women, by shifting the RESPONSIBILITY of women in relationship to the male …

    It’s not a matter of catching vinegar, its about biology

    Women are supposed to be naturally submissive & held accountable to their biology, as is natural to their makeup

    Women naturally are far more content in their natural biological state, & assume responsibility & rational far more readily, & liken to rational & logic & restraint, & chastity in a submissive biological state

    Then they do in an empowered, masculine biologically incorrect role

    The Bible makes it CLEAR women are not meant to take on masculine roles, by insisting they remain true to their submissive natural state

    I suggest you stop, white knighting for women

  135. MackPUA says:

    Addendum to my above post :

    Women arent victims of abusive relationships, they’re perpetrators & participants in abusive relationships, with all the responsibility & common sense, necessary to make sound rational adult choices …

  136. Bwana Simba says:

    The worst thing about sex as a weapon is that all of the men in the church seem to believe that that’s just how it is in that’s perfectly fine and make jokes about it. Hell, there are pastors that include the jokes about men not getting sex from their wives in their sermons. And women wonder why men don’t want to marry.

  137. Dalrock says:

    @George Booth

    Your post here is on “sex as a weapon”? And you’re all about submission? Well, everybody to their own kink. I don’t handle jute rope in my business, but I could.

    You really are an ass, George. If you see the Bible as kinky and something to be ashamed of, then so be it.

  138. George Booth says:

    @Cane Caldo,

    I know that what you’ve said is honestly how you’ve read and understood the scriptures. I’m also pretty sure that you’ve never run into my kind before.

    You and yours are not the last word on the Word. Polemics won’t make it so. Neither will citing hundreds of years of opinions of mere men. They had to support their positions in their time and you’ll have to do it now, if you want to convince me of your correctness.

    I’d like to say that I don’t know where you read me shaming Pastors or your father or you, but I can’t. If I don’t elevate those guys above me, then I must have malicious intent, as well as being wrong in my understanding of the scriptures.

    Well, I disagree. I know this is confusing for you. I’ll help as I can.

  139. greyghost says:

    The truth really violates the essence of those that have taken on the values and atitudes that give thiem perceived wisdom in a feminised wicked world

  140. greyghost says:

    James k was another one Talking all of that christian word shit while the world falls apart. And then smuggley telling the rest of us we are not being christian trying to restore order in a world gone mad. All along the asshole can claim he was true to the word of god. Madness

  141. tweell says:

    George Booth: “I’d like to say that I don’t know where you read me shaming Pastors or your father or you, but I can’t. If I don’t elevate those guys above me, then I must have malicious intent, as well as being wrong in my understanding of the scriptures.”

    Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?

    George Booth: “Your father was a Pastor. Huh. I doubt I’ve met him. I don’t know a thing about him. I know about Pastors though. They are one of a class that I call “professional good guys”. I have only met one of that class that didn’t present himself as better than the next guy – he had been an professional engineer and could return to it at will. They are anxious men put in an unholy and impossible position. They acquire “blessing” from a church institution, seminary … through works. They sell themselves, enslave I suppose, to congregations for money. Their duty is to shepherd … while attracting and entertaining an ever larger congregation. If they are, in fact, called to preach the Word, the inherent conflict wears on them, driving them either towards imperiousness and condescension, or bitter cynicism. I’m sorry to hear about your father. I’m sure he did his best.”

    As an exercise in shaming, let’s replace pastors with George Booths and see if it is shameful.

    Your father was George Booth. Huh. I doubt I’ve met him. I don’t know a thing about him. I know about Booths, though. They are one of a class that I call “professional good guys”. I have only met one Booth that didn’t present himself as better than the next guy – he had been an professional engineer and could return to it at will. George Booths are anxious men put in an unholy and impossible position. They acquire “blessing” from a church institution, seminary … through works. Booths sell themselves, enslave I suppose, to congregations for money. Their duty is to shepherd … while attracting and entertaining an ever larger congregation. If they are, in fact, called to preach the Word, the inherent conflict wears on them, driving them either towards imperiousness and condescension, or bitter cynicism. I’m sorry to hear about your father. I’m sure he did his best.

    Not so nice, is it?
    I’m sure I’ve run into white knights before. There’s no convincing you – your mind is made up. ‘A man convinced against his will is of his own opinion still’.

  142. Legion says:

    Suz says:
    May 20, 2012 at 10:43 am
    “Asserting your will and maintaining control of the relationship is your job as a man… Dominating your relationship shouldn’t be a constant uphill battle.”

    That is all of the problem in a couple sentences. Men are not taught they must lead and control the relationship. Women don’t now they should submit. The laws crucify the man,. Men now know better than to marry.

  143. Elspeth says:

    As a woman, I guess I’ll respond to George Booth. I’ll be brief because this isn’t rocket science.

    I haven’t read the entire thread here, but I certainly can’t imagine Dalrock asserting that any man can demand submission from his wife. Biblical submission is given, not coerced. The responsibility to submit belongs to the woman. The responsibility to lovingly lead falls to the husband. And my understanding of that love is not interpreted as placating a wife’s feelings.

    It is not the husband that demands submission in all things, it is God who commands that the wife give it, and given it even when her husband isn’t a believer.

    It is a Scriptural command that a wife not deprive her husband of sex, going so far as to make clear that when a couple marries, each spouse’s body belongs to the other.

    I fail to see why this is controversial, really. Unless you’ve subscribed to a feminist worldview, which is incompatible with Christianity anyway.

  144. Suz says:

    “The essence of submission is to do what one is told, and only what one is told. Proactive submission sounds like an oxymoron to me.”
    George you have swallowed the feminized “definition” of submission. To submit is to commit with all of your heart. Submission is not passive.

  145. Cane Caldo says:

    I fail to see why this is controversial, really. Unless you’ve subscribed to a feminist worldview, which is incompatible with Christianity anyway.

    Bingo. It’s a point I cut from my list: George is a feminist. He’s not only subscribed to it, but subsumed in it. Time and again he makes clear that his reference point for whether a thing is good or not is himself; his feelings; his thoughts…this is THE classic feminist position. It is unfathomable to him that faith, tradition, or obedience should play any role in his life.

    That, and the nonsense. His comments are just full of flat out weirdness, easily observable lies, and gobsmacking contradictions. As I said of Ray, he’s either a troll, or delusional. If I didn’t think Dalrock was on the case as host, I’d be suspicious they’re the same person. He takes some meth, logs on as Ray the Avenger. Later, he takes some quaaludes to counter-balance, smears his lips in Revlon, and comes back here to do the Internet version of the Buffalo Bill mirror dance.

    [D: George and Ray are in different states, so I’m nearly certain they are different. I’m losing patience with George, and I’m guessing the feeling is mutual.]

  146. CL says:

    George is a feminist. He’s not only subscribed to it, but subsumed in it.

    Submitted to it?

  147. I was raised in a Church with no professional pastors. I’ve only attended one church with a pro-pastor. I call them hired guns. I’ve been on retreats and I’m an interview away from ordination (and interview I’ll never have). I see it as the difference between a wife and a “professional sex worker.” How about paid white knights?

  148. Dalrock says:

    @GKC

    Now if only we could all agree that the Christian perspective of sex for nearly two millenia up till the Lambeth Conference in 1920 was one that actively encouraged the production of children:
    http://anglicanhistory.org/gore/contra1930.html

    This reminds me. In part 4 of the series I quoted a commenter Sheila featured in her post (the one Sheila said she agreed with). One part of the commenter’s rant which I didn’t quote in that post was (emphasis mine):

    Men, women have to have the babies. The least you could do is make a date once a week or two. Get off your butts. Feminism occurred because men liberated themselves from the home during the industrial revolution. . . And gradually, they turned their backs on their familial and marital duties. It particularly heightened post WWII.

    It is fascinating how perfectly she has inverted the meaning of 1 Timothy 2:11-15. To modern Christian women children are now just one more club to beat their husbands/baby daddies with, both with guilt as above and with threats of court sanctioned theft of the children and his assets/income. The children are simply one more tool to force the man to submit. Those who truly care about actively encouraging the production of children will I assume get right on fixing that. I know this isn’t you, but the silence on the issue from the vast majority of Christians who claim to be traditional is deafening. They only time they speak up is to swat down anyone who proposes something… traditional.

  149. Suz says:

    Cane, you made my day.

  150. Cane Caldo says:

    @Dalrock

    Those who truly care about actively encouraging the production of children will I assume get right on fixing that. I know this isn’t you, but the silence on the issue from the vast majority of Christians who claim to be traditional is deafening. They only time they speak up is to swat down anyone who proposes something… traditional.

    I read this three times, but i still don’t understand. Which part do you want fixed, and what are they silent on?

    @Suz

    My pleasure.

  151. Jacquie says:

    GB,
    “And you’re all about submission? Well, everybody to their own kink. I don’t handle jute rope in my business, but I could.”

    Submission is not my kink, it is my gift to my husband. If you knew your ass from your elbow you’d understand it’s definition and the Biblical instruction women have been given. This is how I honor my husband. It is one of the most important ways I demonstrate my love toward him. A woman using it as a tool of manipulation is only telling her husband how little she actually cares for him, how little respect she has for him. That is what the post was about so your brain must have slept while yours eyes read through it.

    “Tell any person to submit and, oh yeah, you’re going to need ALL those verses, especially if s/he doesn’t believe you’re worthy of submitting to.”

    A woman who questions the worthiness of her husband for her gift of submission should have questioned that before the wedding. If there were any doubts then she should not have taken a vow. If she did so with the intent to not honor those vows but to implement her own ideas as soon as the cake was cut then she misrepresented herself and is the one unworthy of him.

    “The essence of submission is to do what one is told, and only what one is told. Proactive submission sounds like an oxymoron to me.”

    The essence of submission is to follow one who is in authority over you; this would mean a boss, a superior, a cop, the government. My husband has God given authority over me. He makes known to me what he expects because of his position/role in our marriage. I carry out what he would like because it is my position/role. When decisions need to be made he consults me just as a senior officer would ask subordinates to weigh in their opinions as to the best course of action. They may not agree with his final decision, but they are aware that options were considered and they follow out his commands. How is this not proactive? You make no sense.

  152. ray says:

    dalrock —

    “George Booth

    I think that there is too much emphasis on “submission” and not enough on “responsibility”.

    Are you arguing with me or with scripture?”

    i was just instructed (numerously) that females are free to make their own biblical interpretations, to hold their Christian Workshops and Conferences and Websites (for mixed genders or just females, doesnt matter);

    . . .that females damn well do NOT have to listen to, nor obey, mere male “strangers” (who, as Suz helpfully informed, are usually Batterers and Attackers anyway, from whom women are “lucky to escape”) :O)

    that wives need only submit to husbands, not to Abusive Strangers on the Internet, and that only fools reject the “wisdom of women” based on their sex (gender)

    Suz — “Genuine authority involves more than age and experience. Wisdom and morality are also factors. Only a fool would reject wisdom due to the age or sex of the “teacher.””

    only fools would reject the Genuine Wisdom of Suz, Jacquie, Antigrll and Co.!

    who decides who has “authority”? Suz and Co.

    and they’ll let you know of whom they approve (it’s just like the Legislatures!)

    likewise, i’m instructed that unmarried females (or females in biblical discourse addressing males other than their husbands) have no requirement of obedience to males generally, and are at liberty to refute (and degrade, and exclude) any mere man/stranger who dares require their silence and submission

    let’s print it again, second thread running, might stick this time —

    “Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

    But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

    For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

    And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.” (1 Tim.)

    the apostle says NADA about wives and husbands

    NADA about WHAT the female is teaching, nor whom, nor what age the students are, etc etc etc etc, save the rationalizations

    what was Eve’s sin? disobedience

    no different than her sisters today, she assumed the import of her precious Opinions, arrogating to herself the knowledge/judgment of what is right and wrong (good and evil, meaning she took/takes the Law from God and his servants, and sets herself up as Lawgiver and Judge . . . sound familiar to any Western men?)

    the results speak for themselves, I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

    the authority of the male over the female (not spousally, but generally and globally) is not only affirmed biblically, but the apostle declares he will not “suffer” such disobedience — meaning, such rebellion is hated by God, and will be punished by God

    on the prior thread, at the first sign of my support for this verse, out came Team Woman to “defend their Rights” and Express Their Opinions, while ignoring Timothy’s scriptural command (too busy thinking up great vengeful insults to obey)

    worse, out came “christian” males to — as ever — support and defend the grrls in their disobedience and rebellion (citing Scripture no less!)

    folks if “christian men” cant even stand up to empowered, smart-mouthed, rebellious women on the anonymous internet, what do you think happens in a physical church, with 120 females, 50 males, and mr. pastorette? if they rush to defend disobedience anonymously, do we imagine that men are standing up to female power and mockery in the congregations?

    they arent, theyre doing exactly what they did here . . . worse, in many cases, b/c outside the internet, renegades from the matriarchy can be punished, in many ways beyond the usual female shame-a-thon

    thats why females rule the western world, and thats why Christ (thru Isaiah) told us 2800 years ago that women ruled over his people (specifically, his Chruch but generally, all the world belonging to Christ)

  153. Jacquie says:

    “the authority of the male over the female (not spousally, but generally and globally) is not only affirmed biblically,”

    Ray, I would ask you where you find scripture to support this statement but since 1 Cor. 14 tells me that I am to ask my own husband if I want to learn something I asked mine. He lead me to 1 Tim. 2 which states that women are not permitted authority over men, but it does not state that any man has authority over any woman; her husband has authority.
    And where on this forum am I teaching, I am engaging in some stimulating debate and weighing in my thoughts. You take them and leave them as you wish.

    [D: You certainly don’t need Ray’s or any other commenter’s permission to participate here.]

  154. Dalrock says:

    @Cane Caldo

    I read this three times, but i still don’t understand. Which part do you want fixed, and what are they silent on?

    This part:

    To modern Christian women children are now just one more club to beat their husbands/baby daddies with, both with guilt as above and with threats of court sanctioned theft of the children and his assets/income. The children are simply one more tool to force the man to submit.

  155. Suz says:

    Jacquie,
    You’re veering off of Ray’s script. When you ad lib like that, instead of answering you directly, he’ll just go off on yet another tangent, and try to bury you under a pile of non-sequitors and straw men. Take cover, and enjoy the show!

    Ray,
    Like George, you don’t know your ass from your elbow if you can’t tell the difference between teaching and discussing. Between submission and weakness. Between moral authority and contrived authority.
    Somewhere buried in your nonsensical verbiage are a few threads of truth. What you have woven them into is astonishingly lacking in the grace and logically irrefutable truths which permeate the Bible. I wouldn’t waste my words trying to teach you anything; you’re ineducable. Feel free to entertain me with yet another Spectacular Rant, but could you trouble yourself to spice it up with some new material?

  156. David says:

    Is it me or do some on here feel very threatened by strong, intelligent submissive women? I, for one, appreciate the benefit of knowledge from wherever it comes, regardless of gender.

  157. Anonymous Reader says:

    As I pointed out to GKC earlier, in a previous thread, bearing children is not a magic cure all. I’m thinking of a man I knew over 20 years ago, in the 80’s. The youngest of his children graduated high school and left home, whereupon his wife divorced him. Looking back at his face in my memory now, I recognize that stunned, poleaxed look; he never saw it coming.

    He was an active Catholic, a public foe of abortion, who fathered five children with a wife that he believed loved him and would stay with him to death. He tried to reconcile, no dice. I don’t know if she bought an annulment or just divorced him. He moved to a different state and so far as I know did not remarry The point being, bearing 5 children and being a SAHM was not a magic spell of protection.

    Given the fact that custody of any children pretty much guarantees money for years after a divorce, one could argue that bearing children gives a woman a bigger hammer to hit a man with. As with all aspects of modern marriage (2.0) “it depends”. It is not the +5 amulet of protection GKC apparently believes it to be.

  158. The Antigrrrl says:

    One problem with submitting to weird guys on the internet (other than the obvious) is that they could actually be a three hundred pound lesbian playing devil’s advocate. who really knows in a virtual space?

  159. Anonymous Reader says:

    Submission to a duly constituted authority may be passive but generally is an action. It may be a positive action, as when a shop owner actively ensures the store is within fire code, it may be a negative action as when I obey the speed limit even though I am alone on the road. But it is not supine, lay on the ground, passivity. That’s a Marxist line of thinking, no surprise that feminism often uses it. Suz and Jacquie have already explained this in detail, I’m just trying to add a more abstract way of saying the same thing

    Perhaps George Booth could ponder all these replies on submission for a while

    Ray, how is it that you know so many homeless men?

  160. The Antigrrrl says:

    “But it is not supine, lay on the ground, passivity. That’s a Marxist line of thinking, no surprise that feminism often uses it.”

    Passivity also tends to be a sign of abdication of active choice and responsibility. Passive people are usually the ones who say “but I was just following orders…” It is an extreme “not my fault, it was the other guy” line of thinking, classic victim mentality.

  161. Cane Caldo says:

    @Dalrock

    Gotcha. Very true. I misread the quoted bit, and was confused.

    @AR

    I don’t think GKC means that it is a cure-all. It’s like school. Here’s the verse “Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.” You can learn reading writing and arithmetic in class, but only if you continue with self-control. Class is not a cure-all, but you really are better off going to class to learn, and use self-control. Most people don’t simply pick it up without an instructor, even though the actual learning is done by the student.

    In reality, this is hardly practiced in our times. Your poor friend (withstanding? notwithstanding?) aside, most people restrict their child-rearing well under capabilities, or danger. Their eyes bulge out when I tell them we have four kids, and there’s always some comment about my poor wife.

    You don’t understand, I say–I’m saving her life. Haha!

  162. MackPUA says:

    @Antigrrl

    Could say the same thing about weird creepy girls on the internet …

  163. CC, I have been in quite large groups of people at my old workplace, and been the outlier with three children.

  164. All the women on this thread, which I have glanced at briefly, seem to be on the right track about the submission thing. And I am always happy to read what Suz, Elspeth, Antigrrl, and Jacquie have to say.

    And Antigrrl, absolutely. Never assume that a person is what he or she purports to be on the Internet.

  165. ray says:

    ever vigilant, The Group has spoken

    didnt waste any time with the Collective Slapdown, eh Team? :O)

    ” Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.
    But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.”

    nothing ambiguous about that — except for rebels and their enablers, disobedient to the end

  166. Anonymous Reader says:

    Antigrrrl
    Passivity also tends to be a sign of abdication of active choice and responsibility.

    It is also the first word in “passive-aggressive”, not surprisingly passive-aggressive people tend to abdicate choice, and blame their problems on others.

    Ray, this is not a church.
    And how is it that you know so many homeless men, again?

  167. Cane Caldo says:

    @AR

    “Submission to a duly constituted authority may be passive but generally is an action.”

    Very well stated. Your phrasing caused me to consider the word “submission”, in a new, but obvious, way: sub-mission. The commander has a mission. Those under his command have a sub-mission that supports it. Those in sub-missions are important for the execution of the mission.

    I know, I know…the whole captain and first mate thing. I got it; I just never saw the etymology before. Stupid.

  168. Comment_Whatever says:

    I’d like to make a very simplistic point that seems to be being missed.

    If a woman failed to submit to her husband, but kept her own council and acted on her own judgement she could conceivably be dealt with in a reasonable way.

    But the thing is, women kinda don’t do the independence thing. They are submitting to someone or something 24/7. Was it that Eve failed to submit to her husband, or that she did the bidding of the serpent?

    One follows the other, and vanity over all, but still, if women were actually the bold independent creatures that they claimed to be, things would be less likely to explosively explode when they stopped listening to their husbands or God. But women don’t let go of one branch but to grab another. The female herd, the government, rich doctor man, ect.

    And this makes the situation so much more explosive.

  169. Comment Whatever

    I think that is broadly true. Women don’t do “original thought” much. Most of the feminist ideas in the Church could probably be traced to male scholars.

    On a possibly related thought, I was musing this morning that “society is a struggle for the resources of men”. That includes intellectual support. Feminists are always eager to get the intellectual imprimatur of men. That is why “white knights” and “manginas” are so crucial. Feminists don’t like these men, but they are valuable as window dressing.

  170. ray says:

    Ray, this is not a church.

    darned if you arent right after all, congratulations

  171. Anon1987 says:

    Dear Dalrock and co,

    I’ve only been reading your blog for a few months (and I’d just like to point out that while I’m not religious, I can understand and appreciate where you are coming from, hopefully no offence taken) and what you have to say really hits home with me. I have not had many experiences with women (I’ve only had 2 girlfriends) and I’ve always felt like the relationships going bad were my fault, despite my best attempts. However since the end of my last relationship, I’ve felt no real desire to start another relationship under my own terms, but I certainly feel a lot of societal and familial pressure to do so because apparently it’s a concern that I don’t want a relationship anymore.

    After a lot of things you’ve been saying and from doing my own research in my own time, I can hardly see why I would want to find someone again. I will admit it, I’m overweight, not particularly good looking, still going to school (to become a teacher nonetheless, which I’ll probably be at a disadvantage in finding a job because I’m male and therefore automatically a mysogynistic pedophile) and I don’t own a car. I don’t particularly feel like I’m attractive to women which is true from my experiences and trying to get my life on track seems not to count for once.

    I don’t feel like I can meet up with the standards that a lot of women seem to have these days and I don’t like the idea that once I hit 30, all the women who didn’t want me in my early 20’s will suddenly want me, and I don’t want that. I want to feel appreciated and loved for who I am too.

    But by the same token, I can’t see myself getting married and having kids anymore. The very idea scares me now. My first girlfriend lied about being pregnant and tried to blackmail me and my parents with it, so I really can’t see myself having children anymore because I just can’t bear the thought of them being used as a weapon. I don’t want to get married because it makes me feel apphrensive. I feel like I wouldn’t constantly and unceasingly have to prove myself over and over and if I do one tiny thing wrong, there goes my possesions, my money and my life.

    As a man, I feel pretty worthless because I don’t fit in with societies ideals. And I guess I just want to say thanks to you and the other commenters here for providing a place in which I feel I’m not judged and that people can share some of the same ideas without making me feel like an inherantly bad person.

    So thank you for what you do, and keep fighting the good fight, because someone sure has to.

  172. The Antigrrrl says:

    “@Antigrrl

    Could say the same thing about weird creepy girls on the internet …”

    Guilty here, absolutely weird and creepy at times.

  173. Paul says:

    Well, looks like the man up meme is going commercial, I saw a guy wearing such a shirt on the weekend, poked around, and it looks like Nike has a whole line of man up shirts, for both men and women. Here’s but one example:

    http://www.finishline.com/store/catalog/product.jsp?productId=prod686296

  174. unicorn_hunter says:

    Good stuff to teach my kids. I wish I’d known it years ago. Maybe I wouldn’t be divorced.

    I’ve got a question for the folks here. Where in the hell do I find a unicorn? I’ve learned some game and have some success with women half my age(45) I meet out at the bar, but I rarely run into the kind of woman I really want to meet. At this point, my plaint isn’t that I can’t get these women to date me, it’s that I can’t figure out where to meet them.

    What am I looking for that is so unattainable? I’m looking for a smart, educated, attractive, sane woman with a sense of humor and who isn’t hopped up on anti-depressants. When I say smart, I mean capable of a PHD in a hard science smart. Basically, an attractive woman with a degree and a job.

    Most of the time to closest I come is meeting a teacher or a nurse. Maybe once a year I’ll meet a woman who works in a professional capacity in the corporate world, and one of the most attractive women I’ve ever met wasn’t that good looking, but she was a grad student working on her PHD in one of the hard sciences and it was incredible to meet my intellectual equal.

    So, if they aren’t out at the bars, what’s left? The local mega-church? Whole Foods? South Beach? Actually, yes, I do meet them in South Beach, but I live in Denver.

  175. Dalrock,
    Probably the best line in your post is this – “…. Denying a husband who is tempted by porn the healthy sex which is his due as your husband is better compared to denying someone clean water because they are so thirsty they are tempted to drink out of the sewer. …..”
    Since taking the vow to obey my husband (his anniversary present at his request), sexual desire for him seems to always be on tap. This desire makes my actions regarding exercise, food, grooming and communications congruent with keeping his fires burning. Neither of us is complaining.

  176. chaz345 says:

    “Paul says:
    May 23, 2012 at 8:16 am

    Well, looks like the man up meme is going commercial, I saw a guy wearing such a shirt on the weekend, poked around, and it looks like Nike has a whole line of man up shirts, for both men and women. Here’s but one example:”

    The man up meme has been commercial, social, in church, in ministries and seminars aimed at men for decades now. About the only place it’s absent from is entertainment because there it’s apparently funnier to portray men as bumbling idiots who would be hopelessly lost without their wives.

    To be honest I’d have no problem with a man up message if every time a man or group of men steps up, they weren’t immediately smacked down again.

  177. MikeDiver says:

    To ANON1987,

    You might want to reconsider your choice of career. My second wife was a teacher. The few male teachers at the school were all married. The chance of a single man not in a LTR with a woman getting hired is nearly zero. You are immedialtely assumed to be a rapist and child molestor, or why else would you want to work with children. As we know, men have no natural affinity to care for children, even their own. Only by being under the control of a woman that can vouch for you are you even marginally acceptable.

    However, I think your apprehension about entering into a LTR with an American Woman is right on. Do not let social pressure make you put your life in jeopardy. Remember that men are 3 to 4 times more likely to commit suicide than women, and that a divorced man is 4 to 5 times more likely to do it than men in general. For the math deficient, that means that if you marry and get divorced, as a man, you are 12 to 20 times more likely to kill yourself out of despair than a woman. Divorced women experience no increase in suicide rate. By the way, the statistics on suicide and rape show that a female survivor of rape is no more likely to commit suicide than women in general. This, in my mind, counters the whole “rape is the equivalent of murder” meme.

  178. greyghost says:

    Dalrock
    (more butt kissing here) You have given women that had an instinct and desire to please their husbands a please to feel comfortable. Our culture constantly belittles these women. Also these women may feel stress free content that is being undermined with herd induced self doubt. Women will feel unhappy because they were told they were unhappy. Approval of the herd is a huge motivator for social nature of humans. With out a strong base in logic women are especially influenced by the herd.
    Just as the Mens sites give men the answers to something they felt and couldn’t put their fingure on you have given women that give a damn the same thing here.

  179. Suz says:

    Thanks, greyghost, for pointing that out. Not to ramble on about my feeeeelings, but it is SO refreshing to talk with people who validate my instincts, with logic, no less. And I do mean my “instincts,” not my indoctrination.

  180. GG says:

    I doubt that dissenting comments are welcome here, but I have to say that this series on Christian women and many of the comments on it are discouraging to me as a Christian wife. When I read them I don’t see Christ; I see men who are scrambling to seize the control and power they believe are due to them. I see men who are calling women on the sins that are common to women, but glossing over the sins that are common to men. And I see men who want to decide for themselves what it means to serve and to love, rather than looking to Christ’s example. In many ways I see men doing the things they are accusing women of doing – “I will decide what it means to love her.” “I will decide what it means to lead by serving.” That’s not very different from “I’ll decide when he loves me enough.” “I’ll decide when I feel like having sex with him.” I’m not suggesting that husbands should let their wives (or anyone else) decide for them what love, serving and leading mean – the meanings of love and servant leadership are quite clear in Scripture. Almost everyone interprets Scripture in the light of his or her own experiences and interests, and it seems that many men here are interpreting it from the “I’m the man and I want what’s due to me” perspective. I’ll probably be vilified for making these comments, but every time I read an article in this series and the comments that follow, I think that Christ the church and Christian marriage are not being glorified.

  181. chaz345 says:

    Suz, I’m sure you understand this but I’ll say it anyway. There’s nothing wrong at all with feeelings. The problem comes when they become the end all, be all. When they are the starting and ending point that decisions and everything else are based on.

  182. Pingback: Sell Me Marriage | The Society of Phineas

  183. greyghost says:

    GG
    I think that Christ the church and Christian marriage are not being glorified.

    At this time there is nothing there in the church and christian marriage to glorify. The best thing is for you to lead a christ like way in your relationship to your husband. You don’t need the church to have faith. God is good and always was and is the church and christian marriage is not.
    Suz
    The best thing a female MRA can do is change the definition of what a stong woman is. Woman that live a true life of the scripture need to be seen as strong the same as any man the sacrifices for his family. The current definition has women changing the bible to suite modern woman.

  184. Elspeth says:

    GG,

    I think what is happening here is a push back, and a much needed one I’ll add, against a culture and a church that has vilified men while giving women a pass based on nothing more than the validity of our feelings.

    Paul’s love was tough, if you read his writings. So was Christ’s. Yes, there was tenderness, and yes there was compassionate empathy. but not at the expense of the truth. Today’s church has determined that love means “whatever makes you feel validated.” This is not love. Women have internalized it as have men to the detriment of their families because most women won’t live with weak men for the long term.

    That said, I don’t necessarily fall in lockstep with every man who comments here. I have learned to distinguish between those who are Christians and those who aren’t when read their comments. This matters. Even when they aren’t believers though, I feel their pain because this is not conceptual for me. I have witnessed just about everything they lament up close and personal with men I know and love; inflicted by church women. Women who destroyed lives and families and kept right on churching like nothing happened with the full support of their congregations.

    If you want a more delicate, feminine touch on these truths, you can check out my blog under the tabs Dangers of feminism, marriage, and men and masculinity.

    You can learn a lot here, but it’s not necessarily a good place for a woman with delicate sensibilities to hang out.

    [D: Great points Elspeth. I embedded links above to the sections you reference in your blog. I assume you won’t mind.]

  185. unger says:

    GG: Well, first of all, are any power and control due men? If no, then you and God would appear to have a very fundamental disagreement. If yes, then what power and control are due them – and where does this series go beyond calling for what is due?

  186. Suz says:

    Chaz345,
    EXACTLY!

  187. GKChesterton says:

    @Goodfoot,

    “Proactive submission” isn’t an oxymoron. It means working toward a goal without having to be told what to do. This is a line from the Army NCO Creed– I will exercise initiative by taking appropriate action in the absence of orders. An NCO is still being submissive to his superiors, but he doesn’t need his hand held.

    Precisely so. The idea that submission is mindless is post-Enlightenment balderdash. Submission is mindful. In my submission to God I am exposed to a wide variety of choices in how to deal with that submission. In fact GB’s conception of submission is oddly Islamic in form.

    @Jason,
    There are lots of ways to have sex that dont require vaginal penetration (oral sex and hand jobs come to mind here). Is it a perfect solution? No probably not, but if each spouse has a duty to the other then a wife who loves her husband (and that is what seems to be the general case here) should be willing to offer him a helping hand even in the case of medical incapacitation (from the perspective of vaginal penetration).

    Two notes. First the Church both East and West along with the original Protestant reformers would have rejected your statement. The assumption would be that a woman, and likewise a man, incapable of having vaginal sex should not marry. In fact, that they lacked the capacity to marry (this is different from gaining the disability _after_ marriage). Also, that such acts were a _form_ of sodomy. Now I’m not lily white in this area but I think we should at least recognize the historical Christian norm rather than accepting the PUA description of sex.

    @Caldo,

    Time and again he makes clear that his reference point for whether a thing is good or not is himself; his feelings; his thoughts…this is THE classic feminist position.

    Quibble. It is the post-modernist view of which feminism is but a part.

    @Dalrock,
    To modern Christian women children are now just one more club to beat their husbands/baby daddies with, both with guilt as above and with threats of court sanctioned theft of the children and his assets/income.

    I’m not sure if I can follow that the comment is essentially a club. As a patriachalist I have to assume that men own the _majority_ of responsibility in the current state. We can’t be leaders and have a wider bell curve without resulting responsibility. In fact I do see feminism as a direct play by what I call in private conversation “bad patriarchs” (what the manosphere would call PUA’s) to create a sort of “Pleasure Island” where women are divorced from their ends and are free to congregate around said patriarchs for pleasure. But yes, I think even the ancient Christian world had trouble with what, “saved by childbirth,” meant. I tend to take it fairly literally now as I see the negative consequences of being removed from children given in a stable monogamous relationship can do to a woman. I think its directly spiritually harmful in the same way that a man not bonded to either a woman or the Church (through say monasticism as is implied by Paul) is directly spiritually harmed.

    In fact as per Caldo’s question I don’t think most Christian women are even aware of the scriptural imperative to have children. I think they tend to be ignorant of it. I know even in my very conservative upbringing this was lost on most people.

    @Chaz345,

    To be honest I’d have no problem with a man up message if every time a man or group of men steps up, they weren’t immediately smacked down again.

    Indeed. But we have to recognize two distinct groups that do this. One, the feminist minded women and the men who lead them. This is one of the places where I diverge with Dalrock. While I agree with his analysis on slut shaming and the effects on the sexual marketplace I think he discounts the leadership that PUA’s provide women. That’s why I don’t like them. Of course they are nice, we all like alpha’s men and women alike, but alpha PUA’s are just as much the enemy as ultra feminist women.

    @greyghost,
    Our culture constantly belittles these women. Also these women may feel stress free content that is being undermined with herd induced self doubt.

    Quite right. The peer pressure is “group think” in action. Everyone feels we should say this right? [silence]. Silence must mean agreement! We must think this way! [jumps cliff]

    @Suz,

    Thanks, greyghost, for pointing that out. Not to ramble on about my feeeeelings, but it is SO refreshing to talk with people who validate my instincts, with logic, no less. And I do mean my “instincts,” not my indoctrination.

    Both sexes do it but women are much more prone to it. Which is why we can’t treat silence as acquiescence. If you have a group of women and eyes are darting back and forth after a stupid feminist laden comment for God’s sake say something. This is the point before the avalanche. They might laugh it off a bit, but you’d be surprised how fast everyone comes back around to thinking “Christian” once someone, preferably a man, steps in to correct the thought.

  188. Jacquie says:

    GG,
    “When I read them I don’t see Christ; I see men who are scrambling to seize the control and power they believe are due to them.”

    Go back and read the comments more carefully with a bit more of an open mind. Throw out the societal garbage that has been fed for the past several decades and you will begin to see that most of the comments are from men who simply would like the respect that has been denied them; sometimes not even just as a husband but as a human being. Sadly most times this has been done by the church.
    If you have read the comments carefully you should know that I once bought into the rhetoric that everything fell on my husband and everything was his fault. We were both basically told several times by different church leaders when we asked for help with our marriage. I watched as leaders berated my husband in front of me and said he needed to fix himself and fix our marriage, giving me more ammunition to use at home.
    It wasn’t until we turned to the traditional roles of husband as the head and wife submitting to her husband that we found healing in our marriage and healing in ourselves as individuals. These traditional roles are what is outlined in scripture.
    I agree that the subject matter and the words get strong on a forum such as this, but you have to have a thick skin, learn to know when it’s time to add something to the mix of value and when to step back and let something go. We are all human, things can get heated, but then things got heated many times in the scriptures. This is a forum to voice ones opinion, to debate and to back the argument.
    Everyone on here has a voice to say what they feel on controversial subjects, but they do get the opportunity to speak. I cannot say the same for the churches I’ve been in. I’ve seen more of Christ on this forum than I’ve seen in some churches. I’ve been in some churches where the requirements of a potential pastor were so narrow that even Jesus himself wouldn’t get past the initial application stage.
    I’m here to learn the truth, not some ground up version of piecemeal scripture to make a political statement without an opportunity to debate the issue if I see flaws. Here I’ve have been given information to mull over and make my own decisions.
    Thank you.

  189. Suz says:

    GG,
    This is the real world. SOMEONE must make those “decisions;” a marriage with no leadership is dead in the water. The Bible commands that the “someone” be the husband, NOT THE WIFE. You are speaking from the perspective of a culture that doesn’t dare trust husbands to follow Christ. Believe it or not, if you had the sense to marry a moral man, you CAN trust him to make the right decisions for the long run. He may do a few stupid things, and you might not always see the “right” (IOW, you won’t feeeeel like he’s leading properly) he will progress in the right direction, and he will take your marriage with him. But only if you follow. If you’re a modern Christian, it might be beyond your imagination to truly, deeply trust your husband. It is almost certainly beyond your experience.

    Giving yourself fully to your husband is a lot like giving yourself fully to Christ.

  190. Elspeth says:

    You are speaking from the perspective of a culture that doesn’t dare trust husbands to follow Christ. Believe it or not, if you had the sense to marry a moral man, you CAN trust him to make the right decisions for the long run.

    Again, excellent Suz. I often wonder why on earth a woman would marry a man she doesn’t trust to lead here. Then I remember we live in an egalitarian culture (LOL) and women today don’t marry men in order to follow them, but for the wedding, the status, and legitimate babies, at least at the time of the birth.

  191. GG says:

    Thank you for your comments, particularly Elspeth and Jacquie. I am not denying that men deserve respect as people, husbands and the leaders of their homes – quite the opposite. The comments here do seem very harsh and in many ways un-Christlike to me, but as Elspeth said, they are undoubtedly push-back against injustices done to men. We seem to be in a vicious cycle. For most of human history men held virtually all of the power and could pretty much do as they pleased. Early feminism attempted to shift some of the power to women, but modern feminism has pushed way beyond that and is attempting to grab as much power as possible for women while punishing men. And clearly elements of feminism have moved into the church. So now men are pushing back and attempting to either (depending on your perspective) regain some voice and value as people or retake as much power as possible. I guess this cycle is part and parcel of our fallen nature, but it certainly seems pointless and unproductive to me. Maybe you are right and this is not the place for me. I often find Dalrock’s perspective on things interesting, but probably need to stop reading the comments. And I probably won’t comment any more – I am guessing that a woman who doesn’t toe the party line will be chewed up and spit out fairly quickly. I’m not a “princess” or a “special flower,” but I do have feelings – lol.

  192. GKChesterton says:

    The wedding. They do it for the wedding. I scandalized a young gal at work when she was talking about her imaginary wedding that she shouldn’t wear white. “Everyone deserves..” it though…sigh…

  193. Suz says:

    Unless you’re irrational, most commenters here won’t chew you up. Commenting or not, it’s good that you’re reading.

  194. Comment_Whatever says:

    GG says what’s mine is mine and what’s your is “ours”:

    I see men who are calling women on the sins that are common to women, but glossing over the sins that are common to men.

    Needless to say, any request that you ask whether Oprah or your Church give “fair and equal treatment” to the sins of women as they do to the sins of men will be answered with “screw you, buddy”.

    Thanks for being a leech. Bye now.

  195. Elspeth says:

    Thanks for the linkage Dalrock. I hope GG pokes around my blog, but if she doesn’t have the time I thought I’d link to one of my favorites:

    Why you SHOULD Cater to Your Husband

    It hits all the notes, I think.

  196. Cane Caldo says:

    @GKC

    I nearly said post-modern instead, but the post-modernist view is utterly effeminate. Feminism is post-modernism full-grown.

    I wonder if you’re misreading her statement in the same way I did. You and I both know that verse, and what it means. So, when I read it, I at first thought she was encouraging men to get their wives to have more babies; following that up with some silly advice about how to make that happen. What she was actually saying was that since women are burdened with the atrocity of having babies, then wives should have every whim met by the husband.

    PUAs know what they’re doing is not Christ-like. They know it explicitly and implicitly. However; most men and women don’t. The point, I think, of a blog like Dalrock’s is not change sluts or PUAs, but to kick the ghosts of them out of everyone else’s head. If sluts are bad, and if most PUA-fodder are sluts, then they both have their own rewards. What’s necessary is to get everyone else from accepting slut behavior; men and women. Why no focus on the PUAs? There just aren’t that many PUA ghosts in people’s heads. The culture isn’t so much telling us to have sex with sluts so much as it is telling us to worship women.

    Though, there was in mine. I had to stop reading Roissy, but that was before I found this blog.

  197. Cane Caldo says:

    It’s like Groundhog Day

    @GG

    For most of human history men held virtually all of the power and could pretty much do as they pleased. Early feminism attempted to shift some of the power to women…

    Have you ever read Genesis 3? Who had the power? Who was given the power, and where did it end up?

    Have you ever wondered how women gave themselves the right to vote, if they didn’t have the right to vote? Who had the power? Who was given the power, and where did it end up?

    Have you ever compared the history of feminism to the history of Genesis 3?

    Thank you for your comments, particularly Elspeth and Jacquie.

    I don’t think praising what you assume to be the sorority is going to get you what you think it will.

    @Suz

    Don’t fall for this: I doubt that dissenting comments are welcome here… I’ll probably be vilified for making these comments… And I probably won’t comment any more – I am guessing that a woman who doesn’t toe the party line will be chewed up and spit out fairly quickly.

    These statements are very revealing; though they are meant to cloak.

  198. deti says:

    GG:

    “I see men who are calling women on the sins that are common to women, but glossing over the sins that are common to men.”

    The “sins that are common to men” are discussed, dissected, pontificated about, analyzed, reported and obsessed over daily on every talk show, on every news program, from every pulpit, in every newspaper, in every advertisement and every TV show. This has been the case for more than 20 years. There have been and currently are sitcoms, movies and entire television networks devoted to the “sins that are common to men”.

    We don’t need to hear any more about the “sins that are common to men”. We are painfully aware of what they are. I am bombarded daily with information and judgment about the “sins that are common to men”.

  199. Suz says:

    I’ve seen very few sites where dissenting comments are more welcome. Yes, Cane, very revealing. Thank you.

  200. GKChesterton says:

    @Caldo,
    …What she was actually saying was that since women are burdened with the atrocity of having babies, then wives should have every whim met by the husband.

    PUAs know what they’re doing is not Christ-like. They know it explicitly and implicitly. However; most men and women don’t. The point, I think, of a blog like Dalrock’s is not change sluts or PUAs, but to kick the ghosts of them out of everyone else’s head. If sluts are bad, and if most PUA-fodder are sluts, then they both have their own rewards. What’s necessary is to get everyone else from accepting slut behavior; men and women. Why no focus on the PUAs? There just aren’t that many PUA ghosts in people’s heads. The culture isn’t so much telling us to have sex with sluts so much as it is telling us to worship women….

    If that is what she’s saying then I disagree. I also find I _mostly_ agree with you.

    PUA ghosts aren’t a problem in the general environment, but I do think they are a problem specifically in the manosphere. See your own reference to Roissy. Jesus reminds us to be crafty like those in the world and to learn from that. So Roisy is a snake that has useful information. I have to keep that frame. Otherwise he might bite.

  201. Jacquie says:

    “We don’t need to hear any more about the “sins that are common to men”. We are painfully aware of what they are. I am bombarded daily with information and judgment about the “sins that are common to men”.

    Speaking of which, I have a question that’s a little off topic, but somewhat related to this statement, since a few people here have also been on CF.

    I went on there for the first time this weekend and in perusing the boards found it interesting why there is a men’s section with boards that appear to be for men dealing with their sins, but there is not a women’s board. Yet I see post after post of women gossiping and berating their husbands on open forums on the internet.Is this not sin that needs to be dealt with on a board for women only?

    GG mentioned that she didn’t see Christ in the posts and comments here and yet I feel the same way about so many posts on a christian forum. Does anyone know why there is no board for women? I know the answer already, but I already don’t want to go back up on there and I only signed up Saturday.

  202. Jacquie says:

    Sorry, I’m blind, just missed it I guess when I was on there as a guest instead of signed in, but I still feel Christ missing from many posts.

  203. chaz345 says:

    “GG says:
    May 23, 2012 at 1:12 pm
    Early feminism attempted to shift some of the power to women, but modern feminism has pushed way beyond that and is attempting to grab as much power as possible for women while punishing men.”

    If you recognize this as the central issue under discussion here, and filter what you read through it, you will have no problems and no one will chew you up. There are some rather un-Christlike comments, largely, as would be expected, from non-Christians.

    There may be some from Christians that you believe to be un-Christ like because they are plain spoken and direct and may be hard for someone to hear. That framing of things is, in and of itself part of the problem. We, society at large and the Church as a whole, have come to a point where anything that hurts even a little, even it’s 100% true, can’t possibly be of God or Christlike. We’re so wrapped up in warm and fuzzy and feel good type love that we can’t conceive of the idea that something that’s hard to hear is in any way loving. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if Jesus Himself were to stand up and preach a sermon in most of today’s American churches, He’d be physically thrown out of the pulpit within about 15 minutes. His type of love, the kind that plainly and directly called out wrong when He saw it is way too offensive by today’s standards.

    To frame it a different way, it is my opinion that some of what you are characterizing as un-Christlike is in fact entirely Christlike it’s just that we’ve come to not accept that side of His nature/character anymore.

  204. chaz345 says:

    “Jacquie says:
    May 23, 2012 at 2:54 pm

    “We don’t need to hear any more about the “sins that are common to men”. We are painfully aware of what they are. I am bombarded daily with information and judgment about the “sins that are common to men”.

    Speaking of which, I have a question that’s a little off topic, but somewhat related to this statement, since a few people here have also been on CF.

    I went on there for the first time this weekend and in perusing the boards found it interesting why there is a men’s section with boards that appear to be for men dealing with their sins, but there is not a women’s board. Yet I see post after post of women gossiping and berating their husbands on open forums on the internet.Is this not sin that needs to be dealt with on a board for women only?

    GG mentioned that she didn’t see Christ in the posts and comments here and yet I feel the same way about so many posts on a christian forum. Does anyone know why there is no board for women? I know the answer already, but I already don’t want to go back up on there and I only signed up Saturday.”

    If you were look around a little more closely at those boards specifically for men and for women you’d see VERY different tones to them. Men’s would be corrective in nature, even when the advice responses are from other men and women’s would be encouraging/affirming, even if the poster were considering doing something plainly and blatantly sinful.

    The mixed gender marrieds section is a complete joke though. EVERY thread ends up assuming the worst possible motive in the man and subtly or even openly excuses any wrong by the woman. In nearly every thread where a woman comes in asking for advice in dealing with a problem with her husband someone pipes up with “that could be called abuse”. As it currently sits that place is destroying marriages as people who come in with what are likely fairly minor issues end up convinced that they are married to abusive monsters.

  205. goodfoot says:

    Exactly. Jesus made a whip and forced out people who were desecrating the Lord’s house. A lot of people forget that, apparently.

  206. Dalrock says:

    @GKC

    So Roisy is a snake that has useful information. I have to keep that frame. Otherwise he might bite.

    I don’t think Roissy would have it any other way.

  207. Elspeth says:

    I am guessing that a woman who doesn’t toe the party line will be chewed up and spit out fairly quickly. I’m not a “princess” or a “special flower,” but I do have feelings – lol.

    I don’t always toe the party line here as some can attest. I’ve never been chewed up or spit out. I’ve been challenged, but I’m a big girl and I can take it.

    Our discomfort as women doesn’t negate the validity of the overall theme of this blog and the feelings of the men here. Men are people with feelings too, something we all too often forget.

  208. chaz345 says:

    The fact that those that don’t toe the party line aren’t thrown out or aren’t allowed to be beat up on is precisely what makes this place so much better than a lot of other places.

  209. @Cane Caldo

    “”Don’t fall for this: I doubt that dissenting comments are welcome here… I’ll probably be vilified for making these comments… And I probably won’t comment any more – I am guessing that a woman who doesn’t toe the party line will be chewed up and spit out fairly quickly.”

    These statements are very revealing; though they are meant to cloak.”

    They are in fact more than a cloak, they are an implicit accusation. That is, “If you are a woman and you comment here, you must toe the party line.”

  210. Anonymous Reader says:

    Cane, Art, others:
    GG’s comments are chock full of passive-aggressiveness. It’s pretty standard in a lot of women’s writing to wrap various insults within feigned humility. Either the envenomed barb gets under some man’s skin and he responds in anger, which provides a great opportunity for Poor Pitiful Pearl to point out how beastly men are, or the envenomed barb is stoically endured – which as any man who has studied Game knows, inevitably leads to more of the same.

    As Dalrock has pointed out more than once, this is natural behavior for women. They do it to each other from girlhood on. Junior high school / midschool is a breeding ground for variations on the passive-aggressive theme.

    Once again: A woman has to be taught not to do this. It comes naturally to her. It’s a default mode in the female persona. Although White Knights cannot seem to grasp this elementary fact. They live in a delusion that girls are naturally good, and all women just grow up to want to be help-ers, and therefore one can never, ever count on one of these male doormats to ever criticize bad behavior by women.

    And returning to the original topic: withholding sex from a husband is an act of aggression, although it may be done in a passive manner (*). No surprise, therefore, that the backstabbing scorpion-girls at Churchian Forums are all in favor of it as a tool for controlling men. They never got the memo: a happy man is a lot more pleasant to be around than a burdened, morose slave.

    (*) With the usual “health issue” waiver, where “health issue” is defined in terms of a medical diagnosis, not the vague problem with no name…

  211. Vain Yogi, you have learned the lesson the whole culture used to know. The complementarian dynamic is erotic.

    I admire you for taking a vow, but most wifely obedience is implicit. When I got up this morning and my wife had my breakfast laid out for me at the head of the table as usual, that wasn’t too bad. I suspect every happy traditional couple has some way of keeping the male-female magic alive.

  212. AR, another good point is one made by Roger Devlin I think. “Women complain at the margins”. Women are MUCH quicker to complain than men. As a rule. Because men are more stoical, we think: “oh, no, she is upset – there must be a real problem”. Er, no. Women get upset and pissy about nearly nothing.

    Most passive-aggressive bitchery should be ignored. Including on the Internet.Look, I am not a Protestant. But, gee, please read the bit in the Bible about “the weaker vessel”. That’s true. Also, women are good at watering down scripture because it plays to their verbal strengths. “But some guy I read wrote that the text really means … blah, blah, blah”. Sometimes this Catholic man just wants to say, stop overanalysing the text, and just do what women have always done – obey their husbands.

    It is often pointed out by men that Western women, uniquely advantaged, still complain vociferously. This is not really surprising. Complaining is adaptive attention-seeking behaviour by women. As for sex, as I said once before, if she wants you, nothing is too much trouble in the bedroom. If she doesn’t, anything is too much trouble. If sex is a chore, she is, to use the name of a popular book, “just not that into you”.

  213. James K says:

    The subject matter has broadened a bit, so I’ll chip in again.

    @Anonymous Reader

    “GG’s comments are chock full of passive-aggressiveness. It’s pretty standard in a lot of women’s writing to wrap various insults within feigned humility.”

    When communicating in plain text, it’s hard to distinguish feigned humility from the real thing. You don’t have eye contact, gestures, or tone of voice. Some forums have a rule called “presumption of goodwill”. I think it’s a good rule. If you think you see cloaked passive-aggression, ask the writer to explain; draw her out and find out what she means. If you’re lucky, you’ll gain a supporter; if you’re really lucky, you will find a grain of wisdom that improves your original idea.

    @hurp

    Sorry, I don’t blog.

  214. CL says:

    For most of human history men held virtually all of the power and could pretty much do as they pleased. Early feminism attempted to shift some of the power to women

    Another woman sees leadership as all about power but apparently fails to realise that there is responsibility and burden that go with it.

    James K, no need to white knight. If women want to be treated equally, then they need to either say something sensible or shut up and listen, not try to teach everyone with some half-baked thoughts. It’s nothing to do with goodwill but if someone jumps in out of their depth, they need to learn how to swim, not to be given an artificial leg-up to “equality”.

  215. Anonymous Reader says:

    James K:
    GG is not the first “oh, noes, you menz are so mean!” commenter to show up. Nor is she the first female commenter I have ever seen on any of several blogs / newsgroups to complain that men are not being hammered far enough into the ground, not yet sufficiently beaten down with no-win criticism and so any discussing of women’s flaws is simply terrible and Should Not Be Allowed. It’s not new, not to me anyway. . You may well see these things differently.

    You seem to be expecting respect for GG because of claims that the poster is female. IF that’s what you mean, my respect for anyone is earned, it’s not to be presumed, or assumed, and forget demanding it.

    I have multiple decades of experience interacting with feminists. Don’t expect me to assume good will when certain slogans or concepts show up. I am a mere bicycle, to be sure, but I do have some miles on my odometer…

  216. Anonymous Reader says:

    Pat Benetar from the 1980’s. I think it’s time for a man to rework this tune and put it out there.
    Some may see a stupid advert before the vid, sorry about that.

  217. Jason says:

    @GKChesterton,

    Thanks for the reply.

    “Two notes. First the Church both East and West along with the original Protestant reformers would have rejected your statement. The assumption would be that a woman, and likewise a man, incapable of having vaginal sex should not marry.”

    For the record I would agree with that. It would be a form of fraud and grounds for an annulment as I understand it. So I think we basically agree there. I think there was an assumption that is was a disability (physical or psychological) that turned up after being married.

    I’d also not the church might want to be careful following the line you suggest about not calling everything else apart from penis/vaginal intercourse sex. I can see the thinking behind it, but at least in todays culture, that is taken as a license to do everything but (hand, oral, anal! etc) and still be considered a virgin. Which would seem not to be the intent. I know the original intent had to do with sex as, in part, a procreative act, so all of the other means fail to qualify because they are inherently unable to generate life.

    Also from a brain chemistry point of view, two people, nudity and orgasms are what make something sex, and will lead to imprinting and bonding, not just what hole what is stuck in.

    I wasn’t trying to adopt a PUA conception of sex, just one based on human biology.

    Also a thought. If either spouse develops such a disability, what is the appropriate course of action? Enforced celibacy (Paul has something to say about that), Adultery (Jesus had a few things to say, as did the OT Law) or is it a legitimate grounds for divorce (Probably not either). It would seem that the solution is certainly imperfect and falls short of at least one of the ends of human sexuality, but would seem to be a Godly alternative to the other options suggested.

    Jason

  218. poester99 says:

    I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, but it looks like the root cause of all these problems in these so-called Christian relationships is the basic negativity that most (American) women learn as regards masculinity and men. They are having to be taught or shown that their men are human too and worthy of respect as they are. This the a very good example of the seep of evil caused by societal misandry.

  219. James K says:

    @CL

    LOL, I wondered who would be the first to complain about “white knighting”. White knighting is the insincere defense of a woman, particularly in the deluded belief that it will lead to sexual favors.

    I don’t think “Anonymous Reader” knows what passive-aggressive behavior is. It is a term originally coined by the military, and it means deliberate but deniable sabotage. An example is knowing that an order is doomed to fail, but instead of pointing out the reason, carrying out the order to the letter and then saying “there, look what you’ve done”. I am sure that a lot of this happens in marriages, but I can hardly agree that “GG’s comments are chock full of passive-aggressiveness.”

    I really don’t understand the general level of defensiveness. If you have the Bible, and your opponents have the Book of Oprah, guess which one is going to win?

    @Anonymous Reader

    It is hard to avoid feminists in the mainstream press. Their grievous errors include the following:

    1. There’s no need to discuss the vices of women. We’ve had enough of that. We’re here to knock down the men.
    2. Disagreement? If you’re a man, we won’t take you seriously because you’re from the enemy camp. If you are a woman, then you must be a self-hating woman.

    What I find saddening is that the manosphere has the chance to prevail against this kind of nonsense, but instead falls into the same traps as the feminists, in mirror image.

    On the subject of gender and sin, one of the most insightful discussions is this one:

    http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2012/04/15/women-divorce-and-misleading-statistics/

    It looks for responsibility for divorce, not by asking “who filed?” but “why?”. Marriages break down because one spouse either “screws up”, or “trades up”. Men tend to be the ones who “screw up” (e.g. by cheating); women tend to “trade up” (divorce first, then look for a “better” spouse). Guess what? The overall picture is that men cause 51% of divorces, and women 49%. This should not be a surprise. We are made from the same stuff. We are equally mired in vice and sin. The genders differ only in their modus operandi.

  220. Anonymous says:

    Dalrock,

    Long-time reader. First-time commenter.

    I want to suggest that perhaps some generosity of spirit towards Sheila may be in order.

    My guess is that this recent post shows that she is reading your blog:

    http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2012/05/wifey-wednesday-getting-over-thinking-sex-is-all-for-him/

    I think she may very well have what Christians call a “teachable spirit”.

    Although I almost always agree with your analysis, I am quite happy about Sheila’s work now though – my wife read that post last night (after I had introduced her to Sheila’s blog through a very good non-sex post that honestly dealt with stay-at-home moms having higher rates of depression), and for the first time in our 10 + years of marriage, she was engaging in face-down – rear-up doggystyle activity last night.

    So go Sheila – propelled by Dalrock (I think).

    In any case, my wife heard about “Fifty Shades of Grey” last night and when I told her that it just showed women could lust to, she disagreed, and bringing up *Fireproof*, said it was all about women just being lonely and falling for guys who pay attention to them. I know that anecdotal stories abound of women not being haaaapy (as you say) with husbands, who, on the face of it, are super good guys and do pay attention (perhaps too much – thereby earning their wives disdain!) to their wives – and yet women leave them. Are there solid studies to back up this phenomenon – i.e. that many women cheat or leave their faithful and doting husbands in the hope for something more alpha?

    What could I show her that would make a very strong case that women lust to?

    Thanks much,
    Anonymous

    [D: Welcome. I will respond to this comment when I have more time.]

  221. greyghost says:

    So James on 200 plus comment article on a wife with holding sex as a weapon you are going to post up some shit like that huh? “Both sides are equally the blame wih pig men just edging out princess.”
    Your comment was just pure delusion. The only way you can even thick like that is if you are not and haven’t been in any kind of relationship with any woman in a long time. You are writing from how it felt the first time you met. The “good chrisrtian man” (churchian man is more like it)has had his shot and chose supplication of the pussy and called it being christ like and loving (the hate the sin and not the sinner shit)
    We got this now. The men of the manosphere are going to fix this and then you can go back to playing house.
    I like how James k tries to give the approach of superiority the way he phrases his comments. And how he is saddened by how the manosphere is acting just like a bunch of femmeist bitches. The question is what can the manosphere do to please James K and still say mean and hurtful things about women.

  222. CL says:

    I really don’t understand the general level of defensiveness.

    Classic projection. Point is, why are you coming to the defence of strange women on the Internet? She wasn’t even being attacked, only corrected. If she gets her feelings hurt by that, tough shit. People (especially Christians) need to be made of stronger stuff.

    If she is going to speak, she has to be able to accept rebuke and stand on her own feet. How is she supposed to learn that if you come rushing in to defend her against the truth? No one was being nasty or obnoxious, so it was unnecessary.

    Then you go with the classic, male-shaming “if she divorced him, he did something wrong” argument. What you don’t seem to realise is that women are masters of rationalisation. I’m not denying that a man is ever at fault, it’s that the hamsters don’t need the food, overweight as they already are.

    As for those statistics, perhaps men are less likely than women to point a finger and say “it’s her fault”, which would skew the stats. Perhaps men are more likely to suck it up rather than air all the dirty laundry for the sake of the kids. How can we really know without making educated guesses based on the general trends and the psychological make-up of each sex?

    From the study posted at the link you posted: “Husbands initiate 30% of divorce and blame the wife 21% of the time.” Does this necessarily mean the rest of the time it’s not her fault, or just that he didn’t see it as worthwhile to blame her? Men take responsibility more than women and often just accept the responsibility for her. This skews the stats.

  223. Paul says:

    JamesK, oh please, look at the assumptions behind the numbers you cite:

    “Assuming that those who assign blame are the ones that initiated the divorce, and had a “good” reason”

    In other words, to get even these numbers there is a no-hamster assumption for divorcing women. That alone is garbage.

    Second, the article you linked to is based on another one, which notes the following: “The problem is that people are asked what was caused the divorce, but they are not asked to whom they are referring. For example, a woman says that infidelity was the cause, but we don’t know if she or her husband was the guilty party. ”

    Again, the underlying data does not support the conclusions made. Period.

  224. chaz345 says:

    “It looks for responsibility for divorce, not by asking “who filed?” but “why?”. Marriages break down because one spouse either “screws up”, or “trades up”. Men tend to be the ones who “screw up” (e.g. by cheating); women tend to “trade up” (divorce first, then look for a “better” spouse). Guess what? The overall picture is that men cause 51% of divorces, and women 49%. This should not be a surprise. We are made from the same stuff. We are equally mired in vice and sin. The genders differ only in their modus operandi.”

    Even if we accept these numbers as valid, which it would seem there is good reason not to, how much of the cheating by men is caused by or contributed to by the fact that the woman can, because of the horribly biased family court system, do pretty much what she wants knowing that its incredibly unlikely he will file because he’ll get royally screwed over if he does? The imbalanced system that puts all the power with the woman is the cause of nearly all divorces. When the real reasons behind divorces are looked into, by looking at not just the filings but at the court transcripts themself, infidelity or abuse is a factor in under 10% of the cases.

  225. James K says:

    @CL

    “Then you go with the classic, male-shaming ‘if she divorced him, he did something wrong’ argument.”

    I said nothing of the sort. One of Heartiste’s main points is to rebuke women who divorce in order to “trade up”. To my mind this is a far more damning description than any talk of “unhaaaaaapiness” or “rationalization hamsters”. I am starting to get annoyed with those phrases, firstly because they are jargon that people coming here for the first time will not understand, and secondly because they are repeated and applauded like a comedian’s catchphrases.

    @greyghost

    I was not making a point about the odd 1% which in any case is not statistically significant. I see that you also have a crystal ball and have divined my relationship history. You and some others on this blog appear to have difficulty accepting that other people can honestly hold a different point of view.

    When discussing the sins of women, it is essential to discuss the corresponding sins of men. In the present case, anyone who is not already thoroughly infused with manosphere ideas will look at the original article, and the comments, and wonder whether we are trying to equate Christian marriage with sexual slavery.

    If a wife does not submit to her husband, she is behaving unbiblically. If the husband forces her to submit, he is behaving unbiblically. If we can agree on this, then the discussion will lose most of its heat.

  226. greyghost says:

    When discussing the sins of women, it is essential to discuss the corresponding sins of men. In the present case, anyone who is not already thoroughly infused with manosphere ideas will look at the original article, and the comments, and wonder whether we are trying to equate Christian marriage with sexual slavery.

    Now where is this coming from. This comment is PC churchian bullshit. You have made your bed. You have made a choice to worship popular feminist culture. You have feminised the church and feminised your own christian faith and then arrogantly speak down to the rest of us.James K I would say you are a man that gives a damn on the blue pill. I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt.
    https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/corollary-to-dalrocks-law-the-law-of-rationalization-hamster-strength/
    https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/11/10/the-rationalization-hamster-500/

  227. justsomesquare says:

    Hi Dalrock,

    I’ve been reading you for a while but have never said anything before. I just wanted to second greyghost’s comment:

    “You have given women that had an instinct and desire to please their husbands a please to feel comfortable. Our culture constantly belittles these women…Just as the Mens sites give men the answers to something they felt and couldn’t put their fingure on you have given women that give a damn the same thing here.”

    This is true. It’s part of why I like this blog so much. For so long, I felt like it was my “dirty little secret” that I, you know, actually LIKE being married, adore my husband and want to please him. It’s nice to see that not everyone thinks this is crazy talk.

    Also, @Elspeth: that post you linked to, “Why You SHOULD Cater to Your Husband,” was great! I bookmarked it.

    Thank you, and keep up the good work, y’all.

    [D: Welcome to the blog, and thanks for the kind words.]

  228. James K says:

    @greyghost

    Read again.

    I invite you to agree or disagree that a husband who forces himself on his unwilling wife is behaving unbiblically.

  229. greyghost says:

    Unhappyness is a valid reason to divorce that beta chump. I known because he is a sinner ,we are all sinners and Gods children christ our lord. ( I’m a PC chuchian preacher lubrucating the pussies of the congregation of good chrisrtian women.) ” You boys in the back come up here and man up for some of this good christian ass, amen”
    https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/03/08/pathological-denial/
    Here is a block of articles from Dalrock of all peole to help with the happiness issues.
    https://dalrock.wordpress.com/?s=unhappiness

  230. greyghost says:

    I invite you to agree or disagree that a husband who forces himself on his unwilling wife is behaving unbiblically.
    No you don’t force yourself on your wife. You show the bitch the fuckin door and throw her the hell and get you another one that takes wedding vows and responsibility to owns spouse seriously. That is a how a christian man should handle it.

  231. rockthrowingpeasant says:

    James K,
    I’ve kept out of this discussion, because – well – I don’t see it going anywhere constructive. I think you may be misunderstood on some points.

    That said, what the hell is this?

    I invite you to agree or disagree that a husband who forces himself on his unwilling wife is behaving unbiblically.

    Immediate shift of blame from the root cause of the problem to place blame on men. Breezed over any indication that the woman is unquestionably unbiblical and, more to the point of these conversations, very typical of the modern American woman. This situation and you’re frame is akin to telling men, “You had better just give up on expecting women to be Biblical and just look at your own actions.” To me, that does reek of feminism. Oh, it might be “realism” because our culture is infected with feminism, but it is most definitely a feminist way to frame a scenario.

    How else can someone look at that situation?

  232. Anonymous says:

    Dalrock,

    Thanks! I look forward to seeing her jaw drop. : )

    -Anonymous

  233. rockthrowingpeasant says:

    Ugh, whip the bottom of my feet for “you’re.” I was re-crafting that sentence and didn’t change the word to “your.”

  234. Paul says:

    “I invite you to agree or disagree that a husband who forces himself on his unwilling wife is behaving unbiblically.”

    This is back-assward. The language in the Bible about spouses not denying each other sexually is unambiguous and clear. An ‘unwilling’ wife is the one who is behaving unbibilically. There is also a real and substantial difference between exercising your God-given right to something and ‘forcing’ yourself on someone, unless of course you’re of a feminist bent and believe such thoroughly ridiculous notions like ‘marital rape’.

  235. James K says:

    @rockthrowingpeasant

    No, I’m not trying to shift blame, I’m trying to check whether a general principle can be applied in the present context: that two wrongs don’t make a right; sin A cannot be used to excuse sin B.

    @greyghost

    Thank you for the links. The third one is the best summary of the hamster I have read.

    @paul, chaz345

    Thank you for the pointers to the other studies. I’ll read these more carefully. Do you know of any studies based on court filings?

    @greyghost

    I am sorry that my posts come across as “arrogantly talking down” or “superior”. I am genuinely hoping that someone will argue these points, even if only by saying “No, we do it this way because …”

    I realize that most people here are genuinely reaching for an understanding; I am trying to do the same.

  236. chaz345 says:

    “chaz345

    Thank you for the pointers to the other studies. I’ll read these more carefully. Do you know of any studies based on court filings?”

    I know OF one I just don’t know where to find it online. It was one that was looking at the fact that 70% of all no fault divorces are filed by women. It was done in Virgina I believe. Empath may have it avaiable as it was him who I heard about it from.

  237. CL says:

    If a wife does not submit to her husband, she is behaving unbiblically. If the husband forces her to submit, he is behaving unbiblically.

    If person A steals from person B, is person B committing a crime when he takes back what is his? What is the Biblical sin of a man forcing submission? I’m asking this in good faith and curiosity.

  238. James K says:

    Ephesians 5:23 tells us that a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of His church. Yet Christ lets us go our own way if we choose to disobey Him. The reckoning comes on Judgment Day.

  239. chaz345 says:

    @James K

    sin A cannot be used to excuse sin B.

    This is, of course absolutely 100% true. However, it’s done all the time. “He’s not loving me as he should so I’ll divorce him” is VERY VERY common thinking. Or more to the original topic “he’s not loving me as he should so I’m not going to have sex with him.”

  240. Jacquie says:

    @ justsomesquare

    “For so long, I felt like it was my “dirty little secret” that I, you know, actually LIKE being married, adore my husband and want to please him. It’s nice to see that not everyone thinks this is crazy talk. ”

    Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed for taking your vows seriously and enjoying it. I have to stop myself as well from feeling like I’m the one who’s the square peg.
    When I meet up with someone I haven’t seen in a long time and we begin to catch up there’s usually the question of how am I doing, you look well, you look happy, what’s up. I’ll scan my memory trying to recall what I know of her relationship with her husband and think, I could share and be open with her so I go for it.
    I’m learning that I really was blind to alot of what was going on around me and it doesn’t take long, I know that look now, the false smile, the nodding head, and that look in her eyes that tells me I either need to end the conversation or something’s about to erupt.
    I used to feel ashamed walking away from such encounters because I knew what would be said of me in all the circles, but now I just walk away shaking my head and pitying the poor woman’s husband. Then I give my husband a little extra attention just so he knows who he is to me.

  241. CL says:

    So I guess God has never allowed earthly chastisement to befall humans. The Israelites were really not enslaved in Babylon or Egypt after their going their own way and disobeying God.

    Yes, James K, you are as clear as mud and are getting sucked in to defending a wacky, unbiblical projection, which cannot successfully be proved using the Bible because “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.”

  242. TJ says:

    Long-time lurker here…

    What’s with the bashing of ballroom dancing? Totally not seeing this at *all*. Dancing is great for both partners – when done well. Men learn how to lead effectively and women learn to trust and let go TO their partner’s lead.

    You can tell a lot about a couple by how they dance together – is HE leading and comfortably? Is SHE submitting and letting go, placing her trust in his leadership skills?

    Etc.

    It’s a *great* feeling as a man, to dance with a new partner – and watch her realize that I know wtf I’m doing, to watch her let go and relax and submit to my will.

    Grow some balls – learn to dance like a man.

  243. chaz345 says:

    @ justsomesquare

    “For so long, I felt like it was my “dirty little secret” that I, you know, actually LIKE being married, adore my husband and want to please him. It’s nice to see that not everyone thinks this is crazy talk. ”

    Women with this attitude toward their husbands are actually actively attacked and ridiculed over at Christian Forums. One, who I’ve since come to know in real life(major small world moment) who said that their attitudes toward their husbands and the “just wait he’ll eventually turn on you” nonsense that they constantly spout at anyone who has a happy marriage were starting to negatively affect her attitude toward her own husband to the point where she had to leave the forum. So sad that a place that claims to be there to help marriages has become dominated by bitter unhappy women to the point that it hurts more than it helps.

  244. Dalrock says:

    @CL

    So I guess God has never allowed earthly chastisement to befall humans. The Israelites were really not enslaved in Babylon or Egypt after their going their own way and disobeying God.

    Not to mention the gruesome example made of Judas for his betrayal (Acts 1:15-19).

  245. Dalrock says:

    @Jacquie

    I’m learning that I really was blind to alot of what was going on around me and it doesn’t take long, I know that look now, the false smile, the nodding head, and that look in her eyes that tells me I either need to end the conversation or something’s about to erupt.
    I used to feel ashamed walking away from such encounters because I knew what would be said of me in all the circles, but now I just walk away shaking my head and pitying the poor woman’s husband.

    This is envy on their part more than anything else. They don’t understand that your attitude has so much to do with this, so they are assuming that you married much better than they did. No matter how much we have been trained to deny it, marriage is very much about status to women psychologically. The divorcées resent you because you still have the status they foolishly threw away and can’t regain, and the unhappily married ones resent you because you clearly married a better man than they did. Either way, chalk it all up to whispers.

    Edit: If you wanted to be really cruel (which I know you don’t), you could rub it in further by showing false sympathy for their unhappy marriage or divorced status. Actually real sympathy will do the trick just as well, because they will simply interpret it that way since that is what they would do in your shoes.

  246. James K says:

    @CL

    I’m open to correction, but it seems to work a bit differently in the New Covenant.

  247. greyghost says:

    chaz345
    Now take what you just told to justsomesquare and spread that to every TV commercial, radio ad,politician running for office, popular music, Valentines day, etc. etc. That is just the media. Now lets go into the day to day lives. It is some kind of merit badge for a woman to bad mouth her husband even in just casual conversation at a hair solon or standing in line at a grocery store. That is the power of the herd.
    Even in the comments from women that are interested in mens issues we see the “team woman” covering their back side. The women that are truely respected on mens (maybe not fully trusted) and beleived to be sincere lose that and post with confidence of the truth. Suz is one that seems to bne really working at it. She still drives me crazy sometimes, but you can tell it is a she and she is trying.
    Overall I think the greatest influence women can have in the MRM or just plain family law and the church is to change the peer pressure of the herd to a model where someone like these women is the norm and not the odd one.

  248. deti says:

    I’m not sure a husband can force wifely submission, since the wife must agree to submit and do it voluntarily. That said, there are a number of ways to exert pressure for submission.

    1. for a believing wife, taking the issue to a pastor or to the church at large.
    2. if she resists regular frequent sex, making clear that sex is one of her marital obligations.
    3. if she continues to refuse sex, the husband should withdraw commitment. This can be done by tightening supervision over her life; restricting her freedom with money or time; expecting reports on her whereabouts, or conversely by pursuing his own interests without her and refusing to explain his activities or whereabouts (while remaining faithful to his vows). “Trust but verify” is the name of the game.
    4. if she continues to refuse, then he should make clear that by continuing to refuse sex and submit to him, she has abandoned and deserted the marriage. This is grounds for divorce.
    5. All of this should be documented in a journal, emails to friends, or in memoranda.

  249. Jacquie says:

    “Women with this attitude toward their husbands are actually actively attacked and ridiculed over at Christian Forums.”

    I guess they can get banned also. I just went on CF out of curiosity and found that I had two messages sent to me yesterday giving me warning and telling me that two of my posts referring to submission were deleted because I posted them on the marriage board and:

    “Submission will only be discussed in the separate forums for married men’s/women’s personal topics.”

    So, Chaz, the comment I posted to that poor husband you told us about has been deleted
    along with another comment on another post when I commented that I love that I can give my husband my submission on another thread about One Positive Thing.

    And if I don’t watch myself I will accumulate enough points to not be able to post at all. Can I rip my hair out now? How did I miss all this BS for so many years?

    Sorry, rant over. I just needed to release a little.

  250. chaz345 says:

    The true hypocricy of the staff there though is that submission can be mentioned if you are saying something negative about it. Since the utterly stupid rule banning talk of submission has been put in place, there have been countless anti-submission posts made with no action taken. So if the rule were to be worded to reflect the realtity of the situation it would say no discussion talking about submission in a positive light will be allowed.

    Oh and for the record, I’m quite sure that at least some of the members there and probably some staff come here to read what we’re saying about them. That’s actually part of why I keep talking about them, because I’m quite sure it ticks them off to no end that they can’t do anything at all about it.

  251. 7man says:

    @James K
    ” I’m open to correction, but it seems to work a bit differently in the New Covenant.”

    The concealed truths of the Old Testament are revealed in the New Testament. The God of the New Testament is the same as the God of the Old Testament. The Old also prefigures the New and there are themes and relationships between the stories. This is called typology. The New Testament also includes prophecy of the apocalypse and travails in the end times (however you choose to believe them), and earthly suffering has not been abolished for those nations and people that defy God.

    The New Covenant is the 7th Covenant and none of the older covenants are abrogated. (God only goes up to 7 in creation and this is an important and “perfect” number).

    There are many that speculate that the God has withdrawn his hand of protection from many countries due to the millions upon millions of abortions and other abominations. When the Israelites took possession of the Promised Land, many of the city states were totally destroyed and all the occupants were killed. They worshiped the god Molach and sacrificed their babies to it. Do you think God has changed that He will continue to bind satan and withhold his hand of anger for the modern worlds sins? These analogies were commonly known by Christians of the past, but are now not mentioned in the PC happy all-about-feelings modern churches.

    When mankind breaks their side of the New Covenant, will God still stay his hand? When a wife defies her marriage covenant, will she never face earthly consequences. It is possible that a husband’s act of dominance may get her in line (if she reforms) and save her from a worse fate. . I am not necessarily advocating this or and certainly I oppose brutality. I am just using logic and relating it to other Biblical truths. Again what is the husband’s sin if he should act in this inadvisable manner?

  252. chaz345 says:

    “greyghost says:
    May 24, 2012 at 12:19 pm

    chaz345
    Now take what you just told to justsomesquare and spread that to every TV commercial, radio ad,politician running for office, popular music, Valentines day, etc. etc. That is just the media. Now lets go into the day to day lives. It is some kind of merit badge for a woman to bad mouth her husband even in just casual conversation at a hair solon or standing in line at a grocery store. That is the power of the herd.
    Even in the comments from women that are interested in mens issues we see the “team woman” covering their back side. The women that are truely respected on mens (maybe not fully trusted) and beleived to be sincere lose that and post with confidence of the truth. Suz is one that seems to bne really working at it. She still drives me crazy sometimes, but you can tell it is a she and she is trying.
    Overall I think the greatest influence women can have in the MRM or just plain family law and the church is to change the peer pressure of the herd to a model where someone like these women is the norm and not the odd one.”

    I realize that the problem is widespread and pervasive. It’s largely the fact that it’s the norm that causes it to be so hard for so many people to see. In all of the women I know, online and IRL, there’s only one that I can think of that I would think would not only never participate in bashing but consistently and plainly stand up to it. Encouragingly, it is someone who is quite young. I really see a much higher degree of “getting it” as relates to the constant male bashing among the younger women.

  253. Jacquie says:

    “Oh and for the record, I’m quite sure that at least some of the members there and probably some staff come here to read what we’re saying about them. ”

    Then it may not take long now for them to figure out my screen name over there, decide they don’t like me because I post here and go back and scrutinize every post I’ve made or do make. I’m waiting for another warning message about the scripture reference I left on a thread where a wife talks about resenting her husband and spent the last month berating him and tearing him down on the forum, and she gets all kinds of support from other wives. I simply quoted Proverbs 25:24. Curious what rule they will find I violated to delete that post.

  254. Dalrock says:

    Jacquie,

    If you want to keep posting there, there is only one rule you need to remember; More Oprah, less scripture. Follow that rule and you will be just fine.

  255. Dalrock says:

    @James K

    I’m open to correction, but it seems to work a bit differently in the New Covenant.

    I linked to the fate of Judas in Acts in a previous comment. Another example from the same book comes to mind. God makes the IRS look lenient when it comes to the penalty for improper accounting of the sale of a capital asset.

  256. chaz345 says:

    Jacquie says:
    May 24, 2012 at 12:56 pm

    “Oh and for the record, I’m quite sure that at least some of the members there and probably some staff come here to read what we’re saying about them. ”

    Then it may not take long now for them to figure out my screen name over there, decide they don’t like me because I post here and go back and scrutinize every post I’ve made or do make. I’m waiting for another warning message about the scripture reference I left on a thread where a wife talks about resenting her husband and spent the last month berating him and tearing him down on the forum, and she gets all kinds of support from other wives. I simply quoted Proverbs 25:24. Curious what rule they will find I violated to delete that post.

    Not liking you because you post here is quite secondary to the fact that you don’t buy into their party line BS. Given that you are so new there though, what happened with those posts should have, if they follow their own policies, been warnings that carry no points. If there were any points involved then it’s a sure bet they know who you are from here though.

  257. @ Dalrock
    “If you want to keep posting there, there is only one rule you need to remember; More Oprah, less scripture. Follow that rule and you will be just fine.”

    Oh, that’s my problem. My Bile reading to Oprah watching is about 10,000:1 so I guess I don’t stand much of a chance of getting along. Oh well, everybody has to have a hobby.

  258. Dalrock says:

    @Anonymous

    I want to suggest that perhaps some generosity of spirit towards Sheila may be in order.

    My guess is that this recent post shows that she is reading your blog:

    http://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2012/05/wifey-wednesday-getting-over-thinking-sex-is-all-for-him/

    I think she may very well have what Christians call a “teachable spirit”.

    My original take on Sheila was very similar, and I originally sheltered her from receiving criticism for what I thought were off the cuff comments that Christian women have biblical justification to divorce husbands who view pornography. When I wrote my review of Fireproof I decided not to name Sheila when I mentioned this alarming stance, and I emailed her at the time to explain this. About a week later she made the same claim in the comments section on one of my posts. After this I found a comment she left on youtube to a woman suggesting that an off hand claim of “emotional abuse” was a valid claim for abuse, which Sheila lists as the other valid biblical reason for wives to divorce. After I pointed that comment out Sheila removed all comments from the video, but I posted a snapshot of the archive here.

    As for her seeming change of heart, I’m skeptical based on how quickly she has forgotten things like this before. One day she really seems to get it, and then a few weeks later she is back with her same old message. Even in the post you reference you will notice that she doesn’t do anything to challenge the use of denial of sex for power. Interestingly she acknowledges the mindset of women using sex for power in her latest post:

    But for most of us, that’s not the issue. It’s not that it hurts or it brings back flashbacks. It’s that sex has become a chore. And we think, “why should I make love to him if he can’t even be affectionate towards me? Why should I go out of my way for him if he can’t do the dishes sometimes or lighten my load? And doesn’t he understand that I’m exhausted?” And so we don’t.

    Here is the point where a biblical teacher would point out how sinful this mindset is and point out how clear Paul was on this in 1 Corinthians. But to Sheila it is simply counterproductive. As she always does, she overlooks the sinful nature of it and focuses on trying to convince wives they should want to have sex for their own benefit:

    What if there were another way of looking at it? What if you could actually start to believe that sex was for you, too? It isn’t something you just “give” him; it’s something that actually benefits you, and that can help you with your exhaustion, or your insecurities, or your loneliness?

    I don’t doubt that there will be for many women an improvement after hearing this message, and I’m very glad to hear this was the case for your wife. But the one thing she isn’t doing is breaking the frame from an Oprah based frame to a scripture based one.

    This is a real problem because women actually think they are getting bible based advice from Sheila. In my husbands as helpmeets post I showed how she massively twisted the command to wives to submit. By the time she was done, she was suggesting men were created to serve women, and that women were shortchanging their husbands if they didn’t give them a list of housework chores to do. Here is an excerpt from one of the reviews of that book on Amazon.com:

    And while all of this is helpful, the real value of Gregorie’s book is in its discussion of the principles that should guide the division of labor in the home.

    As the back cover says, this is no “women’s lib” book and Gregorie does not fail to mention biblical verses referring to wives submitting to husbands. Nevertheless, she does a masterful job of exposing how commonly held ideas about gender roles within the home are of a cultural construction and not a biblical construction. Furthermore, she points out that these traditional gender roles aren’t effective for many families existing in our modern economy. With this in mind, she suggests innovative ways to devise a truly harmonious living and working environment.

    I have to step away for a bit now. I’ll return to address the other question you asked later.

  259. There is a certain one who actually suggests that I cannot have a valid point because I read and post here (and write over on Empath’s on rare occasions).

  260. I see that as evidence (in Sheila) of a hamster hard at work.

    Remember:

    “Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
    (Eph 6:11-12)

  261. Oh yeah, if anyone is interested, there is a thread up on CF right now that suggests that our marriages should be like “little churches” as a call out to my common them of suffering. I laid this on them, and basically said, “Yep, that is what is wrong with out marriages too”:

    http://www.intothyword.org/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=36562

  262. GKChesterton says:

    @GG,

    For most of human history men held virtually all of the power and could pretty much do as they pleased.

    Where do people get this stuff? Do as we pleased? The most powerful men in history rarely got to do “as they pleased” in the full sense. Please re-examine what you just wrote, open up a book of history and consider:
    * Did G. Washington “do as he pleased”?
    * Abraham Lincoln?
    * Unhappy King Charles?
    * Ezekiel?

    Don’t say stuff like that. It sounds terribly ignorant and off-putting.

    @James K,

    No, I’m not trying to shift blame, I’m trying to check whether a general principle can be applied in the present context: that two wrongs don’t make a right; sin A cannot be used to excuse sin B.

    Yes you are, and here is why. The scenario you posit would be considered impossible not more than sixty years ago. Rape laws generally didn’t cover married couples because, well, how could they? Now wives have been protected in the West from abuse by law for well over a thousand years; but the idea of forced sex would have puzzled people if the couple was married. I think it is healthy to view it as puzzling. So I reject your scenario. It can’t possibly happen because both parties have made an agreement that makes such a scenario impossible. They’ve pre-emptavely granted free license to their bodies to the other partner.

    I’m open to correction, but it seems to work a bit differently in the New Covenant.

    No. The same timeless an unchangeable God exists in both. Consider, “I came not to take away the Law.”

    4 if she continues to refuse, then he should make clear that by continuing to refuse sex and submit to him, she has abandoned and deserted the marriage. This is grounds for divorce.

    “Let no man break apart,” so no. It may be grounds for a formal separation to protect his assets. It may be that he withdraws formal support. But he cannot divorce for this. Not as a Christian anyway.

    @Dalrock

    God makes the IRS look lenient when it comes to the penalty for improper accounting of the sale of a capital asset.

    [howling laughter]. Spot on. Jesus is not a Teddy Bear. He is not a tame lion. Repeat that 500 times.

  263. James K says:

    @Dalrock

    Thank you for the link.

    I admit that this is something I have trouble understanding.

    Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were profoundly evil men who had turned away from God. Hitler committed suicide when surrounded by his enemies; the others died of natural causes long after committing their worst crimes. Western Christianity itself was in the hands of criminals, evil men, and unbelievers for at least 600 years before the 16th century.

    Hitler was saved at the age of 4 from drowning in the river Inn – by a boy who went on to become a priest.

    It appears that God chooses not to strike down even the very worst among us. It is not for us to understand why; but it does appear to be a fact.

  264. James K says:

    @GKChesterton

    “Yes you are, and here is why. The scenario you posit would be considered impossible not more than sixty years ago. Rape laws generally didn’t cover married couples because, well, how could they? Now wives have been protected in the West from abuse by law for well over a thousand years; but the idea of forced sex would have puzzled people if the couple was married. I think it is healthy to view it as puzzling. So I reject your scenario. It can’t possibly happen because both parties have made an agreement that makes such a scenario impossible. They’ve pre-emptively granted free license to their bodies to the other partner.”

    You are absolutely right that, in a healthy marriage, the issue is not going to arise, and will indeed be something of a puzzle. However, the Bible applies to healthy and unhealthy marriages alike; and wifely submission is not by itself sufficient to make a healthy marriage.

    Matthew Hale wrote about marital rape in the 17th century, and although he gave the opinion that it was not possible, the fact that he considered the matter at all, and recorded his opinion in writing, shows that it was not something inconceivable.

    The marriage vows that I am familiar with are those of the Book of Common Prayer. The words are of course not as explicit as “pre-emptively grant[ing] free license to their bodies to the other partner”, but they do instruct the wife to be subject to the husband, and of course to obey scripture.

    Instructions to the husband include: “Nevertheless, let every one of you in particular so love his wife, even as himself.”

    The precise meaning is open to interpretation. However, it seems to me that no loving husband will force himself on his wife, even if she is disobedient and failing in her scriptural duty. Surely we can all agree there are better remedies …

  265. ballista74 says:

    Pat Benetar from the 1980′s. I think it’s time for a man to rework this tune and put it out there.

    I was wondering how long it would take to bring that up. Especially since that song goes through my head every time I look at the title to this post. (of course I’m dating myself too by saying that)

    An open question to all: It’s easy it seems these days to find all these negative examples, but are there positive ones out there? I know for the times I’ve researched, I’ve had to work very hard to find counter-examples to the feminism-tinged evangelicals that are operating, and many times I come up empty. Like for marriage, is there someone out there doing marriage conferences with reasonable notoriety (say as well known as Gregoire) who gets marriage as God gave it right? Probably not, because I gather it’s Feminist Hamster that is driving the demand for such things?

  266. MackPUA says:

    Interesting point on current feminism is infact state instituted Sharia Law for men …

    walking in hell May 25, 2012 at 02:43

    @evilwhitemalempire

    On that blog he makes the case that Western feminism is Sharia law for Western men. I couldn’t agree more.

    “Yet, having a society base its morals and social structure upon the primitive reproductive urgings of one sex alone degrades women, degrades men, degrades civilization and, in fact, turns the western humanist world into nothing more than a ‘secular’ and feminised version of an Islamic fundamentalist state under Sharia law.

    Actually, men in the west are far worse off than women under Sharia, as at least Islamic law does cater for the basic needs of women (which are largely reproductive). This is why feminists are so reluctant to criticise ‘the oppression of women’ under Islam and often appear to even support it.”

  267. Anonymous says:

    Dalrock,

    Thanks much for that comment. Enlightening. You are right.

    I look forward to the other one!

    It would not be so bad if she balanced those “this is good for you posts” with other posts that talked seriously about what those Scriptures say and how they should convict.

    Anonymous

  268. justsomesquare says:

    “Don’t let anyone make you feel ashamed for taking your vows seriously and enjoying it.”

    Thanks, Jacquie (for your entire comment, really).

    @chaz345:
    “Women with this attitude toward their husbands are actually actively attacked and ridiculed over at Christian Forums.”

    I’ve never been on CF but I don’t doubt this. This reaction/attitude is almost everywhere. It’s so depressing.

  269. James K says:

    @MackPUA

    It’s not that there is no merit at all in feminist ideas; it’s that once they are established, they are allowed to expand way beyond anything that is reasonable.

    For example, domestic violence is a genuine problem that used to be overlooked. Law enforcement now takes it seriously, but found that not all the perpetrators were men. Feminists wanted to give violent women a “get out of jail free” card, so Lenore Walker invented the concept of “Battered Woman Syndrome”. As the document below explains, Walker further believes that a man can “batter” a woman “by ignoring her and working late”, and that if she then throws a glass at his head and hits him with a chair, it should not be classified as domestic violence because it is a manifestation of “battered woman syndrome”.

    Good intentions often lead to bad results, but to turn out batshit insane like this, something else must be happening – it is as if legislators, judges, the media and the public have gone to sleep and let these madwomen change the rules to whatever they want.

    Honestly, anyone who thinks a man can “batter” a woman “by ignoring her and working late” should probably be in an asylum, and certainly nowhere near the levers of power.

    http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/feminist-jurisprudence-equal-rights-or-neopaternalism (see p23 of the pdf)

  270. MackPUA says:

    @James

    What merit is there to feminist ideas?

    Feminism has never been about merit, or fairness to women, its been pretty much proven, feminism has always been & is essentially a lesbian radical supremacist movement

    Which is precisely why even the EARLIER reforms for women, were so insane & damaging to society as a whole …

  271. Dalrock says:

    @James K

    It’s not that there is no merit at all in feminist ideas; it’s that once they are established, they are allowed to expand way beyond anything that is reasonable.

    I think a far more accurate statement would be that feminists claim to be acting in good faith, but once we trust them they show themselves as profoundly duplicitous.

  272. Dalrock says:

    @Anonymous

    In any case, my wife heard about “Fifty Shades of Grey” last night and when I told her that it just showed women could lust to, she disagreed, and bringing up *Fireproof*, said it was all about women just being lonely and falling for guys who pay attention to them. I know that anecdotal stories abound of women not being haaaapy (as you say) with husbands, who, on the face of it, are super good guys and do pay attention (perhaps too much – thereby earning their wives disdain!) to their wives – and yet women leave them. Are there solid studies to back up this phenomenon – i.e. that many women cheat or leave their faithful and doting husbands in the hope for something more alpha?

    What could I show her that would make a very strong case that women lust to?

    My first thought is to ask her to prove scientifically that men lust, and aren’t just trying to save every one of the tramps they bang or aren’t unconsciously craving love and acceptance, despite what their words may say to cover their hurting hearts. The very framing of the question is suspect, and I just want to point that out.

    I don’t know if this is what you are looking for, but my wife stumbled on this article just yesterday and we had a chuckle about it: Blame your ovaries for your bad taste in men!

    Extra points to the author for the hamster gymnastics in the last lines:

    You never know. Sometimes bad boys turn good when they fall in love.

    I should know. I married one!

  273. chaz345 says:

    “MackPUA says:
    May 25, 2012 at 9:36 am

    @James

    What merit is there to feminist ideas?

    Feminism has never been about merit, or fairness to women, its been pretty much proven, feminism has always been & is essentially a lesbian radical supremacist movement

    Which is precisely why even the EARLIER reforms for women, were so insane & damaging to society as a whole …”

    I disagree. Initially feminism sought to address some very real discrepancies in the actual legal rights of women. What’s happened is as those issues were addressed, which they largely were by about 30 years ago, is that feminism has morphed into being about something else entirely.

  274. chaz345 says:

    “@ballista74

    An open question to all: It’s easy it seems these days to find all these negative examples, but are there positive ones out there? I know for the times I’ve researched, I’ve had to work very hard to find counter-examples to the feminism-tinged evangelicals that are operating, and many times I come up empty. Like for marriage, is there someone out there doing marriage conferences with reasonable notoriety (say as well known as Gregoire) who gets marriage as God gave it right? Probably not, because I gather it’s Feminist Hamster that is driving the demand for such things?”

    Although they don’t specifically address things from within a gender roles framework, Marriage Savers has a very balanced and Scriptural approach to what it takes to make a good marriage. They don’t blame one gender over the other for the bulk of any given marriage’s problems. And most relevantly, they’ve got VERY solid data to prove that their approach reduces divorce.

  275. James K says:

    @MackPUA

    In the example I gave, the merit was pointing out that law enforcement should not ignore domestic violence.

    Most reasonable people would agree that we used to have a problem in the way we handled domestic violence; but the big mistake was letting radicals propose the solution, and not adequately screening them for crazy beliefs. I have to agree with Dalrock that the radicals at least are duplicitous; but then so are all lobby groups: they will take the maximum that we give them, and still want more.

    The problem is that, in their heads, a lot of feminists think that by definition the perpetrator of domestic violence must be a man. I think the feminists have managed to get so far with this idea because it plugs in to a piece of our pre-existing culture: if a man beats a woman, we despise the man; if a woman beats a man, we despise the man.

    [D: I think they knew exactly what they were doing. I’ve written about the problem here.]

  276. @ David Collard:
    Thank you for your kind words. The eroticism of the complementary dynamic kept me from posting them for a while, but its ubiquity within oneself and between people eventually compelled me to publish them.
    I agree that wifely obedience is typically implicit or used to be anyway. But it was necessary in my case to make the vow explicit and formal. Our initial marriage vows were standard boilerplate secular words. So the revision needed to be deliberate and obvious. When I take a vow in public I am more likely to keep it because I’ll prove myself a fraud in the eyes of my peers if I don’t keep it. I think that by asking for the vow my husband enlisted my conscious, active and aware cooperation towards his efforts at maintaining leadership in the marriage. Without it he could only rely on my intent and benevolence. With it he also obtained my ego and its need for approval and be seen as trustworthy.

  277. Aunt Haley says:

    deti–
    3. if she continues to refuse sex, the husband should withdraw commitment. This can be done by tightening supervision over her life; restricting her freedom with money or time; expecting reports on her whereabouts, or conversely by pursuing his own interests without her and refusing to explain his activities or whereabouts (while remaining faithful to his vows). “Trust but verify” is the name of the game.

    This is just going to make her complain to her girlfriends that her husband turned into a vindictive control freak just because she didn’t give him sex on demand all the time. Ten bucks says her friends will back her, proclaim his demands unrealistic and patriarchal and his behavior appalling or possibly dangerous, and counsel her to consider leaving him if it continues.

  278. freebird says:

    @George Booth-regarding the comment that it is a Duty to warn of sin,which he has twisted into “advocation of cruelty.”
    Ezekiel 3:18
    When I say unto the wicked,Thou shalt surely die;and thou givest him NOT warning,nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way,to save his life;the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity;but his blood will I require at thing hand.
    19:Yet if thou warn the wicked,and he turn not from his wickedness,nor from his wicked way,he shall die in his inquity;but thou HAST delivered thy soul.
    This time George it is I whomst warns you my brother.
    My soul is clean in this matter.
    Good luck with your feel good BS.It is un-biblical.(and the spirit of anti-christ)

  279. freebird says:

    Spelling error,”thing” should be “Thine.”

    My original comment
    was regarding the duty to warn women
    to submit to their husbands,George got that all tangled up where I was the sinner for not unconditionally loving.
    (calling it a sin-to call out sin)
    Sad for the son of a preacher-man.
    Well good luck brother George-I’ve done my duty.

  280. freebird says:

    Regarding the second contention from George that un-equally yoked does not apply to marriage-I concede it is not “unlawful” to unequally yoked in marriage,but in the spririt of the law,it is very hard on the stronger party.
    “The spirit of the law giveth life,but the letter of the law causes death.”
    Rough quote,not exact.
    Have you absorbed the spirit of the word, or do you just pick specific phrases out of context?

  281. freebird says:

    Using the same nit-picking George could also contend that the quote from Ezekiel does not apply to women as it says “he” and not “she.”
    So yeah, don’t warn women when they sin,that is advocation of cruelty.

  282. freebird says:

    Oops!
    Made a mistake.
    The son a preacher man was cane-caldo, and I find no fault with his theology.
    Good on you old man!
    Apologies to both parties concerned.
    My bad.

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  285. @Cane Caldo

    “Have you ever read Genesis 3? Who had the power? Who was given the power, and where did it end up?

    Have you ever wondered how women gave themselves the right to vote, if they didn’t have the right to vote? Who had the power? Who was given the power, and where did it end up?

    Have you ever compared the history of feminism to the history of Genesis 3?”

    I’d say that the first sin was about the woman trying to gain power that did not belong to her. Genesis 2 already established who was in authority when Adam gave woman her name. The problem with the fall was that Adam chose woman over God. He pedestalised her and men have been making the same mistake since then.

  286. Cane Caldo says:

    @FM

    We have a winner! Though, I would add that the power ended up in Satan’s hands. She didn’t end up taking it for herself so much as transferring it to the serpent. Same with women’s suffrage: they passed the power onto the state.

  287. Kaehu says:

    Usually I want to believe that Christian women and the church are not so messed up as often portrayed by “Game” advocates, but I have to admit that Al Mohler’s latest piece posted today at Christian Post fits exactly within this thread: http://www.christianpost.com/news/the-seduction-of-pornography-and-the-integrity-of-christian-marriage-part-2-75949/

    Check out this excerpt from Mohler’s article:

    “By definition, sex within marriage is not merely the accomplishment of sexual fulfillment on the part of two individuals who happen to share the same bed. Rather, it is the mutual self-giving that reaches pleasures both physical and spiritual. The emotional aspect of sex cannot be divorced from the physical dimension of the sex act. Though men are often tempted to forget this, women possess more and less gentle means of making that need clear.

    Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed. As the Apostle Paul states, the husband and wife no longer own their own bodies, but each now belongs to the other. At the same time, Paul instructed men to love their wives even as Christ has loved the church. Even as wives are commanded to submit to the authority of their husbands, the husband is called to a far higher standard of Christ-like love and devotion toward the wife.

    Therefore, when I say that a husband must regularly “earn” privileged access to the marital bed, I mean that a husband owes his wife the confidence, affection, and emotional support that would lead her to freely give herself to her husband in the act of sex.

    God’s gift of sexuality is inherently designed to pull us out of ourselves and toward our spouse. For men, this means that marriage calls us out of our self-focused concern for genital pleasure and toward the totality of the sex act within the marital relationship.

    Put most bluntly, I believe that God means for a man to be civilized, directed, and stimulated toward marital faithfulness by the fact that his wife will freely give herself to him sexually only when he presents himself as worthy of her attention and desire.”

    Read the rest for a full dose!

  288. Elspeth says:

    “Earn access”????
    If that wasn’t bad enough, he also said that for husbands sex is mainly about genital pleasure, as if only wives experience emotional and spiritual bonding during sex. He speaks if men are animals driven purely by physical instinct As if they operate on a lower level of consciousness than women.

    I had a lot of respect for Al Mohler even when I didn’t agree with him 100%, but asserting that the Bible supporting than men have to “earn access” to the marriage bed is one of the worst pieces of garbage I’ve ever read. I don’t know that I’ll ever read him the same way again.

    I thought marriage was the access pass. Good grief! That was really bad.

  289. Elspeth says:

    That was a typo ridden mess. Sorry for the incoherence.

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  292. ballista74 says:

    Read the rest for a full dose!

    FWIW, I just read it off his site and responded. If the first article I reviewed wasn’t enough to prove Albert Mohler a feminist advocate of Marriage 2.0, this one made it beyond doubt.

  293. Josh the Aspie says:

    Wooooow. I tried reading that post and some of the commentary, and after a while, just couldn’t take any more.

    Seriously, if I’m not in the mood to whisper sweet nothings, that makes me a bad husband, but if she’s not in the mood to provide sex, that means I’m a bad husband, or it’s just ‘normal’?

    See, this, and knowing about the propensity for divorce and false rape accusations are why I never got married, and have no intent of doing so.

  294. MB says:

    Your post was very un-Christlike and it made me sick to my stomach. This is one reason why so many people are leaving the church.

  295. Father Marker says:

    So says the arbiter or all things Christlike. Have you considered how many people are leaving the church because of its misandric ways. Oh I forgot! It’s OK to drive evil mysoginistic men out of the church. We have to keep those precious misandric women in there instead.

  296. koevoet says:

    MB – If people are leaving the Church because their modern sensibilities cannot handle the truth…did they really have faith to begin with? What would they have done if they had to face persecution?

  297. Pingback: Dr. Phil enforcing the feminine imperative. | Dalrock

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  299. FloatyBoaty says:

    Has anyone seen the similarities between BDSM and marriage? Whether Biblical or secular?

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  302. Rich says:

    My wife cut me off after 20 years of marriage because of menopause and lack of desire based on that. I still carry. My desire for her only, but got busted looking at a swinger site after almost a year of no sex.
    Sinc she busted me, now she doesn’t trust me. I have always treated her like a queen and still do. She gets respect from you me, understanding, and 2 hr. Foot rubs. I don’t even masturbate, hoping one day something will change.
    I still have desires for sex and passion and its not
    even a vision at the end of the tunnel.

  303. Dalrock says:

    @Rich

    My wife cut me off after 20 years of marriage because of menopause and lack of desire based on that. I still carry. My desire for her only, but got busted looking at a swinger site after almost a year of no sex.
    Sinc she busted me, now she doesn’t trust me. I have always treated her like a queen and still do. She gets respect from you me, understanding, and 2 hr. Foot rubs. I don’t even masturbate, hoping one day something will change.
    I still have desires for sex and passion and its not
    even a vision at the end of the tunnel.

    Don’t be fooled into thinking this is about “trust”. This is about two things, attraction and power*. Both of these are related, and the more power she wields over you the less attraction she feels towards you (and the more miserable she is as well). You might check out my post Romance 101: How to stop frustrating your wife (as a primer for attraction) as well as Cane Caldo’s Tacomaster Desires Steadfast Love.

    *The power grab is an act of rebellion, in direct violation of the instruction of Scripture (as I explain in the OP and here). Understand this as you read the two posts linked above. Also, the Romance 101 post links to Athol Kay’s blog and book. He isn’t a Christian but you can tune his advice accordingly and I think it would be helpful.

    Good luck, and you will be in my prayers.

  304. Kris says:

    As a believer in the God of Abraham and a follower of the Messiah(even though I fall short many times), I use praise of the movie FIREPROOF to spot “Christians” that I view according to my religious and spiritual beliefs to be followers of the devil. Anyone who could praise such a movie(from a Biblical standpoint) worships neither the God of Abraham nor follows the teachings of the Messiah at all.

    There is no room for debate really with these fake Christians. They are heretics. I know that is a dirty word because of the Inquisitions and witch burning, but it ought to be used when it applies.

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  308. Don Juan says:

    Men get almost no benefit from marriage any more but women seem mystified as to why men no longer marry. Well, lets see: He’s not respected, he’s not cared for physically (cooking,etc.), and he doesn’t get sex.

  309. Pingback: Why Christian Men Choose Not to Get Laid Before Marriage | The Reinvention of Man

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  313. Write says:

    Actually, this is my husband that has been denying me sex for 13 years now. I do realize that I very, very unattractive (to say the least!) and I did ask for divorce multiple times but he denies going with it. Of course, I do have 5th grade brain I will be proceeding with divorce myself, but the point I would like to bring is that not all women are denying you sex, only those that are ugly!! So wonderful men, pls find fit, beautiful, young educated women to be with. Men are wonderful and they will love you for your youthfulness, beauty, wisdom and sexual desire, (by 48 year od. 5.4, 125 lbs, athletic and very fit but considered morbidly y obese and fat by mother in la, lol!! )

  314. Buepillprofessor says:

    Churchians of today all the way back to the Apostle Paul are wrong about sexuality. God wants us to have lots of sex of both the procreative and recreational type. See the Song of Solomon for more.

    On Wifely submission which makes the fems go apoplectic I direct you to the Book of Proverbs, specifically the end of the book describing the characteristics of a virtuous woman- basically a merchant who runs goods all over the world running multiple businesses. THAT is ‘wifely submission’ in Scripture.

    What is required is respect and submission. Paul was specifically talking about sexual submission and specifically directed that the wife’s body belonged to the husband and vice-versa. That is all that is required of women in scripture- screw your husband when he wants. The contrary notion was not even considered reasonable until about 45 years ago. Beyond sexually satisfying her husband and giving him respect a woman is free to be as successful as she wants. In fact, Scripture ONLY calls her “virtuous” if she is very successful.

  315. JDG says:

    Paul was specifically talking about sexual submission and specifically directed that the wife’s body belonged to the husband and vice-versa. That is all that is required of women in scripture- screw your husband when he wants.

    Ephesians 5:22 Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands.

  316. Pingback: The Types of Women in Church – A Primer | The Reinvention of Man

  317. Sarah says:

    Porn is best kept secret tbh. It always causes trouble when the wife finds it. Can’t help it. It makes us think he’s not happy with us physically or sexually. A don’t ask, don’t tell policy is the best approach.

    I agree with her re her hair. Long hair can be more difficult or impossible to maintain when you are older. Can look trampy. If you say ‘short hair’ to a man they automatically think “the lesbian look’

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