Rollo kindly shared a New Yorker article that he thought I’d be interested in:
A Sociologist of Religion on Protestants, Porn, and the “Purity Industrial Complex”
The article is an interview with sociologist Samuel L. Perry, who is looking at modern Christian culture from the outside. One of his observations is that “complementarian” wives are twice as likely as other women to divorce their husbands for viewing pornography:
Conservative Protestants tend to be what we would call “complementarian”…
Conservative Protestant women are twice as likely to divorce their husband because of his pornography use. And it’s not because their husbands are looking at porn any more often than non-conservative Protestant husbands. It’s because they draw a hard line, and they consider pornography use not just analogous to but literally adultery, or a betrayal, or a perversion. And so the consequences of pornography use for their relationships are extreme compared to consequences for anybody else’s relationships.
…
You’ve got these marriages that are blowing up because of pornography. With the survey data, I’m able to see the severity of consequences over the general population, but I’m not able to hear the stories. So what was so powerful to me was when Christian women would describe what it was like to discover their husband was looking at pornography: the anger that they felt, the betrayal that they described, and how they were processing it, how they called it adultery, and how they said it was betrayal. Or the husbands would describe getting caught and talk about how their wives didn’t talk to them for two weeks and threatened divorce. One of them came home to bags packed on the front porch.
Coming from the outside, what he doesn’t understand is this is about power. Complementarians pretend that they believe in biblical headship, but in practice the foundation of complementarianism is the wife is in charge. Pornography threatens a cherished lever of power for complementarian wives, which is denial of sex. This lever of power isn’t unique to complementarian wives, as all wives are tempted to use it. See for example Alyssa Milano’s recent call for a sex strike over abortion.
Athol Kay explained how porn threatens this lever of power, and why wives using denial of sex to manipulate their husbands have a much more violent reaction to their husbands viewing porn than other wives do in his post Wives Denying Sex and The Porn Firewall:
Here’s the situation…
After several months or a few years of his wife denying sex, the husband ends up seeking some kind of sexual solace in using porn to masturbate to. Typically he carefully hides this activity from his wife, because he knows the reaction it will get.
Sure enough though, eventually he slips up and she discovers the porn. Whereupon she reacts just the way he knew she would – with a huge explosion of rage. Porn, it will be explained to him, is demeaning to women, disgusting, immoral, wrong, disappointing, revolting and hurtful. It’s also very likely to be explained to him that his use of porn has now put the relationship back several steps, just as she was starting to feel like she could open up to him, but of course now she can’t, and it’s all his fault.
Thus The Porn Firewall is created.
…
The unmet need for sex is a powerful impulse, and to keep a physically healthy male in an intimate relationship, but deny him sex, requires a heavy hand of control…
It’s an old behavioral technique to smack down hard on a person making a minor infraction, to intimidate then into never even considering a major infraction.
Complementarians are coy about this, but they play by the same script. Pastor Doug Wilson explains in The Suitor and his Porn that the problem with pornography is that it makes husbands lazy, and therefore they won’t be willing to work hard enough to earn sex from their wives:
Laziness: real sex takes real effort. Sometimes it requires two or more jobs — because the children must be fed. If the only effort for the young man’s sexual gratification is the effort his parents put out in getting a wireless connection down to the basement, then the chances are good that he will have come to believe that sexual release is low-hanging fruit, because in his lazy world, it has been. Marriage won’t fix sexual laziness because marriage won’t fix laziness. Marriage often makes laziness worse. But laziness as a character deficiency can be publicly identified. Marriage spurs the right kind of man to work hard, and encourages the wrong kind of man to slack off.
Entitlement: if the young man in question has a sense of entitlement about things generally — grades, employment, standard of living, and so on — it should not be surprising that he is the kind of person who will just “expect” what is his due. If for some reason that drifts away from him, he will still feel entitled. The most common way this happens in marriage is that a man does not treat his wife right, they start to quarrel and drift apart, and this naturally includes their sex life, and he feels just as entitled as he ever did. And the computer is right there. If she is going to take away x, then I will compensate with y — and she can’t complain, because its really her fault. Like laziness, the root problem is abdication of responsibility.
Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, explains the problem with pornography in a strikingly similar way in his Christian Post article The Seduction of Pornography and the Integrity of Christian Marriage, Part 2 (emphasis mine):
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…
…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.
…
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.
Perhaps specificity will help to illustrate this point. I am confident that God’s glory is seen in the fact that a married man, faithful to his wife, who loves her genuinely, will wake up in the morning driven by ambition and passion in order to make his wife proud, confident, and assured in her devotion to her husband. A husband who looks forward to sex with his wife will aim his life toward those things that will bring rightful pride to her heart, will direct himself to her with love as the foundation of their relationship, and will present himself to her as a man in whom she can take both pride and satisfaction.
Pastor Dave Wilson takes a slightly different approach, explaining that God communicates his displeasure with husbands through their wives (non) burning bush:
According to Pastor Dave Wilson and his wife, Ann, a man’s relationship with God is key to unlocking the mystery of marital intimacy.
…
Dave: Yes. Here’s all you need to know about that night—the thing that changed our marriage is when Ann was sharing with me what she felt—I had a pretty unique encounter with God. I sensed God was speaking to me, through Ann;
The complementarian response to men viewing pornography isn’t about the threat pornography poses as a sin, it is the threat pornography poses to one of complementarians’ favorite sins. Key to understanding this is to remember that the Bible teaches that husbands and wives are not to deny each other sex, because this would create temptation for sexual sin. This comes in the same passage where the Apostle Paul explains that Christians who experience sexual temptation should marry and have sex (1 Cor 7:1-5, ESV).
7 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.
Complementarians have inverted Scripture, because what Paul tells us is prohibited (denial of sex) is a cherished tool for complementarian wives. In this sense it is a sin being used to further another sin (not submitting to their husbands). Husbands viewing porn threatens this cherished complementarian sin, and so it must be eradicated. But again, the reason for the intense focus on pornography isn’t to forsake sin in general, it is to pave the way for other sins that complementarians are heavily invested in.
One way to cross check this is to see if the complementarian response to women using pornography is similar. Complementarians don’t teach that a husband’s sexual attraction to his wife is God’s method of making his wife submit to him. Moreover, in the same New Yorker interview sociologist Samuel L. Perry explained that complementarian husbands don’t threaten their wives if the wife is viewing pornography. In that case, the sin this is ostensibly about is not nearly the problem:
Of the women who were watching porn, was it more that they themselves were feeling guilty, as you hinted at? Or was it that their husbands were also mad at them?
I had very few interviews where a Christian wife was looking at porn. In the heterosexual relationships in which I interviewed conservative Christians, it was almost always the man who was looking at porn. The Christian women who were looking at porn that I interviewed were primarily single college girls. I guess when women were married, the temptation to look at pornography was not quite the same.
But I will say this: the statistic that I gave you about conservative Protestant women being twice as likely to divorce their husbands as non-conservative Protestant women—the reverse is not true. The data that I have shows that men almost never divorce their wives because they’re looking at pornography. It’s just not something that they draw a hard line about, or get offended by, the way women do.
This is, I have to admit, a very clever tactic by complementarians. They are able to frame their own sin as merely a dislike for sin, and frame anyone who notices what is really going on as advocating for men to sin. Moreover, that this is wholly insincere doesn’t change the fact that pornography is a problem in itself.
The thing it seems that all these “conservative Christians” are ignoring is that even if you count porn as adultery, and even if adultery is viewed as justifiable grounds for divorce (if Protestant), NOWHERE in scripture does it say that a divorce would be REQUIRED on those grounds!
It’s like the idea of forgiving one’s husband for adultery (whether real or porn) has never once occurred to these women.
I regard pornography as more of a symptom than a problem.
Men that are getting some on the regular are less likely to access pornography. I don’t have any science to support this, but, hey, open your damn eyes.
Mark my words :
Before long, some cartoonish cuckservatives will pressure men to marry some MtF transgender, while showboating about how ‘pro-marriage’ and ‘traditional’ they are.
The cuckservatives will not see the irony of their behavior at all.
This will happen sooner than you think. Probably by 2021.
I am reminded of Sheila Gregoire’s rather heretical interpretation of 1 Cor. 7:4, to the effect that the verse means that a wife is fully entitled to be the regulatrix of her husband’s sexuality, including determining if, when, and under what conditions, he has access to sex. Basically renders the other side of the verse (a wife’s body belonging to her husband) null and void, which is fine, because to give any power to that verse would be condone *rape*, which it goes without saying no complimentarian would ever support.
They would use things of the flesh to make slaves those that Christ freed.
Laziness: real resources takes real effort. Sometimes it requires extra hours. If the only effort for the young woman’s resource needs is the effort to sit and watch TV, then the chances are good that she will have come to believe that being given resources is low-hanging fruit, because in his lazy world, it has been. Marriage won’t fix laziness because marriage won’t fix laziness. Marriage often makes laziness worse. But laziness as a character deficiency can be publicly identified. Marriage spurs the right kind of woman to work hard, and encourages the wrong kind of woman to slack off.
Entitlement: if the young woman in question has a sense of entitlement about things generally — grades, employment, standard of living, and so on — it should not be surprising that she is the kind of person who will just “expect” what is her due. If for some reason that drifts away from her, she will still feel entitled. The most common way this happens in marriage is that a woman does not treat her husband right, they start to quarrel and drift apart, and this naturally includes the desire for the husband to buy things for her, and she feels just as entitled as she ever did. And the cash and prizes in divorce are right there. If he is going to take away x, then I will compensate with y — and he can’t complain, because its really his fault. Like laziness, the root problem is abdication of responsibility.
I’ve observed that it isn’t husbands’ porn use that destroys the marriages of Christians, it’s the over-reaction of wives to their husbands’ porn use that blows up marriages. And these wives have been taught or even commanded by churchianity to respond this way to porn. Women are very susceptible to suggestion when it comes to divorcing their husbands, especially when the suggestions come from so-called “Christians” or Christian “leaders”.
(Pastor Phil) “Hello Bob, how are you doing today?”
(Bob) “Well, quite well. I just got the promotion at work that I was paying for. You are right, God does answer ever prayer and sometimes the answer is no but in this case, it was yes.”
(Pastor Phil) “Good, I am really happy to hear that. How’s the porn addiction going?”
(Bob) “Its GREAT! I just discovered two new websites and they have all these high definition feeds I have seen yet…”
(Pastor Phil, interrupting) “No I mean, have you been able to resist the temptation?”
(Bob) “Oh of course not. God gave me much too high of a libido, I need sexual release.”
(An angry Pastor Phil) “Bob, we’ve talked about this. Are you not listening to my sermons? I talk about porn every single time!”
(Bob) “Oh yes, but its not for me. I am not married. I am not committing adultery or even fornication. There is nothing in the Bible where God even talks about pornography.”
(Exasperated Pastor Phil) “Its for ALL MEN Bob, not just the married one.”
(Bob) “Who am I betraying? I can’t help it if my libido is sky high. I have no sexual release Pastor. None. I have no wife. I am not just going to go to sleep at night and let God give me a nocturnal emission every night for release.”
(Pastor Phil stuck in a LOGIC BOX) “I don’t know what to say to that. You don’t talk about your porn addition with anyone else in church do you?”
(Bob) “No. Just you. And I don’t even really want to talk about it with you. I only talk about it because you asked about it a long time ago and I don’t feel any real shame.”
(Pastor Phil) “Well my sermons are for you too, and maybe you should feel shame.”
(Bob) “Why? I don’t understand. There is nothing in the Bible about…”
(Pastor Phil, cutting him off) “Yes, yes, I know. There is nothing there. But look what you are doing to yourself!”
(Bob) “I am emptying my prostate as much as I can so I don’t get prostate cancer when I am 50 years old. Would it make you happier if I wasn’t looking at men and women having sex over the internet while I am doing it?”
(Pastor Phil) “Well, I suppose it would make me happier.”
(Bob) “But what difference does it make? I am not married.”
(Pastor Phil) “You are…” searching his mind, thinking deeply “… you are denying your future wife the special privilege of you ONLY knowing her nude body. By looking at all these…. uh, actresses, you are slowly but surely diminishing the power that she will have”
(Bob) “So this is about POWER? Is that really the problem here, I am taking away her POWER? I thought in any marriage I am in, I am the one with headship?”
(Pastor Phil, now trapped in another LOGIC BOX) “I think, I think maybe it might be time for you to find another church Bob.”
(Bob) “You are kicking me out?”
(Pastor Phil) “I don’t think this is the right church for you?”
(Bob) “Well, what church WOULD be the right one? I haven’t committed any sin. Who have I hurt? Is it might fault I have the libido of a 3 year old bull who is always in heat?”
(Pastor Phil) “I have no idea where you should go but you can’t come here anymore, not until you start to change your ways.”
(Bob) “Well, okay. I guess I’ll head over to the coffee hall and tell everyone in church why you are kicking me out and see how they react…”
(Pastor Phil) “Bob, no. I am telling you no.”
(Bob) “You are not my pastor anymore. You have no authority. Go call the cops, I’ll be done with my public lecture in 60 seconds anyway…”
I could write a whole book about this shit!
Sex in marriage should not be duty or obligation, though that seems to be what Christians derive from the Bible somehow.
My God, what a horrible perversion that is!
And what a horrible, human husk of an existence for husbands trapped with asexual wives!
I would rather be single and sexless than hitched up to a girl who offered duty sex, didn’t really want me, nor have any genuine sexual desire for me. That would be a non-stop nightmare.
The reason why more husbands are grabbing his iPAD, locking the bathroom door and punching the munchkin is because his balls are full. Sexless marriage should never be tolerated by any husband, or any wife.
But the truth is, men do this to themselves.
Most men today in sexless marriages have allowed themselves to get flabby, fat, whiny, effeminate and incompetent. You don’t even have to be competent by the way. But my God, at least be physically healthy, masculine and sexually attractive.
And the same charges can be levied against most wives today, because too many of them love food more than they love their husbands. They become human beach balls after marriage.
Some husbands tolerate sex with these beach balls. But most cannot and would rather jerk off.
And so porn.
Porn is free, ubiquitous online, easily accessible, and easy to conceal.
Easiest method for men to “get the poison out” and move on with their day.
Porn the worst thing ever for women, young and old, who are wondering just where the hell are the men at? And how come they aren’t trying anymore? Women complain about this, mind you, while they are completely absorbed with their overpriced, worthless education degrees and working 50 hour work weeks, also known as “sexually unavailable”.
Wives who discover their husband are using porn might get angry, indignant and outraged. She might want to mount her moral Christian high horse and lecture him about perversion, adultery and betrayal. But most of the time it just confirms for her what she already knew before – her husband is an unattractive, weak minded, low quality man, who cannot get what he wants.
The same old definition game is played out: what is “porn”? The modern churches define “porn” solely in terms of visuals. Pictures / videos of nudity and/or sexual activity. There’s evidence that about 20% of US women view porn, although it’s shaky. I suspect this skews heavily towards the under 30 demographic.
But what is “porn”, again? For centuries porn images were few, but lurid text was more common. Until the 1950’s or so, “Banned in Boston” actually mean something. Plays, musical reviews and books were all banned.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Banned_in_Boston
One of the problems complementarians have is they have bought into the feminist lie that men and women are exactly the same except for boobs and babies. This is not true, and in fact the most recent “researchers” are the PUA’s, who have clearly shown that while men tend to be visual in attraction, women are often verbal. It’s not new, no doubt Casanova had a fine way with words.
Women’s porn is typically in text form. This is easy to test at the nearest chain book store in the “Romance” section, as most modern RomFic has a “letter to Penthouse” described sex scene every 80 to 100 pages. Just pick one up, start with Harlequin Romances. They are right out in the open, nothing furtive.
Or test this at Amazon / Goodreads. There are plenty of examples of fiction for sale for 99 cents at Amazon that are porn intended for women, on the level of “script for a porn video” detail.
If porn use is fornication or adultery, disqualification for marriage, then plenty of church going girls are just as disqualified as the basement-dwelling man that TradCons are so fond of bashing.
Yet churchmen who won’t divorce a wife for video porn surely are not going to do the same because she has a stack of “romances” on her side of the bed, or a gig of RomFic on her Kindle – fiction that she often reads all by herself…and no TradCon preacher will say one word of protest. Nope. Not gonna happen.
The theology of “everyone is flawed” I shall leave for others. Tradcon hypocritical ignorance, on the other hand, is easy to point out.
“Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed…”
Unbiblical and ahistorical!
If wives withhold sex from their husbands until some payment is made, they are literally guilty of fornication. They are acting exactly as whores.
@Damn Crackers
But, but, “earn access to her bed” is the fundamental truth of Fireproof! So it’s gotta be true!
@farmlegend – “I regard pornography as more of a symptom than a problem.”
Agreed. As for proof, just consider what came first: feminism or ubiquitous pornography. Men’s use of pornography is a reaction to feminism, not that it isn’t negative in other senses (sinful, mind-control, dyscivic, etc.)
The use of porn should be a required topic for couples to discuss BEFORE they get married to minimize any misunderstandings after they are married. If they can’t come to some agreement before they are married it’s doubtful they will after they are married.
@Anon Reader
Right. Part of why this tactic works so well is because men are ashamed of their sin when they use porn. Women aren’t. They are quite literally shameless about it. So complementarians can avoid challenging willful rebellion by stomping on the men acknowledge that they are sinning. It is sheer evil brilliance.
I should add that if this were sincere, there would also be the problem of the same passage (Mat 5) calling lusting with the eyes adultery also says that anger is murder. Obviously Christ wasn’t giving wives a path to break their marriage vows for this kind of adultery any more than He was encouraging us to execute anyone who commits spiritual murder (anger). Moreover, in the very same passage He then says that divorcing causes adultery:
I was visiting Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa in the late 1990s and heard Chuck Smith teach from the pulpit that women could divorce their husbands if they viewed pornography because it was adultery. Of course, this Christian assembly had no deliverance ministry for these Christian men who suddenly found themselves immersed in an Internet world brimming with pornography for which they were unprepared.
No ministry to help Christian men who were overnight thrust into an online world of pornography (most initially being instructed by their employers and distance education organizations to get online with many of their wives introducing the Internet into their homes so they could network and gossip better), but lots of condemnation from their church with a pastor’s blessing for their wives to divorce them. That’s what I heard and saw with my own ears and eyes and it came from the very top of the leadership pyramid.
I believe so many wives started divorcing their husbands because of this from the end of the 1990s into the early 2000’s that it created chaos and havoc in these assemblies. That’s why the message stopped being preached from the pulpit and new deliverance ministries sprung up around the problem. It was creating pain/problems for church leadership so church leadership went another direction. They were fine with wives divorcing and destroying their husbands but when the negative consequences created pain for them, then they shifted gears to protect themselves and their 501c organizations.
Dalrock
Part of why this tactic works so well is because men are ashamed of their sin when they use porn. Women aren’t. They are quite literally shameless about it.
Excellent point. There’s a long rabbit trail into the woods about that shamelessness. Some other time.
I should add that if this were sincere, there would also be the problem of the same passage (Mat 5) calling lusting with the eyes adultery also says that anger is murder.
Except when it’s a preacher being angry at single men for failing to ManUP and marry one of the beautiful, beautiful single mothers. Then it’s all right. Righteous, even?
Paging Mark Driscoll…
Ah, power.
It is amazing how the failure to self-limit, for women and men, brings so much pain.
So many women aren’t steak, and so many men lack game. Round and round it goes, down to a mutually assured destruction.
It’s really a failure in the transmission of knowledge from parent to child. Once that chain breaks it’s very hard for a child or further descendant to pick it up again. Red Pill Theory and Game represent that pickup (heh) for men. For women? I think Dr. Laura used to do that, but her banishment to XM was an early deplatforming by feminists.
Anyway, It’s going to be up to redpill men to educate their daughters on how to treat a man. Women will destroy the village to save it.
Your post reminds me of a man who admitted viewing pornography to me and another man. I told him he didn’t need pornography because he has a Christian wife who will do what he asks.
Now I wonder if I was mistaken.
Porn is free, ubiquitous, easy to access and easy to conceal.
I agree with the earlier comment.
The reasons husbands grab their ipads, lock the bathroom door and punch the munchkin on the regular is because their balls are full.
Their wives don’t want to have sex with them anymore.
I mean, just look at what has become of American men. I don’t blame women (married or not) one iota for not wanting to perform fellatio or have sex with them either.
And I think it is safe to say that most of the married men you see in public – at the grocery store, IKEA, the restaurant, at church, or on your business flight home – haven’t gotten laid in weeks and months.
There is a lot of frustration, and even anger about it, that no man really wants to talk about.
And I’m sure the sexual frustration among wives is also high.
Sometimes husbands can correct matters. Most of the time they cannot because its too late, the wife has checked out and declared sexual retirement (with him), and nothing he does will get her to come out and play.
I think the married redpill on reddit has a lot of great resources and guidelines for men that they can try.
Amping up the alpha and instilling passive dread works 60% of the time, every time.
If the man’s balls are getting emptied with genuine sexual desire and validational sex, then porn use loses its luster pretty quickly.
Some recommendations for the fellas:
1. STFU, Stop talking. Stop complaining. Stop apologizing, Stop asking for permission. Be present and listen.
2. Get shit done – at work, around the house. Knock it out. Free up your time, and worries.
3. Eat sensible diet. For most American men that means stop eating entirely, and adopt a fasting-focused lifestyle – e.g. 72 hour to 96 hour+ prolonged fasts until you get shredded.
5. Lift weights 4 x per week, 1 hour. Alternate so as not to burn out, Back&Bi’s then Chest&Tri’s.
6. Hygiene – haircut, manscape, 2 showers a day (one in morning, one after workout, before bed).
7. Buy a new wardrobe to fit the leaner, meaner you.
Usually by step 3 (fasting and weight loss), the barge starts to turn the corner.
By step 7 you’re Thurston Howell IIII on a yacht with Ginger and Maryanne.
@constrainedlocus
#1 is the most powerful of all those there.
In fact, I make it a point never to debate politics, economics, philosophy, or redpill theory with my wife. I’ll make statements or point out clown world honking in news stories, but I never debate. That implies winners, losers, and competition, none of which I want with my wife.
Men would probably prevent most of their problems with STFU.
I also regret the lack of an edit button.
Don’t skip leg day.
@constrainedlocus
Are you a Complementarian?
@constrainedlocus – “Usually by step 3 (fasting and weight loss), the barge starts to turn the corner.
By step 7 you’re Thurston Howell IIII on a yacht with Ginger and Maryanne.”
Why bother with marriage then?
Sex is a pretty insidious weapon, because its use creates even more justifications for its use.
Example: The last time I tried to initiate sex with my wife, she moved her bedtime back to 3am. When lack of sex came up, her new night owl kick was the excuse she used. When I point that she wasn’t a “night owl” our first 12 years of marriage, she just happened to become one the night after I tried to initiate sex, and that she herself used it as an excuse, her answer is “being a night owl has nothing to do with sex, but you would think that, wouldn’t you? Everything is about sex with you.”
Another example: bad behavior among wives and their friends is contagious. One of her friends, after hearing the glories of being a night owl, became a night owl too, conveniently avoiding the bedroom and her husband. After over a year of no sex, she found out about porn, so his inappropriate response to her neglect is now the excuse for her neglect.
On a side note, these are two long time friends who both were adamant to their future husbands that they weren’t like other girls, and after the wedding would say “that’s how all girls are, and if you don’t like it you should have married a man.”
I don’t see many antidotes. Anything that should be done, the State will put force behind the opposite.
I listen to Catholic scholar E. Michael Jones (EMJ), author of Libido Dominando
One of his points is that pornography is used as a form of social control by the oligarchs to dissipate men’s energies so there won’t be any reaction to, say, stagnant wages since the 1970’s, while the top 1/100th of a percent have been making bank.
Counter-intuitively, here, you seem to be saying denying pornography is actually a form of social control, albeit by wives (petty dictators, but not oligarchs!). And pornography, if not condoned, one may understand it is performing some service possibly by taking the edge of a sexless marriage…for the children’s sake.
Is there a paradox with what EMJ says? I think not. It is the exception that proves the rule, that is, it is no exception. Feminism — even the Complementarian kind — has been enabled by pornography. And feminism does serve Oligarchic interests. The war between the sexes would be vastly different if pornography wasn’t dissipating men energies, such that feminism would be left bloodied and dead on the field. My God, men might demand sexful marriages.
I don’t think anyone here is justifying pornography. The Bible very clearly says that depriving your husband of sex gives the devil an opening to tempt him. Now, succumbing to temptation is his sin, no question. But it is very cruel to allow the devil such an opening, especially when their is specific biblical instruction not to.
So no, no one is justifying a husband indulging in porn, but it is certainly less of a sin than actually having sex with someone outside of marriage. The bible prescribes the antidote.
Besides, any time a wife cheats, even one who is adamant for years that she hates sex… don’t they usually blame the husbands neglect?
JR
Counter-intuitively, here, you seem to be saying denying pornography is actually a form of social control, albeit by wives (petty dictators, but not oligarchs!). And pornography, if not condoned, one may understand it is performing some service possibly by taking the edge of a sexless marriage…for the children’s sake.
That’s almost exactly the opposite of what the Original Post said. Suggest reading more carefully.
I think that the two problems (sexless marriage and porn use) are not as connected as people here seem to be representing. Granted regularly having sex with your wife will reduce the temptation, but the temptation is still there and porn is so easily accessed that the barrier to falling into sin so low that it is almost impossible to stop completely.
That’s not to excuse the wife’s behavior in creating a sexless marriage as there are all sorts of other consequences that flow out of that other than porn use. It sets up a pretty corrosive environment which will eventually lead to the breakup of the marriage (either through divorce or just a dead relationship) but that seems to be what the wife is aiming for anyway. The porn use for complementarians is simply the socially acceptable way of justifying the wife leaving while also giving her a great weapon to destroy his reputation on the way out (as if charges of spouse/child abuse were not enough).
All Christian men struggle with the flesh against their new nature and that’s been the case since Pentecost. Porn is just the latest manifestation of that and one that can be greatly helped with a good group of men holding each other accountable. That same group would also be good at helping men deal with all the toxic emotions related to their sexless marriage as well and help them focus on glorifying God rather than dishonoring their marriage vows.
Those recommendations are pretty spot on and it’s what I do. Eating right and lifting weights keeps me at sub 10% body fat (I’m basically a carnivore). My wife keeps fit too and we workout together most of the time. We have no need for prescriptions. Healthy bodies help make sex frequent (2-4 times a week). That keeps both of us pretty happy. She initiates at least half the time, which I like. I have my clothes tailored when needed for a perfect fit to keep from looking like a slob and actually am picking up a shirt today.
I’m a good listener and she knows that she can come to me anytime and vent. I do likewise, and vent to her when I need to. But we both know that we can’t be complainers as a habit.
One thing left off the list was “have fun and BE fun”. So we make efforts to do that. Oh and compliment each other. She poked me and woke me up last night just to tell me that she loved me, which was sweet of her.
@Trust
Obvious fitness test, with any of several ways to dismiss it / swat it away. The usual reaction from a man who feels betrayed such as whining, begging, butthurt anger, etc. are not the solution, they just make the problem worse.
Various sites such as /r/deadbedrooms are full of stories like that. There are clear, easy to understand explanations beginning with “loss of frame”. It’s something that’s routinely discussed here and elsewhere.
Every man should know that women are “herd” creatures, they are much more influenced by friends / coworkers / associates than a man would be.
I don’t see many antidotes.
You need a pair of The Glasses, then you can see solutions clearly.
Anything that should be done, the State will put force behind the opposite.
Despair / black pilling is not a solution.
E. Michael Jones is the Jordan Peterson of Catholicism. He’s good at some ideas, but his reductionism of all modern problems to one or two sources is wrong.
Pingback: They’re too traditional to stay married. | Reaction Times
@Dalrock
Right. Part of why this tactic works so well is because men are ashamed of their sin when they use porn. Women aren’t. They are quite literally shameless about it. So complementarians can avoid challenging willful rebellion by stomping on the men acknowledge that they are sinning. It is sheer evil brilliance.
This is a great point. But can we draw it out even further? Because I’d be willing to come right out and say that at this point women in general aren’t ashamed of any sin at all. You don’t have to limit it to porn use, or lusting. The default state of today’s modern woman is that not only is she her own highest priority, she should be yours as well, and that all of society (including religion) should be arranged to accommodate her in this belief.
For a great illustration of this, look no further than how evangelical women are reacting to the recent news that a few southern states recently chose to make abortion a felony. Did you see the ladies of the church rejoice that women would no longer be permitted to slaughter their own offspring, or at least expressing some happiness that fewer children would be killed before birth?
Nope. But we did see them tell us that banning abortion would unfairly punish a few women who might need one . . . .
. . . Along with some reminders that however horrifying the practice may be, the women that want it are innocent lambs . . .
. . . Before working their way back to reminding us that if there is anyone that needs to be punished when an abortion happens, it’s . . . THE MAN!
The cognitive dissonance of the evangelicals on this one is possibly even more stunning than it is on the porn issue. They want to condemn a practice they spent years saying was an abomination while simultaneously keeping it available just in case it might come in handy, while also granting absolution to the one and only person who can legally make sure that it occurs — right before they transfer the guilt that they just spared her onto her romantic partner, who must be terminated with extreme prejudice for the part that he played in committing such a heinous and blasphemous sin.
The only consistency in any of this seems to be some sort of conviction that whatever the crime, the woman is always innocent, and whatever the situation, the woman’s prosperity must be optimized. Which makes a lot more sense if you conclude that women are what they actually worship.
Christianity may not be a woman’s religion, but evangelicalism most certainly is.
They want to condemn a practice they spent years saying was an abomination while simultaneously keeping it available just in case it might come in handy, while also granting absolution to the one and only person who can legally make sure that it occurs — right before they transfer the guilt that they just spared her onto her romantic partner, who must be terminated with extreme prejudice for the part that he played in committing such a heinous and blasphemous sin.
This is of course how they view divorce as well.
Wow! Christian pastors think sex should be ‘earned’ by the husband? WTH? I see why I’d prefer to remain agnostic. Why would I want to listen or such drivel from these alleged followers of Jesus?
Sex is something you give freely without any strings attached in a relationship and that applies to both men and women.
Wow! Christian pastors think sex should be ‘earned’ by the husband? WTH? I see why I’d prefer to remain agnostic. Why would I want to listen or such drivel from these alleged followers of Jesus?
These pastors have a lot to answer for.
Don’t let that distract you from your own decision to be an enemy or servant of God though. They failed you, but we answer for ourselves.
You know, in the same breath with which Jesus condemned lust as outright adultery, he condemned hatred as outright murder. Perhaps the complementarity who advocate divorce for lust would also advocate the death penalty for every one of us who has harbored hatred for our brothers. Porn is bad. Porn is not grounds for divorce.
Pornography threatens a cherished lever of power for complementarian wives, which is denial of sex.
It also rubs their noses in their own sin of sexually denying their husbands, which they very likely find even more intolerable than being disarmed.
That men are aroused by pictures, and women by text (romance novels), is seen by women as another example of women being more “elevated, refined, and intelligent” then men.
Pictures are “dirty, crude, and animalistic” whereas romance novels are “literature” with characters, themes, and ideas.
Being firmly Sola Scriptura, I would have to ask: What is the exact Scripture that says a man must earn the right to sex from his wife? These people claim to follow the Scriptures, yet none exists for this claim.
JR…
That’s almost exactly the opposite of what the Original Post said. Suggest reading more carefully.
Anonymous Reader, perhaps you can elaborate on what your understanding is. I could have it bass ackwards, I took it that Dalrock agrees in part with Athol Kay: Athol Kay explained how porn threatens this lever of power.
Or I can reiterate:
Blue balls threaten oligarchs. Paradoxically, not having blue balls threatens (complementarian) wives’ power. The paradox is interesting to me — however, pornography is being used in marriage to make sexless marriages bearable, while sapping men’s vitality, which impedes political activism by ordinary men. (imho)
Over and out. I don’t want to derail the OP, since I am coming from a different place talking about oligarchs, and not imputing my own formulation to Dalrock, of course.
IBB,
You will never convince me that porn is a good thing for a single man.
That would be like saying it doesn’t matter how much crappy food he eats, as long as he fixes it before he gets married. Choices impact you in many areas and training yourself with porn is not going to train you for a stable marriage, if you ever get that.
It is not the worst sin in the world, but it is not a great thing to have either.
American,
Chuck Smith has some good teaching, but he is completely ignorant of women. I remember hearing him teaching on one of the Scriptures in Proverbs about an immoral woman and he said that “very few would be that way.” I think his words were “1 in 1000” or something like that, though these are not direct quotes since I heard that a while ago.
He had no clue that women could be and were very corrupt.
As to their teaching, the porn issue was almost certainly not the core one. I have yet to hear a preacher challenge a woman for gaining too much weight or having a nasty attitude in marriage, let alone intentionally denying sex. One preacher did mention “eating too many Twinkies” in a sermon against divorce, but he quickly went onto other topics.
When was the last time anyone heard of a divorced woman being challenged for her divorce? Even those who claim to completely oppose divorce will not challenge a divorced woman coming into their services.
Delivering a man from porn will never solve this problem and thus is worthless.
vfm,
Give up on the false equivalence. Most men don’t expect the ideal. Women do. My wife was think, but she got her dad’s face and thus was not the most attractive there. I didn’t care. I would pull a lot better if I thinned down a lot, but my dad and grandfather, whose genes I shared, never had trouble pulling women. I had a moral stand against that along with a geeky nature that didn’t help, but I could likely have gone down the same route had I wanted. I didn’t have “high standards” for a wife. I would bet I am more like “most men” than not.
vfm,
Women don’t want to save anything, just themselves. Saving the village would mean looking out for more than themselves and few will even claim to be doing that, while almost none will ever attempt anything in that vein,
With christians like Doug Wilson who needs atheists?
I’ve lived in several countries and have known Christians from Africa, India, and even China. Only North American Christians have these problems. Even as a non-Christian, I find evangelicals to be absolute scum. They have completely surrendered to the left in the culture war and the only thing they are good at is shilling for Israel. They refuse to tackle feminism and gay marriage but bow before a hostile middle eastern tribe that is mainly responsible for plaguing them with these social afflictions. Garbage people.
The complementarian wives have already stopped having sex with their husbands. Now the husbands can’t even watch porn? How’s a modern Christian husband supposed to get a little satisfaction anyway?
Very old joke:
On Monday night, a husband asks his wife to “make love.” No, sorry–she has a headache.
Tuesday, he asks again. Oh, honey, the kids were so bad today, I’m so tired…
Wednesday, he tries again. The wife explodes in anger: “That’s three times in three nights! What are you, some kind of sex fiend?”
Women have all the power in sexual relations. Feminists and their enablers refuse to admit this, because it wrecks the “poor little powerless woman” narrative. Women DO have a lot of power, at the edges of the “good” and “bad” scales. An enraged, out of control woman is horrifying because unstoppable. It has ever been thus: the Bible talks avoidance–living on a rooftop rather than inside with this hateful creature.
Before she “matured” into strong leftist tendencies (in late 2010, she taunted military men who opposed gays in the military), Dr. Laura was a decent purple piller. She chastised women for withholding sex from husbands: what, you don’t want to have some fun with the man you married, maybe an orgasm or two?!? Stunned silence. Giggling. Woman snarling about her husband sheepishly admits the stupidity of withholding sex. Whether the epiphany lasted beyond the phone call is anybody’s guess.
Unless they are psychopaths, I believe that deep down, women know exactly what they’re doing, and that it’s wrong, and it hurts them morally. Otherwise, evil people wouldn’t have to keep egging on their Satanic behavior. But the women listen, and not only keep doing it, they escalate. The curse of Eve.
constrainedlocus: File under NotAllMeninSexlessMarriagesAreFlabbyLazyFeminizedboys
Anecdotal or not, and I know plenty of men like me, I am a very healthy, athletic late 40’s something guy (yes, even down to the cliche “you look 30” from everyone, all the time). I powerlift, do BJJ, have changed thousands of diapers, wash dishes, cook, do all the soccer dad stuff…and I have a dead bedroom.
My wife is a pretty good woman, all things considered, and a great mom and life partner (and Christian in all other ways), but after several kids, and nearing 50, I suspect that she is subject to what millions of women are and have been for thousands of years…dropping libido and the eventual “sex retirement” as Rollo calls it. The truth is, contrary to all the feminist myths, most women have lower sex drive all throughout their lives, especially as they age (including that magical “40” that feminists always talked about in the ’80s)…for the women who are single and having great sex at our age, they may be single because they have higher testosterone and all the other things that come with warding off eligible bachelors from being more aggressive (like becoming a lawyer)–as a result, they are like female men, single and wanting and getting lots of sex as a single woman later in life. Women who marry, don’t want that and are not like that. Exceptions may exist, but if I had a dime for every fit, respectable man who is not getting any at home, I’d be able to buy a sexdoll factory.
I fully expect there to be a concerted effort to return to the Victorian Era when it comes to porn and sexbots, or whatever they are. For obvious reasons–it removes their power.
[D: Welcome Oss.]
@BillyS
Check out the complementarian supplemental canon, specifically Troyes’ epistle to Aquitaine and Capellanus’ epistle to Champagne. Although if we are true to the text it says that a noble man should focus on earning sex from other men’s wives.
Billy,
I am not saying that porn is good (for anyone.) But I would say that a man ejaculating (at least once a day) is probably pretty good. In fact, I would say it is necessary. You have to keep the pipes flowing by any means necessary. Prostate cancer is real and scary.
@Oss
Get the Blue Pill Professor’s Guide to a Low-Sex Marriage, and start incrementally increasing dread until you make progress, or not.
If not, take a mistress and don’t hide it: she’s cheating you of what she signed up for and that’s on her.
You need to be willing to burn everything to the ground if necessary.
Assuming you actually care about this. If not, then carry on.
If I’m not mistaken, doesn’t the old testament define adultery as having sex with a married woman? Which means that if a married man had sex with an unmarried woman, it technically wasn’t adultery and that he’d only be liable to pay a fine if he were caught. I think this makes sense and is certainly a boon for many sex starved husbands.
What’s really clever is when married women claims she is sexually available to her husband, but her husband spurns her for porn and masturbation. Its really hard to prove what’s going on here one way or the other. Perhaps he really is using porn in preference to his available and neglected wife. Or perhaps she’s misrepresenting the truth.
CSI,
There is something else going on here too. Unfortunately (in a steadily ever increasing percentage of marriages) women just lose all interest in sex and the bedroom goes dead. For years, dead. But the women like being married (because too many of their friends are divorced and they do NOT want to be like them) and the husband does not want to lose half (wants to stay married even if there is no sex) so a concession is made in the marriage. A “trade” is accepted. Okay honey, you can masturbate to porn all you want, just don’t ask me for sex anymore and don’t fuck any other women. Turn out the light and quietly come to bed after you finish up at xvideos. And be sure to wash your hands. And there is the “trade.” In her mind, its a win-win because she just does NOT want to fuck her husband (or anyone) anymore and she thinks he is getting what he wants (sexual gratification from porn and masturbation.)
In a spiritual sense, I would say the devil is actually a third party in this “trade.”. And they are both guilty (her slightly more so than him.) I would say she is more guilty because more often than not, its not really a deal that he wants. Its just a concession that he is accepting since he has no alternative.
You will never convince me that porn is a good thing for a single man.
I am going to openly say that anything that reduces the power that these shrikes have over men, is good. If that happens to be porn, so be it.
“Complementarians have inverted Scripture, because what Paul tells us is prohibited (denial of sex) is a cherished tool for complementarian wives. ”
Isaiah 5:20
“Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter”
@Novaseeker
A winnie the Pooh actor was accused of raping and molesting his wife:
“He later came up behind me,” the ex-wife claims, “grabbed my arm, spun me around, and forcefully put his hand on the back of my neck and kissed me while holding me in place against the wall.”
The 66-year-old actor then allegedly asked Stephanie if she could “see him leaking, because that’s what I make him do when he touches me.” She said the experience left her “humiliated and degraded.”
Jim recalled the incident differently, saying in court documents that hef was “joking and laughing” with his ex-wife. “I touched her slightly on the butt,” he recalled. “[T]the whole incident was happy” and consensual, he said, noting that Stephanie “is much taller than I am, and a large woman, made no objection to anything.”
Jim denied the alleged incident further in an email to Stephanie: “Shame on you, you’re [sic] distortions are obscene. ‘forcing?’ Please, everyone, Gracie myself and especially YOU were all giggling and laughing, it was pleasant to have one moment of light-heartedness,” he wrote. “We both erupted into laughter … I’m hardly the first person in the world to point out one ‘catches more flys [sic] with honey than vinegar’ for you to overlay a reference to being a whore is little too telling, Let’s get this over with for the love of God.”
A police report was filed after Jim allegedly raped her in 2013, the ex claims.
“Jim would frequently ‘without consent, would touch my buttocks, my groin, and my breasts. He would hold me in place attempting to kiss and fondle me. He would spank me in front of our daughters. He would then follow up by making sexual comments to me that I found repugnant,” Stephanie said, according to the report.”
https://www.dailywire.com/news/46757/man-who-voiced-winnie-pooh-accused-rape-abuse-ex-amanda-prestigiacomo
Other than doing it in a inappropriate context which I agree was not good. The nonsense the pervades our culture. Enables the ludicrous anti-Christian notion that a man can sexually molest and rape his wife behind closed doors.
Imagine a porn mogul issuing a public “thank you, all you frigid Christian wives out there, for making me and my stable of stars all very, VERY wealthy!”
@constrainedlocus
“My God, what a horrible perversion that is!
And what a horrible, human husk of an existence for husbands trapped with asexual wives!
I would rather be single and sexless than hitched up to a girl who offered duty sex, didn’t really want me, nor have any genuine sexual desire for me. That would be a non-stop nightmare.”
If the potential wife doesn’t have the hots for the Husband. Forget it. Its better for both that she doesn’t marry him at all.
Better to not marry than to be trapped in a lie of an asexual marriage. A fundamental. contradiction
@Someone
“Wow! Christian pastors think sex should be ‘earned’ by the husband? WTH? I see why I’d prefer to remain agnostic. Why would I want to listen or such drivel from these alleged followers of Jesus? ”
Believe that Jesus is who he says he is for its own sake. Whilst steering clear of the false prophets and wolves in sheep’s clothing.
. . . Before working their way back to reminding us that if there is anyone that needs to be punished when an abortion happens, it’s . . . THE MAN!
That is why even many regulars here, who got excited that Alabama banned abortions, but forgot everything they knew about cuckservative laws that made abortion the lesser of two evils, revealed their inner cuckservative.
Cuckservatives have created legal horrors for fathers so extreme that abortion has become the lesser of two evils.
Old St. Paul – “It’s better to marry than to burn.”
New St. Paul – “It’s better to marry, but you’re going to burn anyhow.”
Like Pete Buttigieg
@Asaph: hahaha. How can a deceived, unrepentant, Marxist, openly homosexual, narcissist who gravely misrepresents Christianity publicly and covets becoming the president of the United States so he can help the anti-Christ take over the world NOT go to hell?
One can no more Rape ones Wife than one can Marry ones Mother: one may not attempt successfully such a metaphysical impossibility.
Ann’s been Bernankefied by a chad who’s likely monopolized her vagina & Doug’s probably not the father of her children.
“Lust
27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ”
Does no-one think it odd that the verse only applies to looking at women (as translated and interpreted).
“everyone who looks at a man\boy\girl\ferrari with lustful intent” – has no issues then.
@innocentbystanderboston
Got a kick out of your “Pastor [sic] Phil” vs “Bob” (the single guy)… but you’re off base on at least one part; I guarantee you that when “Bob” says:
>(Bob) “Why? I don’t understand. There is nothing in the Bible about…”
No so called “Pastor [sic] Phil” would EVER agree that there is “nothing in the Bible about…”, instead such types will at least attempt to construct some kind of “biblical” proof-text prohibition on masturbation; most likely bringing up the Gospel passages on “lusting with eyes”; and THAT failing to be persuasive… will most likely switch gears to the Genesis 38 verses on Onan, and “spilling seed” (aka the “Gospel according to Kellogg” {yes the Corn Flake guy}). And nevermind how horribly poor/misinterpreted THAT passage is (out will come the “seminary degree”; the M.Div, or Th.D, etc).
——–
Note on the [sic] — these “Phil” type fellows are NOT actually “pastors” in anything even remotely like the (relatively minor) Biblical talent/role of that name; and no, they aren’t (despite their claims to such) actually “elders” either; nor are they truly “evangelists” (certainly not of the actual gospel of Christ); and they are certainly/epmhatically NOT “shepherds” following Jesus example. No, at best they are “hired hands” (Cf John 10:12-13), pandering “ear-ticklers” who are self-called (and essentially self-“ordained”) as “professional clergy” (yet who’s “profession” is very often false) seeking after filthy-lucre. As proof of that: all you have to do is cut off the paycheck (we’re sorry “Phil” but the board of elders has decided that instead of paying you a salary, we’ll be using the money previously budgeted for that to help the poor in our congregation and the community)… and I guarantee you that “pastor/shepherd” will not only be out the door in an instant (after of course giving full proof of his ability to alternately both BEG and CRY, and — especially if any of the elders suggest he might take up ‘tent repair’ — blistering RAGE as well, citing oxen & grain, etc) and just as instantly seeking “greener pastures” (i.e. another “flock” to parasitically feed off of) without the least care about (not even a backward glance at) the “sheep” he leaves behind.
@Dalrock
You are absolutely correct that it is about POWER in the relationship/home… and that BTW is exactly why Paul reminded the Corinthians that such “sex deprivation/manipulation” was PROHIBITED.
But, when it comes to these various “complementarian” preacher/teacher advocates … you seem to either not realize (or else you simply stop short of saying) what this actually REVEALS about their OWN relationships: these men are in fact NOT in charge of their own homes (and very likely not *REALLY* in charge of anything else either)… they themselves are SUBSERVIENT to their own wives (who hold this “power” over them, and doubtless — via the bedroom — dictate matters FAR beyond the bedroom, not even excepting their so called “ministry”).
Moreover, what they additionally reveal — via their elevation of the “Holy ‘V'” as some ultimate reward that must be “earned” — is that in fact they are IDOLATORS. They have not only gotten rid of God the Father (slightly OT, but seriously, for all of the “Buddy Jesus” lipservice, have you ever noted how — since the advent & pedestalization of the gynocentric-feminist-churcianity — sermons almost NEVER discuss “God the Father” {heavens, that smacks of “Patriarchy” can’t have that}, but rather prefer to speak in generic/ungendered terms of “god” and “Jesus”)… but they have effectively replaced Him (and his word) with WOMAN (goddess) and worse, with her arbitrary “feelings.” They may as well be worshipping “Ashtoreth.”
—
Also RE this:
>Right. Part of why this tactic works so well is because men are ashamed of their sin when they use porn. Women aren’t. They are quite literally shameless about it. So complementarians can avoid challenging willful rebellion by stomping on the men acknowledge that they are sinning. It is sheer evil brilliance.
The reason these “modern” women are shameless about their “sin”… is because they quite literally do not believe they CAN “sin” — the very concept of “objective moral standards” went out the window decades ago — and in it’s place the present “moral” [sic] standard is FEELINGS, or at least the FEELINGS of women and/or assorted other so called “oppressed minorities” (and nevermind that women are FAR from a minority); ergo the only thing that qualifies as “sin” to these women is things that OTHER people do that irritate THEM. Whatever/however they FEEL — as you have noted the “complementarians” themselves reinforce via their (false) new “gospel of the holy ‘V’ “– is seen as being the very definition of “morality”; so as long as they “follow their heart” (regardless of how arbitrary & capricious the “mood” of such may be) then they themselves are NOT “sinning”… how could they?
And since — in their own “heart/feelings” they do not “feeeeeeel” that they have sinned (regardless of what they have or have not DONE) — they have ZERO shame.
Add onto that, as feminism has taught them — shaming is simply a misogynistic “oppreshun” tactic of that nasty, mean (even archaic, barbaric & certainly obsolete) Patriarchy.
As for their complementarian “apologists” — well, as they are NOT actually servants of God (certainly not “God the Father”), but instead are worshippers before the “goddess of fertility/sexuality” — they have no compunctions about LYING… why should they? They are simply obeying orders from their ACTUAL master (the father of lies; who speaks to them through their wife AND other women of the congregation, and collectively their “holy ‘V’s”); they dare not be disobedient to that, lest they be deprived (of both bedroom AND salaried position). Because — among other things — “preachers” (and assorted other “clergy”) can be #MeToo’d just as easily as anyone else (complete with the “one phone call” to the police, and a little DV allegation/VAWA exercise).
@constrainedlocus;
“I mean, just look at what has become of American men. I don’t blame women (married or not) one iota for not wanting to perform fellatio or have sex with them either.”
Feel free to reverse the genders in that comment.
Also, good luck with four day fasts synched with weightlifting. Your cortisol would be through the roof.
Back/bi’s, chest/tri’s. LMAO at 1988 bro-lifting.
All in all, your attempt at AMOG failed.
@Anonymous Reader says:
May 17, 2019 at 3:50 pm
______________
Nice job completely missing the point. The point was that sex as a weapon becomes its own justification.
Amused by your chest beating, though.
@Emperor Constantine
“If not, take a mistress and don’t hide it: she’s cheating you of what she signed up for and that’s on her.
You need to be willing to burn everything to the ground if necessary.”
Exactly so. Frigid wives are owed neither fidelity nor continued marriage. On the other side, if a man is content to tolerate being defrauded in his own home and to settle for the consolation prize of choking the chicken over naughty pictures, that’s on him.
The wonder isn’t that Evangelical Weirdo World is sanctifying divorce over this. It’s that those men aren’t pre-empting the issue by reliably divorcing their frigid wives for fraud if they won’t get with the program.
The article says that these guys are ashamed of their porn usage. They ought to be ashamed of tolerating the situation that led up to it, not this ninth-rate solution. If you’re willing to be unmanned rather than lose the approval of a worthless pastor and a heretical church culture, you’re your own mental jailer.
@Minesweeper,
The purpose of Matthew 5 is to demonstrate how nobody can keep the law; that we are all sinners.
It is odd though, how the one example about adultery is pulled out, while the other adultery example is ignored.
Looking at a woman lustfully is the same as adultery.
…whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.
If we’re going to take these verses literally, then no Christian man can marry a divorced women–ever.
There are no exceptions. Abusive; deadbeat; they fell out of love; or he watches porn. Nope, none of them are loopholes that would allow a Christian man to marry a divorced woman.
@Otto,
“Looking at a woman lustfully is the same as adultery.”
Can any male say he is not an adulterer ? If he has looked at a woman even just once in his life – thats the definition, doesn’t matter if he goes onto marry her on not.
Since then all men are adulterers, except those that are gay or eunuchs, why include this verse ?
Unless its just been dreadfully translated and means something completely different.
The line about anger = murders comes right before and parallels it. The message is pretty straightforward, don’t entertain evil thoughts. There is also another meaning in that we should not regard ourselves as holy(the two debtors is a good related parable) and say to ourselves that these murderers and adulterers are surely damned while we are surely saved. It is a reminder that we are sinners too, and should treat our fellow sinners with love and kindness(which is not niceness).
The context should be obvious, these are not literal. We’re not supposed to examine people for anger and arrest them as murderers, anymore than we would treat someone as an adulterer for wandering eyes.
Treating it literally is just bad interpretation, it’s not a translation issue.
“I guess when women were married, the temptation to look at pornography was not quite the same.”
Reminds me of an old joke: what’s the one food that kills a woman’s sex drive? Wedding cake.
Minesweeper: it has been dreadfully translated. As Otto said, Jesus’s “amplification” of the Law was meant to stop His audience from becoming self-righteous. But Evangelical Christains have taken those passages at face value, hence the reason why many of them believe that porn usage is grounds for divorce.
A comment from the Daily Mail about the Pooh voice actor:
Rusty Shackleford • 15 days ago
I heard he refers to his member as The Hundred Acre Wood.
I laughed.
@purge187 says:
“Minesweeper: it has been dreadfully translated”
Considering the greek says its about coveting (yearning to possess) someone elses wife. yeah id say its been a particularly bad translation into our current culture.
But hey, even the enemy can twist scripture to great effect it so seems.
@Minesweeper,
It should not be read literally, but rather as a warning: you think you’re so holy and perfect, let me give you some idea of what it really means to keep the law; the standard is so high you can never meet it.
But, if women (and churchians) are going to take the line about men looking at women = adultery LITERALLY, then you have to take the line about marrying a divorced woman = adultery LITERALLY also.
In context, you can’t take one literally and not the other. I think this is the proper response to bring people back to their senses. If someone says a woman can divorce her husband for adultery, because he watched porn, then point out she can never remarry–because that too would be adultery.
There’s no reason men should allow themselves to be beaten over the head with bad theology. But if someone does try it, it’s fair game to beat them over the head with their own bad theology.
@Otto, Jesus said it as the jews were covetting wives other than their own. And thinking themselves holy as they weren’t committing adultery with them.
And yes your right, remarriage without adultery previously (actual not in the heart) occurring someone has to commit adultery at least once. And pay the penalty for.
Should say rather : “And yes your right, remarriage without adultery previously (actual not in the heart) occurring is sin, someone has to commit adultery at least once. And pay the penalty for.”
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Oss
My wife is a pretty good woman, all things considered, and a great mom and life partner (and Christian in all other ways), but after several kids, and nearing 50, I suspect that she is subject to what millions of women are and have been for thousands of years…dropping libido and the eventual “sex retirement” as Rollo calls it
“Nearing 50” is in the range of pre-menopausal to menopausal. A lot of physical and mental systems are affected by the big shifts in estrogen. There are a variety of ways to manage or modulate those changes, but it does require her to submit to your frame. That’s probably not easy for her in the middle of a big mood swing or hot flash. There is a lot of info on various forms of hormone modulation, ranging from herbal stuff to straight up estradiol.
Stay away from Premarin – it’s derived from horse urine and has no place in any human. Just don’t start.
As with PMS, you may find that the indirect approach is more useful in managing her than direct confrontation. Game still works, though. There are sources. Do not give up.
O/T
My realisation that Feminists and The Gay Mafia find convenient and temporary mutual bedfellows in each other – though not of course in the biblical sense.
Once again I am neither listening to nor taping the latest new British opera which is being broadcast as I write. The Composer (none of whose music I have so far heard – so no change tonight) is a professional homosexual whose next piece will be an operatic celebration of the Stonewall Riots. His librettist tonight is a woman at whose photograph one has to look twice to ascertain that she is indeed a woman. The libretto is predictably rife with misandry and sentimental whitewashing of female choice and behaviour. The Composer is then only too happy to blame all those evil Heterosexuals (of which he is not one) as he is able, without sex rearing its ugly head, to work with the female (as I presume) lesbian librettist intent on slandering normal men. Gay men do not oppress women. It makes me yearn for the subtlety of almost any of the Britten operas – or am I now just nostalgically old-fashioned – where – say – one never knows whether Grimes is as brutal as his accusers say (or just very unlucky) and whether matrimony (rather than a beard) is really his intention with regard to school marm Ellen Orford.
Stage works do not gain in veracity because the entire cast (Holocaust, Twin Towers, Reign of Terror-Carmelites, – all recently done here – all perish – operatically that is). It is to mistake the act for the deed. and merely reminds me of those Soviet operas which we now laugh at in their absurdity where Vlad the factory worker perishes as he single-handedly defeats the forces of bourgeois fascism. zzzzzzzzzzzz
This discussion has been very helpful. Too many churchy-types promote the idea of “until you quit watching porn, you don’t even deserve a wife.”
Trust
Nice job completely missing the point. The point was that sex as a weapon becomes its own justification.
Not exactly news that a woman playing “hide the vagina” is justified in her own eyes. A whole lot of men have arrived in the androsphere / manosphere as a result of searches such as “my wife won’t have sex anymore”. There’s multiple sites where it’s discussed in a problem solving manner.
It’s not a new or unique problem, and your conclusion is pure black pill. If you want to spiral into despair that is your option, other men don’t need that stuff.
Amused by your chest beating, though.
You present a problem, another man points to solutions, now you’re “amused”…
Well, ok.
How’s your brand new Gillette shaver working out?
The New Yorker article Dalrock linked to is actually much more interesting than I expected, there wasn’t much of that “Expedition into the darkest reaches of Flyover” that one usually encounters.
The term “Purity-Industrial Complex” is a bit snarky, but there is truth to it; the URL harvesting applications are apparently supposed to be on your computer forever, and you pay for a form of spyware? Interesting…
Plus, towards the end an interesting point is made in passing:
Well, maybe a show that features rape and incest as regular plot points plus nudity and violence would be at least regarded as “porny” back in the previous century. Not just “porny” but really disturbingly dark porn. Yet I know churchgoing people who have been following GoT for the whole run. Some are middle aged women who made a Girls Night Out of seeing Twilight years ago when it was in first run theaters, but not all.
So — does watching GoT count as “viewing porn” or not? Anyone want to ask their pastor?
@Constrainedlocus
“6. Hygiene – haircut, manscape, 2 showers a day (one in morning, one after workout, before bed)”
2 showers a day is bad for your skin and musk. Women are mainly attracted to men through olfactory cues. Hard science data shows one shower every other day is suffcient. Also if your using body wash your exposing yourself and everyone else to endocrine disruptors.
Women are also more attracted to men with medium length hair, and a 10 days beard growth. This military idea of hygiene has gotta stop. Its not biblically sound as well.
GoT is porn. Anything that causes one to fantasize about other human beings in a sexual fashion, whether those humans beings are real or imagined is porn. This includes everything from Pride & Prejudice to 50 Shades of Grey.
If they key issue of pornography is not “fantasizing about other humans real or imagined in a sexual fashion” then things like hentai would obviously be exempt.
Porn as a sin is sort of conditional. The point of a romance novel is titillation, but if a person reads one wrongheadedly trying to understand how male-female relations work in the hopes of emulating courtship or something, they’re presumably not fantasizing in that case. Porn is mixed into a lot of things these days, including advertising, but happening to view any number of these things in passing is not sinful. Engaging in the fantasization part is the sin.
@constrainedlocus But the truth is, men do this to themselves.
You are an *sshole.
A sexless marriage is when you have less than 10 times sex a year. A frequency my wife regularly hits, the last time we had sex was about 2 months ago, but this is by far not a record yet. She just refuses, and she thinks that’s pretty normal, and I’m to blame of course. Her sex-drive is virtually non-existent, and she doesn’t care.
Most men today in sexless marriages have allowed themselves to get flabby, fat, whiny, effeminate and incompetent.
Yeah, right. As if you’re the expert. Loser.
@vandicus “Anything that causes one to fantasize about other human beings in a sexual fashion, whether those humans beings are real or imagined is porn.”
So, Song of Solomon is porn?
Its one of the best indications of Godlessness.
That all the fun and best sexuality is outside wedlock and none inside wedlock.
When it should be the other way around.
@Paul
“A frequency my wife regularly hits, the last time we had sex was about 2 months ago, but this is by far not a record yet. She just refuses, and she thinks that’s pretty normal, and I’m to blame of course. Her sex-drive is virtually non-existent, and she doesn’t care.”
How then does she not know that the wife’s body belongs to the husband and vice versa? Or does she simply ignore the word of God on this matter?
I fail to see the difference between online p*** the guys look at and chick p*** like the bachelor and Bachelorette & Fifty Shades of Grey. One imagines fantasies through Visual stimulation and females imagine fantasy through words. What is the difference? But you’ll never hear a pastor come down on women against chip p***
The last time I had sex with my ex she told me later she felt violated. I simply figured if you never broach the subject the answer would always be no. In no way did I force myself upon her.
She’s now a 250 lb + beach ball. I probably should lose 10 lb in and need to start lifting again although I’m very active physically. The dating world has been good for me because I have discovered that there are women who are my age who are fun, attractive, interesting and like sex what a shock!
This post really hit home because it describes the events that transpired between my sister and her ex-husband. They belonged to a very complementarian congregation and she insisted on wearing the pants in their marriage from day 1 (my father actually warned him about this before they were married so maybe he had it coming). According to my sister, her ex started using porn (although she couldn’t bring herself to say so directly) at some point in their marriage and that in her mind justified divorce. I have very limited information about what actually transpired but real adultery does not appear to have been involved. Both parties refuse to provide any real information when questioned, but I am unable to believe that divorce was truly justified. The elders of their congregation seem to feel as described in the original post and it does not appear that they offered any real assistance to try to save the marriage. I am certain that neither party was without fault but I’m genuinely shocked at the ease with which their congregation justified their divorce. I know I shouldn’t be shocked but sometimes these things take me off guard.
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How then does she not know that the wife’s body belongs to the husband and vice versa? Or does she simply ignore the word of God on this matter?
Do you really mean that as a serious question?
Women DO.NOT.GIVE.A.SHIT about what Scripture says when it puts their feeeeeeeeeelings at risk and when it threatens their rebellion-fueled control over their men.
Do we really need to rehash the basics? This Androsphere Knowledge 010.
@JR
E. Michael Jones. One sharp, insightful writer. Essential reading for every Christian male.
King Alfred-
There is no reason to believe that any religious organization, even my beloved Orthodox church is currently configured or motivated to “save the marriage” when a couple hits a rough spot.
Not for the sake of marriage (as an abstraction or institution.)
Not for the sake of God’s clear commandments on the topic of divorce.
Not for the children.
Not for any reason.
If a marriage is to sustain and enjoy lifelong longevity, it is only because the two parties invovled have comitted in their hearts to do so, at all cost.
And everyone reading here knows what that means when contextualized by the culture, the courts, the mental health and clergy professions. One should assume, if a couple seeks help in any of these venues that the underlying presuppositions are in favor of hedonic (nor sacramental) marriage and it is the job of the mediator to determine what the husband did wrong.
She’s not having sex with him anymore? He must not be sexy anymore.
She cheated on him? His neglect drove her into the arms of someone else.
She committed an act of domestic violence against him? He provoked it.
Everyone you might go to–including your friends–have been converged in this manner.
@ RedPillLatecomer
“literature”. Yeah, just like Hemingway and “The Bard”.
“The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.” – Samuel Clemens
So now, not only will your friends not stand with you when you are in the wrong, they won’t even do it when you are in the right.
Not surprising that churchian types watch Game of Porns. I have never watched a single episode, nor do I feel any desire to do so.
GoT is prom. The reality of porn is anything which portrays sexual acts, whether real or simulated, to third parties. Portrayals can take the form of text, video, pictures, etc. Sexual acts are inherently private, so consuming content which portrays others sexual acts to yourself is perverse.
That should read: “GoT is porn.”
The quintessential complementarian pro-divorce perspective re: porn at:
https://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
By publicly stating that sexual sin and abuse, not wounded spouses, ends marriages, we hold the marriage bed in honor. This protects marriage by creating a holy fear of violating it. By offering biblical divorce, the church affirms that pornography is depravity, and will not be countenanced by Christ’s church. Naming and disciplining sexual sin as the evil it is and offering divorce to the innocent party makes the value of marriage clear as we refuse to see it damaged, abused, or treated lightly.
Holy fear, indeed.
Look at what they do, not what they say. There is something else going on here.
Christian marriages end in divorce at approximately the same rate as secular ones (more or less, the difference varies from not at all to maybe 10%, whereas it should be an order of magnitude difference). These aren’t virtuous women, if they were they wouldn’t be blowing up their marriages at such high rates. No different than their secular sisters.
What is different is the REASON given just justify the divorce. Here you have one: porn. I read another study once that showed Christian divorce was more likely to end because of infidelity.
So it’s not that Christians men are more likely to cheat or more likely to watch porn, as the author pointed out. What it is is that women will give a SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE REASON for divorce when they decide to blow up their marriage. And for Christians that means porn and infidelity.
But it’s not about the porn or the infidelity. No, the truth is these are just bored women tearing down their houses who come up with different reasons owing to their subculture. In truth they are lying about the cause, or they just cherry pick different reasons.
Yes lying. Look at what the sociologist said….single Christian ladies reported porn use but not married ones? B.S. The married ones used porn too, just like they did while single, they just lie about it now that they have to appear high and mighty about porn. If they were virtuous women they wouldn’t be denying sex and they wouldn’t be divorcing their husbands.
Correct. Furthermore, the term ‘lust’ and ‘woman’ in the NT passage used to justify porn=adultery is better translated covet and wife. In other words, its a restatement of the “do not covet your neighbors wife” of Moses. It doesn’t apply to single ladies (notice no one protests lusting for girlfriends) and it doesn’t apply to paintings (or the modern version pictures and video, unless you happen to personally know the porn actress and shes’s married).
For that matter the advice by comentors above about a mistress isn’t all that unbiblical either. The modern girlfriend/mistress is essentially what the Hebrews called a concubine (though Hebrew concubines lived with you). And they don’t meet the Biblical definition of adultery; unless the women was already married that is.
The definition of lust of the New Testament is clearly linked to Daniel 13 of the Deuterocanonical (Apocryphal) books. Two old dudes scheme to rape a young woman and then accuse her of adultery when she screams that they are about to rape her. Daniel uncovers their evil and has them executed.
In contrast, a young man having a ‘naughty’ thought watching the tradthot swaying her hips while wearing her yoga pants to mass or church is NOT lust. Pornography is probably closer to this rather than conspiring with another old man to rape a young woman.
Gary Eden
That’s what I thought. Even in ancient Greece and Rome, it was perfectly ok for married men to sleep with prostitutes and keep mistresses. Infact, I believe in many instances the wives were well aware of their husbands activities and were ok with it. Even in modern day Korea most wives are resigned to the fact that their men will seek gratification from other women. Korean women just warn them to not fall in love their prostitutes.
I feel like the ancient Greeks/Romans (and modern day Koreans) had the right idea (as did the OT) because this allowed men to produce heirs while also keeping their dignity by not having to beg for sex from their recalcitrant wives. The wives for their part were spared the excruciating burden of opening their legs for their husbands. The men had heirs and plenty of sex while the wives had the status of being married along with the security that went along with it. It was a win-win
There is no reason to believe that any religious organization, even my beloved Orthodox church is currently configured or motivated to “save the marriage” when a couple hits a rough spot.
That’s correct, yes.
The whole emphasis when that happens shifts to “protecting the woman from the bad man”. It is assumed that the man is bad, because (1) the culture as a whole believes that women are better behaved than men and therefore it is a “good bet” that the husband behaved worse than the wife and (2) the particular American Protestant idea that women’s sins are the fault of men, based on the almost ubiquitous (mis)interpretation of Genesis 3 that prevails in American Protestantism. What this adds up to is an assumption that the man is bad or that, even if both did bad things, that the man is ultimately responsible, and therefore the priority is to protect the woman from the bad man.
It’s the ultimate white knighting scenario, and it plays out in both the secular and the Christian contexts.
The best analysis of pornography I have seen is a contributor to this website, who made the following pointed observation:
“Women constantly tell us that women can’t compete with porn. They aren’t young / strong / athletic. don’t have the surgical changes / libido.
This is not true. The opposite is true: Porn cannot compete with women. Porn is a series of dots on a page or pixels on a screen. It can’t see, feel, interact, have a scent, cannot laugh or respond”.
Men would much rather, then have sex with a real-life woman than porn, hands down. Porn comes into it’s own, however, when women are uncooperative: being fat, bitchy, difficult, weaponisers of sex, manipulators or any of the other atrocious behaviours women are well known for”.
As such, none of these behaviours mentioned in this commentator’s long list is ever approached by pastors, and it is here that it should be.
old-fashioned-man says:
May 18, 2019 at 7:28 pm
@vandicus “Anything that causes one to fantasize about other human beings in a sexual fashion, whether those humans beings are real or imagined is porn.”
“So, Song of Solomon is porn?”
If you’re reading the Bible to get a hard on, you’re doing it wrong. What is pornographic is somewhat dependent on the person. Children in beach-wear is presumably not pornographic to any of us here but is sexually arousing to pedophiles.
Pornography consequently can be very culturally dependent. Over time a society can move from showing ankles and bared arms being sexually arousing to only women in full undress or close to it being sexually arousing. Some things on the far end of state of undress will nearly always be pornographic to almost the entire population, but many of the middle states are person dependent. What is often overlooked are the things that women find sexually arousing. They are often encouraged in sin and society denies its sinfulness.
An analogy would be substances one knows they’d be addicted to. They’re particular behooved to avoid them. We are, as the Bible says, not to be mastered by anything.
Spike-
Your comment re:real women competing with porn is so dead on it bears amplifying.
A middle aged married man would rather have banging it out, hot, enthusiastic sex while they connect with each other, giggling, laughing etc with his 5/10 wife whose body has started to sag after multiple kids than simulated sex with a 10/10 porn star.
With 100% accuracy this is true.
And if that is happening on a regular basis, saving for truly immoral men, the vast majority of those husbands will wake up every day and kill them selves for her.
They won’t even notice other women.
@Anonymous Reader says:
May 18, 2019 at 3:28 pm
______
You’re ridiculous. Read what you wrote. No solutions there, just snark. Kind if like your gillette comment, reminiscent of school yard insults.
@Spike
Women know deep down that porn cannot compete with them. That’s not the point. The point is to say and do whatever it takes to get society to demonize and ban porn. Women always know exactly what to say to get men to do their will.
@Scott,
Thank you for your comments. Every time I try to extract from a pastor legitimate reasons for divorce the pastor immediately begins a long tirade about all the terrible injustices women have suffered since time immemorial at the hands of their husbands and men as a class. I have heard countless reasons to justify women divorcing their husbands, but I have never heard them suggest that a valid reason exists for a husband to divorce his wife.
I believe that churches should openly declare the conditions of marriage and the justifiable causes for divorce up front, so that there can be no confusion about the terms of the agreement and the penalties for infractions. They should also be completely open and transparent about the double standard they hold. Of course, if they did that, marriage would probably cease to exist, but it is well on the way to extinction anyway so they could at least be honest about it.
I don’t have much respect for the anonymous commenters that show up basically saying men deserve it, it’s many’s fault, and basically saying all men should be more alpha (implying like them of course).
I remember one guy at Dr. Helen’s blog who responded to literally everything by saying “men are p*ssies, and p*ssies get what they deserve.” After dozens of these posts he mixed it up and laying out how things were gonna be when he got married. He had no clue what it was like to be a husband against the vast number of constant forces influencing wives against respectable men, yet he anointed himself their sensai.
Fact is, we don’t more alphas. Alphas, for the most part, make for horrible husbands and members of a decent society. They are generally uncaring, self-serving, have trouble being faithful, as solipsistic as any woman, and if you really watch and listen to them you can see they are for the most part clueless dunderheads. What we need is a society the respects respectable men, rather than reward women for ruining their lives.
Men can “man up” all day long, but as long as society not only pressures women to detonate the marriage, but rewards her richly for doing so, it will continue.
@Gary Eden
“Lust “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. ”
Does no-one think it odd that the verse only applies to looking at women (as translated and interpreted).”
Finally someone else gets it.
That’s why women LOVE just LOVE this verse so much (badly translated as it is) as it ONLY applies to those lusting after women.
So women lusting after men, either in porn, movie stars, pop idols, romance novels, high school crush, AMOG pastors of the week, get a sinless free pass to do whatever they want.
Men, get the guillotine by comparison.
@Gary Eden says:
“Correct. Furthermore, the term ‘lust’ and ‘woman’ in the NT passage used to justify porn=adultery is better translated covet and wife. In other words, its a restatement of the “do not covet your neighbor’s wife” of Moses.”
Yep, its an expansion of that to encompass ALL wives, not just your neighbours.
And I can relate to that, I confess, I have coveted someone elses wife at one point, and it actually felt like adultery in the heart. It wasn’t a good feeling at all.
You can not commit adultery if you are not married. Its that simple. That verse in the Bible applies to “anyone” so long as “anyone” is married.
@IBB,
“You can not commit adultery if you are not married. Its that simple. That verse in the Bible applies to “anyone” so long as “anyone” is married.”
If SHE is not married. Whether the male is married or not is not in the equation.
Biblically, Men can have a 1000 wives if they so choose and if you go with the OT mideset 1000 concubines as well.
What is ruled out is prostitution.
Okay, Hank. I hope I wasn’t beating a dead horse.
@RPC,
The problem with finding that Ukrainian country girl to marry is that she will have VAWA laws on top of all the myriad legal powers that American women already have in marriage. You’re likely to know this, but a foreign woman only has to claim abuse in order to be fast-tracked to her green card, plus the huge payout from her stooged divorcee. Thank Obama and has his pseudo-heroism. To think that a trad-con judge or feminist judge will care one iota over whether her claims are true or not is hilarious. I’ve heard that the claims are not even investigated. That’s how much of a wet dream VAWA is for insane, blue-haired feminists. It’s all of their deranged dreams come true. Thanks again Obama.
American betas who marry young, attractive foreigners are LOATHED by almost every facet of our culture. God forbid the Ukrainian girl scratch up her own arm and tap her cheekbone with a hammer until a welt is raised before making the call in to the police. Add a lot of your money to her new green card, possibly a house and all kinds of cash and prizes that are dumped onto ‘abused women’ and you almost can’t blame the girl. Assuming she is attractive and feminine, then imagine how many looks she will be getting in her first six months here. It’s be like marrying a Ukrainian 4 (an 8 in America) and then having her take you to the Ukraine where full-on tens (off the charts in America) will be making ioi’s at you. But the real point is that the foreigner no longer has to endure 7 years of dutiful sex while she lusts over the dutiful 6’3″ engineer down the street who has no idea how attractive he is thanks to how this culture has treated him. To think any young woman would be naïve and hidden from these things is silly. Of course she’ll have the internet and Ukrainian friends who could steer her to forums that would explain her options and legal powers point by point.
A guy is really playing with fire to marry under any circumstances and it’s all for no payoff. Pure risk, zero possible reward. Now that’s a good deal! I think the only safe route is a male who is a full 9 or 10 in MMV who simply wants kids. He marries, his wife gains 50 pounds and he now has her outclassed by 7 MMV points. That marriage stays together. It’s sexless and she’s fat but at least he has the kids he wanted. Maybe he lays an escort once a month or something. Being an alpha, maybe he’s just over the drama of dating etc, and has nothing to prove. If you take the concept of children out of the equation there is simply no incentive or rational reason to get married. An alpha who can score a 10, can also continue to score tens. A male 7 (good earner, fit, but sees himself as a loser with women) would have to settle with a 2, maybe a 35 year old 3. It’s so ruined. P&$$y-blinded twenty-five and unders who have had no exposure to the redpill and whose brides are still (just barely) under a buck seventy will often get led by the weiner into marriage but anyone who has any smidgen of wisdom would have to see it as an atrociously bad deal. So where do we go from here? VAWA ended the overseas bride option, full stop. American women are rotten to the core and even if they’re not, every law is begging them to become that way.
Plane touches down in Albuquerque New Mexico at noon on Friday. Out walks a sturdy 33 year old male, we’ll call him Stephen. Stephen lives in the 8th plane of Hell, San Jose California, working as a “scrum master” for a small firm. His job responsibilities are mostly managing software developers, business analysts, and QA analysts as a form of “servant-leader” (if such a thing really existed) in understanding what they intend to do each day. But Stephen has taken some PTO today to visit his folks. He has some news that they are partially going to love and partially going to hate.
(Stephen) “Hi ma. Wow, its been almost a year since I’ve been to this retirement community. It really is beautiful here.”
(Mother) “Yes your father and I are really happy. We made up the guest room for the weekend. I assume you are staying the weekend?”
(Stephen) “I intended to yes.” Everything gets quiet. His mother pours Stephen another cup of coffee as his father sits down at the table.
(Mother) “So there was something you wanted to tell us? Some big news for you?”
(Stephen) “Yes.” pauses “I just uuhhhh, I don’t really know where to start this other than to start it so here goes. You know how the two of you have been begging me to get married and give you grandchildren?”
(Mother and Father) “Yes!” A very hopeful smile comes over them “So who is the lucky girl!?!?”
(Stephen) “Well, there really is no girl.”
A feeling of terrible dread overcomes both parents as they fear the next words out of their only son’s mouth is that he has gone full Bay Area and is coming out as a homosexual….
(Stephen) “But there is going to be a grandchild, maybe two.”
Dread further deepens.
(A very angry father) “Did you get some girl pregnant out of wedlock?”
(Stephen) “No. No one is pregnant. Not yet. But there may be soon, pregnant with your soon to be grandchildren.”
Dread is now replaced with a complete absence of thought. Both parents staring at the son not knowing what to think.
(Mother) “I don’t understand?”
(Stephen) “You know how you always wondered what I did with all my money, how I never spent it, never bought anything. Well, I am starting to spend some of it. I retained a lawyer.” Long pause. More shrugging of the shoulder from his parents. Stephen takes a long sip of coffee. “I retained a lawyer and I rented out a tiny, vacant storefront in a strip mall not too far from UCLA. My lawyer hired a couple of students to pass out IQ test exams and take pictures.”
(Both parents, totally confused echoing each other) “What???”
(Stephen) “They are there interviewing the future mother of your soon-to-be grandchildren. I am going to buy the eggs from the smartest and most physically attractive UCLA student that walks into that store. My lawyer posted flyers all over UCLA encouraging co-eds to come in to sell a couple of their eggs. I’m paying $4000 to whichever student that I choose who allows me to harvest two of her eggs. Hopefully at least one of those eggs will be your grandchild that you two have been begging me to give you.”
Stephen’s parents are now both leaning back in their chairs, not having any words at this moment. They are still trying to process this information. And they are finding it more and more difficult. They just can’t seem to understand what it is exactly their son is saying to them.
(Stephen) “I rented that square footage for a month. I expect in the next couple of days to whittle down to who the future mom will be. I am having no trouble getting young women to walk in the door. That $4000 seems to be the perfect price point for a rather simple out-patient operation that I am also paying for, that will cost me about $5000.”
(Father) “Where are you going with this? What is this all about?”
(Stephen) “So I am out $3000 to rent the space in the strip mall for a month. I am out about $10,000 to retain the lawyer and $9000 to pick the mom and harvest the eggs. That doesn’t even begin to cover fertilization in the laboratory. But we don’t do that until I rent the uterus.”
(Mother) “I’m not sure I can sit here and listen to anymore of this.”
(Stephen) “Well you want to be a grandmother right, right? You have been begging me to give you grandkids for the last 10 years.”
(Mother) “I always assumed you would get married and just…”
(Stephen) “That is not going to happen. I have too much to lose now. I’ve been working professionally for over ten years, I have too many assets to lose because I haven’t spent dime one. I agree with you that it is time for me to pro-create, but it has to be done this way. I can’t risk divorce, too much risk.”
(Father, half interested and half disgusted) “Go on.”
(Stephen) “So once we have the eggs, we freeze them. They have a viability for several years. But I don’t intend that they be frozen for long. My attorney will then set up base camp at a local community college not too far from San Jose. We will go through the same process we did in Pasadena only this time, we are renting the womb of a college co-ed, some girl who attends community college will do. I’ll put her up in a small apartment for one year, pay for a whole year of her tuition. I’m not paying UCLA prices, no way. I’ll also pay for the delivery of my children. If we can time it right, I can jerk off in a cup over the summer and get the zygotes implanted in her uterus before she even starts classes in early August. She can deliver at least one, hopefully both just after spring break after living for free for a year. Your grandchild or children will be born mid-April of next year.”
(Father) “How much will that cost, all-in?
(Stephen) “All in? Total cost is just shy of $100,000.” Pause. “Money well spent.”
(Father) “Why this way son? Why?”
(Stephen) “I can’t get divorced dad. I can’t have a woman with any legal power to seek out state government authority to take my children from me. I am making the future mother sign a notarized document that she has no maternal rights over these children, children she will probably never know in the first place. Now, her name as mother will go on the birth certificates as my kids may want to know some day, they might want to track her down, but they wont get to see that name until after their 18th birthday, long after that woman could come into my life and take them away from me, and take child support.”
(Mother) “What happened to you?”
(Stephen) “I took a red pill.”
My previous comment appears to be stuck in moderation. In summary, modern marriage is nothing more than a whip with which wives and churches can scourge husbands. No one ever looks for reasons to save a marriage, instead wives and pastors are constantly seeking occasion against good husbands so they can justify divorce. It seems that involving church in a marriage is more likely harmful than helpful at this stage. Truly a sad state of affairs.
@Spike repeated:
“…This is not true. The opposite is true: Porn cannot compete with women. Porn is a series of dots on a page or pixels on a screen. It can’t see, feel, interact, have a scent, cannot laugh or respond”.
Men would much rather, then have sex with a real-life woman than porn, hands down. Porn comes into it’s own, however, when women are uncooperative: being fat, bitchy, difficult, weaponisers of sex, manipulators or any of the other atrocious behaviours women are well known for.”
Words worth repeating.
Ladies, if you’re guy is looking at porn, YOU are the problem, not him.
@Mitch
Thanks for the link to:
https://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
I have read this a couple of times and remain utterly astonished at the Satanic depravity of it.
She basically makes the case for Goddesses defining marriage and God’s will.
And 99% (I am not exaggerating) of married “Christian” women would agree with every word of it.
Straight out. No excuses, no hiding it, nothing. Women know and own the good, men are depraved monsters who are solely responsible for any evil in a marriage.
And she is married to some guy who is the head of a “Christian” seminary.
We live in total clown world.
@feeriker Women DO.NOT.GIVE.A.SHIT about what Scripture says when it puts their feeeeeeeeeelings at risk and when it threatens their rebellion-fueled control over their men.
It’s indeed something like that. But don’t underestimate the power regular “Christianity” has on women, which tells them EXACTLY what they WANT to hear.
Quite frankly, if I read all the “official” church statements on marriage and divorce mentioned above, it’s making me sick to my stomach.
It really is difficult to live a life as a devout follower of Christ without falling into sin yourself, given the current culture prevalent in most churches, especially for married men. Praise be Jesus, the Shepherd of my soul.
Ladies, if you’re guy is looking at porn, YOU are the problem, not him.
It’s probably not necessary, in practical terms, to say that in any language other than English, but I’m going to use Google Translate to render it into every language it’s capable of translating.
@ Spike
That depends entirely on the woman.
Exactly. There are natural consequences to a woman’s decision to morph into a beach ball stuffed with lard. One consequence may be that she repulses her husband.
@Oscar says:”That depends entirely on the woman.
Porn comes into it’s own, however, when women are uncooperative: being fat, bitchy, difficult, .., manipulators or any of the other atrocious behaviours women are well known for”.
Exactly. There are natural consequences to a woman’s decision to morph into a beach ball stuffed with lard. One consequence may be that she repulses her husband.”
And many women encompass all of the above.
Women need to be taught how to be “good women”, this seems very sadly missing in all walks of life. The fact its mentioned in the bible means its a problem that exists across the millenia.
And of course, utterly denied by all ladies in church.
@Trust
I agree wholeheartedly. What’s more, “Alpha” implies a superior type of man, which just ain’t true.
Speaking from experience, there are certain commenters here who will accuse you of immaturity, trolling, and worse, for saying such things.
Totally Disgusting Dalrock, but you are unfortunately correct in that.
IBB,
I am not sure daily is good, at least after a point, but I would agree regularly is good. I do wonder if some of the trouble with prostate cancer now is exactly this.
My wife and I had been trying “daily sex” for a month or two to try to conceive a birth child at one point and that did get a bit exhausting. She was going with the flow, but then she was not really engaged, so perhaps that was a problem too. Sex even with a hot woman can be undesirable if that woman has a bad attitude. (At least that is my speculation. I was faithful to one woman, though I did see the impact of a bad attitude on things.)
Scott says:
May 19, 2019 at 9:46 am
Spike-
Your comment re:real women competing with porn is so dead on it bears amplifying.
A middle aged married man would rather have banging it out, hot, enthusiastic sex while they connect with each other, giggling, laughing etc with his 5/10 wife whose body has started to sag after multiple kids than simulated sex with a 10/10 porn star.
With 100% accuracy this is true.
Scott: This is what the Bible means when the “Two shall become one flesh”. It is coupledom the way God intended it to be. And children thrive on their parents – their two biological parents – being together.
Yet modern Western thought tells women constantly that they need to be ”independent”, that they need their ”freedom”, that they need to ”know themselves and know what they want” before marriage. It’s all running cover for promiscuity, and all of which destroy women’s ability to bond with their husbands.
In a biblical sense what is a husband entitled to do if his wife “defrauds” him of sex? Since adultery and divorce are forbidden it seems like the guy is up the old shit’s creek and with no options, right?
@Emperor Constantine says:” https://gentlereformation.com/2017/07/20/a-high-view-of-marriage-includes-divorce/
I have read this a couple of times and remain utterly astonished at the Satanic depravity of it.”
I tried to read it, it was just sooo evil, i couldnt get further than the 1st couple of pages, my spirit recoiled within me.
@JJR, yep, any man who signs the marriage license, is a lamb to the slaughter, unless she is the rare unicorn devoted to the Lord and bound to follow his will.
@ BillyS
“I do wonder if some of the trouble with prostate cancer now is exactly this.”
I’ll bet you my last dollar it is. Within a year after my wife weaponized sexual withdrawal, I went in to my doc at the VA doubled over with what turned out to be a wicked case of prostatitis. I was 39 years old, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me. When he learned I was married, he quizzed me about my sex life. Said the problem was caused by not having sex frequently enough–or at all in this case. Pretty simple.
He offered to talk to my wife, but I knew better than to take him up on it. He sighed and gave me strong antibiotics to clear it up. Told me that I’d have to start taking matters into my own hands–so to speak–if I didn’t want to be back there two months later with the same problem. Also said I could be looking at prostate cancer in ten or twenty years if something didn’t change.
At the end of the appointment, he said, “Look, you’re not alone in this. I see it all the time, for the same reason. I could walk you out into that waiting room and ask how many of those guys are dealing with the same issue. Two-thirds of them would raise their hands.”
I did tell my church lady wife what the doctor told me when she asked about my appointment. She got mad at me for telling her the truth and then laughed about it. She was an ex-wife a while after that. In retrospect, I’m sorry I didn’t file the next day.
@Iowa Slim, same thing can happen with your testicles !
In short, men need to empty both these organs frequently, between 3-20 times a week.
Less than that you are facing some big trouble in your future.
Many of you promoting mistresses are forgetting one key fact: Most men can’t get a mistress today. So the 20% of the men who already get all the sex they want could get more. Women are already willing to be in soft harems. Making it more formal just breaks things down further.
What idiocy. God set the pattern, one man and one woman for life. That has been attacked on all sides today, but it remains the standard. Not ancient Rome which had a great many problems that ultimately led to its downfall.
Many of you promoting mistresses are forgetting one key fact: Most men can’t get a mistress today.
Oh yes, we can, because, as you yourself go on to say:
Women are already willing to be in soft harems.
Exactly, and, as I’ve mentioned before, it really is MUCH easier to gather one than most men imagine, especially a middle-aged man. No, the women you will gather as “‘plates’ to spin” will not be young hotty supermodel quality, not by a long shot. However, if your goal is just sex, that won’t matter. And no, a man does NOT have to be a wealthy George Clooney lookalike to pull this off. As long as he is not hideously ugly, morbidly obese, or dresses and maintains the hygiene of a homeless bum, there are post-wall women out there who are STARVING and DESPERATE for male attention, especially of the sexual kind.
So why don’t most thirsty, neglected husbands avail themselves of the opportunity? Because most of these women are trouble waiting to find a victim. “Mentally ill” is too polite a description for most, and most men with even a modicum of common sense can smell the danger from a mile away. Better to just “flog the log” to let of the tension than risk a level of drama that would make a long-running soap opera seem boring by comparison. As with most women (including, very likely, the one the cheated and deprived husband is married to), the juice ain’t worth squeezing the fruit for. And finally, no one is any longer stupid enough to do this:
Making it more formal just breaks things down further.
That’s just begging for trouble, and even the bluest of desperate blue-pilled simps knows it. Unless he’s a Head of State or a Fortune 100 Multibillionaire, this isn’t even remotely a realistic option.
What idiocy. God set the pattern, one man and one woman for life. That has been attacked on all sides today, but it remains the standard. Not ancient Rome which had a great many problems that ultimately led to its downfall.
Unfortunately, it takes two cooperating teams to play a successful ballgame. When one team refuses to play by the rules, or simply walks off the field, then there is no ballgame. Or, alternatively, under extreme circumstances, the players of the one team form a whole new league or invent a whole new sport.
Making a child without a mother active in their life is just as evil as doing that without a father. God made both for a reason.
Feeriker,
I could never have a mistress. I see it as opposing God’s will and my physique will not pull someone I am attracted to anyway. I could lift and get in better shape, if I was really motivated to do so, but I would still not be attracted to most of the woman who would be attracted to me even then.
I would have been fine if I had married a woman who gained a bit of weight over the years, but starting fresh with someone is very hard at this age.
That also ignores venereal diseases and such.
Perhaps many men could get some fat women for sex, but that is very repulsive to at least some of us. Even if you could ignore the moral aspects. The Scriptures never indicate that approach is a good thing. It does describe it happening, but they describe many things that were not good happening as well.
And you would have to have far more women than men for any form of a harem to work. Otherwise a bunch of men either have to share or have to go dry. The current system is horrid, but that doesn’t make any solution better than no solution.
@BillyS @Feeriker
Christ forbid fornication and sex outside marriage.
But He also created Christian marriage for men and women’s physical need for sex, and the Holy Spirit expressly forbid (via Paul’s writings) taking this away from your spouse.
So on the one hand we have God creating an institution that mercifully meets the needs of his flock (the “Old Books” arrangement as Rollo calls it); yet on the other we have Satan via feminism corrupting this institution to such a degree that it is now used to do the inverse of what it was supposed to do (remember, Satan’s will is the inverse of God’s). That is, marriage is being used to DENY men access to sex. They can’t get it from their wives, and they can’t get it from any other women because they are married.
I don’t know what the solution is here anymore.
I feel like we are in a historically unprecedented state, like the persecutions in the early Church, where people apostosized and yet were taken back into the Church. There is no way that God wants a huge majority of Christians to be cut off from sex via his institution of marriage. And yet that is exactly what is happening. God does not expect most people to be able to be celibate their whole lives: that is a heroic act left for only a few. During the persecutions, only a few didn’t apostosize, and the Church took back the rest because it’s wise leaders understood that that level of heroic sacrifice could not be expected of the majority.
@EC
Yes, the situation is dire. But sexual immorality is probably the gravest sin of the NT. No other sin is emphasized so much, as is the advice to FLEE sexual immorality. And yes, celibacy/abstinence is the only option if having sex with your wife is no option. I know it’s maddening, but we can trust God that He will help us resist temptation.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
@Paul,
“And yes, celibacy/abstinence is the only option if having sex with your wife is no option.”
I’ve frequently wondered about that, since my marriage has been sexless for many years. Paul said the withholding of sex is “defrauding” your spouse. Does that mean the marriage is fraudulent and you are not actually married?
@Paul
What you’re describing doesn’t seem to me to be a Christian marriage at all, it’s simply wife worship.
Robert What?
“… Does that mean the marriage is fraudulent and you are not actually married?”
No, but it does mean you have clear grounds for divorce. If you choose to keep the woman around after her choice to stop functioning as a wife, hopefully she recognizes that as a great gift and honors you for it. Quite often a defrauding wife will find additional ways to express the underlying disrespect that sexual withholding is a symptom of.
EC, I read the Gentle Reformation link.
Several women commenters love it. One guy told truth and was mocked by a woman with two last names.
The church seems dead to me because Gentle Reformation and SBC leadership and TGC represent most protestants beliefs.
Well they won, they got everything the world offers and the hand of fellowship of churches. They didn’t have to sacrifice anything and our pastors love these women. Men like Iowa Slim, not so much.
Iowa,
What denomination were you in and does your ex still attend church? Did any pastors confront her to try to save the marriage and turn her back to the Lord? Does she express any biblical guilt over the divorce itself?
I often think about whether I would want sex if my wife decided to participate. I’m torn because she repulses me because of her rebellion but the bible says don’t deprive one another. It’s hypothetical anyhow, so I don’t need to answer it.
OT
Wherein Wilcox and friends tell us how feminism has made marriages happier:
@EC
Well, I don’t know about which version of Christian marriage you’re talking here. To the best of my knowledge marriage according to NT standards has the following components:
* sex is only allowed between husband and wife in monogamous (biblical) marriage
* therefore, either abstain from sex, or marry and have sex with your spouse
* marriage is till “death do us part” for a Christian (you can be divorced against your will)
* sexual immorality (Gr. porneia) is repeatedly referred to as the one sin the gentiles should avoid, even flee. Most explicit NT lists of sins include various forms of sexual immorality (adultery, sex between men etc.)
I don’t see where wife-worship enters the picture, the above rules hold equally for men and women.
EC,
We live in a mess now. No good solution.
I don’t want to remain alone, but that appears to be my lot. Though I really want to find a way to connect with at least some small group of like-minded men. That is almost as hard as finding a godly wife these days. Churches are no help in that area. The men’s groups are infested with female worshiping men and those don’t really make connections outside the group.
I’m really late to this thread.
Let’s be very clear about something here – the reason married men look at and use pornography is as an aid to masturbation. The reason married men masturbate is because their wives will not have sex with them. Their wives refuse them, verbally and emotionally abuse them, mistreat them, and act cruelly and inhumanly to them. They inflict excruciating pain on their husbands on a daily basis. These husbands are doing literally the only thing they can do to relieve some of the pain.
Swanny River,
She stopped going to church around the time she cut off sex. She had the fellowship of a coven of Christian internet hags to comfort her, endorse her, and teach her how to sharpen her claws. In the spirit of the OP, she seemed to have become “Too Christian to go to Church.”
Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft. The marriage bed rebellion, when (or because) tolerated, quickly followed its logical structure and sprouted into more egregious forms of abuse–of both me and my children. These subsequent manifestations were what the divorce appeared to be “about” to the general public.
As to remorse over blowing up the marriage, there was an expression of it over piffling side issues during a post-divorce outbreak of reunion fever prompted by her learning that I had another woman.
@Trust:
Sex is a pretty insidious weapon, because its use creates even more justifications for its use.
Sometimes you have to drop the hammer on the marriage. Since she is constantly threatening to push the nuke button, push her out of the way and push it yourself. “Things will change, right now, or we are done. Your choice.”
@Swanny River
One guy told truth and was mocked by a woman with two last names.
I loved how she used the term reparations to describe the cash and prizes from divorce. You don’t have to read between the lines to see the pettiness and vindictiveness. But as Dalrock and many others here have said and illustrated, no fault divorce and the ensuing cash and prizes are absolutely necessary conditions for the apostles of Christian divorce to have any sway.
That said, one of the main reasons why no fault divorce is critical to their success is that it removes the requirement of proving fault in a courtroom. If the wife actually had to prove that her husband had neglected her sexually because of a porn addiction, she would actually have to be the victim of sexual neglect. Under no-fault, however, she just has to demand the divorce, allege the porn addiction, and the court will give her what she wants and the church will back her up. “Believe the woman” has become a core belief among complementarians as well as feminists. (Unless, of course, the woman is Juanita Brodderick.)
@ Swanny River
“I often think about whether I would want sex if my wife decided to participate. I’m torn because she repulses me because of her rebellion but the bible says don’t deprive one another. It’s hypothetical anyhow, so I don’t need to answer it.”
The male sexual response is shut down by the autonomic nervous system in response to stress or anything resembling a threat condition. It’s very common for men in this situation to just quit asking after a while. It then becomes common for the man’s apparatus to stop registering the defrauding wife as a human female when this has gone on long enough. It doesn’t take long for that to become permanent. Thus the repulsion you mentioned. When this line has been crossed, he may view the woman with frank disgust. He may also wonder if he has been literally unmanned by his choice to tolerate the mistreatment. An experience with a woman who treats him like a man will usually show him that there’s nothing wrong with his equipment. It will also give him the joy of the restoration of something critical to his masculine identity which he thought he lost. That’s a greater pleasure than the long-deferred sexual relief.
Why are you still married to this woman, friend?
Women know deep down that porn cannot compete with them. That’s not the point. The point is to say and do whatever it takes to get society to demonize and ban porn. Women always know exactly what to say to get men to do their will.
The point is power. Women want power, and will stop at nothing to get it. They want power in their relationships, in one on one relationships, in work, at church, in all situations. Women have immense sexual power, and use it quite effectively in their relationships with men. Getting to decide who will and won’t get sex is a power most men simply never enjoy.
It’s all about power. Plain and simple.
@Paul
I agree with your points but look around.
Do you actually think most American woman are properly formed in the Faith, without outside external influences unduly influencing them?
Do you actually think they understand and take seriously their Christian vow till death do us part?
Given the high divorce statistics and even higher percentage of females who refuse to do their duty as wives, most of them simply do not understand their vows or can make them in a serious manner. Culture, law, even the Church does not hold them to this in the slightest degree.
Therefore, since their vows are fraudulent in the first place, the defrauded spouse is under no obligation to follow them either. If you sit there and pretend she was serious and refuse to acknowledge the fraud, you’re worshipping her, not Christ or Christian marriage.
@thedeti said:
“The point is power. Women want power, and will stop at nothing to get it. They want power in their relationships, in one on one relationships, in work, at church, in all situations. Women have immense sexual power, and use it quite effectively in their relationships with men. Getting to decide who will and won’t get sex is a power most men simply never enjoy.
It’s all about power. Plain and simple.”
And my concern is that a too strict a reading of the verses Paul very legitimately cites leads us to be unwitting partners with rebellious women in their relentless search for a power that is not about Christ, His truth or His Love, but about this new generation of Eve’s lust for control.
The allowed reason for divorce given by Christ was ‘sexual immorality’. That is broader than just adultery, especially considering adultery was punishable by death under the OT law and hence divorce was not an issue.
What is immoral sex? Look to the Old Testament for that. It has lists; and those lists don’t contain ‘sex outside of marriage’ as one of the prohibited items (for men that is; it does for women, i.e. adultery).
Would denying her husband sex fall under that? One could make the argument from logic but not from OT scripture. That’s more simple rebellion. The answer to that isn’t divorce, but to enforce your will. Either she’ll come around obediently or she’ll leave; and the question of divorce for sexual denial will become a non-issue as she’ll have done it, not you.
Although a man denying his slave-wife sex (or food or clothing) was required to let her go free; so that is an argument for ending a marriage over no sex. That men had the ability to deny their women basic sustenances while the OT never mentions women denying sex, tells you something of the amount of power exercised by men in the scriptures.
@thedeti
It’s all about power. Plain and simple.
Yes it is. More specifically, the urge to be in charge, to have authority, and the refusal to submit to authority, that is, the rule of men. It is a direct reflection of the rebellious nature seen in so much feminists and in ‘girrrl power’.
As for what’s feeding this, I can say from experience that fear caused by lack of trust plays a major role. At moments when I’m weak for whatever reason, the rebellious nature of my wife goes into overdrive. That’s why I think St. Peter tells women:
For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves. They submitted themselves to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her lord. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.
As a woman, if you put your hope in God, AND do not give way to fear, then you can submit to your husband and call him your boss (=lord) and obey him.
If only we had churches that backed up men to help them deal with rebellious wives. Calling out such sin publicly would already help a lot.
@EC Therefore, since their vows are fraudulent in the first place, the defrauded spouse is under no obligation to follow them either.
That’s where we disagree. You can acknowledge a wife being fraudulent, while keeping true to your vows. It makes her a sinner, while you stay true to God. Do not repay evil with evil, but love your enemy, is especially true for the one you married.
@Paul And is “love” a husbands only recourse?
And how could divorce be evil when that same sort of consequence was specified by God in reverse (Ex 21:10)? Is divorce only bad when the man does it?
@GE
It is loving to call out sin, HOWEVER if your spouse refuses to listen AND the church denies it’s a sin AND the government punishes men if they want to exercise their authority, there’s not much left a man can do.
Divorce is evil because we’re explicitly commanded in the NT not to divorce, both men and women.
The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”
But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this.
The Scriptures aren’t talking about troubles because of the modern system Paul. Use your head a bit. He was talking about all the trials and tribulations Christians faced at that point in time. Learn a little.
@BillyS
The quote had nothing to do with the modern (legal) system, but with the troubles foreseen in marriage. In the end, the situation we’re in is one-on-one coupled to what happened in Genesis when Eve desired to be as god and Adam followed her. This pattern keeps on repeating between all wives and husbands. Modern feminism is but one form of it, but also in the past we had “The Taming of the Shrew”.
No Paul, it is far more likely the quote had to do with the times the Church was facing as it clashed with Roman paganism. Too much of Scripture notes it was God’s plan for a man and a woman to be married for life. Variants may exist, but they are the exception, not the rule.
It is also not a tautology. “Things are hard all over” is a meaningless concept. The Apostle Paul’s life was not easy even though he was not married, so marriage is not the sole source. But stay with your dead horse if you want!
@BillyS
Despite all the evidence on this site showing the misery marriage can bring, you interpret the NT as promoting marriage for Christians?
Note that in the whole of chapter 7 of the letter of St.Paul, nowhere is an indication made his instructions are only temporary or only locally. And it’s clear St.Paul advocates marriage as the inferior option only to be pursued if you cannot control your sexual desire.
I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided.
@Paul
Your way is defeat, destruction, and oblivion.
Christianity is patriarchy and unless men rise up and take charge, civilization is going to collapse.
Machievelli was a Christian philosopher, we need to think at the scale of culture, not our little selfish personal interpretations of what is right. Your way is defeat and destruction. Fuck these sluts that lie their way illicitly to the benefits of Christian marriage. They are evil and they and their evil works must be rejected in every way, shape and form.
@Spike and Scott,
Yup. They’ll do anything for that wife.
What’s most interesting to me is the sense of existential dread that women have when discussing how awful it would be to compete with The images in pornography. Like they describe this soul crushing existential fear at what they say is the attractiveness and “fakeness” of these women. That dread is crucial.
Because as you’ve pointed out, men would absolutely rather have sex with their real but less attractive woman if they know that she desperately wants and needs them and Sees them as a masculine ideal. So then what really causes the dread?
The loss of control of access. That is the actual cause of that dread, And the reason why actually addressing it or never happen in mainstream culture because it changes the context of the discussion entirely. And it shows a fallen side of women that most women and most men would rather not acknowledge.
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They need to change the name of porn to “absent wife literature”. When someone says to a man who’s admitted to looking at porn “But, your wife’s not absent”, he could just reach over, touch her on the shoulder, and when she disgustedly recoils from him, respond to the third party with a “Really? Where do I have one of those?”.
Damn Crackers says:
May 17, 2019 at 1:50 pm
“Consider the fact that a woman has every right to expect that her husband will earn access to the marriage bed…”
Unbiblical and ahistorical!
If wives withhold sex from their husbands until some payment is made, they are literally guilty of fornication. They are acting exactly as whores.
Indeed. He earned that access with his marriage vow. That’s like expecting someone who’s paid off a car to keep having to fork over money for it decades later, else that’s Grand Theft, Auto.
@Luke, what we regard as porn is fine. Whats incredible is that an image\movie is grounds for divorce.
Charles,
The women in porn are definitely happy doing what they do. I would bet that plays a role in the dread you note.
Luke,
We do that with cars and houses under the modern tax regime. You never truly own either.
You can stop paying the registration on the car; you just have to refrain from having it on public property/roads. So farmers could stop paying, and still use it. And I stopped paying briefly while out of the country, with the car parked on my private property.
You are unfortunately very correct about me “owning” my so-called “private property”.
Do these pastors issue edicts about women READING porn? Looking at porn is a man’s domain, because biologically, men are visually stimulated. Men’s porn, thus is what we are familiar with.
Women on the other hand, need mental stimulation. Thus, Fifty Shades of Gray sells so much it makes it’s author $500 million. Twilight is a best-seller based on an abusive relationship, just like it’s fanfic successor. Barbara Cartland, the eccentric British aristocrat with links to the Royal Family, made a fortune a generation back writing “romantic novels” about feisty aristocratic daughters stowing away to far-flung corners of the British Empire, where she meets an Alpha who rapes her at the climactic scene (“No! No! We musn’t…..!) but whom she then marries. And men don’t read, write or distribute this shit. It is exclusively women’s territory.
No mention about the unrealistc expectations the ‘romantic novel” brainwashes women with has, to my knowledge, ever been addressed by the church.Yet it is just as destructive to relationships (“Honey, I can’t compete with Christian Gray….”) that porn is.
Spike
Do these pastors issue edicts about women READING porn? Looking at porn is a man’s domain, because biologically, men are visually stimulated. Men’s porn, thus is what we are familiar with.
Generally the very definition of “porn” in the modern world is visual: pics and vids. Therefore by definition “women don’t use porn”. Of course that ignores the fact that about 20% of online porn subscribers are self-labeled women, but in general pastors don’t know much about the online world. Not even the younger ones.
Women on the other hand, need mental stimulation.
Yes, men are visual while women are more verbal. Contrary to a lot of brainwashing we all receive, they are not “men with boobs”, they do not respond the same to visuals or words as men do, and yes words work differently with them.
The “smooth talking cad” is hardly a new thing. Casanova was a smooth talker, I’m sure. Women’s preferred porn is in the form of text. It’s readily available at any level of overt porn desired, too. Start at the sole surviving chain bookstore in your town, proceed to the “Romance Fiction” section, pick up a book and start skimming. Depending on the publisher, anywhere from 1 /5 to 1 / 3 of the way through, an overt sex scene will be found; it will be graphic, even anatomically correct.
Step back and reflect that this kind of text was “banned in Boston” some 70+ years ago, it’s porny, and it’s for sale in the nicely lit bookstore with the coffee shop. No need to go to the “adult store” for a DVD or a magazine, no need to go online, just stroll into the nice chain bookstore.
Younger women don’t have to do that, of course, they can just download cheap little novels that are the text equivalent of porn vids. There’s a little cottage industry of women writing porn for other women, and selling it for a couple of bucks on Amazon in the Kindle format. That woman on the train with her eyes glued to her E-reader might not be reading the Great Books or Jane Austen.
Women are earthy creatures; see the Song of Solomon for one example. Pastors all too often are drawn from the bluest of blue pill betas, and so there are things they just cannot “see”.