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Banking off what I blogged about this morning, I feel like I have to add a few words about Bristol Palin choosing herself over her supposed inborn obligations to sacrifice for the patriarchy. There’s a lesson in all this for the Republicans, though I doubt they’ll pay attention to it. The louder they wail and moan about how people aren’t sufficiently self-sacrificing to bullshit ideals that serve no purpose, the more extreme they get (like Ken Blackwell just condemning sex outright and suggesting on national television that people who use contraception are animals), the more people are going to be turned off, and the more hysterical the base will get as they get more isolated from the rest of the country. One thing that’s interesting me is that they’re not being able to keep a lid on the most politically damaging implications of the pro-patriarchy worldview---it’s easy enough to get ordinarily sexist swing voters on board with your agenda if they think women are the only targets, but since women and men’s lives are so intertwined, it’s pretty hard to hide forever that the Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too.
This Bristol Palin/Levi Johnston situation is unmanageable for just that reason. Right wingers have gotten a lot of mileage out of demonizing female (and gay male) sexuality and wailing about single mothers, but it’s only effective as long as men can be painted as the victims of evil liberated women. But when a genuine white daughter of Republican privilege turned up pregnant at 17, and they had to put their money where their mouths were, it all went to hell. Because it’s not as simple as the woman fucked, the woman must pay. There’s a man in the picture, and he’s not so easy to classify as the victim of women’s liberation. “She” who did the wrong is now “they” who did it, and it’s really exposing how ugly and anti-human the whole pro-patriarchy movement that’s keeping the Republicans afloat is.
Take, for example, this response by Lisa Schiffren (hat tip):
I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around.
People aren’t going to work up the energy to demonize Levi Johnston, because he didn’t do anything that young men like him aren’t supposed to do in the pro-patriarchal mindset. Getting drunk and getting laid is a young man’s right, is it not? It’s the women involved who are obliged to set limits, not wear that skirt (you knew what would happen!), and pay the price when the inevitable happens. Once you look at it from a man’s point of view, the punishing nature of the Anti-Sex League becomes really obvious indeed, and all the hand-waving about fetal life in the world can’t change that, because men can’t get abortions. Once you realize that marching pregnant young women to the altar to marry them off as punishment for fooling around means that a man gets punished with an unhappy marriage, then then injustice of it becomes that much easier to focus on.
Inevitably, the logic of sexism turns around and bites men, too. You can only conceal for so long that women’s liberation has more benefits for most men than drawbacks. Doing more dishes than maybe you had to in the past is a small price to pay for not being forced to get married to someone who hates you at 19 out of duty. Certainly, I was amused this morning at how Ace of Spades and his commenters were unable to get that their bitterness towards Jessica for writing about her upcoming wedding said more about their own self-imposed inabilities to ever really get how great love between equals can be---they’re victims of their own propaganda. That the result of marriage-and-childbirth-as-punishment-for-sexual-sin regime doesn’t do men any favors isn’t going to stay a secret for long. That’s why Schiffren’s post was pretty much an admission of defeat---people should get married just so they can subject their child to a divorce? Because they were naughty and did things with their lady parts and gentleman junk that Schiffren disapproves of? Yeah, not buying it. Making Levi Johnston and Bristol Palin hold hands and look stupid at the RNC did more to bolster the cause of comprehensive sex education than all the research in the world could have. People can be stupid, but they’re not so stupid as to think that people should deliberately enter bad relationships as self-flagellation for fucking. Maybe we could accept it if only women were involved (we still have sad polling data to indicate this is true), but it’s not just women, and you can’t hide that forever.
The comments at Hugo’s just made me grin, because of how out of touch conservative views are with those of the non-nutty. Most people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, think of marriage primarily as a romantic occasion justified by how happy your beloved makes you. That’s the mainstream position, even amongst pretty sexist people. We Americans, barring a few hard core right wingers (who currently control the Republican party), believe in Twue Wuv, and that’s that. And so wingnut beliefs about marriage like the ones expressed by this commenter at Hugo’s will not sit well:
While I think any man who gets a woman pregnant has the obligation to offer a marriage proposal, it seems as though Bristol didn’t want to get married in this case, and that’s her decision. I think that the link between marriage and procreation should be more emphasized _before the fact_: i.e., you shouldn’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy.
Again, if this was directed at women, I think maybe more people would admire his tough-nosed approach to the world. But this is aimed directly at men---don’t sleep with any woman that you won’t marry if you “have” to---and that, I think, is just depressing to most people. What man wants to marry a woman he doesn’t love out of duty? What woman wants the occasion of her marriage proposal to be performed by someone who’s acting like he’s eating worms? I pointed this out to the commenter:
Boy, Hector, you make proposing sound as fun as getting a cavity drilled. You do realize some men want to get married because they’re in love? Yeah, with actual women, despite our being members of the lower gender caste. Sheesh. “Willing” to marry? “Obligation” to propose? So depressing.
Social conservatives do have a sexist culture working for them, but they’re screwed on this issue. Despite the official-ish sexist belief that men don’t really want to get married, I think it’s well-understood at this point that men do want from female partners some romantic sizzle and passion, and so all this talk of marrying for duty and obligation is just not going to work. If anything, the reason that men (supposedly) don’t want to get married is the fear that making it official drains the romance out of relationships, where babies sweep in one door and sex out the other. Luckily for you guys, today’s tone deaf wingnut took the exact stance with the exact wording that every wingnut should take on the issue of why you should marry out of duty instead of love, both men and women.
It is evident that Miss Marcotte’s ideal world has little place for sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis. Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.
I admire his willingness to be an honest asshole, because most of them aren’t. But if you want weddings to be a toast to male and female self-abnegation, sacrifice, and obedience, good luck! For one thing, the wedding industry will fight you on this---you make a lot more money off people trying to show off their individuality and love than people trying to demonstrate humble obedience and self-hatred. It’s not even worth getting into a half-assed argument with a moron on why it’s better to be happy than depressed, better to like yourself than abnegate yourself. Why? Because liberals have definitely won this round. Even the evangelical churches realize you catch more flies with honey and more parishioners with promises of wealth and joy than dour sermons about how we’re all doomed and god can barely stand the sight of us. What we can hope for is more desperate demands that people embrace a depressing, god-forsaken lifestyle for no reason at all, because that’s not the sort of thing that endears people to movement conservatism, and can only be better for our side.
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Posted by
Amanda Marcotte on 07:19 PM •
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Maybe they are trying to *protect* gay people from this terrible punishment - I mean sacred sacrament - from god.
<blockquote>Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.<’blockquote>
Since when did “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” become awful, unAmerican things??
sorry, messed up the tags. 8(
I certainly don’t know if they should have gotten married. You’d have thought so . . . even if it didn’t last forever. Better odds for the kid.
Odds of what?
Dealing with it’s parents screaming at each other, being passive-agressive f-wits to each other?
I sure wish that my parents had never gotten married- or ended it before they had me- they would have been happier people in the long run.
Oh how SAD today’s youth won’t be roped into loveless marriages held together for “the sake of the kids” - no matter when that kid is concieved.
Sheesh.
I’m so glad - but not that surprised - that the wedding’s been called off. The two of them standing on that RNC stage looked like they’d been sold off for S. Palin’s political ambition. The thought of that marriage made me feel very sad.
What Woodrowfan said. It’s not just that anyone who thinks obedience and submission are superior to freedom and self-expression is obviously a miserable asshole. Freedom and self-expression are supposed to be the values America is based on! Are conservatives just completely giving up the “we’re the patriotic ones who stand for American values” bullshit? I thought that was one of their main rackets!
Better odds for the kid. If the parents didn’t like it, well, they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around.
Uh...no. Not better odds for the kid, since teen marriages are very likely to end in divorce. Raising a child in a loving two-parent household is a good thing. Raising a child in a house where the parents hate each other and resent the child for forcing them to get married and ruining their prospects for education and jobs? Not so much.
I love the “they” in the “they should have thought about that when they were drinking and fooling around.” That’s never gonna fly in a world where men are supposed to get laid as teens or else they are teh GAY. It’s supposed to be “SHE should have thought of that” so she can be slut-shamed. The patriarchy isn’t properly set up to slut-sham a male person of privilege. If men can be slut-shamed for not using contraception or for having sex out of marriage...then who has the privilege? Who wears the pants? What the fuck? Men have to be responsible and think before sex? THAT’S FEMINISM!!!111!!!
Plus, had Bristol and Levi had decent sex education and access to birth control, there wouldn’t have been an issue in the first place. Mommy and Daddy could have pretended that they were virginal if they wanted, now they get to be Grandparents for real.
That’s the lesson most of America learned. Pretend all teens can say no until they marry in their late twenties/thirties if you want: reality is completely different.
“Since when did “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” become awful, unAmerican things?”
From the beginning, there have been people in America who wanted freedom for themselves and not others, who believed they should have rights that were denied others, and people who believed they deserved to be happy, or earned that right through hard work or virtue, but others should be denied it.
The really kooky ones, obviously still alive in spirit, believe that happiness is something you get in the afterlife...while you’re here, keep your nose to the grindstone and keep your hands to yourself…
Yeah, we’re fucked up…
It is evident that Mr. Hector’s ideal world has little place for freedom, rights, autonomy, and self-expression. Instead, his worldview emphasizes ‘sacrifice’, ‘obligation’, ‘obedience’, ‘submission’, ‘abnegation of the self’, ‘kenosis’, and all the other buzzwords of the Dark Ages.
Well, in the traditional version, the guy who’s forced to marry the woman he knocked up just goes out and keeps partying while she stays home with the kid. And who could blame him for cheating on her? she’s all sleep-deprived and not wearing makeup and her breasts aren’t perky anymore. It’s the couples who actually have warm feelings for each other where the man and the woman both get clobbered, because all of that just goes to hell in the face of too much responsibility too soon.
Yeah, I know, the idea that the patriarchy is bad for everyone but complete assholes (and even them, because how did they get that way) isn’t really news.
“i.e., you shouldn’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy.”
I think there might be some merit to the framing of this idea, though his version of things sounds horribly oppressive.
There are lots of situations where we prepare for the low probability, worst case senario even though most of the time the prepared for event never happens. Every time you get in a get in a car you put on a seatbelt in case you get in an accident. Make a living will so you don’t spend decades on life support. Stuff like that. It’s not likely that you’ll end up in a persistent vegetative state, but the possibility makes you prepare for it anyway.
A better way to phrase his precaution might be, “Never sleep with anyone you wouldn’t be willing to share 20 years of child custody with.” Still not very romantic…
The only input men have into whether prenancy ends up happening is the sex part. After that they don’t get any say. That’s as it should be because all things are not equal. Men never carry the pregnancy to term. After the sex it out of men’s hands.
Women have a different set of decision making points. The stakes are higher for women, but they can opt out after the prenancy occurs and say, “Nope, I’m not doing this.”
To push the car wreck analogy too far, when the accident happens women have the opportunity to stop things, step away and let the car get wrecked on its own. OK that is does push the analogy too far.
I’m happy for Bristol, because I think she will be genuinely much happier (well, as happy as any eighteen-year-old with a baby can be) to not be saddled with Levi, when it was clear from the beginning she was only planning to wed with Mom in mind.
I think you’re forgetting that the forced marriage thing in a sexist society is not as bad for the man as for the woman. The “sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis” the commenter at Hugo’s talked about are a lot more optional for the man than for the woman.
She gets pregnant, has to keep the baby, take care of it, marry him, take care of him. She may or may not love him. If she doesn’t love him she’ll probably love the baby and that’s her real job, anyway.
He’s probably not into that love stuff so much, so it doesn’t so much matter who he marries, though she better keep herself pretty. He has the money and the power, both legal and physical (pow!), so she has to do what he wants. He gets food cooked for him, laundry done, house cleaned, sex when he wants it.
However much money he makes, that’s her standard of living, and she has to make do with it. She can nag, I guess, but there’s no real force behind it. If there’s not enough money, she has to go to work but still manage all the primary child and house care.
She can’t easily say “no” to sex without being called a shrew or frigid, and possibly being forced into it anyway. If she tries to resist, and his sexual tastes don’t run to marital rape, or he decides he likes someone else, he can hook up with the new someone else, while wifey’s doing the laundry or something. If the new someone else seems preferable, he can drop wifey and the kids and move on.
You know, my main argument for gay marriage has for a while been that since America believes in Twu Wuv, and I have been brought up to expect that i will marry someday the One Love of My Life, it is my civil right to marry even if that person happens to have two x chromosomes and a uterus too.
that’s the thing. since around the industrial revolution or the romantic period or whatever that ideal of lifelong true love in marriage happened, people with a vested interest in keeping marriage from changing are going to have to confront the fact that in a venn diagram, the set of people who love each other in that lifelong passion sort of way does not perfectly overlap the set of people in heterosexual monogamous relationships.
something has to change: either our rules on what constitutes marriage, or our attachment to Twu Wuv. Guess which is harder to change? I’m betting that wuv will conquer all, myself.
As you pointed out, Amanda, a similar shift to this one applies to situations like that of Bristol and Levi. the narrative has already changed away from the shotgun wedding in the non-crazy parts of this country in the face of widespread attachment to the idea of sex for pleasure, (and also ill-advised teenaged romances) so we can’t really manage to wish a lifelong loveless marriage on them now that they’ve made it clear it isn’t what they want.
I’ve recently had an eye-opening experience regarding conservatives, patriarchy, and marriage. My little sister, who is 19, absolutely brilliant but slightly allergic to hard work, recently decided to drop out of college, get pregnant and marry herself into a conservative family.
I don’t know what was going through her head, but she had skated through high school, she has always been a bit spoiled being the baby of the family, and for the first time in her life, our family was having financial trouble and we were pushing her hard to do better in college, so I think she found a way to get the praise she craved and the stuff she wanted by wholesale buying into the patriarchy.
It’s interesting, because the transaction was so transparent. After numerous failed attempts and a fertility specialist, my sister got herself pregnant. The boyfriend’s family then insisted that they get married though there really wasn’t any love involved in the relationship. Once my sister agreed to the marriage, and she agreed quite quickly, she was showered with attention, praise, and gifts, especially because the pregnancy was high-risk, so it became this creepy cult of the fetus, with people buying her toys and gifts for this six-week old fetus and describing it like it was already a very real baby. They also paid entirely for a very nice wedding with over a hundred guests and purchased for her a pricey engagement ring (she was insisting on a “large rock"). My sister tried to get a new car out of the deal too, since the father of the family works for a luxury car dealership, but she wasn’t able to.
Now, what did the conservative family get out of it? First of all, they get the baby. It was made clear at the wedding ceremony that the baby was going to be baptized in the faith and that my sister was expected to convert as well. Second, they get to keep their respectability, since this was a bit of a scandal for the church. In addition, my sister now submits completely to the family. She lives in their home and lives by a very strict set of rules that includes a 7pm curfew unless she is out with her new husband. She now dresses more conservatively and speaks in this little girl voice about frivolous things like baby clothes and shopping. No politics, no opinions, and her new husband can do no wrong, which is a problem, because he’s an unemployed pothead, so she keeps making excuses for him.
I guess what I’m saying is good for Bristol, because my sister is living the conservatives’ dream and I think long term, she will be utterly miserable. Heck, I think she’s miserable right now, she just won’t admit it to herself. Marriages shouldn’t be a duty and they shouldn’t be a punishment, they should be equal partnerships that are enthusiastically entered into by both parties.
You know they actually hire idiots to tour around catholic high schools - and some public schools - and preach about how it is totally all up to the women to not tease and to say no, no, no because teh boyz can’t controlz themselvz.
Wonderful, huh.
Given the quantity of oxycontin that Levi’s mom is up for dealing, has it occurred to any of these dimwits that maybe, just maybe, she’s breaking this off for the sake of the baby?
It is evident that Miss Marcotte’s ideal world has little place for sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis. Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.
I am utterly confused. A wingut is mocking freedom, rights, autonomy and self-expression? But, isn’t that what patriots die for? Isn’t obedience, submission, and abnegation of the self what teh evil Mooslims and Communists want?
I just can’t wrap my mind around it. Freedom and rights are bad. Obedience and submission are good.
War is Peace?
Freedom is Slavery?
Ignorance is Strength?
I once read this book where a man told the story of how his father gave him advice: “Don’t sleep with someone you wouldn’t marry.” I figured it was a pretty good guideline for most people since we apparently have this insane attachment to fucking only within the bounds of marriage. Didn’t mention a baby, didn’t mention duty - just said, don’t sleep with someone you don’t dig enough to live with for a long time. And the sex is probably better too.
I hope Bristol finds her happiness on her own terms =)
either our rules on what constitutes marriage, or our attachment to Twu Wuv. Guess which is harder to change? I’m betting that wuv will conquer all, myself.
Oh, you’re dead on with that, cedarcrane. Back in the days of Courtly Love, everyone knew that marriage was all about property and inheritence. It was considered impossible to have true passion for your spouse--you could only feel that way for a lover...so you have all these Courtly Love romances about affairs. Guenevere and Lancelot, for example, were quite happy with one another and Arthur didn’t care in the earliest written versions.
However, it was the priests who did all the writing, and the adultery bothered them. They created the entire Grail Quest to pry some of the Courtly Love aspects away from Arthurian Legend, and continued to fight about having to transcribe ‘courtly love’ tales.
But the basics are there-->people do love each other. Marriage is mutable and changes. Now that marriage and true love are supposed to overlap, and duty, possession and inheritance have been stripped away, it’s not going to go back.
Trying to push it back in the closet is fruitless when even the most conservative abstinence-only, procreational sex only people are still couching their arguments in “One True Love/Soulmate” terms.
Foxling, I’m sorry your sister has gone that route. Unfortunately, she’s made her bed, and she’s going to find it uncomfortable to lie in it.
How does the rest of *your* family (parents, other siblings if you have them) feel about what’s happened to your sister?
Caren, “Freedom”, “Rights”, “Democracy” — those are just words you use to get the proles to vote for you. They don’t have any real meaning…
Mike, you know damn well they have meaning - so long as we restrict our conversation to the second amendment!
Hey! I remember Hector. Judging by his commentary, it’s got to be the same person. How I haven’t missed reading Hector’s hateful comments for the last several years.
Honestly, my ideal world, too, has little place for obedience (for the sake of obedience), submission (outside of consensual, mutually pleasurable activity), abnegation of the self (perhaps he means “abnegation” rather than the Department of Redundancy Department), and kenosis (since I think people should, you know, be people). Unlike Ms Marcotte’s ideal world as divined by Hector, my ideal world certainly has a place for sacrifice and obligation as well as scare-quoted horrors like freedom and rights and autonomy and self-expression. I’d love to see Hector actually live his words. He clearly isn’t practicing kenosis or submission (which are, I’m again guessing by the way Hector is using those terms, synonymous). I’d have to guess he isn’t abnegating his self either and that rather than practicing obedience and sacrifice and submission, he expects others to do those things for him.
I’m glad that Hector has no power to dictate the terms by which I live. I wish him luck not being such an obvious hypocrite, though.
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Thanks for letting me vent. We’re all kind of in shock. We’re a bunch of godless atheists and pagans who believe strongly in feminism, even my brother, so we’re all just sitting around, scratching our heads, wondering where we went wrong.
What’s with this “Miss. Marcotte” shit? Seriously. Wingnuts do that faux-respect bs all the time and it really creeps me out.
Well, to be fair, Hector is a full-scale, unrepentant, ‘the Enlightenment was a bad idea’ sort of guy. I very much doubt that he would waste a lot of his time defending, in bad faith, a document like the Declaration of Independence. He seems to have a little too much pride to go that far.
He is really, really, really wrong about it. But he doesn’t make the popular claim that the majority of the Right does, that the best expression of American freedom is to completely conform to the middle American lifestyle and reject all deviance from that model.
Well, to be fair, Hector is a full-scale, unrepentant, ‘the Enlightenment was a bad idea’ sort of guy.
Certainly. In the sense that he’d like to be living as royalty under a pre-enlightenment society. I just don’t think he expects to have to “submit” or “abnegate” or “practice kenosis” himself. He certainly has shown no hint of any of that online. Unless there’s some chat room he spends a lot of time in.
Wingnuts do that faux-respect bs all the time and it really creeps me out.
It just makes using faux civility and faux respect on them that much more effective. They really can’t stand it. “My esteemed colleague, X, is sadly mistaken on the facts of Y,” can make their heads explode.
JoAnne, I never said patriarchy wasn’t worse for women. But “bad for women” sure as hell doesn’t mean “great for men”, and the march to the altar is a good example. I firmly believe men are better off if they have the option to fall in love with an equal and enjoy all the benefits of having someone you really share your life with, not just your bed.
I will say the marriage you describe, JoAnne, while ideal for sadistic, evil men is not actually ideal for men who haven’t had their souls crushed by the patriarchy. There’s men whose cocks get softer, not harder, when women aren’t into it, too.
“Mike, you know damn well they have meaning - so long as we restrict our conversation to the second amendment!”
...sorry, I forgot… 
Most people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, think of marriage primarily as a romantic occasion justified by how happy your beloved makes you. That’s the mainstream position, even amongst pretty sexist people. We Americans, barring a few hard core right wingers (who currently control the Republican party), believe in Twue Wuv, and that’s that.
I knew all these crazy people growing up who actually didn’t believe in the system that has been in place for the last 150 years or so. They believed in a puritan model of courtship, where a young man takes an interest in a girl (GIRL being the operative word, the idea usually is that this is happening in high school), spends time getting to know her family, and then asks her father for permission to marry her. I thought those folks were pretty weird, but even they believe that the occasion for all of this patriarchal nonsense is that the boy truly loves the girl and they think they will be happy together.
Shit, even in cultures which still use arranged marriage, the whole thing is usually built around the idea that the two individuals will be a good match and make each other happy.
Jha, the problem with that advice is most people sleep with people that aren’t long term prospects, but you can’t know that until you’ve hung around for awhile. But if you believe that every sexual partner has to be marriage material, you won’t admit that you were wrong, and you’ll stay in bad relationships longer than you should.
Deliberately sleeping with someone you don’t want to be with more than a week is sometimes a way to buy yourself freedom by getting over that ridiculous social expectation.
I’ll have to try that, Jake Squid.
Foxling—I’m sorry to hear about your sister. She kind of reminds me of my own sister who switched from hanging out with the free-wheeling, liberal theater folks to uptight, conservative Mormons. She was dating some Mormon dude for awhile and became “normal” again after they broke up. It’s like her whole personality changed during that time. She was all obsessed with starting a family and making babies. I think she was doing the whole Finding Your Own Identity thing one does in their late teens and early twenties. Maybe your sister is doing the same thing. It might be harder for her to separate herself from that situation if she changes her mind. I wish her the best.
Cat Ion, I don’t even know if it’s faux respect to call me “Miss”. Seems like a straightforward attempt to belittle my adult status by using an honorific that’s traditionally held only by children and women who have minor status.
I knew Schiffren many moons ago—friend of a friend kind of thing. Had a huge fight with her about unions at a Sunday brunch while others cringed.
I recall her contemplating having a child without benefit of marriage in her early thirties. Wingnuts tend to have short memories.
Also, @ Foxling - virtually the same thing happened to my step-sister. I’m pretty sure the pregnancy wasn’t deliberate, but she went from bad seed to holy vessel faster than you can say Kinder, Kuche, Kirche.
I recommend “How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America” by Christina Page.
Great book.
One of the things she does is outline the statistics of how unhappy people were in their marriages in the 1950’s, and how many marriages were compelled by unplanned pregnancy. People got married because they “had to,” and were then miserable for the rest of their lives.
That book is brilliant, as is Cristina. I don’t know why it wasn’t a NY Times bestseller.
I get that, Amanda. But, I’m also reminded of wingnut posts referring to a “Mr. Taylor”. I mean, why the hell can’t they call you “Amanda” or “Amanda Marcotte” or call refer to Jesse as “Jesse Taylor”? It’s an obnoxious, phony wingnut thing and it drives me batshit. Calling you “Miss.” only makes it doubly worse. I’d have more respect for them if they just made up a nickname or something.
Amanda:
JoAnne, I never said patriarchy wasn’t worse for women. But “bad for women” sure as hell doesn’t mean “great for men”, and the march to the altar is a good example. I firmly believe men are better off if they have the option to fall in love with an equal and enjoy all the benefits of having someone you really share your life with, not just your bed.
I will say the marriage you describe, JoAnne, while ideal for sadistic, evil men is not actually ideal for men who haven’t had their souls crushed by the patriarchy. There’s men whose cocks get softer, not harder, when women aren’t into it, too.
Oh, sure, I agree completely on both counts. But that isn’t compatible with the patriarchal world view, so while it makes no sense to us, forced marriage makes sense to a lot of patriarchal types.
I’m looking at all this operating in a strong patriarchy. The kind where men are the head of the house and women stay home if at all possible and generally keep their mouths shut.
In such a society, the marriage I describe isn’t only a good racket for sadistic, evil men. It works great for men who are “only” self-centered, narcissistic, lazy, or immature. They’re the ones who generally don’t have a taste for marital rape and will instead get their jollies elsewhere if wifey is too tired to play after a full day of managing the kids, the house, the finances and social/family life.
The threat of punishment for failure as a perfect wife and mother, up to and including violence, is implicit in the culture. The husband doesn’t have to raise his hand for that to be ingrained in the wife’s response. He’s also got his hands on the money, so he can starve her out if he chooses.
There’s exceptions made, too, to the forced marriage. The woman can sometimes choose to call it off, though in a strong patriarchal society, she’s in bad shape if she has a baby without an owner, and generally her father will insist (aka formal white shotgun), because he’s not going to want to raise a child that’s not his. It’s that, or an extended stay at the Home for Wayward Girls for the woman, and a one-way trip to the adoption fairy for the perfect white infant.
The “get out of marriage free” cards are usually reserved for the men. Usually it’s because the woman isn’t “good enough.” I mean, for heaven’s sake, you wouldn’t have to marry a prostitute! Or a slut who should have known how not to get pregnant. Or a woman who knew you were already married. Or one who’s the wrong race, or the wrong social class. Only marriages that are in line with the desired social order would be enforced.
Cat Ion, the Miss and Mr. thing is probably being used to “remind” the person they’re talking to that they’re not supposed to so rude as to talk about their naughty bits or have all those egalitarian thoughts and stuff in public. You’re reminding someone to “act like a lady/gentleman.”
If the other person stops talking about those uncomfortable things, you’ve effectively silenced her/him.
If the other person continues, they’ve “shown they have no class” and can be ignored.
Hector is nuts. He comments a lot over on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog at The Atlantic, and he comes off as a sort of hairshirt-wearing socialist Catholic—hates materialism and the culture of greed, deeply suspicious of corporations, but also incredibly misogynist and suspicious of, well, bodily pleasure. He really seems to think that virtue and happiness are pretty much mutually exclusive.
Let’s face it. We have no idea who the child is better off with. For all we know Levi is the soul of sanity and Bristol is a total irresponsible psychotic in private. I will also note that now that Gov. Palin has lost her bid for the VP’y it matters not a jot what her family’s travails are. Put inelegantly, it’s none of our fucking business, no?
Cat Ion, I don’t even know if it’s faux respect to call me “Miss”. Seems like a straightforward attempt to belittle my adult status by using an honorific that’s traditionally held only by children and women who have minor status.
Amanda Marcotte on 03/12 at 09:49 PM
I dunno, Amanda. I have a hard time shaking the habit that I picked up in Texas of respectfully referring to every woman over, say, twenty as “ma’am”. Normal enough down there, from what I recall, (and VERY normal for very “southern” places like Louisiana), but, umm, less so here in Canada and occasionally seen as “aging” the woman to whom it is addressed.
Well, when College Republicans pull the courtliness thing, it’s generally to muddy the waters and ward off direct accusations of stupidity, racism, sexism, or homophobia. Or idiocy. The hope is that you’ll be lulled into joining the dance around these unpleasant truths. I think it’s more an adaptive response to cognitive dissonance than a conscious strategy.
Hector is nuts. He comments a lot over on Ta-Nehisi Coates’s blog at The Atlantic, and he comes off as a sort of hairshirt-wearing socialist Catholic—hates materialism and the culture of greed, deeply suspicious of corporations, but also incredibly misogynist and suspicious of, well, bodily pleasure.
It’s the same ‘Hector’ who comments at Yglesias: a youngish South Asian-American High Anglican Crusader Knight who quotes St Augustine and other Church Fathers all the time. basically wants it to be 1150, and thinks that everything post-Renaissance is ‘hipster trash’. Today he was calling for a military dictatorship in Pakistan. I’d bet good money that he’s a twentysomething virgin. He’s truly unrepresentative of anything other than himself.
As for the Bristol Palin thing: absent the family’s prominence and the acres of press, you can imagine the kid being raised to think that Sarah was his mother and Bristol his big sister. Happens all the time. So the gossip from Alaska—not just from Andrew Sullivan—was, in a time-shifted way, well-grounded in certain social practices. And those practices are actually anti-patriarchal in certain ways, at least in the form that it took dating back to the days before widely-available contraception, because having a grandmother or aunt or even a friend of the family raise a kid after an unintended teenage pregnancy was a way to allow the mother to have a life that wasn’t set in stone by one act.
I’m fairly confident that Sullivan grew up knowing people his parents’ age or slightly older who fit that category—the uncle who wasn’t quite an uncle, the aunt who looked very different from the other siblings. It wasn’t the product of religious virtue, but practical necessity.
If anything, the reason that men (supposedly) don’t want to get married is the fear that making it official drains the romance out of relationships, where babies sweep in one door and sex out the other.
As I recall, weren’t people here pointing out recently that this is in fact the case (well, the less sex due to the burden of children and the toll that takes on a relationship)? I know for a fact that it was one factor that came into play when my wife and I decided that it was another reason why we chose not to have kids.
There’s men whose cocks get softer, not harder, when women aren’t into it, too.
The sexiest thing a woman has ever said to me was, after a long period of foreplay, “Fuck me right now or I’ll kill you.”
Any guy who doesn’t want to hear his partner say that and mean it is goddamn insane.
Cat Ion, the Miss and Mr. thing is probably being used to “remind” the person they’re talking to that they’re not supposed to so rude as to talk about their naughty bits or have all those egalitarian thoughts and stuff in public. You’re reminding someone to “act like a lady/gentleman.”
Perhaps, but conservatives tend to be very traditional, even with such minor issues as how to address other people. Certainly by choosing “Miss,” Hector is deliberately avoiding using what is now the acceptable honorific for women: “Ms.” But going for a more formal way of addressing someone doesn’t necessarily equal belittling them or trying to guilt-trip them into not talking about their naughty bits. I still catch myself when I’m just about to address someone as “Mr.” or “Ms.,” and I still use those terms in correspondence where many other people wouldn’t bother. But I was raised to be rather formal (by a liberal mother) and it’s hard to shake that.
keshmeshi: “Certainly by choosing “Miss,” Hector is deliberately avoiding using what is now the acceptable honorific for women: “Ms.” But going for a more formal way of addressing someone doesn’t necessarily equal belittling them or trying to guilt-trip them into not talking about their naughty bits.”
They don’t refer to Rush Limbaugh as Mr. Limbaugh, though. He’s Rush, or Limbaugh. So the question remains, why are they so formal? Is it genuine, or sarcastic?
When I hear someone call a woman “Miss Jones,” I immediately think of grade school. Our teachers would use that form of address when they were angry, to remind us to behave. Maybe your experience is different.
As I read that Schiffren quote, she does blame the guy as much as the gal for careless sex. It also appears she’s not sparing either of them condemnation because, after all, iokiyar. Since I’ve only recently become aware of her existence, I wonder whether she often makes more sense to the liberal ear than she intends, is actually more reasonable than most conservatives, or is this a freak departure from her typical pronouncements?
Shorter version of Hector’s views on marriage and sex: If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
Funny how the people who claim to want to protect the sanctity of marriage have the weirdest and most disturbing conception of it.
Also, I’d pay good money to see Hector’s marriage proposal if he ever gets down on one knee. Something like “Would you like to submit, obey, sacrifice… heck I’ll just say it. Wanna be truly miserable and have me around for the rest of our lives?” I wonder if Kay Jewelers or De Beers could still make an add out of that sort of thing.
Also, I’d pay good money to see Hector’s marriage proposal if he ever gets down on one knee. Something like “Would you like to submit, obey, sacrifice… heck I’ll just say it. Wanna be truly miserable and have me around for the rest of our lives?”
It’s more like Hector talking to his potential wife’s father and saying, “Can I buy your daughter?”
I just had a moment tying all these things together; maybe I’m just late to the game.
1) Teenage men are expected, in the boys-will-be-boys tradition, to get drunk and get laid.
2) Girls and women are expected to set boundaries, act sufficiently chaste, and prevent men from getting laid, or
3) Girls and women who have sex must resign themselves to being sluts and Bad People; combined with
4) Our cultural rape-as-romance narrative, that with a good fucking she’ll be totally into you, and finally
5) The denial that teenagers have gonads and refusal to accept their sexuality, or fully prepare them for it, all together leads to
Not just the belief that boys pressuring girls into sex means the girls are totally hot for it, but also, grounds for the idea that if she becomes pregnant, then all that sex makes her a slut, and a bad person, and therefore precisely the kind of girl you DON’T want to marry. It’s culturally legitimised permission for boys to dump pregnant girls, feeling they have the moral high ground, and create all those bad single mothers.
Ahhhhh, the “sanctity of marriage” hard at work in the rightwing mind. Brings moisture to one’s eyes.
My mom warned me in high school not to sleep with any dude I didn’t want to marry. It wasn’t really intended to be an abstinence-until-marriage message, more a “don’t sleep with some spotty idiot” message.
There was an interesting call on this week’s Savage Lovecast, a woman was calling because her best friend was dating some creepy dude who was trying to rush her into marriage, and going way too fast when her friend was a virgin still, etc. Amidst all of the advice and interpretation, Dan offered a very insightful suggestion: That maybe this woman was intentionally going to sleep with this asshole just to “get the job done” and lose her cherry (when, for a lot of women, the act of having sex for the first time is uncomfortable and painful and not really worth holding on to), and not marry him and sell the ring and move on with her life. But because admitting that in our culture would make her a Slut and a Bad Person, she’s hanging off of the old “I love him” chestnut to save face with her judgmental friends and family. Which I thought was really important to point out. The whole “Don’t sleep with someone you don’t plan on marrying” in the day of birth control and legal abortion is pretty ridiculous: yeah, you should still take precautions and definitely don’t catch a disease, and I still think you should at least respect the person you’re having sex with even if you don’t love them ... but sometimes it’s a blessing to sleep with someone you don’t want to marry. With your awkward, embarassing sex out of the way with some random person who you aren’t really interested in maintaining contact with, you can save the practiced, amazing sex on someone you love.
Am I the only one here who had never heard the word “kenosis” before?
I’m sure Hector would make a big deal about what a Godless, selfish, uncultured heathen that makes me.
But if Hector is Catholic then, based on the five minutes of Googly research I’ve done so far, he’s on thin ice, because the Wiki entry and Catholic Encyclopedia link that led me to suggests it is far more an Eastern Orthodox and Protestant buzzword; Roman Catholics describe the concept in other words; the Encyclopedia emphasizes that Jesus’s humbling to human state was limited. (At any rate in my own Catholic upbringing I never heard the term, though I am certainly familiar with the concept).
In fact Hector’s “sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis” would seem to make the obscure Greek word redundant; Catholics at any rate don’t seem to use the word to describe the positive aspect of becoming paradoxically greater by subordinating one’s worldly, limited self to the transcendent purpose of God, which is, I gather, basically the point of “kenosis.” In short, “sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self” are not really good things in themselves; they are good because we are fallen, warped to evil; therefore “self-emptying” (which is what “kenosis” is derived from in Greek) is necessary to allow the good, true purposes of created beings to come forth. This, if I remember my Christian orthodoxy correctly (and I know it as much from CS Lewis as actual Catholic teaching) is why Jesus’s own kenosis in becoming human and dying on the Cross was necessary, not because God intended a universe of suffering and destruction.
So just what good would come forth of Bristol Palin’s “sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self” in the form of marrying Levi? As far as I can see, not only would this be a grim reinforcement of patriarchy in our heathen eyes, it would seriously undercut Sarah Palin’s standing; if we all agreed that maintaining the secular order as held by wingnuts of “woman marry man and raise babby for him” was a good or necessary thing, then what the hell is this woman doing as mayor, Governor, and Vice-Presidential candidate (with, had McCain somehow won, a very good shot at becoming the actual President) instead of obligingly, obediently, submissively abnegating herself to raise the damn kids? No doubt someone is suggesting that had Sarah Palin “sacrificed” herself in that way her daughter wouldn’t be out creating scandals--nonsense of course, but the R’s are in a real box considering that Governor Palin was their appeal to people who think in just that way.
I suppose Hector is right; I certainly don’t share a reverence for self-negation as a good thing in itself with him, as he claims. Of course I don’t think he really thinks that way consistently either; it’s a paradoxical way of thinking and that’s why the Catholic stuff I’ve found so far on the subject tends to be full of caveats and waffling. I understand the logic as emanating from the complexities of a dominator worldview attempting to fully encompass human experience and potential by displacing the Patriarch to the mysterious status of Creator of the Universe, and then recreating the patriarchy on Earth in its crudest form and baptizing it as somehow its own opposite in Eternity--while keeping crude and simple here and now.
Aren’t “sacrifice” and “obligation” just as much “buzzwords” as “rights” and “self-expression?”
For instance, fundies could “sacrifice” their comfortable moral certainty and “abnegate the self” in curbing their indulgence in finger-wagging. Fundies can then fulfill their “obligation[s]” to question norms for themselves and respect other people. So, fundies, stop crowing about your “rights” to have everyone live your way and your “freedom” to impose your values on everyone else! Too many rights and freedoms in your “ideal world” and not enough “obligation” and “sacrifice”! Tsk tsk.
Humm, I make a practice of calling my students (undergrads) Miss or Ms or Mr. It seems more polite and calling them by their first name all the time (I do use first names sometimes.) I have tended to reserve Ms. for the older female students, but haven’t been consistent and often use Ms. regardless of age. Perhaps I should reconsider and abandon “Miss’ entirely for “Ms.” I thought of it as an age thing rather than being derogatory.
===========================
With your awkward, embarrassing sex out of the way with some random person who you aren’t really interested in maintaining contact with, you can save the practiced, amazing sex on someone you love.
but then, maybe if you’re with someone you love they will enjoy helping you practice and get better… J
My mom warned me in high school not to sleep with any dude I didn’t want to marry. It wasn’t really intended to be an abstinence-until-marriage message, more a “don’t sleep with some spotty idiot” message.
My parents didn’t give me that on, merely a quiet “If you do it, be careful” comment. In this case, I don’t think it’s because I’m male; I’m not sure, but I believe my sister received the same. My parents were/are surprisingly liberal regarding that sort of thing, considering where they grew up. Amusingly, where they were conservative it was with regard who I married: despite belonging to the most liberal denomination in Canada, they were overly concerned about me coming home with a Baptist or, God forbid, a Catholic. Contraceptive premarital sex to my hearts delight, no problem; Roman Catholic wedding ceremony? Forget it, buster.
They mellowed on that point later. First they conceded that another Protestant was okay. Then Catholics weren’t so bad. After I said that some day I’d introduce them to the Jewish Asian French-speaking immigrant I’d find someday to elope with, they realized that they were being dumb about the issue. They even took my out-of-the-atheism-closet well.
Keith—I wasn’t trying to be an exhibitionist, I was merely trying to say that the “don’t fuck someone you wouldn’t marry” rhetoric can be used by people who aren’t hard-line conservatives (my mom definitely isn’t) as a means of trying to protect their children from what they feel are the perils of sexuality. Potential babymaking aside (which wasn’t really a big concern for me, my mom would have thrown me the biggest abortion party a 16 year old could dream of), I think that her advice was aimed more towards the fact that most of the guys in high school are either Losers, Dipshits, or Assholes*, and if I was going after someone older he was likely a Pervert, and that I don’t want to fuck some guy and be completely mortified that I did, I should apply a little litmus test beyond “OMG we’re totally in love” before I let him into my trenchcoat.
So just what good would come forth of Bristol Palin’s “sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self” in the form of marrying Levi?
That’s where it all falls down, of course. Or, as Mr. Foxwell puts it, what is the point of all those things? Because God says we’re supposed to feel bad? No higher spiritual goal is served by entering into a loveless marriage contract; only punishment. Oh, wait, punishment is the point.
Seriously, it’s almost a relief to see them abandon the pretense. I suspect that letting more of their true ugliness show helped us in November. And accurately pointing out that Limbaugh is their avatar is paying dividends. Keep going, guys! You still have a few sane supporters left!
Hey, maybe that’s why the Times picked a misogynist, theocratic little shit like Douthat: because for all the talk of his superficial reasonableness, he can’t really keep a lid on the smug moralism or the kneejerk racism and sexism. It’s all a brilliant ploy to continue discrediting modern conservatism, which is why they didn’t pick a principled conservative writer who’s even occasionally right about something; e.g., Daniel Larison wasn’t squealing over how Sarah Palin is the greatest. Thanks, New York Times! (NB: No, I don’t really believe this was their reasoning, more’s the pity.)
And, uh, I usually directly address the principals as “Ms. Marcotte” and “Mr. Taylor,” because I don’t actually know them [Surreptitiously shoves “Amanda Panda / JesseGon” under rug]. I also use “Professor Bérubé” to address Michael Bérubé, and referred to Chris Clarke as “Mr. Clarke” until he ordered me to call him Chris. That’s just how I roll. And I don’t think I’m a passive-aggressive wingnut. It’s not like I’m saying, “Bless your heart.”
They’re not calling Amanda “Ms. Marcotte,” they’re calling her “Miss Marcotte.”
Ms. and Mr. at least confer some level of respect when responding to someone’s comments. Calling someone Miss in a rhetorical response means “silly little girl pretending to be all grown-uppy and smart.”
Am I the only one here who had never heard the word “kenosis” before?
No, you’re not. But given the context that it came out of the fevered fingers of a conservative, rest assured that the word is probably being used wrongly.
Shorter conservatism: God WANTS your marriage to be the most miserable time of your life, and who are you to disobey God?
They’re not calling Amanda “Ms. Marcotte,” they’re calling her “Miss Marcotte.”
Oh, that’s almost always meant as condescension. I just noted a couple of comments suggesting that any sort of formality in address, including “Mr. Taylor,” was some sort of superiority ploy, and I merely wanted to timorously point out that some of us had it beaten into us with a cat o’ nine tails.
Meanwhile, an entertaining alternative interpretation occurs if one misreads “kenosis.”
Mighty Ponygirl’s right. Context is everything. That you, a decent person, might do something similar in another context is irrelevant. Hector was using it to a) imply that my gender (and probably marital status) excludes me from adulthood and b) that I’m beneath addressing directly. Notice, he uses it to avoid replying to me. He directs his reply to the male blogger and the commenters, and avoids giving me the respect of acknowledging me. Because I’m a child. You can tell by the ladyparts.
Now, that a straight conservative man thinks grown women are children is more than a little disturbing, because that’s a form of emotional pedophilia, is it not?
While I think any man who gets a woman pregnant has the obligation to offer a marriage proposal, it seems as though Bristol didn’t want to get married in this case, and that’s her decision. I think that the link between marriage and procreation should be more emphasized _before the fact_: i.e., you shouldn’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy.
This isn’t inconsistent with the idea that we should marry for love. Maybe the commenter would say that you should only sleep with someone you love.
Mighty Ponygirl’s right. Context is everything.
Certainly, which is why I wasn’t defending Hector’s usage. Just fumblingly trying to ask a couple of other well-meaning commenters to avoid painting with too broad a brush. I guess I’m just a wee bit defensive about my peculiar mannerism.
Maybe the commenter would say that you should only sleep with someone you love.
Unfortunately, this would still require engaging in premarital sex, and embracing the notion that sex with someone you love can be a fun act even without a church wedding involved**. I suspect that the commenter would not actually endorse either of those things.
**Although having sex with someone you love during a church wedding could add some extra spice, I suppose.
But Daryl, why - in that case - would a pregnancy place you under an obligation to propose? If you already love your partner so much you want to marry them, a pregnancy would be irrelevant. Describing a marriage proposal as an obligation only makes sense if you don’t want to do it.
Mighty Ponygirl, Whoops, I was trying to track back to the offending comment and thought it was, Jake squid 3/12 9:15. I guess I found the wrong one. Which one was it, por favor?
To clarify, I’m sure the commenter does believe that marriage for (some addled version of) love is the ideal toward which one should strive. However, in the event of pregnancy, he states that marriage is an obligation, with or without love.
Because otherwise of course the lady and her ‘natural child’ will be Quite Undone and social outcasts and she won’t even get a job as a governess. Or am I confusing Master Hector’s worldview with Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances?
I was referring to the OP
Well, not “Don’t sleep with anyone who you would not be willing to marry in the event of a pregnancy.”
But maybe, as advice for teenage boys, “Don’t sleep with anyone whose child you would be unwilling to support for 18 years, in the (admittedly unlikely) event of contraceptive failure, if your female partner exercises her right to chose not to have an abortion”
“Perhaps I should reconsider and abandon “Miss’ entirely for “Ms.” I thought of it as an age thing rather than being derogatory.”
Well, ‘Miss’ is traditionally reserved for unmarried women much like ‘Mrs.’ is traditionally reserved for married women, a status which has a rough but hardly perfect correlation with age. ‘Ms.’ isn’t freighted with ties to marital status and is generally considered more professional, especially if you don’t know the person you’re addressing well enough to hazard a guess as to marital status. You pretty much can’t go wrong with it, short of insisting on it after they’ve asked you to use one of the others.
Thanks, Mighty Ponygirl, I read right over that one. Must be a man thing, no really.
It’s more like Hector talking to his potential wife’s father and saying, “Can I buy your daughter?
Well, really, how else is an insecure sad-sack like young master Hector gonna get laid? Talk about making a virtue (albeit a miserable one) out of necessity.
Seriously, it bears repeating in simple terms that this is the toxic nexus of Xtian fantasists, extreme free marketeers, RWAs, and Amanda’s NiceGuys®: all of them believe that human relationships must by definition involve some sort of financial transaction.
As to “Mr.” and “Ms.”, etc., it’s one of those areas where I allow a little personal inconsistency: I’ll sometimes lapse back into NYT style (which demands the honorific on second and subsequent references), but more often not (because I’m lazy). And when I do use an honorific, it’s either Mr. or Ms.
When right-wing comment trolls use honorifics, of course, it’s usually passive-aggressive BS or (in the case of “Miss") a deliberate show of disdain for feminism.
Look for more of Teh Crazy from these types as the GOP keeps visibly shuddering due to its own internal contradictions. First the reaction to Steele’s indecisive Kamikaze act, and now this Palin business. And just wait until unemployed Know-Nothings start seriously demanding mass round-ups and deportations of “the Browns” (many of whom are also highly conservative Xtians themselves).
OT, but how does one pronounce “Ms.” when speaking instead of writing? I’m honestly asking. When learning English as a 2nd language in my teens I was taught “Miss” = miss; and “Mrs.” = missus (kinda); but I was never taught the phoneme for “Ms.”
I thought of it as an age thing rather than being derogatory.
It is, but the cut-off age between “Miss” and “Ms.” is 18. A high-schooler is still “Miss,” but by the time she gets to college, she’s adult enough to be “Ms.”
“Mizz”, as far as I’ve ever heard.
OT, but how does one pronounce “Ms.” when speaking instead of writing?
I’ve always heard it as “miz,” which might get a little confusing depending on one’s accent. I’ve heard Southerners compact both “miss” and “mrs.” into “miz.”
“This isn’t inconsistent with the idea that we should marry for love. Maybe the commenter would say that you should only sleep with someone you love. “
So it’s only inconsistent with the idea that we should marry for love in any universe in which human beings act like human beings. Yay?
But maybe, as advice for teenage boys, “Don’t sleep with anyone whose child you would be unwilling to support for 18 years, in the (admittedly unlikely) event of contraceptive failure, if your female partner exercises her right to chose not to have an abortion”
More to the point, “always practise safe sex, and avoid sleeping with religious nutbars and insecure girls who are baby crazy.” That was pretty much the message both my parents sent me as a teenager, and it served me pretty well.
Dan2108, I’ll chime in that the proper pronunciation (at least in the MSM) is “Mizz”
Please tell me the benefits of only sleeping with someone you love, or would be willing to marry, or have a child with, cause I just don’t get it. I mean love is great, I’m all for it. So is sex. When those things come together- awesome. But they don’t always come together. I just really don’t understand our society’s emphasis on sex being this huge sacred thing. Yes, there are risks, but there are also precautions. But apparently I’m just Slutty McSlutterson, because I’ve had sex with people that I had no intention of ever seeing again. Whoops. Although, I’ve manged to turn out as a happy, healthy, successful and contributing member of society. Single and disease free, even!
It is evident that Miss Marcotte’s ideal world has little place for sacrifice, obligation, obedience, submission, abnegation of the self, and kenosis. Instead, her worldview emphasizes ‘freedom’, ‘rights’, ‘autonomy’, ’self-expression’, and all the other buzzwords of our age.
Sacrifice and submission are much better than freedom and rights for the person who the woman is submissive to.
Agreed, Gracchus.
Unfortunately, people spend so much energy finding someone who 1) will consent to be with them, 2) isn’t completely repellent, and hopefully 3) shares at least one or two things in common with someone that getting down the the really nitty-gritty compatibility issues like “what if there’s an accident” probably makes your average teen/twentysomething feel like they’ll never get laid if they have to worry about silly outlier things like contraception and abortion.
Obviously, I feel like contraception and abortion mismatch issues should fall under the “completely repellent” category, but I guess a lot of people don’t feel the same.
If teenage boys are supposed to have sex and teenage girls are supposed to avoid it, there’s only one way that can work out, and we know how the conservatives feel about male homosexuality.
It is, but the cut-off age between “Miss” and “Ms.” is 18. A high-schooler is still “Miss,” but by the time she gets to college, she’s adult enough to be “Ms.”
I disagree. There’s nothing similar to this for guys who are under 18. When I was in high school, I went by Ms. on the rare occasions that I needed an honorific, and it should be like that for any girl or woman who chooses it. Our honorific should not need to indicate age or marital status, as it does neither of those things for a man.
“I’ve always heard it as “miz,” which might get a little confusing depending on one’s accent. I’ve heard Southerners compact both “miss” and “mrs.” into “miz.””
I think that’s actually where Ms. ("miz") got its start--you already had certain large regions of the country using a pronunciation that eliminated the difference between Miss and Mrs. by the time anyone thought that it might be handy to have a feminine honorific not dictated by marital state.
I disagree. There’s nothing similar to this for guys who are under 18.
Oddly enough, there used to be. Time was, minor or unmarried young men were “Master” rather than “Mister.” That’s why Alfred calls Bruce Wayne, “Master Bruce"--it’s not because Bruce is his employer but because he is a bachelor.
Unfortunately, people spend so much energy finding someone who 1) will consent to be with them, 2) isn’t completely repellent, and hopefully 3) shares at least one or two things in common with someone that getting down the the really nitty-gritty compatibility issues like “what if there’s an accident” probably makes your average teen/twentysomething feel like they’ll never get laid if they have to worry about silly outlier things like contraception and abortion.
Well, I was a teenager in the ‘80s, so there was nothing silly or outlier about using condoms (not sure how it is now for teenagers). And I went to liberal schools, so the chances were greatly reduced of running into a girl who thought that teenage marriage or pregnancy was a desirable outcome.
There’s nothing similar to this for guys who are under 18.
It used to be “Master,” but I don’t think many people use it anymore. Until I was 10 or so I would get birthday and holiday cards addressed to “Master T. Gracchus” from one set grandparents and aunts, but even then it was probably something of a relic—which is what “Miss” should be.
I thought the irony was pretty clear when I said “silly outlier” but I guess not…
I know about the historical use of Master/Mister. But it’s historical, the way Miss/Mrs. should be. We had sense enough to get rid of the male version, and we should do the same with the female version.
I thought the irony was pretty clear when I said “silly outlier” but I guess not…
Nope. Having been a horny teenager, I can see how some of them might seriously consider it a “silly outlier” when they get the opportunity to do something.
Weighing in on the Miss/Mrs./Ms. discussion.
In the fundamental religious circles I was raised in, Miss was for unmarried women, period, Mrs. was for married women, period, and Ms. was a possibility for widows or divorced women - in order to differentiate them from the unmarried women, of course.
I usually just use Ms. unless people tell me otherwise.
And, yes, Ms. is usually pronounced “miz” but it does get a bit hard to tell in parts of the South. I’ve encountered speakers whose pronunciation of Ms. is closer to “miss” and gotten some frustrated explanations after asking variations on “But why are you calling so-and-so ‘miss’ when she’s married and old enough to be your mother?”
Well, that’s the point. It’s not a silly outlier, but if you’re horny and you feel like if you’re going to be all picky about stuff like marriage and contraception when all you want to do is blow your load, it’s going to seem like a silly outlier. Perception/reality, all of that.
There’s nothing similar to this for guys who are under 18.
Actually, there is—boys are called “Master,” men are called “Mr.”
I’ve never heard anyone in the states refer to a boy under the age of 18 as “Master.” The only time I’ve ever heard it in anything vaguely ‘murican was when Alfred calls Bruce Wayne “Young Master Bruce.” And we all know Alfred is British, and as such, is indescribably weird. 
It’s not a silly outlier, but if you’re horny and you feel like if you’re going to be all picky about stuff like marriage and contraception when all you want to do is blow your load, it’s going to seem like a silly outlier. Perception/reality, all of that.
The reality in the ‘80s, though, was that we were all so terrified of AIDS to the extent that even the Xtian fundies were secretly telling their kids to use condoms. These days the preferred fundie “solutions” to preventing STDs and pregnancy seem to be limited to abstinence, blowjobs, and saddlebacking.
Also, if the parents knock it into a teenager’s head that becoming a parent before age 22 or so is not ideal, that teenager learns to spot those who didn’t get that message—even if they are coming on to his horny, geeky self. In that case, if a teenaged girl (or guy) is all moony over babies or weddings or Jeebus, it can be like an instant megadose of saltpeter.
Mighty Ponygirl is correct on the weird but Alfred calls Bruce Wayne “Master Bruce” because he is an old family retainer and he is simply calling him by the name he was known by when his father was the senior male member in the household. Originally “miss” applied only to the senior unmarried daughter in the household and all more junior girls had to wait for that appellation until the senior daughter got married. In addition, traditionally in households where there were servants people might retain their family honorific in the same way they retained their family nickname even after marriage--especially where there was a status differential between their childhood name/father’s status and their married name/husband’s status.
but who cares. The thrust of this original post by Amanda was just fantastic.
aimai
I am as liberal on women’s rights as you can get. My wife is a profession, as am I. She makes more than I do, and that is just great. Women should have unfettered and unencumbered access to medical decisions (including birth control and abortion), without onerous second visits.
But I still tell my son (and will my daughter when she is older than the 9 she is) that you certainly shouldn’t have sex with someone who you would never consider marrying. My point is that birth control is not 100% reliable, and if there is a child, you will have to deal with the consequences for a very long time. So don’t just have sex with some drunk, just because they are available and you feel the sap rising. You might have to deal with the issue for the rest of your life. That is assuming you aren’t accused of rape because the person was too drunk to recall the event. I have seen that happen several times in my field.
If you get an abortion, there is certainly going to be some second guessing if you aren’t able to have kids later, and if the young lady wants the child, then someone is going to be held financially responsible. Its a life changer in any event.
Melkor, respectfully, I disagree. Good on you for teaching your children your values. But thats just it, they are *your* values. And again, consequences? And who says people are having careless, drunk sex? What about two people who are sober, responsible and attracted to each other? Who have enough awareness of themselves to know they are not ready for any form of committment, and so they don’t commit to each other and take precautions and have a discussion in case anything goes wrong and somehow they end up pregnant? That is responsible, safe sex. With no “are you prepared to have any kind of attachment to this person for the rest of your life?” Why is that wrong? Not all non-committed sex is drunken, sloppy and irresponsible.
My point is that birth control is not 100% reliable, and if there is a child, you will have to deal with the consequences for a very long time.
Don’t be dishonest. For your daughter, there won’t just “be” a child unless she chooses to make one. Boys have to be careful about this; it’s just biology. As we all know, that’s why men have such a hard time disassociating sex from romance, because they’re gambling so much of themselves when they let a woman have access to their bodies. But women in this country don’t ever have to let a man make the decision about whether they’re going to make a baby, so our daughters just don’t have to restrict their sexual choices the way our sons do. It’s not fair, but hey, what can you do? It’s how we evolved.
Melkor,
I may be misunderstanding your post, but the vibe I got was that you shouldn’t sleep with a drunk because you might be “accused of rape” NOT that you shouldn’t sleep with a drunk because that would BE rape.
Please clarify that you understand this, before you get flamed.
sophonisba, unfortunately it’s not entirely true that it’s 100% up to the girl whether to carry in this country. There are still many places where abortions are so difficult to get that it’s practically impossible.
But I got your point that it SHOULD be that way, ideally. Just nit-picking.
Also, Melkor, the more I read your post, the more weird it sounds. You seem to be equating “have sex with someone who you would never consider marrying” with “sex with some drunk”, which is just...weird.
Graccus, I was in high school in the early 90s and AIDS was still very much a threat. These days, kids don’t take STIs very seriously--which is one of the reasons that the infection rate is shooting back up. Magic Johnson has been surviving with HIV for nearly 2 decades now, so kids don’t think of HIV the way people in the 80’s and early 90s did. They don’t see it as something that will kill you dead, it’s more of an inconvenience that you live with—like herpes.
Also, the way that abstinence-only education reinforces the romantic notion of “the one” combined with a hyper-sexualized culture that treats sex as an inevitability in “real” relationships, teenagers who are In Love probably feel that the “one-ness” of their special love for their current boyfriend or girlfriend means that this person is automatically clean, because how could they be One and In Love and have this Special Relationship with someone with a dirty, icky disease? In the absence of real education, which states as a matter of fact that barring abstience, condoms when used 100% of the time are your safest bet to avoid disease, and that a lot of diseases are symptom-less for a long while, and that you shouldn’t just “take someone’s word for it” that they’re clean--teenagers will spin their own mythologies, about douching with Coke, about first-time freebies, and how to tell if a person is clean or not by sniffing.
And again, because there isn’t real, responsible eduction on sexuality going on in our high school, things that should be common sense are never taught (like compatibility on things like contraception and abortion—which, let’s face it, will never be taught because schools can’t even breathe the “a” word unless it’s to tell you that if the breast cancer doesn’t get you, the suicide will). They aren’t teaching things like meaningful consent, they aren’t teaching things like safe sex, they aren’t teaching things like respecting your partner, they’re just breaking out stupid props like chewing gum and lollipops and comparing women to expendable commercial items. And until we get these Carrot Top curricula out of our schools, there isn’t going to be any sort of expectation that teenagers should think about the red lights/green lights of sex beyond “Is she ok with me putting my dick in her? Green light!”
addressed to “Master T. Gracchus”
AHA! The mystery of which of the Gracchi brothers you are has finally been solved!
...Oh come on, like everyone wasn’t curious?
addressed to “Master T. Gracchus”
Does that mean you became “Mr. T” when you got older? I pity da fool who doesn’t forgive a lame joke.
But I still tell my son (and will my daughter when she is older than the 9 she is) that you certainly shouldn’t have sex with someone who you would never consider marrying.
I have a slight variation on this. I intend to tell my sons (who are currently 4 and 6) that they shouldn’t have sex with someone they’re not willing to risk having a child with. You don’t have to marry her, but you have to be able to tolerate the risk that she may get pregnant and choose to keep the baby. You need to consider (1) can you handle raising a child right now, and (2) can you handle raising a child with this person, in particular.
We’re not anti-sex. Especially on point 1, they’ll know they can count on me and my wife to be supportive. I’m not saying they can’t have sex until they’re financially independent. But I intend to tell them that they at least need to consider, in advance of having sex with anyone, if lightning strikes and birth control fails, can they absorb the consequences. And, if not, they shouldn’t be having sex with that person.
They’re not calling Amanda “Ms. Marcotte,” they’re calling her “Miss Marcotte.”
Ms. and Mr. at least confer some level of respect when responding to someone’s comments. Calling someone Miss in a rhetorical response means “silly little girl pretending to be all grown-uppy and smart.”
Honestly, “Miss” to me means “I know she’s unmarried.” “Mrs.” means “I know she’s married.” And “Ms.” means “I don’t know if she’s married or unmarried.”
I don’t think it’s innocent. But I think the dig is “a woman I know has never been married”. Not “a little girl pretending to be all grown-uppy”. It’s loaded, but in entirely different ways. What it’s supposed to suggest, to me, is that she’s one of “those” urban liberals. Someone who doesn’t know anything about marriage or child raising. Probably a lesbian (this is actually the strongest suggestion). Definitely hates men.
“What it’s supposed to suggest, to me, is that she’s one of “those” urban liberals. Someone who doesn’t know anything about marriage or child raising. Probably a lesbian (this is actually the strongest suggestion). Definitely hates men.” = Dogwhistle for FemiNazi...?
Wallace, Ms is not a “don’t know” catch-all, it’s a “it doesn’t matter” way of describing that a grown woman as not defined by her relationship as the property of a man. Even though I’m married, I do NOT want people referring to me as Mrs.
Calling a woman Miss is infantilizing, whether it’s intentional or not, and given the tone of Hector’s reply, you’re going to have a hard time convincing me that he wasn’t attempting to dress Amanda down by suggesting she’s an immature little bubble-headed girl unwise in the ways of the world.
Mighty Ponygirl, I agree. I thought it was a more vague “out there, they’re calling her Miss Marcotte.” Re-reading the passage, the context is definitely that she has her head in the clouds.
And Wallace, what do you do with a married woman who doesn’t change her last name? The older system just doesn’t have an option for folks like me. Of course, I chose the easy way out and got a doctorate, so folks who are all in a tizzy about Ms. can just address me as Dr.
Oh Dear God, McCain campaign staff almost married this 2 kids to get him some better poll numbers! Remember this ?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/us_elections/article4837644.ece
September 28, 2008
McCain camp prays for Palin wedding
The marriage of the vice-presidential candidate’s pregnant teenage daughter could lift a flagging campaign
Can you imagine if they went that far ?!!? The poor kids would be saddled to each other now, for political gaming.
Certainly, I was amused this morning at how Ace of Spades and his commenters were unable to get that their bitterness towards Jessica for writing about her upcoming wedding said more about their own self-imposed inabilities to ever really get how great love between equals can be---they’re victims of their own propaganda.
.
Reminds me of the line “You & your kind will rot in the hell you’ve created!”
AHA! The mystery of which of the Gracchi brothers you are has finally been solved!
...Oh come on, like everyone wasn’t curious?
That’s right, you’ve got it: Timmy Gracchus, at yer service. I was the one who calmed the people during the famous honeyed doormice shortage and instituted bee-keeping and pest-control reforms to ensure it would Never.Happen.Again.
Does that mean you became “Mr. T” when you got older? I pity da fool who doesn’t forgive a lame joke.
I’m not the forgiving type—you ought to be ashamed of yourself and hide your face, man. In counterpoint, I was able to abnegate myself enough to resist the temptation (a mighty one in this discussion) to speculate that Hector’s last name is Bates. You displayed no such restraint. Back in the day we’d have thrown you to the lions for something like that, Xtian or not.
Agreed with you @12:44PM, MPG. I don’t think anyone liked the dread fear of AIDS as a means to encourage responsible sex ed and more use of contraception, but that’s what happened. It wasn’t as useful as teaching some of the other important things you mention, but apparently even that’s pretty much gone because condoms = contraception = slut enablers.
I’m not familiar with the prop comedy curricula, except of course for the bananas and the plastic clinical models (which provide middle school students with many opportunities for hilarity). How on Earth are chewing gum and lollipops being used to teach sex ed?
MissPrism: “But Daryl, why - in that case - would a pregnancy place you under an obligation to propose? If you already love your partner so much you want to marry them, a pregnancy would be irrelevant. Describing a marriage proposal as an obligation only makes sense if you don’t want to do it.”
It’s God’s Plan (tm).
God knows you better than you do. He knows what you really need. If his plan is for you to have a baby and be forced to marry someone you don’t like, there’s a reason. If his plan is for you to be married to an asshole who treats you like a dog, that’s something you *needed*. God’s ways are beyond the understanding of mortal man (so obviously it would be way beyond women).
This explanation is convenient for any time anything doesn’t make sense. We can’t live in a senseless world, we just *can’t*. <foot stomp>
Attention Caren-Sun-blocking Creator of Animorphic Pancakes: you forgot to add “Chocolate Rations are Up.” Please report immediately to Room 101.
Gracchus: A lot of sex-ed curriculum these days involves giving a boy a stick of chewing gum or lollipop, then asking him to take it out of his mouth and offer it to the boy next to him, which results in “eww gross no” response, and then make comparisons to how having sex with a girl who isn’t a virgin is like having some other dude’s chewing gum in your mouth.
There’s also the sticky-tape analogies, in which a piece of masking tape is stuck to one kid’s sweatshirt then peeled off, then stuck to another kid’s shirt, then peeled off, and then the LESSON is that premarital sex is like using up all of your “stickiness” so that you won’t be fresh and sticky for the person you love, and that you’ll just end up divorced and worthless and in the trash like you deserve for being such a slutmobile.
Amanda: The book was written in the 1950s, which probably gives the advice more context. For the longest while I stuck to it, and I’ve been pretty happy with the sex so far (except for one incident which sort of blighted the relationship, but it was my first so it took me longer to get away). I still stick to it, mostly because I’d rather stay celibate than risk bad sex. That’s just me, though. I find it’s one of those YMMV things.
I think a more sensible approach is the famous advice given by Nelson Algren, slightly updated to the 21st Century:
“Never play against a guy nicknamed Hack, never eat at a place where the decor is more important than the food, and never sleep with anyone who has more troubles than you.”
Lisa Schriffen is either unwittingly making the case for comprehensive sex ed and contraception or for teenaged marriage as the norm*. Notice how she didn’t mention Bristol’s admission in the interview with Greta Van Susterin that abstinence-only sex ed is unrealistic.
*For the Unwashed, of course, not for Bristol, and certainly not for cosmopolitan Wingnut Welfare Queens like Schriffen or Ann Coulter.
So don’t just have sex with some drunk, just because they are available and you feel the sap rising. You might have to deal with the issue for the rest of your life. That is assuming you aren’t accused of rape because the person was too drunk to recall the event. I have seen that happen several times in my field.
If you are sober enough to know that the person you are about to fuck is too drunk to be consenting to fuck you, then you should be slapped with a rape charge. Because you’d be a rapist.
and never sleep with anyone who has more troubles than you.
bwahahah good luck with that.
Ok its pretty clear that the only thing that would meet with approval from some people here is advice to fuck anyone you feel like at any time and nothing bad will ever happen to your life.
First, drunk people consent to all kinds of things that they wouldn’t sober, from driving drunk, riding on a motorcycle drunk, and having sex with an idiot. Unless they are unconsious, or barely so, it isn’t rape. That is the law, and I have some knowledge about the law.
Second, men (and boys) do not get to decide whether the girl is on the pill, or if she decides to deliver a child after the failure of birth control. That is as it should be- -all the female decision. However, when a woman has a child, the male will have some obligations imposed by law (and i hope by some personal responsibility) and could be responsible for the finances of a child they never intended on having. Also, there is this thing called love. You can love a child and end up hating the parent. Marriage is certainly no innoculation to this development. SO what happens when one parent decides its better to have the child move several states away? Someone becomes an appendege tp a child’s life. That attachment never goes away, and the pain of losing a child is something few of you should ever have to experience.
If you have managed to float through life doing whatever and have had no problems, that doesn’t mean its a good idea for everyone. I dropped acid all through college yet still became quite successful, other people ended up in institutions. i hardly think that i should recommend my life experience to everyone.
I would still prefer that my kids had sex with people they actually think would make a decent parent, it the event there is a failure of birth control.
People who are impaired by alcohol or other substances are legally unable to consent to sex, as whatever substance they’re on is affecting their ability to make rational judgments.
Taking advantage of someone who is impaired in such a way is rape.
End of story.
Something serious is missing from this discussion. What about the kid?
A shotgun marriage is not about “the patriarchy”, it is about both parties sucking in, pooling their resources, and doing what is best for the kid. If the parents have differences, they have to put that aside and find a way to work together to give the kid a good childhood. In the one particular case of Bristol and Levi, if they truly couldn’t make it work then maybe the kid would be better off without them getting married. In general, two adults under one roof can produce more net income, spend more time with the child, and keep a better house than one adult under one roof. This is not “wingnuttery”, it is math.
Furthermore: Sex is an attempt to procreate. This is not “patriarchal” thinking, it is basic biology. For all of our scientific advances in inventing contraceptives so that we can experience the chemical joy of sex—which evolved as an incentive to procreate—without suffering the consequences of actually procreating, once in a while they don’t work.
And some actions can sometimes have undesirable consequences. This is not “nutty”, it is common sense.
From the excerpts, it is obvious that the conservative disapproval is mostly directed against Levi for failing to do his duty to provide a good home to both Bristol and their future child. It makes no sense to rant about the “sexist patriarchy” when everyone involved is blaming the man for failing his responsibility to help raise the kid while acknowledging that Bristol is going to at least be doing hers.
Finally, what kind of feminist thinks the woman alone should be saddled with all of the responsibility of raising a child when it took two people to get her pregnant? If the man has no responsibility, should Levi get off paying child support as well?
Something serious is missing from this discussion. What about the kid?
Actually if you read some of the comments above you’ll find that some of us did think of the kid; they were universally relieved that this would not be yet another hate-filled shotgun marriage...but wait…
A shotgun marriage is not about “the patriarchy”, it is about both parties sucking in, pooling their resources, and doing what is best for the kid.
Ah. This is where you go the most wrong. The forced marriage (force is what the iconic “shotgun” implies and it doesn’t matter if the force is explicitly the force of law with the resources of the state behind it, the overwhelming consensus of the community, or just the unchecked whim of some hillbilly Pappy as in the iconic image) is not about the baby, not about the welfare of the mother, certainly not about the best interest of the father. It is about maintaining a certain social order, regardless of the consequences for the parties involved. The reason that a forced marriage was suppose to be better than none for the “bride” was that under these traditions, the evidence of her having sex outside of marriage branded her as a scarlet woman, an unmarriagable slut, and she and her baby were deemed disposable if she couldn’t hook the man who did it to her, or at any rate some man before the baby popped out.
Around here, this overarching social order is called “patriarchy” which I think is a good though not perfect name for it; I prefer to speak of the “dominator society” but I don’t think it’s worthwhile to explain the difference right now. One reason I do prefer my term is the fallacy you are about to commit, one I see pretty often here and elsewhere--the false notion that “patriarchy” implies it’s a conscious conspiracy of, by, and for men that logically ought always to benefit men at women’s expense. It isn’t; it’s a system that evolved socially and is robust and self-perpetuating, but not particularly for anyone’s personal benefit.
If the parents have differences, they have to put that aside and find a way to work together to give the kid a good childhood. In the one particular case of Bristol and Levi, if they truly couldn’t make it work then maybe the kid would be better off without them getting married. In general, two adults under one roof can produce more net income, spend more time with the child, and keep a better house than one adult under one roof. This is not “wingnuttery”, it is math.
Insofar as this is “math,” doesn’t “math” imply that if 2>1, than N>2 where N is any number greater than 2? Where N is in fact the community the pregnant woman lives in. In other words, why exactly is the problem of finding support for the baby limited to just the mother and/or the guy who knocked her up? If it is the family, as in the cartoon image of hillbilly Pa wielding the shotgun, grimly guaranteeing the wedding takes place, why does their responsibility begin and end with hitching the dude to her, and how can they safely assume that once they have taken care of this legality that said dude will thereafter take care of their grandchild, let alone their own daughter? How safe is she now? If it is an even larger social unit--a church everyone involves belongs to, or the government--and they have the resources to check in and make sure the “happy” couple stays hitched, why aren’t these same resources available to ensure the kid’s welfare directly?
Because damn often, when such mandatory “weddings” were done in the past, the outcomes for wife and kid were grim. If you look realistically at them, you can’t conclude the social practice was about the simple math of pooling resources for the kid; obviously the system didn’t care about that or there would have been interventions of some kind to correct the situation when it went wrong. What mattered was, pregnant woman gets married, pronto, never mind to whom. That was the priority, as evidence as well as the tone of all discussion of the matter indicated.
Well wait, there’s more:
Furthermore: Sex is an attempt to procreate. This is not “patriarchal” thinking, it is basic biology.
Wrongo. “Biology” has nothing to do with “attempts.” It is meaningful to talk of the intent of a social institution like “the patriarchy” even if it too developed mindlessly, because it is an organization of minds and as such people’s intentions are coopted into it as a system. But biology is the outcome of a completely mindless process, evolution by natural selection. Since natural selection does result in an accumulation of information it often seems like a tempting shorthand to speak of “purposes” but this is dangerously slippery at best; at worst, one reason we talk that way is that science used to be Creationist, which was the only other way to account for the increasing complexity of life. Creationism does involve intent, and creationists are generally, in our society anyway, involved with an attempt to impose and maintain a patriarchal order.
If living things just “wanted” to reproduce, our unicellular ancestors had that down pat long before the innovation of sexual reproduction. What imposing the requirement of two individuals coming together to mingle their genetic material in a mix-and-match raffle accomplishes is a much more rapid rate of evolution--over the long haul, positive adaptive traits can be combined and separated from association with other traits that aren’t so beneficial. But none of this was the outcome of anyone’s intention and in that sense it isn’t an “attempt” at all.
As far as human beings are concerned, the requirement that we have sex to reproduce and the association of sexual pleasure with the possibility of reproduction are just arbitrary facts. It seems straightforward to patriarchal thinkers to leverage them into moral imperatives, but it is hardly logically necessary to do as you do:
For all of our scientific advances in inventing contraceptives so that we can experience the chemical joy of sex—which evolved as an incentive to procreate—without suffering the consequences of actually procreating, once in a while they don’t work.
And then we have developed yet other scientific advances. No woman need ever have a baby she doesn’t want to have; the “need” comes solely from elements of society who insist she must complete every pregnancy.
And some actions can sometimes have undesirable consequences. This is not “nutty”, it is common sense.
What is nutty is to insist on responding to the “undesirable consequences” with mandating still more undesirable consequences. That too is unfortunately what has passed for “common sense” in the past.
From the excerpts, it is obvious that the conservative disapproval is mostly directed against Levi for failing to do his duty to provide a good home to both Bristol and their future child. It makes no sense to rant about the “sexist patriarchy” when everyone involved is blaming the man for failing his responsibility to help raise the kid while acknowledging that Bristol is going to at least be doing hers.
You see, I already addressed this: the patriarchy does not lie in who blames whom, but in the framework everyone is expected to see things in. The welfare of the kid can be addressed many ways, but you and the conservatives see only one. Why is that?
Finally, what kind of feminist thinks the woman alone should be saddled with all of the responsibility of raising a child when it took two people to get her pregnant? If the man has no responsibility, should Levi get off paying child support as well?
Tangaroa on 03/14 at 11:04 AM
The kind of feminist that sees a bigger picture than you want to look at, Tangaroa.
melkor: “Ok its pretty clear that the only thing that would meet with approval from some people here is advice to fuck anyone you feel like at any time and nothing bad will ever happen to your life.”
The first half is true, more or less, so long as there is consent (which can’t be given by a minor, or a drunk).
The second half...I’m not sure where you think we don’t believe there are consequences for acts. It’s just that they should be limited to the real ones. Not made-up social ones. If I got pregnant and chose to keep it, then I have to take care of it or find it a home.
Being branded a slut or a loose woman isn’t a “natural” consenquence. It’s not mandated by any physical law or moral imperative. It’s simply a social convention of patriarchy, a system which posits ownership of a woman’s sexuality to a man, or to no one in a state of abstinence. Any other arrangement is “wrong.”
Tangaroa, if you insist on looking at sex as “the way to make babies,” then you’ll have to look at *everything* that way. Social activities are just a way to meet people you aren’t related to so you can have babies. Eating? keeping up your strength so you can have babies. Music? rhythms to dance to, to drive you to sex, to make babies. Work? supporting your babies, and yourself so you can support those babies. Any time you have an idea or a thought, and share it, that’s just peacock preening to attract a mate so you can have babies.
Oops. “If I were not married or in a relationship and got pregnant and chose to keep it, then I have to take care of it or find it a home.”
The forced marriage[...] is about maintaining a certain social order, regardless of the consequences for the parties involved.
The social order meant to be maintained is one where the interest of the next generation is placed above the interest of the current, and one where the child is given a lifestyle within this order rather than one in poverty and directionlessness that tends to inspire a higher rate of criminal behaviour. It is not about “the patriarchy”, it is about the child. The patriarchy was a means to preserve marriage so as to maintain this order. Nowadays we just tell the man and woman to get along.
under these traditions, the evidence of her having sex outside of marriage branded her as a scarlet woman, an unmarriagable slut
And under the same traditions, the man was branded an unmarriagable cad. Either could find someone who would marry them, but not likely from high society.
Insofar as this is “math,” doesn’t “math” imply that if 2>1, than N>2 where N is any number greater than 2? Where N is in fact the community the pregnant woman lives in.
Indeed, there are many communal societies where responsibility for a child is shared among the community. In capitalist America this responsibility belongs to one or two people and the cost of the responsibility is a serious drain on the responsible party’s ability to acquire food, shelter, etc. They can try talking someone else into helping them, but given the cost/benefit analysis, good luck getting help from anyone other than a relative guided by social tradition.
If it is the family, as in the cartoon image of hillbilly Pa wielding the shotgun, grimly guaranteeing the wedding takes place, why does their responsibility begin and end with hitching the dude to her
Because the man and woman are now considered adults and not children. Parents are expected to provide for their children. Adults are expected to provide for themselves. And the parents’ responsibility does not totally end there…
how can they safely assume that once they have taken care of this legality that said dude will thereafter take care of their grandchild
That is what the shotgun is for. I am not joking.
How safe is she now?
That is what the shotgun is for. Europeans had honor killings too. As society advanced, the threat of violence here became the role of the police force.
If it is an even larger social unit--a church everyone involves belongs to, or the government--and they have the resources to check in and make sure the “happy” couple stays hitched, why aren’t these same resources available to ensure the kid’s welfare directly?
Because it is hard to turn the threat of violent force into food. People would generally pitch in labour to build a house, but everyone who could work had the responsibility to work or starve.
Because damn often, when such mandatory “weddings” were done in the past, the outcomes for wife and kid were grim.
Indeed, as was most of life. A lot of the marriages made for Twu Wuv turned just as grim after a few years once the chemical high wore off. These days people are less socially predisposed to causing such trouble and they can divorce if it doesn’t work out.
What mattered was, pregnant woman gets married, pronto, never mind to whom. That was the priority ...
Because a man, never mind whom, could work for food while the woman was busy raising the kid. And if the man who caused the pregnancy was known, it was demanded that he marry the woman.
>Furthermore: Sex is an attempt to procreate. This is not “patriarchal” thinking, it is basic biology.
Wrongo. “Biology” has nothing to do with “attempts.”
Then let us avoid the word “attempt”. Sex is procreation. It just does not always work.
And then we have developed yet other scientific advances. No woman need ever have a baby she doesn’t want to have;
True, but women still have the right to choose whether or not they wish to have an abortion, do they not?
>Finally, what kind of feminist thinks the woman alone should be saddled with all of the responsibility of raising a child when it took two people to get her pregnant?
>If the man has no responsibility, should Levi get off paying child support as well?
The kind of feminist that sees a bigger picture than you want to look at, Tangaroa.
So the big picture that you Truly Scottish feminists see is that women like Bristol who refuse to have an abortion are a kind of abomination for which there is no word, so let us call her a “slut”. Since Bristol Palin is a slut for refusing an abortion, she deserves the weight of the full responsibility of raising the child, and let us hope she has a friendly community to fall back on for support. Meanwhile, Levi bears no responsibility for getting Bristol pregnant since it was Bristol’s choice not to have an abortion. So men can have all the unprotected sex they want without being considered cads, but women who have unprotected sex have the responsibility of acquiring and using contraceptives, having an abortion if the contraceptives don’t work, and raising the child if they make the slutty choice of not having an abortion.
As an only quarter-Scottish feminist, I find this inequality ridiculous. And I think I have the big picture down fairly well, thank you very much.
Tangaroa, do you seriously call yourself any kind of feminist at all? Because you refuse to see the point. You keep saying that things were or are “the way they were/are” as though you see no other possibility. You speak of “honor killing” in the olden days and the police force today, and say “it is hard to turn the threat of violent force into food.”
Um, does it occur to you that human beings might be a bit better than that? That we have brains, and evolved in social units larger than a nuclear family, and that people often do things not just because they are afraid they might get caught and punished if they don’t, but because they hope they might be appreciated and thanked for doing them, or even just because the thing is worth doing regardless of whether it is understood and appreciated at the time? And so there is more to our society in all its forms, at all levels, than mere coercion?
For heaven’s sakes, a shotgun (yes, I get that you were being quite serious; so was I) can compel the Dude to go through the rites, but nothing but perhaps the threat of future vengeance would compel him to treat his forced bride and child decently; obviously then the wife and child’s fate would depend on whether or not he stayed in range of his wife’s kin, and didn’t acquire power to rival theirs as time went on. Or perhaps that in time, he’d come to accept the arrangement--but that whole line of thought presumes dimensions of human society absent from your analyses.
I won’t speak for others who call themselves “feminists,” and I suppose there are those who would suggest I am a poor one myself. But for me, it is all part of a larger humanism, of faith that we aren’t just miserable monkeys beating each other into some kind of grim order and that life seems worthwhile to us for some reason other than mindless programming, whether of the genetic or social variety.
That said, I see history and our world today as full of misery and perverse cruelty, and I account for it by the theory of the dominator society, which holds that we did evolve a grim, battering sort of order that has persisted and elaborated itself because it does solve the problem of what to do about neighboring peoples who are on a similar trip--become like them, develop a militarized society characterized by polarization, ritualized hatred, obsessive competition. That’s the frame I see you operating from, with your limited and grim options.
This bit about accusing me of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy is rich, because you asked “what kind of a feminist...” and I answered. Didn’t say there aren’t other kinds who might agree with you that strict things should happen to Levi--but since for me feminism is a logical aspect of general humanism, which looks first at solving the real problems we have from the full range of options available while doing the least harm necessary, I’d be surprised if any of them agreed with you all down the line.
Whereas you are the one branding us all as saying “screw Bristol Palin” when none of us has suggested any such thing; not only are we claiming to be the Only True Scotsmen, apparently we say True Scotsmen want to ban bagpipes and burn all tartans…
Coming up with real solutions that are better will require creative thought and effort; the one set of solutions we know are full of fail are the traditional ones, because we already know, from both theory and amply demonstrated practice, they are not about solving any particular person’s problems; rather, they are mainly about perpetuating a continual state of war among humans. That can’t be good.
As it happens, young Bristol Palin is the daughter of some parents with real money and also loudmouths who ran around the country denouncing the options of both birth control in advance and abortion after the fact, so they can and probably will pony up to help support their grandchild. Possibly, says my squishy-bleeding-heart nature, out of some genuine love and affection for both that child and their own. My cynical side says that they are in a bit of a bind and would look really bad if they disowned Bristol or made her life too miserable, so prudence will work with basic human decency.
For the more general case--if we were in some kind of severe population explosion crisis in this country, I don’t know what sorts of policies we might evolve, but as things stand, we can afford, as a national community, a decent level of public support for women who do us the favor (such as it is--there are serious ecological reasons to be alarmed at even our current rate of growth) of bearing the next generation. In general human beings are social creatures, on a larger scale than the nuclear family, and all your gruff recitation of “it’s their personal responsibility!” is you expressing your allegiance to a particular ideology, not some kind of self-evident cosmic truth.
As it happens, given our biology, it does take two to make a baby, and given our general nature the man involved might want to be involved in the raising of his child, not to mention stay in pleasant association with this woman who he apparently liked. If he’s a decent person and if the woman involved made her choices freely, without her arms being twisted in any way, then presumably she got with him in the first place because she liked being with him, and there’s the positive basis for a family for you right there, no shotguns or scarlet letters required.
In any state of human evolution, where the positive bond between two young (eventually, not-so-young) people of opposite sexes who have made a baby or more between them does not suffice to keep them all caring for each other, the larger community is always there. The idea that the larger community is there mainly to force marriages where they don’t want to exist (and meanwhile forbid ones that do!) has nothing to do with wise provision for the next generation and everything to do with cultivating misery for purposes of social manipulation.
In the case of Bristol and Levi--well, I’d rather not judge either of them since they come from a toxic circle and neither has had much time to find their own way. (That’s exactly what Bristol was regretting in that interview some weeks back, the one her mom swept into and shut down shortly after...) I have not paid enough attention to gossip about either to retain any basis for judgments. But if Bristol had chosen to go through with it I would have doubted it was her free choice, whereas her decision not to, running against the social current as it were, seems authentic. In any case it isn’t my business, except that there is the matter of the general social message.
I’m glad she had the courage to make it clear that even in her Republican family in Alaska, she had real options nowadays. The kid will be all right and if she keeps her moxie, so will Bristol. The worst case I envisioned for her and the kid would be if she fit herself into her family’s and larger political circles script, which is dangerous for everyone.
Particularly dependents…
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Maybe they are trying to *protect* gay people from this terrible punishment - I mean sacred sacrament - from god.