"She replied that she had three requirements for him: stop smoking, stop drinking, and stop gambling. My grandfather agreed, immediately dropping all three habits, and never returning to them. They were married for more than sixty years and raised four children.
Today, it is laughable to imagine such a scenario occurring in the U.S."
"She replied that she had three requirements for him: stop smoking, stop drinking, and stop gambling. My grandfather agreed, immediately dropping all three habits, and never returning to them. They were married for more than sixty years and raised four children.
Today, it is laughable to imagine such a scenario occurring in the U.S."
Part of what makes this laughable is, sadly, the loss of the ability young women have to make demands on men at all.
When casual sex is so easily available, and when the "marriageable" dating pool has more men than women, women lose the stance from which they have a natural power to negotiate things like fidelity and good habits from men.
This is probably one of the most insidious ways modern feminism has screwed women, because there is no choice here, you can't really opt out - you have to adjust.
For young women who are very desirable - more physically attractive than average - this is easier to navigate, as you retain some leverage. You also tend to attract the kind of men who have high standards for themselves and are willing to put a lot of work into "woooing" a woman. These tend to be the kind of men who are also willing to invest a lot into anything long term - career, finances, commitment, children. These kind of men build your confidence, which increases desirability and leverage, and you end up being one of the lucky ones with a husband.
But for young women in the "average" department this culture creates huge disadvantages. With fewer marriageable men, and an environment where getting all the benefits of sex and a relationship without commitment, improvement, or sacrifice is easy for most guys to find somewhere, average young women are forced to use other means by which to "compete" - and often casual sex or shacking up is the only one they have.
And then that creates its own feedback loop: a girl has to sleep with men to get their attention, which degrades her self worth, which makes her afraid to make demands on men to be better, which leads to crappy men being drawn to her, and the downward spiral goes on.
I think this is where a lot of the current "queer" identification - which is overwhelmingly in young women - comes from. It's average looking young women who are dropping out of the dating scene with men because they just have insufficient leverage. And since "queer" identities have a lot of social cache, this is the easiest way that is available to them to make some meaning and find a place in society.
I've known multiple young women who were conventionally feminine, always dated and slept with boys, and then, often after a weigh gain, excessive promiscuity, or other event that reduced their "desirability", suddenly declare themselves generically "queer" out of the blue. They never date girls, they never even express any real physical desire in girls, and they don't physically transition into anything. They just announce the "queer" status, revolve their identity around "queerness", and rail against "heteronormativity." They always enter a long phase of nearly complete celibacy.
(This does not explain genuinely bi woman and lesbians, who of course exist because that really is how they are wired.)
Perhaps this "queer" celibacy is just a way for less desirable young women to opt out of a dating scene that is essentially a duck-duck-goose game they know they are going to lose. Maybe its a way to have access to old fashioned chastity while still projecting modern social attitudes.
I also think this culture feeds into the hysteria about "rape" and "harassment". Young women *really do* feel pressured into having sex. I think a lot do sense that their hook ups are not fully voluntary or wanted, not because the man in question is forcing anything physically, but because the entire culture doesn't give an average looking girl any leverage to really say "no." The entire experience makes them feel violated and unsafe, which is psychologically intolerable state for any female mammal, for whom safety and security is such a primal need.
The only way they can make sense of it all is to re-code promiscuous sex as "rape" and project fault for the unpleasantness of the encounter on the man.
Re-coding a hook up as "rape" and making the fault of the man also provides a psychological out for a less desirable young women where, rather than be forced to acknowledge that her lack of leverage is due to something about her lack of desirability, she can feel that she is SO desirable that men seek her out by force.
It's weird and twisted, but I worked at at therapist at a university for years, and after a while you just see some patterns that you can't unsee.
It's just fascinating to me to see old fashioned sexual mores - chastity, vulnerability, claims of victimhood at the hands of men - getting re-engineered as "progressive" expressions of feminism.
"She replied that she had three requirements for him: stop smoking, stop drinking, and stop gambling. My grandfather agreed, immediately dropping all three habits, and never returning to them. They were married for more than sixty years and raised four children.
Today, it is laughable to imagine such a scenario occurring in the U.S."
Part of what makes this laughable is, sadly, the loss of the ability young women have to make demands on men at all.
When casual sex is so easily available, and when the "marriageable" dating pool has more men than women, women lose the stance from which they have a natural power to negotiate things like fidelity and good habits from men.
This is probably one of the most insidious ways modern feminism has screwed women, because there is no choice here, you can't really opt out - you have to adjust.
For young women who are very desirable - more physically attractive than average - this is easier to navigate, as you retain some leverage. You also tend to attract the kind of men who have high standards for themselves and are willing to put a lot of work into "woooing" a woman. These tend to be the kind of men who are also willing to invest a lot into anything long term - career, finances, commitment, children. These kind of men build your confidence, which increases desirability and leverage, and you end up being one of the lucky ones with a husband.
But for young women in the "average" department this culture creates huge disadvantages. With fewer marriageable men, and an environment where getting all the benefits of sex and a relationship without commitment, improvement, or sacrifice is easy for most guys to find somewhere, average young women are forced to use other means by which to "compete" - and often casual sex or shacking up is the only one they have.
And then that creates its own feedback loop: a girl has to sleep with men to get their attention, which degrades her self worth, which makes her afraid to make demands on men to be better, which leads to crappy men being drawn to her, and the downward spiral goes on.
I think this is where a lot of the current "queer" identification - which is overwhelmingly in young women - comes from. It's average looking young women who are dropping out of the dating scene with men because they just have insufficient leverage. And since "queer" identities have a lot of social cache, this is the easiest way that is available to them to make some meaning and find a place in society.
I've known multiple young women who were conventionally feminine, always dated and slept with boys, and then, often after a weigh gain, excessive promiscuity, or other event that reduced their "desirability", suddenly declare themselves generically "queer" out of the blue. They never date girls, they never even express any real physical desire in girls, and they don't physically transition into anything. They just announce the "queer" status, revolve their identity around "queerness", and rail against "heteronormativity." They always enter a long phase of nearly complete celibacy.
(This does not explain genuinely bi woman and lesbians, who of course exist because that really is how they are wired.)
Perhaps this "queer" celibacy is just a way for less desirable young women to opt out of a dating scene that is essentially a duck-duck-goose game they know they are going to lose. Maybe its a way to have access to old fashioned chastity while still projecting modern social attitudes.
I also think this culture feeds into the hysteria about "rape" and "harassment". Young women *really do* feel pressured into having sex. I think a lot do sense that their hook ups are not fully voluntary or wanted, not because the man in question is forcing anything physically, but because the entire culture doesn't give an average looking girl any leverage to really say "no." The entire experience makes them feel violated and unsafe, which is psychologically intolerable state for any female mammal, for whom safety and security is such a primal need.
The only way they can make sense of it all is to re-code promiscuous sex as "rape" and project fault for the unpleasantness of the encounter on the man.
Re-coding a hook up as "rape" and making the fault of the man also provides a psychological out for a less desirable young women where, rather than be forced to acknowledge that her lack of leverage is due to something about her lack of desirability, she can feel that she is SO desirable that men seek her out by force.
It's weird and twisted, but I worked at at therapist at a university for years, and after a while you just see some patterns that you can't unsee.
It's just fascinating to me to see old fashioned sexual mores - chastity, vulnerability, claims of victimhood at the hands of men - getting re-engineered as "progressive" expressions of feminism.