Right wing social theories are, to say the least, strange beasts. One of the strangest in recent years is the IWF-concocted oddball theory that feminists and frat boys are in cahoots to streamline pussy into the beds of frat boys without nary a dinner or a flower purchased for the sweet, innocent future housewives of America who just wanted an MRS. degree and didn’t sign up for hook-ups and women’s studies courses. Now Kathleen Parker has joined into propagating this bizarre theory. (Hat tip.) It’s worth noting that Parker is an eager rape apologist as a general rule, and if any of these college girls that she is imploring to remain virgins were raped by their gentleman courters, all that pseudo-sympathy would go flying out the window, and Parker would eagerly be lining up to slander the victim and whine that feminists just want to ruin young men’s entire lives over something as unimportant as a little sexual violence.
That’s why claims like this make me raise my eyebrows:
Too often what follows the hook-up is emotional pain and physical disease, the combination of which has created a mental health crisis on American campuses.
Women who have sex before marriage voluntarily are subject to mental illness. But if a woman is held down and forced to have sex against her will, then she’s just blowing it out of proportion after the fact. There’s only one conclusion I can reach from reading these articles next to each other: Parker thinks having sex because you want to is worse than being raped. You could probably take that a step further and suggest that if young men want to preserve the mental health of their female companions, they’re better off raping them than having voluntary and god forbid pleasurable sex with them.
Women can’t have pleasurable sex and survive with their mental health intact, according to Parker, because women, unlike men, are non-thinking animal creatures that are slaves to our hormones.
The consequences are worse for young women, says Grossman. In her psychiatric practice, she has come to believe that women suffer more from sexual hook-ups than men do and wonders whether the hormone oxytocin is a factor. Oxytocin is released during childbirth and nursing to stimulate milk production and promote maternal attachment. It is also released during sexual activity for both men and women, hence the nickname “love potion.”
Feminists don’t much like the oxytocin factor, given the explicit suggestion that men and women might be physically and emotionally different. But wouldn’t a more truly feminist position seek to recognize those hormonal differences and promote protection for women from the kind of ignorance that causes them harm?
Fucking some two bit frat boy that you never want to see again=breastfeeding? That’s a lot of grasping at straws to make this case. But what’s interesting is the parts I’ve highlighted. Okay, men and women both release oxytocin, which makes men and women different. Let’s try that construction with non-sex-phobic statements, and you’ll see why it makes no sense.
- Men and women both have two legs and two feet. Feminists don’t admit this, because they don’t want to admit that men and women are different.
- Men and women both communicate through language, written and oral. Feminists don’t admit this, because they don’t want to admit that men and women are different.
- Men and women both put their pants on one leg at a time. Feminists don’t admit this, because they don’t want to admit men and women are different.
- Men and women both laugh when they find something funny. Feminists don’t admit this, because they don’t want to admit men and women are different.
- Men and women are both carbon-based life forms of the species Homo sapien. Feminists don’t admit this, because they don’t want to admit men and women are different.
Parker was apparently hoping that the stereotype that women were slave to their hormones and men masters of their destiny would do the work in concealing her inability to make a tiny bit of sense. Oh well, her belief that women and women only become seriously attached after pleasurable sex does go a long way towards explaining her backwards beliefs about sex (bad for mental health) and rape (you’re fine, quit whining). If you were crying and fighting during the whole thing, you’re quite unlikely to be releasing pleasure hormones. And therefore no oxytocin withdrawal, and no mental illness. It makes perfect sense! Trauma is better for you than joy, at least if you’re a hormone slave female. If you really worked on this theory, you could concoct an overall pro-patriarchal argument that women need to be oppressed for their own good, because having freedom leads to joy and joy is ruinous for women.
Parker then threatens young women with death if they have casual sex, because they’ll get HPV and then cancer and die! She doesn’t even mention that there’s a fucking vaccine now, so actually you won’t if you get the vaccine. Interestingly, she doesn’t mention the far more deadly HIV, quite possibly because she’s trying to make the case that sex is only bad for women, and HIV kills both men and women.
But what I really loved was this ending:
To all good and bad, there is an inevitable backlash, and casual sex has lost its allure for many students. Having learned painful lessons from their elders’ misguided altruism, they are seeking other expressions of intimacy.
At Duke University recently, Stepp asked how many in her audience of about 250 would like to bring back dating. Four out of every 5 raised their hands.
Talk about a loaded question. Having read 8 million examples of this talk, I can guess that Stepp basically got up and asked the girls if they’d ever cried their eyes out over a crush or been rejected or had their heart broken. Since that’s about 99% of us, she’s going to get some attention with that. Then she follows up by saying that all these ill effects happen because the dating you’re doing isn’t real dating, and if you were engaging in “real” dating, all the sadness, heartbreak and rejection would not happen. If that doesn’t sell it, Stepp would then imply that if you date-like-you-do and don’t date-like-she-tells-you, then no one will ever love you and you’ll die an old maid. After stuffing girls with stories about how this “real” dating will produce expensive dinners and endless devotion, will turn that idiot college guy you’ve got a crush on into Prince Charming, and save you from ever feeling sad or rejected again, she asks if girls want that. Not sure if a pony is promised as well, but hell, if it gets that 5th arm up, she should add it.
And even though a lot of college guys reject the temptation to revel in youthful male privilege, but instead are respectful, kind and egalitarian in their relationships, there’s still going to be rejection, tears, and heartbreak for some youthful love interests. It’s the nature of the beast of dating, especially when you’re young and still figuring stuff out. And despite Parker’s firm belief that men and women are practically different species, men are fully capable and frequently suffer the pain of heartbreak and rejection. (They can, contrary to Parker’s implications, also catch STDs.) Subsequently, if you painted a fantasy to a group of young men of finding the magic bullet that would land them into a loving, sexually and emotionally satisfying, drama-free marriage without going through the trouble of dating, you’d probably get a lot of raised hands if you asked them if they wanted that as well. Though more would keep theirs down because of the masculine pressure to pretend to be above the feminine desire to be loved, but the fantasy would resonate. But we’ll never know, since no one is going to paint this fantasy to a group of guys in order to try to trick them into not having sex.
They’re selling abstinence to girls with a hard sell full of lies that would put your average time share salesman to shame. But the problem with the hard sell is that as soon as the customer gets a chance to think it over on her own time, without the salesman flitting around promising eternal life if you buy and immediate death if you don’t, the customer starts to realize that she’s been fed a line and will usually change her mind. Once all the excitement dies down, I’m sure a lot of the arm-raisers realize that holding out on sex isn’t going to turn a single piggish college guy into Prince Charming, and the threats that no one will ever love you if you have more than one sex partner is just a trap designed to make sure that you’re scared to hold men to any standard at all, because once you’ve had sex with them, you can’t move on or anything. And those who don’t realize this immediately will learn the hard way—the fact that a few women will take this crap seriously and suffer for it just makes the lying to young women triply odious.
54 Responses to “The wacky, upside down world of a pro-virginity rape apologist”
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Wow, that kathleen parker “the sex offender next door could be your darling blue eyed boy!” essay takes the cake for perverted. Proof positive the guy who was convicted of sexual assault wasn’t a real rapist? that he “drove his victim home” and said “sorry!” Like no rapist or batterer ever suffered remorse after the fact? I particularly like the way she manages to imply that the law, which differentiates strongly between pedophilic murderers and mere sexual assault *doesn’t differentiate* because the sex offender registries make lots of people register as sex offenders and that’s all the fault of feminists who lie about rape anyway.
I like to forget about Kathleen parker in between reading her columns because every time I do read one I’m struck dumb with disgust and disbelief. Really, how can any person, let alone any woman, be so criminally stupid and inhumane? How does she even manage to cross the street given her up is down attitudes towards life? Doesn’t she insist on crossing against the walk signs just because they are probably a feminist trick? I expect to see her smeared all over the pavement some day still shouting “its a feminist plot against jay walkers!”
aimai
Well, I’m not a woman but I did have a lot of out-of-wedlock sex in college and I my ex-girlfriends seem to be pretty mentally stable. But judging from Parker wrote the article, it seems that not having sex is more likely to make you go insane.
Parker then threatens young women with death if they have casual sex, because they’ll get HPV and then cancer and die!
That reminds me of that idiot Congressman from Idaho who suggested that women get breast cancer because God is punishing them for having abortions.
Where the hell do these people come from?
“That reminds me of that idiot Congressman from Idaho who suggested that women get breast cancer because God is punishing them for having abortions.”
Hey, Newt Gingrich thinks women get “infections” once a month…
“Where the hell do these people come from?”
They are all the product of willful ignorance combined with an overblown confidence in their own correctness.
This is a feature of the Reichwing, not a bug…
The whole “oxytocin factor” thing is absolutely (stupid, but) fascinating.
The comparison with old medical beliefs related to the harm masturbation was supposedly wreaking on humanity is irresistible.
An interesting quote: Tissot argued that semen was an “essential oil” and “stimulus” that, when lost from the body in great amounts, would cause “a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred vision, all the nervous disorders, all types of gout and rheumatism, weakening of the organs of generation, blood in the urine, disturbance of the appetite, headaches and a great number of other disorders.”
Contrast with attitudes toward a “female problem”: At the same time, the supposed medical condition of hysteria—from the Greek hystera or uterus—was being treated by what would now be described as medically administered or medically prescribed masturbation for women. Techniques included use of the earliest vibrators and rubbing the genitals with placebo creams.
This is why having a scientifically ignorant populace is harmful - It makes it very easy for political and social charlatans to sway people with idiotic and unsupported claims, who have no information with which to question what they are told.
(BTW, before some nimrod attacks this as proof of the weaknesses of science and medicine, recognize that it was research, experimentation, and scientific understanding that eventually showed these ignorant beliefs about masturbation to be false. If this were merely a religion/social belief, odds are it would be - and still is - firmly held regardless of the mountain of evidence against it…)
There’s only one conclusion I can reach from reading these articles next to each other: Parker thinks having sex because you want to is worse than being raped.
Unfortunately, I think you’re right on. This is exactly what Kathleen Parker and a lot of people like her think. In their anti-sex world view, consenting to sex is worse than being subjected to it against your will.
When I read these 2 articles together, I think that she’s not apologizing for rape, but actively recommending it. It’s a perfectly useful tool for keeping women in their place by fear.
Wasn’t this “sex oxycontin” shit one of the pet theories of some wacko Bush nominee to something or other? Nice to know these people communicate so well.
Stealing and slaughtering the cow is preferable to the cow voluntarily offering it’s milk to a farmer it finds attractive. Or something.
Isn’t the idea with the oxytocin (not to be confused with oxycontin, but is the same thing as pitocin, the labor-inducing drug) that while both men and women release it during orgasm, women release a lot more of it? And then something about it causing pair bonding (so the woman would end up bonding more to the dude, I guess)? I mean, I’ve heard this theory before, but Parker doesn’t really explain it at all here.
Not that I prescribe to it, but still, it fits in so well with the anti-sex view that women who enjoyed sex (and thus orgasmed) would be injured more by it. …Or something.
Well, when you regard both rape victims and women who have consensual premarital sex as having failed in their basic womanly duty of guarding their “precious diamond” for their future husbands’ exclusive use, of course consensual sex is going to seem worse. Consensual sex is a deliberate abandonment of guarding duties, while a rape victim’s “failure” is due to the overpowering animalistic sex drive of those nasty menfolk (who are simultaneously uncontrollable predatory beasts and much more rational than us poor hormonal womenfolk).
Trying to think like these people makes my stomach hurt.
This really gets me:
Well, no. Of course he shouldn’t. Good point there. Except that Gorman got 5 years and Avila got the death penalty (which she conveniently fails to mention). But I guess in the mind of a delusional wingnut, they are the same…?
Just what is hubby going to do with one’s precious diamond once he gets (or achieves?) it?
Well, yeah, Amanda. If men RAPE women, they’re taking all responsibility for being bad and sexual and letting women stay good and pure. Doesn’t that make perfect sense to you? It’s a selfless act of chivalry.
This is where I hurl for even typing that. Blecch.
Well, that would fit with the “men are infantile stupids who just can’t help themselves” theory.
I haven’t found anything on the Gorman case other than Parker’s columns, but even if you believe Gorman and do not believe the victim, Gorman is still guilty of rape.
We all know that “no means no.” What most people do not realize is that in most jurisdictions, silence means “no” as well. If a man* proceeds with penetration without the affirmative consent of the woman* he is guilty of rape.
Taking the facts in a light most favorable to Gorman, Gorman proceeded without the woman’s consent. He probably did not think he was raping her, but that’s the law. Unfortunately for Gorman, his lawyers didn’t think it was rape either. He should have taken the plea bargain. Or perhaps he should have been sure he had her affirmative consent before he proceeded.
As a staunch supporter of civil liberties, I will agree that there are plenty of people on the sex offender registry that do not belong there. Likewise, many of the restrictions on sex offenders who have served their time that have been passed in recent years probably are unconstitutional. However, that is beside the point of whether he is guilty.
*Using heteronormative terms for the sake of clarity.
I take it this Kathleen person wouldn’t object to being raped? One could assume she would not file charges? heh.
Is she assuming that coercion is “just what boys do”? Does she assume that getting in a male’s car or going to visit a male friend at his home is agreeing to have sex?
I’m fascinated by this woman. Does she deny her own agency, or just that of other women? What about her boss? Does she assume that her male higher-ups are entitled to “do what boys do”?
Where does this line of thinking stop - for her, and how men relate to her body? How does a woman sincerely internalize this thought process? What steps lead her to this point? What are her office meetings like???
I’m gonna post her article, Amanda’s article, and my comment on Craigslist. Cahz that’s what boys do.
That reminds me of that idiot Congressman from Idaho who suggested that women get breast cancer because God is punishing them for having abortions.
Which is probably what they use in their own minds to justify passing laws that require women who get abortions to be told that they’re increasing their risk of breast cancer…
Which is probably what they use in their own minds to justify passing laws that require women who get abortions to be told that they’re increasing their risk of breast cancer…
Isn’t it lovely our Congresscritters think people are so stupid they won’t research the risks of a medical procedure before they have it preformed?
Or have the procedure done anyway because they need it, regardless?
As for her pro-virginity column, there are so many logical fallacies with her argument, I don’t know where to start.
First of all, she takes the idea that the “hook-up culture” is “prevalent” at face value. Sure, people “hooked-up”, but if you weren’t into that, there were plenty of other options available. Almost all the people I knew in college were sexually active, but most of the sex was “relationship” sex, not “hookups.”
She’s shocked that a woman would go for sex before a relationship, but gives little reason for this. She relies on the shock of the reader to fill in for her lack of reasoning. Perhaps this isn’t such a bad idea to go to the bedroom first. A man who is selfish in the bedroom is usually selfish everywhere else, and it is good for a woman to know this before getting emotionally involved.
Also, she assumes that casual sex causes mental problems. Even assuming ad argumentum that there is a correlation between sexual activity and mental problems, correlation does not equal causation. Perhaps pre-existing mental problems make young people more likely to be promiscuous. Or perhaps a separate cause, causes both effects.
Then she latches onto the idea that one can’t have both love and sex, which comes pretty much out of nowhere. She also brings back the old “women want love, men want sex” line, this time wrapped in a bit of trendy pseudoscience. She blames the feminists for this problem, despite research that shows that relationships based on “feminist” principles are happier.
Finally, she comes up with the idea that traditional “dating” is the solution to the problem, which is even more puzzling. I’m sure most college girls would like to be taken out on a date. I’m sure most college guys would like the time and money to be able to take a girl on a date. I’m not quite sure what her point is or if she even has one. Perhaps she believes that if a girl is going to “give up” the pussy, at least she ought to get dinner out of the deal.
Or have the procedure done anyway because they need it, regardless?
That, too. Just thinking they know whats best for everyone in general seems to be a characteristic of the species.
First of all, she takes the idea that the “hook-up culture” is “prevalent” at face value. Sure, people “hooked-up”, but if you weren’t into that, there were plenty of other options available. Almost all the people I knew in college were sexually active, but most of the sex was “relationship” sex, not “hookups.”
To busy-bodies like her it doesn’t matter that there are plenty of different cultures on campus, with different values that different types of people can choose to join.
The fact that there is even oneperson on campus having “hook up” sex would bother her. She can’t mind her own business and tend to her own garden. Instead, shes demanding that everyone conform to her values, no matter how unappealing or backward.
Oxytocin = the hormone that a pregnant female releases during pregnancy to bring about childbirth.
Oxycontin = Popular painkiller favored by bloviating right wing talk show hosts.
You don’t get the feeling that they’re deliberately trying to blur the difference, here, by suggesting that women who engage in pre-marital collegiate sex (because the presence of a gold ring on your third finger on the left hand is a natural oxytocin supressant) — are actually hardcore drug-addicts who are no different from the crackwhore at the end of the block, selling their bodies for that next fix?
They were getting all excited about how “talking on the phone” releases oxytocin in teenage girls, which is a huge dope-amine producer and basically causes them to roll over on their back and purr with pleasure.
They say that if you’re worried about going over your due date, you should have sex with your partner to induce labor. I wonder if a good long phonecall with your BFF would do that same thing?
I’m deeply amused at how conservatives think they’re proving something by getting a bunch of women in a room, telling them that if you have sex no one will love you, everyone will hate you, you’ll die, and you won’t even get dinner out of it and then think it proves something that women will respond to that pressure by being agreeable. Asking a group of men if they want to die unloved is unlikely to get an affirmative response, so why do they think women would be different? Hell, even people that know that you’re snowballing them will raise their hands to both be polite and to avoid sending the message that they’re the freak who wants to die alone and unloved. But it doesn’t actually say anything about sex and gender.
Perhaps they are just “busy-bodies”, but perhaps there is more to it that that.
Why are these normally unappealing values appealing to these people?
A large component is religious. If people see people who are happy and not following the precepts of their faith, then it weakens their faith. Therefore, people who do not follow the precepts of the faith cannot be happy.
However, religious values aside, there is still more to it. Who benefits under the “old system?” The answer is sexually selfish men and manipulative women.
Sexually selfish men benefit because under the old system, the girls were being sold a “pig in a poke”, so to speak. Contrary to the conventional wisdom of the right, “trying before you buy” helps women far more than men. The old joke that all a woman needs to do to be good in bed is show up is mostly true, but it takes more work on the part of the man. Under the old system, the man could be as selfish as he wanted to be and the woman wouldn’t know the difference, or if she did she couldn’t do anything about it because she would be “ruined.” Now, our sexually selfish man may only get short term benefits before the woman moves on. The old system was better for them.
The other group who benefited was sexually manipulative women. They used teh pussy to get what they wanted. It’s a socially acceptable form of prostitution. While demand for pussy is always high, now that supply is high, “prices” have dropped. These women are mad that the sluts have ruined the market.
Of course, this is all speculation, but I think there is some truth to it.
“Parker thinks having sex because you want to is worse than being raped.”
That would be because a woman who’s having sex because she’s horny is exercising volition, whereas a woman who is having sex because she’s getting raped is not. It’s the old “malfunctioning appliance” thing again. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: to a lot of these people*, female volition is by nature a kind of a solecism, a grammatical error, something which does not compute. After all, nobody thinks of asking a can opener whether it wants to open cans or not. Opening cans is what the can-opener’s there to do, and insofar as it chugs along about its lid-excising task, it’s operating satisfactorily; if not, it’s defective.
If on could attribute “mental health” to a can opener, one would attribute “mental health” to the can-opener which opens cans on command, without a whine or a sputter. (If that sounds like: “Stop fussing, you; this happens to lots of girls”, I don’t think that’s an accident.) One would not attribute “mental health” to the can opener which opens cans with vim and delight, not only because it’s difficult to conceive of such a thing, but because the results might prove inconvenient for the prudent householder. (Just imagine: the overeager can-opener hops off the counter in the middle of the night, rifling through the kitchen cabinets, pushing stuff onto the floor, searching tirelessly for more and more cans to open…and open…and OPEN. Such havoc.)
In the eyes of people like Parker, it isn’t so much that non-volitional sex is better for women than the volitional kind (because for them what’s better isn’t really a factor) it’s that non-volitional sex is much more in line with a woman’s status as a Mod Con. In that way, so far as they’re concerned, it’s more gender-appropriate. So that you end up with a situation in which a woman who is overpowered remains oddly true-to-task, whereas a woman who messes around just because she likes to by definition deviates from her nature. And who knows where that might lead. One thing’s for sure: it’s not anyplace Parker and her buddies want to go.
*I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: not all of them are male. Kathleen Parker is a fine case in point.
I’m just getting through “College Girls”, by Lynn Peril (reviewed and recommended here, if I am not mistaken). It’s clear from her research that sanctimonious assholes like Sessions and Parker have been peddling this “save your virginity” bullshit to female college students for over a hundred years. And they have always had some cockamamie psuedoscientific justification for it.
BTW, my eyes are too fucking old to read the anti-spam doohicky. It usually takes me about three tries to get it right.
I am amazed at what Parker does to males. Even if women are sane enough to reject her garbage, a dumb male will easily see the gain for himself by adopting her perverse philosophy (and it’s from a woman, no less, so it must be true!). As if we didn’t have enough problems with personal honor.
ElleDee’s got it right. The drug Pitocin that’s prescribed (some say overprescribed) to induce labor is just a brand name for synthetic ocytocin.
When they give it to you they give you a lot. Way more than you’d ordinarily get from “hook up sex” with the entire, oh, say, the entire Prussian army. Plus their horses. (If that was your thing.)
And yet… some how… I know, maybe it’s a miracle, all the petocin they give you, plus all the natural oxytocin you produce during childbirth, plus all you produce during lactation just… just… doesn’t count.
Must be some miracle property in… ok, I know, I know, wedding rings have protective enzymes! Yeah, that’s it.
Once again, we have an instance of someone trying really really hard to talk people into doing what they are supposedly “hardwired” to do, which is a practice so far beyond silly even Graham Chapman wouldn’t bother to suit up for it. Parker’s column says “four out of five” people (it’s not specified what percentage of that audience was male or female) in Stepp’s audience at Duke “want to bring back dating.” Well, what the fuckall is stopping them if they want it that badly? We don’t, after all, have article after article after article telling us that people are “hardwired” to poop, now do we?
Wow, bekabot, that actually made Parker’s insanity fall into some kind of order. To take the analogy a little farther, if volition is a bad thing in one’s appliances, then anything that might increase a tendancy towards volition is by definition a bad thing. So hormones that cause pleasure -> increased seeking of pleasure = bad. Likewise, being traumatized by a rape -> avoidance (of sex, or of guys, or even of just one guy) = bad. Not that rape itself is bad, because that would imply a fault with the rapist, not the appliance. It’s being traumatized that’s bad. Just like you want a sewing machine that’ll go through six layers of denim without breaking a needle, you want a woman who’ll take anything the guy dishes out without bothering him about it.
Thinking back to my college days (which began almost 20 years ago, yikes!) I do remember hearing complaints that people didn’t “date” anymore. You would basically hang around in large groups until you eventually paired off.
In other words, the complaint wasn’t that they were constantly hooking up with no calls the next morning. The complaint was that writing your term papers in the same room shouldn’t really count as a “date” and it would be nice to have dinner somewhere other than a fast-food place every once in a great while.
Well, hey, you aren’t supposed to do it all day or anything… Once or twice at the most…
Yeah - the loss of ‘traditional dating’ has been decried since at least the 1960s. When I was freaking born. And I’m - obviously - not all that young anymore.
The conservative worship of an imaginary past is one of the elements of their assault on modern culture that irritates me most, though I don’t really know why their love of lies in this area should be more appalling than their love of lies in any other…..
“Women who have sex before marriage voluntarily are subject to mental illness.”
HUH. I always figured I would have HAD to been nuts to wait, so didn’t.
As for semen being an essential oil, damned if I want it as a candle scent…but that would explain the milky look.
I’m fascinated by this woman. Does she deny her own agency, or just that of other women?
I believe women like Parker honestly, in the darkest chambers of what pass as hearts for them, believe that they are not like other women and won’t be raped, disrespected, or abandoned by a man. Or if they have been in the past, it’s because they were “bad” like other women, and now that they’ve become “good” they’ve risen above the vile female masses. They genuinely don’t include themselves when they talk about how hateful “women” are.
There’s a group on Facebook called “Women against women drivers” for “women who know that every girl besides them sucks at driving!” I know it’s supposed to be a joke, but even if it didn’t fail miserably, it would still make my point for me.
@bekabot
That traditionalists are pissed that the actions of people who don’t believe like them have “priced” women out of the “market” for them is an interesting way of looking at it.
Disclaimer: not comparing women to things, just didn’t know how else to express it.
Let us assume that I’m stone cold and don’t give a damn one way or the other. Even there I can’t get past the portions of Ms. Parker’s columns where she speaks of evidence that makes Gorman’s innocence and the complainant’s error/whatever even more clear. But she won’t go into it. It’s too complex or detailed for the article.
Sorry, but whether Rich Gorman is innocent or guilty I still call bullshit. There’s enough lawyers on Pandagon to know — and agree with me — that anybody who wants to make a point, says that their evidence will make that point, then declines to show you that evidence is bluffing or lacking confidence in their own evidence.
And forgive me, Lord, for I have used a badly constructed run-on sentence.
The roses-and-dinner bait is pretty interesting, because the implication is that college boys could cough up the roses and dinner, but won’t because they’re getting the sex for free. Besides the implication that every woman is a whore, there’s also the ignoring of the fact that college guys don’t spend $150 on fancy dinners and $75 on roses because they don’t have that kind of money laying around to spend on random first dates. I actually did “get” the dinner/drinks/expensive gifts routine in college, but only from my actual boyfriend who I did have oodles of sex with, and only because he felt emboldened to spend that kind of money on me because I wasn’t going anywhere. If there was ever a time when college men spent an assload of money on dates with women they weren’t in committed, sexual relationships with, it was probably because they were wealthy. For the vast majority of us, those fancy dates are special treats with long-established partners. So “bringing back the date” has a classist vibe to it, it’s about bringing back the era when the only people who went to college were those who treated a semester’s tuition like pocket change.
I don’t understand this “bringing back dating” thing. I’m 25, and I have lots of female friends in their early 20s, and they all date. Some of them have casual sex and some of them don’t, but it’s not an either/or situation.
Amanda, somewhat off topic, but have you seen this article from the Atlantic’s archives about coeds in the 1950s? Thought you might find it interesting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/195711/sex-college
The point about oxytocin was supposed to be that women release a hundred times more of it during orgasms than men do. Of course, by “male orgasm” they basically mean “quickie”; the study this is based on didn’t incorporate men who experience multiple and/or full-body orgasms due to various Western cultural biases. If they had, I suspect that there wouldn’t be a significant difference. (This is not to say that most men aren’t oxytocin-deprived, I think they are, and it hurts relationships over time. White people just… don’t do sex well.)
However, she just kind of threw it out there, which is unsurprising because she’s stupid.
Roses, the define dating as strictly going out on non-sexual dates with men that you are not in any kind of committed relationship with, dates where he pays (preferably a lot of money) for dinner and a movie. After a couple months of this, maybe he gives you his college pin and you get to be “going steady”, with the prestige for you and breast touchage and maybe even hand jobs for him. Then engagement where you trade up possibly a blow job and even consider intercourse for a diamond ring. Etc. It’s a system kids reject for obvious reasons.
Ohmigawd, that rape apology column made my eyes burn. Interesting how she pins the blame for “date rape” on morning-after remorse. Even if you buy that premise (which I don’t), the only reason women would feel morning after remorse is because of all the slut shaming by people like Parker!
Oh, the irony fairy works overtime in Kathleen Parker-land.
(+ AtomicFruitbat)
Well, that was by no means intended to be a bulletproof analogy. (I cop to the fact that it wasn’t.) What I was getting at was that in terms of the Parker/Sessions worldview, no woman’s reaction to any given sexual encounter is of the first importance. That’s because the thing that matters most to them is (AtomicFruitbat points this out) her marketability. Now in terms of a woman’s marketability, it’s to a woman’s advantage, or to those of her guardians or vendors, or whatever, if she’s been subjected to as little usage as possible. To go back to the can-opener metaphor: if you haven’t got a can opener, you’d rather buy one new than buy one used, wouldn’t you? Sure thing. To carry the can-opener metaphor one step further: if you were considering the purchase of a can-opener, and if the can-opener were pre-owned, you’d be more inclined to buy it if you thought it was new than if you knew it was used, not so? Right you are.
This is the way a certain type of mind works. It’s why, incidentally, the scrap of bait that occaisionally gets dangled in the path of the college damsel: “Just behave yourself and your guy will buy you dinner and flowers and eventually he might even buy you a ring!!“—–is crap. None of this is about any potential value a woman might reap for herself. What it’s about, instead, is how much value she represents. And she represents more value in her virgin condition than she would otherwise. That’s the supposition, anyway.
I suspect that Parker, Sessions et al are not very much bothered at the distress of a woman who’s been forced to have sex because they believe she’s “given up” less than has a woman who willingly turns her body over to a man. I have no proof of that, though. It could be that they tend to regard a rape as just an unfortunate turn in the sex-for-maintainance negotiations which, as they see it, account for most of the interactions between men and women, and imagine that if a woman plays her cards right she might persuade a man to “buy” what he “broke” and thus wind up with a ring, a cake and a gown. Success!!—–but I have no proof of that either.
And on the personal anecdote front…
I did very little traditional dating in college, and most of my friends were the same. We went out in groups, we met up at parties, we had lots of sex. A year after college, I met my ex-husband at work, fell head over heels and launched a 13-year dysfunctional relationship that included very few traditional dates.
Most of my dating happened post divorce and was purely a function of demographics - more disposable income, more demanding work schedules and less tolerance for late nights and noisy bars equals more intimate dinners and structured events. I have to say, I’m a fan of some of it, but I sure am glad to be done with first dates.
As for the young 20-somethings I know, they seem to be getting married at alarming rates. We have an epidemic of weddings in the next generation this year between my boyfriend’s two oldest daughters and my oldest nephew (ages ranging from 21 to 24). We’ve tried to set a good example as upstanding heathens living in sin, but these kids today pay no attention. They insist on getting married.
phoebe fay: not sure it’s applicable, but at least some of us in the twentysomething range are getting married because there isn’t any other way to get affordable health insurance. i myself was very happy in my heathendom, but i wanted my co-heathen to be able to see a doctor when he got sick, and it just wasn’t gonna happen without the certificate.
My wife and I met at college and never went on a single “date” as defined by these moralistic assholes. We will be celebrating our 25th anniversary next summer. Our relationship must have lasted because of her mental illness induced by the lack of flowers and dinners.
“i myself was very happy in my heathendom, but i wanted my co-heathen to be able to see a doctor when he got sick, and it just wasn’t gonna happen without the certificate.”
Same here. My husband and I were basically permanently engaged until I landed a job with benefits, at which point we got married immediately so that he’d be covered under my insurance plans.
Last Thanksgiving, I was visiting my parents in Sparks, Nevada. My baby sister had just come home from a rough first semester at a very demanding and expensive music college in Boston, which she had had to cut short due to various kinds of trouble. My mother had just about begged me to visit for the holiday, to be there to support my sister, whom my parents were trying to convince to stay in Nevada and continue college at UN, Reno. Since I had gone to Caltech but not graduated, I felt my sister might be better off taking it easy as an undergrad and going for the high-pressure stuff in grad school. (It’s different in performing arts of course–which is why I wondered if she needed any academic credentials specifically in music anyway).
Well, I could tell lots of stories about how my parents handled their fragile youngest child (who was born about when I should have graduated from Caltech) but the relevant one here is the time my Mom, apropos of nothing I was aware of, let me know that she believed that if it weren’t for “oxytocin,” she’d long ago have castrated my Dad and murdered me.
That’s right-wing morality in a nutshell (or barely avoiding shelling nuts, apparently): morality is what we are compelled to comply with. The notion that human beings might do anything decent because we think there are good reasons is nonsense; it’s all a net of compulsions, and society must be designed to compel order. My mother would prefer to believe she is a mere slave of her providentially designed hormones and would otherwise run amok, rather than take pride in having chosen the life she has.
For some strange reason or other, my little sister decided not to continue at UNR but returned to her tough music college in Boston–and long before I returned home from that holiday about a year ago, I had completely changed my mind about the possibility that she’d be OK staying in Sparks. I still wonder if she might not be better off at some more generic college, but I think she’s been doing OK in Massachusets this year–and just about all my parents’ numerous offspring spent their college years on the far side of a continent, if not the other side of the world (when my father was stationed in Germany) from them.
Oh yes, that magic hormone is surely the key to contentment and bliss…
There’s only one conclusion I can reach from reading these articles next to each other: Parker thinks having sex because you want to is worse than being raped.
Cute, but I think in her mind there actually is a connection between the two columns, but different than the one you’re seeing.
In fact, I’m pretty sure she sees date rape as the unavoidable result of women voluntarily having sex without demanding a ring, etc. first, and, in her mind, people like Gorman are the victims of women’s greater promiscuity (I don’t mean that word judgmentally).
I think the logic works something like this:
Back in the day, when, Parker and her like tell us, men had to buy dinner and flowers for the privilege of holding hands with a girl, and put a ring on her finger in order to get sex. Well, that was a lot of effort, but at least men knew when it was ok to have sex with a girl. No ring, no sex.
But then these women came along and messed things up by voluntarily having sex with men who hadn’t bought the dinners, the flowers, the ring! And men got confused. Now that some women without rings were consenting to have sex, men had no way of telling whether women had consented to sex or not! And of course the result was that men just had to assume ALL women had consented to sex! But then some uppity women claimed that no, actually, they hadn’t consented to sex. And they started accusing men of rape! But how were men supposed to know that these women hadn’t wanted to have sex? Now that feminists had taken away the only way–rings–men had of telling whether or not women had consented to sex! Date rape is all feminism’s fault!
But how were men supposed to know that these women hadn’t wanted to have sex?
I want to add to the wonderful can opener analogy by pointing out that in the male subject/female object worldview, the fear isn’t just that you’ll have sex with a woman who doesn’t want it, but that a woman you’ve spent a lot of money on no longer feels obligated to have sex with you just because you spent money on her. There are no guarantees for men that they’re going to get sex with a “grateful,” “willing” partner if they just spend enough money, and that pisses a lot of people off. It’s as if you could go to a store and buy a can opener and go home with an empty box, and then be laughed at by the clerk when you went back to the store to get your can opener. People want what they pay for, and when I go to the store and pay good money for a can opener, I fucking well better find a can opener in the box when I open it up. If I don’t, there’s absolutely no doubt in any reasonable person’s mind that I’ve been wronged and deprived of something I was entitled to.
What? I suspend my pants in the air with ropes and then bungie jump into them from the roof. I thought everyone did that… o_O
What? I suspend my pants in the air with ropes and then bungie jump into them from the roof. I thought everyone did that… o_O
I nail mine on, like a real man…