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Feminists shouldn’t have sex before marriage Women have always been screwed over by no-strings-attached trysts

Cardi B with her husband Offset. Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic via/ GettyImages

Cardi B with her husband Offset. Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic via/ GettyImages


October 21, 2020   7 mins

Cardi B, she of the notoriously rude song WAP, has flounced off social media after fans rebuked her for staying married.

When the stripper-turned-rapper initiated divorce, claiming the relationship was “irretrievably broken”, rumour had it that she did so because her husband was upset about her making “thot music”. Others have claimed his repeated extramarital affairs were to blame. But just this week Cardi defended her decision to return to her husband, adding that their two-year-old daughter is always asking for her dad at home.

The effort to plot a course between individual libido and the long view is as old as humanity. Some two millennia ago St Paul advised the Corinthians that while it’s better to be celibate, for those that really can’t keep it in their pants “let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” More recently, that poet of chronic inner conflict Sigmund Freud argued in Civilisation and its Discontents (1930) that the essence of advanced societies is a capacity to repress desire in pursuit of long-term goals.

Writing to his wife Martha Bernays in 1883, Freud saw “the extreme case” of civilised repression as marriage: “people like ourselves who chain themselves together for life and death, who deprive themselves and pine for years so as to remain faithful”. Who said romance was dead?

But even before Freud’s time, the opposing view was gathering momentum. The 19th-century ‘free love’ advocate Mary Gove Nichols was a pioneering advocate of pursuing love wherever it led even if that ended a marriage, declaring in 1854: “Marriage and slavery are alike the grave of human liberty, and that which comes nearest to the inner life is, of the two, the greater wrong”.

And yet two years later 1856 the Memnonia Institute founded by Mary with her second husband, Thomas Gove Nichols, was walking free love back in favour of responsible procreation. An Institute circular declared it a “law of sexual relations” that “Material Union is only to be had, when the wisdom of the Harmony demands a child”.

St Paul may have been preoccupied with the spiritual ramifications of desire, but until relatively recently most people — even free love advocates — were unable to avoid the biological one. That is, sexual intimacy has a way of producing children regardless of what “the wisdom of the Harmony” recommends. And before the 20th-century development of technologies to prevent conception or gestation, marriage was the only available mechanism for controlling human fertility — or, rather, de-risking our inability to control it.

A whole genre of folk songs concerns young women persuaded by unscrupulous men that (as Gove Nichols put it), ‘Love alone sanctions the union of the sexes’. Cold Blow and the Rainy Night tells of a soldier who arrives, hat frozen to his head, pleading with a young woman to let him in. She’s eventually persuaded, whereupon one thing leads to another. Presumably in the afterglow, she asks him: “Now since you had your will of me/Soldier will you marry me?”. Nope, he replies:

O then she cursed the rainy night
That ever she let him in – O
Then he jumped out of the bed
He put his cap upon his head
And she had lost her maidenhead
And her mother heard the din – O

The immediate harm caused the young woman in Cold Blow and the Rainy Night is her mother learning of her loss of ‘maidenhead’ and thus, potentially, of her reputation. From a contemporary perspective, this association of premarital sex with shame for women tends to be read as evidence of a patriarchal obsession with controlling female desire. Less often discussed, though, is the fact that for most of human history, reputational damage is a second-order risk whose foundation is the grim realities of solo pregnancy.

The worst-case scenario for the horny soldier was catching some kind of STD. But in a world before contraception and social safety nets, the worst-case scenario for the young woman he sweet-talks (and who, the song strongly implies, is also well up for it) would have been pregnancy but no husband. That is, a grim choice between dangerous medical interventions aimed at ending the pregnancy, abandoning her baby to an orphanage, a decade at least of solo struggle to care for a dependent infant, or infanticide.

The starkness of this, for women, lies dormant underneath the mostly bawdy ‘faithless soldier’ musical genre. When it comes to the surface, the result can be almost unbearably bleak. Another song, The Greenwood Side, recounts the story of a young woman who falls pregnant in an illicit affair, is abandoned by her lover, gives birth alone in a wood and conceals the truth by murdering her twin babies. The affair, abandonment, birth and infanticide are briskly narrated, and the body of the song is a hallucinated dialogue with her murdered babies. The deeply unsettling lyrics blend horror at her deed with profound pity for the woman:

Now, bonny boys, come tell to me
Oh, the rose and the linsey, oh
What sort of life I’ll have after dying?

Down by the Greenwood side, oh

Seven years of visions of blood
Oh, the rose and the linsey, oh
And seven years of hurt in the womb

Down by the Greenwood side, oh

Contemporary feminism has a great deal to say about how unfair it is to shame women for putting out, while letting men off the hook for being faithless. But while this is indeed asymmetrical, in a Pill-and-condom-free world the underlying givens are also unfair, and inescapable. Only women get pregnant. The raw misery in The Greenwood Side conveys something of the suffering faced by countless now-forgotten women, who found themselves making appalling choices in such impossible situations.

Far from being a patriarchal imposition of purity culture, then, aimed at repressing women’s innate libidinousness, before contraception ‘no sex before marriage’ was a profoundly pro-women position. Norms forbidding pre-marital sex might seem repressive to the modern eye, but shielded young women from the risk of being knocked up by faithless shaggers and left to deal with pregnancy alone.

So it’s no coincidence that the drive, already nascent in the 19th century, to pursue human flourishing by liberating sexuality from commitment, didn’t get much buy-in from women until a century later, when birth control became widely available. At that point, social norms that sought to constrain human libido in the interests of the longer-term project of child-rearing came to seem more oppressive to women than to men.

In 1970, ten years after the FDA approved the birth control pill, the radical feminist Shulamith Firestone argued in The Dialectic of Sex that the root cause of women’s oppression is our reproductive role. Gestation makes women physically vulnerable, and human infants have an unusually long period of dependence, so creating and raising them takes time and resources. Thus women and children have historically leaned on men for support and protection, and the temptation for men to exploit that dependency has been irresistible. The result has been millennia of male supremacy.

Firestone thought that the way to liberate women from reproductive oppression was decoupling sex from reproduction. Abortion, contraception and — eventually — artificial gestation would free women from the ungainly and physically risky business of motherhood. And as these technologies developed, the principal means of dismantling  male dominance would be destroying the institution at its heart: the nuclear family. Mallory Millett, sister of the groundbreaking radical feminist Kate Millett, recalls attending a 1969 ‘consciousness-raising’ group with her sister:

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.

Firestone’s vision was of a world that had achieved “not just the elimination of male privilege but of the sex distinction itself”, as she put it. She dreamed of a world in which it simply doesn’t matter which type of reproductive organs you have, and as such there was no need for monogamy at all. In the course of this radical de-coupling of desire from reproduction and the family, heterosexual relations could be disentangled from the historically unbalanced power relations between men and women, and Eros liberated to suffuse society.

Some decades on, this has to a great extent been achieved. We no longer see sex and reproduction as inextricable, because they aren’t. The project to unchain libido from commitment only remains unfinished to the extent that people still (on the whole) prefer to see their kids grow up. Were it not for two-year-old Kulture Kiari Cephus, the desires of Cardi B and Offset variously to make ‘thot music’ and shag everything that moves wouldn’t even be an issue, because no one other than them would have any serious stake in their continuing a relationship should their desires lead them elsewhere.

But even leaving aside the question of whether this brave new world of unchained desire really is that desirable, we should be cautious of taking the unchaining for granted, or imagining it’s irreversible. Shulamith Firestone’s radical feminism accords with centuries of folk wisdom in showing how women’s reproductive role makes us vulnerable, and she’s right to see contraception as key to freeing women from sexual constraint. But while this change is understood today as a priori evidence of our moral progress, in truth it’s a fragile state of affairs, wholly dependent on technology. Only take contraception off the table, and the entire illusion of women’s sexual liberation evaporates.

It would take a cataclysmic shock to modern social and technological infrastructures to disrupt the mass availability of birth control. But the last twenty years have seen 9/11, the Great Crash, and now a pandemic that’s driving a global economic downturn likely to make 2008 look like a Monaco yacht party. Add climate change and the looming prospect of a new era of great-power conflict into the mix, and only the delusionally optimistic could insist without a flicker of doubt that (as Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide victory celebration declared) things can only get better.

Let’s hope they don’t get much worse. Because if we’re to be confident that abolishing marriage in favour of a sexual free-for-all is in women’s interests, we’d better be equally confident that welfare states and reproductive healthcare will always be with us. Should that ever change, we’ll need a radical revision of what ‘feminism’ looks like. And in that unsettling scenario, we might discover that far from ‘free love’, the pro-women position is once again ‘no sex before marriage’.


Mary Harrington is a contributing editor at UnHerd.

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Alison Wren
Alison Wren
3 years ago

I have lived through the whole of the sexual revolution and I see men taking less and less responsibility for any baby that may result from sexual intercourse with a woman. I have decided that actually women have lost more than they gained, being required to put out on most occasions without getting any significant amount of pleasure…..plus poison their bodies with all kinds of pharmaceuticals… who gains here???

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

It is hardly surprising, though, when men are told frequently in our culture that they are optional, unnecessary and even toxic. They have few parental rights, the courts are stacked against them. The sane response in this situation is to keep your distance. But the societal costs are terribly high.

Andrew McGee
Andrew McGee
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

I have no problem with men keeping their distance. Provided of course they they insist very strongly on adequate contaceptive measures.

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Women aren’t required to do anything, it’s up to them. That’s the point.

Andrew D
Andrew D
3 years ago
Reply to  Alison Wren

Men

Claire D
Claire D
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

I don’t agree; when a man has a child or children and fails, of his own accord, to inhabit the role of father, provider and male role model he is letting himself down just as much as his woman and offspring.

(If his agency is taken away from him by the woman herself out of dislike, that is a bit different, then he has another chance of making good with another woman better suited to him, he might still be able to rescue part of his role and relationship with his first child later on.)

I think everyone loses.

It could be argued that there is short term gain from the sexual shennanigens for men but surely that’s superficial and a bit empty.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
3 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Yes – the woman loses in the short-term, the man in the long-term.

Andrew D
Andrew D
3 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

I don’t think we disagree Claire. I wasn’t thinking about children – easily available contraception has made it possible for them to be removed from the equation. I was thinking about consequence-free sex, from which (as Alison suggests) women may have lost more than they’ve gained. Men I’m afraid tend not to pass up an opportunity for short term shenanigans, however superficial and empty that may sound. I agree that in the long term neither sex benefits.

Claire D
Claire D
3 years ago

There’s a great line in one of Barbara Pym’s novels written in the 1960s, one of the male characters says ” . . . how very obliging young women are these days.”

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
3 years ago
Reply to  Claire D

Yes, when women stop being prim and become Dionysian, the End is Nigh.

Hence the West is collapsing

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
3 years ago

No wonder what passes for feminism today is confused. We’ve gone from “hear me roar” to “hear me whine.” Like any strain of activism, it exists for the aggrandizement of those who make a living or draw notoriety from it. The goals of the original feminists have been achieved, but their successors refuse to take yes for an answer.

Karen Lindquist
Karen Lindquist
3 years ago

Careful, speaking truths such as these will get the ire and fury of both women defending being used and discarded while they lie to themselves and everyone around them about what they really want, and the men who love those women because they do backflips to prove how liberated they are by serving men in every way possible for absolutely no personal gain.

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago

Women have not spotted the other threat.House prices are high because of demand and supply. Indeed while house prices have trebled and quadrupled the population has risen less than 20%. So supply is a small issue the big issue pushing up prices is demand- and demand is driven by lending.
Banks are smart. They saw if they lent more on houses they would not just just suck in the main wage they would suck in two wages. So they lent more and shoved prices up as a result.
Thus forcing married women / partners to work and delay childbirth.

Liz Jones
Liz Jones
3 years ago

Absolutely agree. Since the 1970s I have believed that ‘equality’ has actually been detrimental for women. Instead of having basically one job, child rearing, we have to have a full time career as well! Men have got the better side of this bargain.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

Wrong. Demand rises every year by the equivalent of a city somewhere between the size of Nottingham or Cardiff. That is just immigration-driven demand. Those people have to live somewhere… supply is short and demand is high. Ergo, prices rise…

William Cameron
William Cameron
3 years ago
Reply to  Joe Blow

Sorry . You are mixing up desire with demand . If lenders do not give mortgages there is no demand -however much people want something- its not demand -in the economic sense- unless they can pay for it.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

I accept the distinction, but I am not mixing them up. There is, very simply, a shortage of housing. The drivers are complex and there are many of them.
The discussion on housing pressures, however, is almost always bogus since the link to mass immigration is denied in most public discourse.

Vanya Body
Vanya Body
3 years ago

This is my view: not enough attention is paid to the extraordinary emotional toll taken by casual sexual relationships. Young women are encouraged to have sex without qualms with young men who are told there are genuinely no strings and no responsibilities. So boys learn that dating apps, such as Tinder, will allow them to pass from woman to woman without giving them a second thought. I believe every time a woman has sex with a new partner, somewhere deep down in her soul she is hoping that this will turn out to be the actual life partner. Isn’t this just innate and are women not basically hard-wired to seek the best possible mate for our children, even if it is subconsciously done? One who will protect and be there for the long haul? If that is viewed as ‘old fashioned’ or ‘anti-feminist’ I would say: ‘who are we really kidding?.’ I have a daughter just entering adulthood. I am so fearful for her future as she navigates this tinder-framed emotional minefield. Hopes raised and dashed, continuously until emotional numbness sets in.

John K
John K
3 years ago

Best of luck with that. Mammals including humans are driven by the urge to reproduce and all the societal controls in the world don’t alter biology.

Anecdote: I was talking to three young Mormon women about the “silver ring thing” movement a few years ago. I asked them what the pregnancy rate among women who wore one was, compared to the wider community, One looked me in the eye and said “about the same”.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
3 years ago
Reply to  John K

Real Abstinence would certainly be popular if the supply of contraceptives gave out.

J. Rob
J. Rob
3 years ago
Reply to  Tony Buck

But that’s his point. These Mormon girls don’t abstain at any higher rates, nor do they use contraceptives. Hence, the higher pregnancy rates.

M Spahn
M Spahn
3 years ago

It would take a cataclysmic shock to modern social and technological infrastructures to disrupt the mass availability of birth control. . .we’ll need a radical revision of what ‘feminism’ looks like.

Yes, it would . . . and in that scenario we’d have much bigger problems than revising feminism.

But fear not Mary, it may not take that. The new generation of antisex wokehadi feminists may be game for an alliance of sorts with you revanchist church ladies, if that’s what it takes to dictate everyone else’s s*x life to them.

L H
L H
3 years ago

Sex education in schools has gone a long way towards squeezing the living, long term family. Instead of teaching ‘family planning’ the subject is actually ‘family avoidance’. By the time women start to really push against the cultural pressure to delay, delay, delay they often must make the inevitable hard choices for motherhood and against their own personal dreams and non-maternal interests, anyway. All is subsumed by the drive toward motherhood. It has always been ever thus. School sex education should mention the realities of the drive to actually reproduce. There should be a focus on long term family relations not just short term sexual ones. In this secular world, an improved health curriculum might help women achieve important maternity goals with perhaps a bit more dignity.

J. Rob
J. Rob
3 years ago

I have personally always raised an eyebrow at women who equate casual sex with “empowerment” and “liberation from men,” as if men take any issue with a woman not calling after a one-night-stand. Aside from the reasons mentioned in this article (greater risk of pregnancy, violence, disease, etc), they don’t even seem to get any pleasure out of it. Men are unlikely to put much effort into sex with a woman they’ll never see again, and so these women rarely even orgasm during these encounters (less than half, according to webMD). The only thing they seem to get out of it is validation that they’re still “f*ckable,” which isn’t exactly high praise. I work at a bridal shop, and have found that attractiveness isn’t much of a factor when it comes to which women men will marry, let alone f*ck. However, I figured that my lack of understanding stemmed from the fact that I’m a lesbian and don’t really understand heterosexual attraction, so how could I understand the desire to have casual sex with men?

Still, even on the lesbian side of things, where orgasm is more likely in the case of casual sex, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in it. I was just on a lesbian forum today where someone asked our opinions on no-strings-attached sex, to which almost everyone replied, “No, I want to have an emotional connection with whoever I have sex with.” These aren’t exactly conservative women either, most of them are radical feminists. They just have nothing to prove by pretending to like casual sex.

I have noticed that, at least within my own circle, the women who are the biggest proponents of “sex-positive feminism” are the same ones who are the most insecure and seem to change their interests and personality every time they get a new boyfriend. It’s no wonder they also adopt the same masculine, exploitative attitude towards sex. They try hard to present this image to the world of being a “cool girl,” who doesn’t care about silly things like “monogamy” and “relationships”. She likes raunchy sex, just like the guys. She likes porn, just like the guys. She’s straight, but down for threesomes with other women, because that’s what the guys like, isn’t it? Isn’t she such a cool and liberated woman?

I would argue that it’s ok not to settle for bad sex with strangers. One doesn’t necessarily have to wait until marriage, but one can at least wait until she finds someone who cares about her and her pleasure in the bedroom. Standards don’t make you less of a feminist, nor does not treating your sexual partners like disposable sex toys. Connection is important to a lot of women; this is not a weakness. And if you need more convincing from a feminist perspective, read Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy.

Peter Kriens
Peter Kriens
3 years ago

Mary, don’t you think most men also have a strong bond with ther off spring and feel a responsibility to provide? They also have zero power about the pregnancy, have no say in an abortion, and can be forced to pay child support regardless of the woman’s intentions. The movie the Red Pill has interesting section on this topic.

It might help to include the male perspective because the far majority of males are programmed to take responsibility.

It might also help to realize that the few ‘bad boy’ men that want to avoid taking responsibility seem far more attractive to many women than the far majority of more responsible bros.

This story is much more two sided than you make it sound.

robert scheetz
robert scheetz
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Kriens

More like 4,5,or 6 sided. This is the whinging of upper middle-class “sex & the city” princess types.

Boys are told to “take it like a man”, i.e. accept their lot, in this instance, in the gender lottery; and, girls have always been similarly instructed.

Most women aren’t “babes”, and even they are only so for a few years at best. Bourgeois culture way over-values the physical beauty of youth and sexual pleasure. And the sex & the city types end up with Donald Trump or Jeffrey Epstein types they deserve, … and never grow up.

And their are easily as many female predators, …tho it is considered unmanly to write songs about it.

robert scheetz
robert scheetz
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Kriens

I wonder if there aren’t as many predators on the one side as the other? only that it’s ungallant to write songs for one?

Dave H
Dave H
3 years ago

“When the inevitable collapse of society comes, your decadent ways won’t cut it any more!” is what I read here.

Same screed you get from religious nuts, preppers and all sorts of other loons. Guess it’s the right social background for it, what with the pandemic going on. Doesn’t really make it meaningful though.

Not sure anyone’s up for “abolishing” marriage either, though some would end state involvement in the process.

Dave Weeden
Dave Weeden
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

You appear to have read a different article to me.

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave Weeden

I got the same impression. The essay is well written, but the premise is not particularly insightful or illuminating.

It’s understood that, for most of human history, biology has played a massive role in shaping gender roles, sexuality, and values. As the author says, technological advancements have helped to level the playing field and allowed women greater agency over their reproductive journey.

That said, I fail to see the point of theorizing about what might occur in a fictional future where birth control is somehow taken off the table and we’re compelled to revert to more traditional views of sex. It isn’t a likely or even realistic scenario and, to me, the essay reads a bit like uninteresting speculative fiction. The toothpaste is unlikely to reenter the tube. For good or ill, libido and commitment have been decoupled.

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

I got the same impression. The essay is well written, but the premise is not particularly insightful or illuminating.

It’s understood that, for most of human history, biology has played a massive role in shaping gender roles, sexuality, and values. As the author says, technological advancements have helped to level the playing field and allowed woman greater agency over their reproductive journey.

I fail to see the point of theorizing about what might occur in a fictional future where birth control is somehow taken of the table and we’re compelled to revert to more traditional views of sex. It isn’t a likely or even realistic scenario and, to me, the essay reads a bit like uninteresting speculative fiction. The toothpaste is unlikely to reenter the tube. For good or ill, libido and commitment have been decoupled.

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

Twice now I have tried responding to this comment and twice now the UnHerd staff have blocked/deleted my comment. I’ve no idea why. The moderators are fickle and inscrutable.

Robert G
Robert G
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

I got the same impression. The piece is well written, but the premise is not particularly insightful or illuminating.

It’s understood that, for most of human history, biology has played a massive role in shaping gender roles, sexuality, and values. As the piece says, technological advancements have helped to level the playing field and allowed woman greater agency over their reproductive journey.

I fail to see the point of theorizing about what might occur in a fictional future where birth control is somehow taken of the table and we’re compelled to revert to more traditional views of sex. It isn’t a likely or even realistic scenario and, to me, the piece reads a bit like uninteresting speculative fiction. The toothpaste is unlikely to reenter the tube. For good or ill, libido and commitment have been decoupled.

Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
3 years ago
Reply to  Dave H

I think the point is as Harrington says – a lot of women have been told, and believe, that the sexual norms of the past were there to repress female sexuality and make women’s lives difficult. They look at rules around marriage, or women being chaperoned when out with men, and really believe that these existed mainly to disempower women while men were free do do as they wished.

It means they misunderstand what they are identifying as patriarchal structures that need to be dismantled, and can’t understand women’s place in societies historically. Much of their thinking about women is based on a misunderstanding.

As for whether it’s possible that widespread access to birth control could change, there are plenty of places where that is true right now.

cap0119
cap0119
3 years ago

All well and good, but unfortunately, the ultimate fact is that even a husband can desert or run around, and even a woman who refuses pre-marital sex can be coerced or raped.

We are again stuck with having to dismantle the patriarchy. When women have economic power in a society they don’t need a husband. And I don’t mean liberal feminist-type “job opportunities”. I mean ultimate control of the resources, as in Hopi society where all of the real estate belongs to the women. And when men are raised in a matriarchy, they don’t rape and abuse women.

The Hopi and Mosuo of China are better places for us to look to than traditional patriarchal marriage, in which women often end up traded like livestock as an economic asset / dependent.

Joe Blow
Joe Blow
3 years ago

I have advised my sons and anyone who would listen that it is foolish for a man to marry. In fact, if he is only to co-habit, he must get strict and clear legal boundaries in place early.

The risks and costs of being vulnerable to the whim of a woman in the context of a misandrist legal system are simply not worth it. Just say no. You can always find sex; the rest is not worth the trouble.

James Suarez
James Suarez
3 years ago

But I thought marriage was a patriarchal institution.
Now it seems to be both saving women from men, and shackling them to a man.

cap0119
cap0119
3 years ago
Reply to  James Suarez

Exactly. See my comment above.

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago
Reply to  James Suarez

If marriage were so patriarchal, the groom would get to wear an outfit unlike that of anyone else at the wedding, while the bride is dressed exactly like all the bridesmaids.

Tony Buck
Tony Buck
3 years ago

In an ideal world – where there was no selfishness, injustice or oppression – female vulnerability wouldn’t present a problem.

The problem is Original Sin – that human nature is Fallen and out of joint with God’s goodness.

Paul Whiting
Paul Whiting
3 years ago

Interesting article, and it helped me understand something of why feminists think the way they do. Thanks! However it also confirmed my belief that feminists take an extremely narrow and selective view of how the world works, from which flawed premises they inevitably reach their warped conclusions.

Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
Meghan Kathleen Jamieson
3 years ago

Not only is this “freedom” fragile and technologically dependent, it’s questionable how pro-woman a position that requires suppression of our reproductive role really is. Can you really say that women are valuable as women when participation in society depends on making themselves more like men?

The outcome is that we have a society that isn’t particularly supportive of social roles apart from working for wages, sees children as a luxury product, and tends to see women who leave their careers as a little embarrassing.

M Spahn
M Spahn
3 years ago

ddd

Charles Rense
Charles Rense
3 years ago

As long as you don’t mind a little infidelity, I see no problem with this.

jamesconfla
jamesconfla
3 years ago

An American culture is in it’s final gasps of decay and certain failure : there is but one solution! Look upward America!

N A
N A
3 years ago
Reply to  jamesconfla

I wouldn’t put my faith in Elon Musk getting us to Mars.

Steve Gwynne
Steve Gwynne
3 years ago

Perhaps a deeper question is why isn’t masturbation (self-sex) more normalised as an alternative to couple sex.

With practice (possibly aided and abetted with aphrodisiacs) it is possible to experience the same sort of euphoric highs, have multiple mind blowing orgasms and have deep insights on the way.

All without the need for porn or lurid fantasies or the need to be an Incel.

Google ‘tantric masturbation’ or a good book is
‘The Tao of Health, Sex and Longevity’.

In my opinion, tantric masturbation should be a perquisite before embarking on the emotionally messy game of couple sex.

Jonathan Barker
Jonathan Barker
3 years ago

Everyone of my wide circle of friends and acquaintances has had sex before marriage – most/all of them have had more than one adult intimate partner.
Such would be the case almost everywhere in the Western world.

Meanwhile why not check out the books by Stephanie Coontz titled The Way We Never Were, and, Marriage A History