Hell in a Handbasket, Part MCXIV: Women Are Having Sex!
This time, it's due to our society's sad lack of buggy rides, teen marriages, and stigmatized bastards. And today's message is brought to us by Leon R. Kass, who is apparently holds the chair in "Back in My Day Studies" at the University of Chicago.
This piece is from Boundless, the Focus on the Family magazine for college students (which should actually be titled "Bound and Gagged," since that's how Dobson and the gang would like to see all young people -- but only metaphorically, probably).
Now, with no more ado, here are selections from "The End of Courtship: Part 1 of 3."
Until what seems like only yesterday, young people were groomed for marriage, and the paths leading to it were culturally well set out, at least in rough outline. In polite society, at the beginning of this century, our grandfathers came a-calling and a-wooing at the homes of our grandmothers, under conditions set by the woman, operating from strength on her own turf.
I don't know about you, but my grandfathers did not come a-calling and a-wooing in 2001, mainly since they were dead by then. But maybe in the polite society that Leon inhabits, things are different, and zombies rise from the grave at the beginning of every century for some courtin', callin', and undead sex.
A generation later, courting couples began to go out on "dates," in public and increasingly on the man's terms, given that he had the income to pay for dinner and dancing.
Man, things were sure a lot better in the 1900's, when women controlled things by being the chattels of their fathers.
But, especially after the war, "going- steady" was a regular feature of high-school and college life; the age of marriage dropped considerably, and high-school or college sweethearts often married right after, or even before, graduation.
And life was good. Sure, a lot of those marriages were unhappy (because few people are ready for marriage at 18), but marrying off kids while they are in their teens keeps everything clean and tidy, in that they get hitched while they are too young to know any better. Also, they may not have time for any premaritial fooling around,
In other respects as well, the young remained culturally attached to the claims of "real life." Though times were good, fresh memory kept alive the poverty of the recent Great Depression and the deaths and dislocations of the war; necessity and the urgencies of life were not out of sight, even for fortunate youth. Opportunity was knocking, the world and adulthood were beckoning, and most of us stepped forward into married life, readily, eagerly, and, truth to tell, without much pondering.
Yes, they were the Almost Greatest Generation, and they got married without thinking, because it was the cultural expectation -- and they liked it that way!
Not so today.
And that's the thesis of Leon's essay: kids today don't do things the way that they did when Leon was young, and that's WRONG.
Sexually active — in truth, hyperactive —
It's a universally recognized truth that today's young people are "sexually hyperactive" -- after all, Leon wouldn't say it if it weren't true.
they flop about from one relationship to another; to the bewildered eye of this admittedly much-too-old but still romantic observer,
Yeah, Leon is much too old to be window peeking on the students, watching to see if they are engaging in some of that sexual hyperactivity -- and I bet the police don't buy his story about just being a romantic any more than I do.
they manage to appear all at once casual and carefree and grim and humorless about getting along with the opposite sex. The young men, nervous predators, act as if any woman is equally good:
Okay, I'm old (however, not nearly as old as Leon) and possibly out of touch with today's college students, but this seems like bunk (and hogswallah) to me.
They are given not to falling in love with one, but to scoring in bed with many. And in this sporting attitude they are now matched by some female trophy hunters.
The hussies! And now we come to Leon's secondary point: women have no right to be as sexually active as men, because, um, it's just not right! Anyway, it's not what nature intended for them.
But most young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused; hoping for something more, they are not enjoying their hard-won sexual liberation as much as liberation theory says they should.
And if they aren't sad, lonely, and confused, then they damn well ought to be, the Jezebels!
After college, the scene is even more remarkable and bizarre: singles bars, personal "partner wanted" ads (almost never mentioning marriage as a goal), men practicing serial monogamy (or what someone has aptly renamed "rotating polygamy"),
Because women never go from relationship to relationship, only men.
women chronically disappointed in the failure of men "to commit." For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties — their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature.
In times past, mature women in their twenties lived under the protection of a man, and thus were in sync with their inborn nature to be a treated as inferior beings.
Some women positively welcome this state of affairs, but most do not; resenting the personal price they pay for their worldly independence, they nevertheless try to put a good face on things and take refuge in work or feminist ideology.
Most women hate the fact that have to support themselves while they are in their twenties. They also hate it that they are allowed to have jobs, vote, and own property. They all wish that they could meet a man like Leon, who would rescue them from a life of independence and allow them to do what they were created for: have babies, cook meals, and mop floors (but only with the mop that their husbands have chosen for them).
And then they enter their thirties and "they begin to allow themselves to hear their biological clock ticking" -- but they're already over the hill, having left their most fertile years behind them, and no man will marry them now. But they brought this on themselves by not waiting at their father's home for somebody to come a-calling and a-wooing.
Anyone who seriously contemplates the present scene is — or should be — filled with profound sadness, all the more so if he or she knows the profound satisfactions of a successful marriage.
And if you know the profound satisfactions of a successful marriage but aren't filled with profound sadness for single people today, then you should be shunned by that polite society mentioned previously!
Our hearts go out not only to the children of failed- or non-marriages — to those betrayed by their parents' divorce and to those deliberately brought into the world as bastards
As opposed to those parents whose children became bastards without any deliberate planning.
— but also to the lonely, disappointed, cynical, misguided, or despondent people who are missing out on one of life's greatest adventures and, through it, on many of life's deepest experiences, insights, and joys. We watch our sons and daughters, our friends' children, and our students bumble along from one unsatisfactory relationship to the next, wishing we could help....
Yes, Leon, please tell us lonely, disappointed, cynical, misguided, despondent single people how we can return to the days of courtship and marriage (i.e., the turn of this century).
Here is a (partial) list of the recent changes that hamper courtship and marriage: the sexual revolution, made possible especially by effective female contraception;
So, in order to rescue women from lives of sad, lonely confusion, we need to ban effective contraception. Got it.
the ideology of feminism and the changing educational and occupational status of women;
Since marriage only works if men don't have to think of women as their equals.
the destigmatization of bastardy,
And damn it, we NEED to restigmatize it -- for the sake of the children!
divorce, infidelity, and abortion; the general erosion of shame and awe regarding sexual matters,
So basically, we need to return to the days when everyone conformed publicly and sinned secretly -- and then women will be happy again, since sex is best when it's shameful and dirty.
Anyway, Leon identifies several more things that are different now than they were in 50's, but it's premarital S-E-X that really gets his goat.
The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it?
And why would a man marry a cow if he can get the milk for free? And what role does government cheese play in his decision to not woo animals?
Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother.
Yes, back in the good old days, men had premarital and extramarital sex, but they did so only with sluts, harlots, and other women of easy virtue. And men liked it that way! And that's what's wrong with society today: the lack of a double standard.
Once female modesty became a first casualty of the sexual revolution, even women eager for marriage lost their greatest power to hold and to discipline their prospective mates. For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love.
Yes, ladies, a man will never love you unless you're a cock tease. Everyone, be sure to thank Leon for this life-changing message.
Next week, we'll see if Part Two offers further insights into how we bitter, unfulfilled, depressed single woman can find true happiness through male subjection -- but we only have a shot at this kind of true happiness if we're at our peak fertility, because a man won't buy the chicken if her eggs are nearing their "purchase by" date.
5:10:09 AM 
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