A recent piece in the Babylon Bee described a Tradwife as a newly invented product and considered the advantages and disadvantages of buying one: Pro: She homeschools, so your kids are always around you Con: She homeschools, so your kids are ALWAYS around you
It does not claim any evidence about abilities or behavior, only about brain structure.
"However, Brouillard told DailyMail.com researchers still have to investigate if their anatomical findings relate to significant changes in behavior or mental status."
Interesting, but unless I missed it you still don't have direct evidence that use of the pill reduces decision-making abilities, only that it affects hormones in ways there is some reason to believe should have that effect.
There's a Neal Stephenson novel that mentions the use of animal intestines, knotted off, as a condom. Liable to go way back. Still, 'coitus with a condom' as Roger Zelazny mentions disdainfully, wasn't an ideal. 'If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna' said Napoleon.
As I mentioned, both Casanova and Boswell, writing in the 18th century, mention the existence of condoms. I think Casanova says something negative about them.
Checking the Wikipedia article, the earliest European descriptions seem to be from about 1600, first for preventing transmission of syphilis, shortly thereafter for birth control.
Okay, I missed your mention of Casanova and Boswell, but animal intestines were readily available when everyone who ate a chicken dinner had to wring a chicken's neck and had access to chicken intestines. Don't know if chicken intestines were comfortable for a fellow, but wet leather stretches great. And I'm Irish. And guys get macho about difficult sex.
I think you may be leaving out one argument commonly employed in favor of the traditional or modified traditional models. If sex is easily obtained for men outside of marriage, they are less inhibited from leaving the spouse with which they may have had a child.
I also think you may be overstating the importance of sexual compatibility. I don't think specific sexual preferences are very fixed , and so I think sexual incompatibility can mostly be overcome.
I'm looking at the costs or benefits for an individual of following one or another rule. Your point, that a woman may be better off if other women are unwilling to sleep around, is true and important but irrelevant to the question of how it is in a woman's interest to act.
Well, no. People really don't enjoy having sex. They enjoy having had sex. It's like climbing Mt. Everest no one likes the climb but they like having reached the top, and bragging about it. Sex is a lot of work but it's worth it when done.
Also what is sex? Missionary position? Only vaginal intercourse? Oral Y\N, Anal Y\N. Kinky? Roleplaying?
In the waybackwhen with shorter life spans and woman running a fairly high risk of dying in child birth it probably didn't matter much. Sex was sex. If you think about living with someone for 4,5,6, decades then it puts a different perspective on things.
There is making love to a person, making love with a person, having that person make love to you, having sex with a person and Effing a person. The motions may be the same but it isn't the same thing There is a time and place for everything.
There is also a difference between falling in love and being in love.
Years and years ago I was working with a guy who was telling me about his relationship with his wife. Said that when he first met her the main person in her life was her father. (old adage about a son is a son until he takes a wife while a daughter is a daughter all of her life. In a similar vein no soldier dying on a battlefield cries out for his dad).
When he came along he became the center of her life. They were camping buddies, fishing buddies, hunting buddies, lovers and best friends. Then they had children and he said: He immediately became dropped to #2! . And it hurt! I can still remember the sound of his voice when he said that. LOL. Took him a while to get use to it, but he did.
There are two tough adjustments in any long term relationship. One is adjusting from the falling in love feelings to the being in love feeling. And living with a person every day, the same person, every day. The second is hierarchy.
In todays modern relationships where do you fit? If a woman has a high powered career is it You-Career or Career-You. If children come along is it Children-You-Career, Career-Children-You, Probably not ever going to get higher then that. Why do you think divorces happen so much in Hollywood. Everyone thinks the other person will put them higher up than their career. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It gets really bad when the children are placed second to the career.
You think you will take precedence over her career and she think she will take precedence over your career.
One problem is that people have trouble making the transition between falling in love and being in love. I've known people who when the thrill fades they look for that same feeling over and over again and can't cope with it changing. So perpetually unhappy.
I don't think it necessarily follows from traditional marriage that sexual compatibility isn't to be expected. If the couple have the chance to meet and discover emotional compatibility, and if they are attracted to each other before sexual activity, both of those probably have a good correlation with sexual compatibility. It's different if we are talking about arranged marriages, especially if the couple don't get to meet before the wedding or if the parents don't care about their children's wishes, but that's a narrower case than "traditional marriage."
David Hackett Fischer's The Long Wave, a study of economic history, estimates that during the low-inflation period of the nineteenth century, about one bride in twenty was pregnant before the wedding. He counted that as a low illegitimacy rate, and suggested that the evidence is that inflation goes with high illegitimacy rates---but one in twenty is a LOW rate.
Spouses that care for each other should be able to negotiate difficulties. There are some difficulties that will be worse than others, but just about anything can be worked out.
I know a couple that were engaged and the guy got into a bad accident and was brain damaged. He has been in a wheelchair and significantly different ever since. They still got married.
She was young and pretty, so she could have made other decisions. "Sexual incompatibility" sounds silly when presented with a love like that. Previously I had only known older couples who had been together many years before one got sick, but still saw those couples staying together. Even when one is more of a caretaker than an equal spouse.
I'm talking about desiderata. A couple might be sexually incompatible on one way or another and still have a successful marriage, but it would be better if they were compatible.
I think it's a mistake to suppose that mutual caring is necessarily the independent variable and sexual compatibility the dependent one. It's also possible for sexual compatibility to lead to interactions that not only are pleasurable, but also produce emotional bonding that itself adds to mutual caring.
One thing you've neglected is that men and women will naturally start pair-bonding after sex, whether they mean to or not. Also, breaking the pair bond will affect their (and especially the woman's) ability to pair bond to others in the future.
" “Making love” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse but also a description of its emotional consequences. Arguably the bond between a couple who have only made love to each other will be stronger than the bond between a couple each of whom has had a dozen love affairs before this one. "
One point I didn't make is that some of the hostility associated with sex, males looking down on women who have slept with them, may be a result of the male finding himself emotionally bonded to someone he doesn't want to be bonded to.
A good stab at an issue of perennial interest, but I think you stopped short of penetrating it completely. The breakdown is apt but the consequences of complete abstinence for randy youth are given short shrift, particularly in our post-Pill era. In days of yore prostitution was also a tacitly acceptable outlet - for males. Now we’ve moved on something different, and no one seems to agree about how to handle that, or posit acceptable social adaptations ( though I’ve heard the Dutch are making some progress). We’re stuck with an over-sexed media environment, and that’s a major X-factor you’ve left unaccounted for. The question now is, will a frank discussion be able to proceed before it gets too icky?
I think that most men find some women more sexually attractive than others and some women find some men more sexually attractive than others. It isn't as simple as "some women are unusually hot," because the evaluation varies from one man to another, and similarly for women. I think how much I am physically attracted to a woman correlates with some physical and personality characteristics more closely than to whether she would be evaluated as hot by a random male.
A marriage will work better if both partners find each other sexually attractive. It almost certainly depends in part on the relationship, but also on the people. At the negative extreme, if a woman regards sex with her husband as a chore and is very much turned on by another man, that can lead to adultery and/or divorce.
I'm going to reply to your first point. I am very much in the camp of "wow, i wish people didn't feel they had to 'try before they buy'." (for moral reasons.) But I've heard the arguments and don't see the worry of "possible sexual incompatibility in the long-term" to be quite as pointless as you do.
What people mean is that, in a marriage relationship, sometimes one spouse (people believe it's predominantly the wives in present-day Western culture) ends up not desiring sex much at all in the long-term. So, given that expectation, people break it down into categories: "doesn't want to have sex in general" and "doesn't want to have sex with spouse much ever, but would want to have sex with someone in theory."
So I argued with my spouse about stuff related to this and was informed that one test a man might do with his intended-bride involves touch: How does she respond if you hold her hand? (Yes, like any test, this involves false positives and false negatives.) On the other end of the spectrum, (and from the last time we had this debate) I was informed of the practice of bundling, surprisingly (to me) practiced even in cultures with very traditional sexual boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(tradition)
Bundling is a particularly structured version but when I was growing up — I was born in 1945 — a common dating pattern was making out well short of intercourse. I remember one occasion when the woman specified "bikini limits," meaning that I shouldn't touch anything that would be covered by a bikini.
That's Theodicy's point about hand holding, carried a good deal further, and the point I made in the post about the possibility of getting information about sexual compatibility without doing anything that could get the woman pregnant.
So the -next- Babylon Bee article can be about a a student event/march/protest on a Christian campus for raising awareness of a movement to restore the practice.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, so the suitor can travel back to her folks' home, and they can wrap them each in a sack from the waist down, etc.
Lots of different versions existed. My favorite is a couple in a bed with a sword lying between them. All of them, I think, depend on the couple not choosing to ignore the artificial impediments and have intercourse. So it's really a symbolic restriction — like bikini limits.
Here's some unconsidered sand for the gears of your review of the matter: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12716133/contraceptive-pills-change-womens-brains.html. At least while using oral contraceptives, the decision-making abilities of women and their concomitant behavior appear to be very strongly compromised.
It does not claim any evidence about abilities or behavior, only about brain structure.
"However, Brouillard told DailyMail.com researchers still have to investigate if their anatomical findings relate to significant changes in behavior or mental status."
See no evil, hear no evil? A bit more background for you on the general subject, then: https://larryturner.substack.com/p/cognitive-downsides-of-modern-oral
Interesting, but unless I missed it you still don't have direct evidence that use of the pill reduces decision-making abilities, only that it affects hormones in ways there is some reason to believe should have that effect.
Well, damn, then I guess there's really nothing to worry about some 1/2 century or so after the structural change concerned...
There's a Neal Stephenson novel that mentions the use of animal intestines, knotted off, as a condom. Liable to go way back. Still, 'coitus with a condom' as Roger Zelazny mentions disdainfully, wasn't an ideal. 'If you are going to take Vienna, take Vienna' said Napoleon.
As I mentioned, both Casanova and Boswell, writing in the 18th century, mention the existence of condoms. I think Casanova says something negative about them.
Checking the Wikipedia article, the earliest European descriptions seem to be from about 1600, first for preventing transmission of syphilis, shortly thereafter for birth control.
Okay, I missed your mention of Casanova and Boswell, but animal intestines were readily available when everyone who ate a chicken dinner had to wring a chicken's neck and had access to chicken intestines. Don't know if chicken intestines were comfortable for a fellow, but wet leather stretches great. And I'm Irish. And guys get macho about difficult sex.
I think you would need intestines from something bigger than a chicken.
I seem to recall, sheep intestine was the preferred source. Not sure where I heard this.
I think you may be leaving out one argument commonly employed in favor of the traditional or modified traditional models. If sex is easily obtained for men outside of marriage, they are less inhibited from leaving the spouse with which they may have had a child.
I also think you may be overstating the importance of sexual compatibility. I don't think specific sexual preferences are very fixed , and so I think sexual incompatibility can mostly be overcome.
I'm looking at the costs or benefits for an individual of following one or another rule. Your point, that a woman may be better off if other women are unwilling to sleep around, is true and important but irrelevant to the question of how it is in a woman's interest to act.
Well, no. People really don't enjoy having sex. They enjoy having had sex. It's like climbing Mt. Everest no one likes the climb but they like having reached the top, and bragging about it. Sex is a lot of work but it's worth it when done.
Also what is sex? Missionary position? Only vaginal intercourse? Oral Y\N, Anal Y\N. Kinky? Roleplaying?
In the waybackwhen with shorter life spans and woman running a fairly high risk of dying in child birth it probably didn't matter much. Sex was sex. If you think about living with someone for 4,5,6, decades then it puts a different perspective on things.
There is making love to a person, making love with a person, having that person make love to you, having sex with a person and Effing a person. The motions may be the same but it isn't the same thing There is a time and place for everything.
There is also a difference between falling in love and being in love.
Years and years ago I was working with a guy who was telling me about his relationship with his wife. Said that when he first met her the main person in her life was her father. (old adage about a son is a son until he takes a wife while a daughter is a daughter all of her life. In a similar vein no soldier dying on a battlefield cries out for his dad).
When he came along he became the center of her life. They were camping buddies, fishing buddies, hunting buddies, lovers and best friends. Then they had children and he said: He immediately became dropped to #2! . And it hurt! I can still remember the sound of his voice when he said that. LOL. Took him a while to get use to it, but he did.
There are two tough adjustments in any long term relationship. One is adjusting from the falling in love feelings to the being in love feeling. And living with a person every day, the same person, every day. The second is hierarchy.
In todays modern relationships where do you fit? If a woman has a high powered career is it You-Career or Career-You. If children come along is it Children-You-Career, Career-Children-You, Probably not ever going to get higher then that. Why do you think divorces happen so much in Hollywood. Everyone thinks the other person will put them higher up than their career. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. It gets really bad when the children are placed second to the career.
You think you will take precedence over her career and she think she will take precedence over your career.
One problem is that people have trouble making the transition between falling in love and being in love. I've known people who when the thrill fades they look for that same feeling over and over again and can't cope with it changing. So perpetually unhappy.
I don't think it necessarily follows from traditional marriage that sexual compatibility isn't to be expected. If the couple have the chance to meet and discover emotional compatibility, and if they are attracted to each other before sexual activity, both of those probably have a good correlation with sexual compatibility. It's different if we are talking about arranged marriages, especially if the couple don't get to meet before the wedding or if the parents don't care about their children's wishes, but that's a narrower case than "traditional marriage."
David Hackett Fischer's The Long Wave, a study of economic history, estimates that during the low-inflation period of the nineteenth century, about one bride in twenty was pregnant before the wedding. He counted that as a low illegitimacy rate, and suggested that the evidence is that inflation goes with high illegitimacy rates---but one in twenty is a LOW rate.
Spouses that care for each other should be able to negotiate difficulties. There are some difficulties that will be worse than others, but just about anything can be worked out.
I know a couple that were engaged and the guy got into a bad accident and was brain damaged. He has been in a wheelchair and significantly different ever since. They still got married.
She was young and pretty, so she could have made other decisions. "Sexual incompatibility" sounds silly when presented with a love like that. Previously I had only known older couples who had been together many years before one got sick, but still saw those couples staying together. Even when one is more of a caretaker than an equal spouse.
I'm talking about desiderata. A couple might be sexually incompatible on one way or another and still have a successful marriage, but it would be better if they were compatible.
I think it's a mistake to suppose that mutual caring is necessarily the independent variable and sexual compatibility the dependent one. It's also possible for sexual compatibility to lead to interactions that not only are pleasurable, but also produce emotional bonding that itself adds to mutual caring.
One thing you've neglected is that men and women will naturally start pair-bonding after sex, whether they mean to or not. Also, breaking the pair bond will affect their (and especially the woman's) ability to pair bond to others in the future.
As I wrote:
" “Making love” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse but also a description of its emotional consequences. Arguably the bond between a couple who have only made love to each other will be stronger than the bond between a couple each of whom has had a dozen love affairs before this one. "
One point I didn't make is that some of the hostility associated with sex, males looking down on women who have slept with them, may be a result of the male finding himself emotionally bonded to someone he doesn't want to be bonded to.
A good stab at an issue of perennial interest, but I think you stopped short of penetrating it completely. The breakdown is apt but the consequences of complete abstinence for randy youth are given short shrift, particularly in our post-Pill era. In days of yore prostitution was also a tacitly acceptable outlet - for males. Now we’ve moved on something different, and no one seems to agree about how to handle that, or posit acceptable social adaptations ( though I’ve heard the Dutch are making some progress). We’re stuck with an over-sexed media environment, and that’s a major X-factor you’ve left unaccounted for. The question now is, will a frank discussion be able to proceed before it gets too icky?
I think that most men find some women more sexually attractive than others and some women find some men more sexually attractive than others. It isn't as simple as "some women are unusually hot," because the evaluation varies from one man to another, and similarly for women. I think how much I am physically attracted to a woman correlates with some physical and personality characteristics more closely than to whether she would be evaluated as hot by a random male.
A marriage will work better if both partners find each other sexually attractive. It almost certainly depends in part on the relationship, but also on the people. At the negative extreme, if a woman regards sex with her husband as a chore and is very much turned on by another man, that can lead to adultery and/or divorce.
I'm going to reply to your first point. I am very much in the camp of "wow, i wish people didn't feel they had to 'try before they buy'." (for moral reasons.) But I've heard the arguments and don't see the worry of "possible sexual incompatibility in the long-term" to be quite as pointless as you do.
What people mean is that, in a marriage relationship, sometimes one spouse (people believe it's predominantly the wives in present-day Western culture) ends up not desiring sex much at all in the long-term. So, given that expectation, people break it down into categories: "doesn't want to have sex in general" and "doesn't want to have sex with spouse much ever, but would want to have sex with someone in theory."
So I argued with my spouse about stuff related to this and was informed that one test a man might do with his intended-bride involves touch: How does she respond if you hold her hand? (Yes, like any test, this involves false positives and false negatives.) On the other end of the spectrum, (and from the last time we had this debate) I was informed of the practice of bundling, surprisingly (to me) practiced even in cultures with very traditional sexual boundaries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundling_(tradition)
Addendum: Ah; so, it sounds like the implementation of "bundling" in various cultures and families can range from "strict traditional" to "modified traditional." (Unsurprisingly.) This Atlas Obscura article is way more amusing/engaging than Wikipedia: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-awkward-17thcentury-dating-practice-that-saw-teens-get-bundled-into-bags
[Edits: edited slightly to be more concise and/or say what I meant.]
We should totally find a way to bring bundling back.
Bundling is a particularly structured version but when I was growing up — I was born in 1945 — a common dating pattern was making out well short of intercourse. I remember one occasion when the woman specified "bikini limits," meaning that I shouldn't touch anything that would be covered by a bikini.
That's Theodicy's point about hand holding, carried a good deal further, and the point I made in the post about the possibility of getting information about sexual compatibility without doing anything that could get the woman pregnant.
Oh dear.
So the -next- Babylon Bee article can be about a a student event/march/protest on a Christian campus for raising awareness of a movement to restore the practice.
Just in time for Thanksgiving, so the suitor can travel back to her folks' home, and they can wrap them each in a sack from the waist down, etc.
Lots of different versions existed. My favorite is a couple in a bed with a sword lying between them. All of them, I think, depend on the couple not choosing to ignore the artificial impediments and have intercourse. So it's really a symbolic restriction — like bikini limits.