Figleaf's Real Adult Sex

Along the same lines as my previous post, here’s the answer I submitted a while back for this week’s Em & Lo’s Wise Guys feature. The question was “What’s the best way to turn down a guy who you’ve been on a date or two with, but don’t want to go on any others?” My answer?

The most gracious way is also maybe the most practical. You want to say some variation on “I wouldn’t have gone out with you the first time if I didn’t like you. I wouldn’t be saying no now [i.e. instead of just disappearing] if I didn’t respect you.” The point being to make it clear it you didn’t make a mistake saying yes the first time, and that not being a perfect match for you doesn’t make him a loser. That’s the gracious part.

The practical part is that men start learning as early as fairy tales that we have to be persistent, to never take no for an answer, to strive and achieve, and if we just work at it long and hard enough we’ll always “win over” the reluctant girl in the end. Letting him down with ego intact makes it less likely that he’ll try redoubling his effort to win you over. If he can walk away feeling respected he’ll be more likely to respect both you and your decision.

I said it here.

If only I’d figured that out years ago. That and understanding you should probably say the same thing to a woman you didn’t want to go on a 2nd or 3rd date with.

Sigh.

The other wise guys’ answers are pretty good too, as are the comments.

AlwaysArousedGirl has a nice catch related to the real interest ‘wingers have in keeping marriage heterosexual. This time it’s Sam Schulman writing in the Christian Science Monitor, even though he’s more often found in rabidly conservative and neocon rags like The Weekly Standard, the Wall St. Journal, Commentary, and Orthodoxy Today.

Marriage is not about couples or lovers – it’s about the physical and moral integrity of women. When a woman’s sexuality is involved, human communities must deal with a malign force that an individual woman and her family cannot control or protect.

...

Marriage is a necessary defense of a woman’s sexuality and her human liberty from determined assault by men who would turn her into a slave, a concubine – something less than fully human. Human communities need to give women some additional degree of protection – through law, custom, religious decree, or sacrament…

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Modern marriage is only the least worst version of marriage that has emerged from all this – but it is still necessary for women. What protects women, ultimately, is that marriage laws and customs confer upon her independence something extra – dignity, protection, sacredness – that others must respect.

Read the quote in context here.

This guy Schulman is a real piece of work when it comes to understanding the dominant paradigm’s insistence on the bogus Two Rules of Desire and the whole general ideology of women as the “no-sex” class.

Writing more confidently in Orthodoxy Today, for a readership he knows to be more conservative than the relatively liberal Christian Science Monitor he wrote

...marriage benefits women, again not just in law but essentially. A woman can control who is the father of her children only insofar as there is a civil and private order that protects her from rape; marriage is the bulwark of that order. The 1960’s feminists had the right idea: the essential thing for a woman is to control her own body. But they were wrong that this is what abortion is for; it is, rather, what marriage is for. It is humanity’s way of enabling a woman to control her own body and to know (if she cares to) who is the father of her children.

Yes, marriage tends to regulate or channel the sexual appetite of men, and this is undoubtedly a good thing for women. But it is not the ultimate good. A husband, no matter how unfaithful, cannot introduce a child who is not his wife’s own into a marriage without her knowledge; she alone has the power to do such a thing. For a woman, the fundamental advantage of marriage is thus not to regulate her husband but to empower herself—to regulate who has access to her person, and to marshal the resources of her husband and of the wider community to help her raise her child­ren.

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Every human relationship can be described as an enslavement, but for women the alternative to marriage is a much worse enslavement — which is why marriage, for women, is often associated as much with sexual freedom as with sexual constraint. In the traditional Roman Catholic cultures of the Mediterranean and South America, where virginity is fiercely protected and adolescent girls are hardly permitted to “date,” marriage gives a woman the double luxury of controlling her sexuality and, if she wishes, extending it.

He said it here.

It gets worse, by the way. You know how everyone goes around saying it’s radical feminists who think all heterosexual sex is rape? Check out Schulman (who incorrectly identifies the very conservative feminist Catharine Mackinnon as a radical feminist.)

Radical feminists were right, to an extent, in insisting that men’s and women’s sexuality is so different as to be inimical. Catharine MacKinnon has proclaimed that in a “patriarchal” society, all sexual intercourse is rape. Repellent as her view is, it is formed around a kernel of truth. There is something inherently violative about sexual intercourse—and there is something dangerous about being a woman in a sexual relationship with a man to whom she is not yet married. Among the now-aging feminists of my generation, no less than among their mothers, such a woman is commonly thought to be a victim.

Marriage is a sign that the ever-so-slight violation that is involved in a heterosexual relationship has been sanctioned by some recognized authority.

Call me a radical here but I’m… pretty sure marriage is not MacKinnon’s preferred solution to the problem of heterosexuality-as-rape (to the limited extent even she sees it that way.) I’m even more sure her solution does not include further extending “fiercely protecting” women’s virginity and “hardly permit[ting] them to ‘date.’”

In fact, call me a real radical here but I’m… pretty certain that no matter how conservative, and no matter how genuinely leery of sex she might be, and even no matter how superficially similar the outlines of her strategies might be to Schulman’s and those of his ilk, MacKinnon’s solution is precisely antithetical to his: the way to give women agency, sexual and otherwise, is to give them agency, not to immure them in deep and often outright murderous traditions that are merely less worse than enslavement… not to construct them into traps that are at best “ever-so-slight violations” of their autonomy, their integrity, and their right to be independent human beings who’s decisions are to be respected.

And finally, what exactly do Schulman and his kind think of men that they imagine this enslavement of women to be better, safer, more dignified, more sacred at the hands of tradition than at the “mercy” of the monsters they imagine men to be? Sweet Mother of Pearl! And these are the folks who imagine that feminists hate men!

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The remaining points against Schulman have been better expressed by others but they bear repeating

• The most dangerous place for a woman is in her home.
• Women are most likely to be assaulted, battered, or murdered in their homes.

• Women are most likely to be assaulted, battered, or murdered by a husband, domestic partner, or male family member.

and finally

• If the goal of traditional marriage really was the protection of women from men rather than the protection of their property value* as exchanged between men then, as AAG so nicely puts it, women would be far better off marrying 80-pound Rotweiler/pit-bull-mix attack dogs. Or as one of her commenters put it, they could marry their cans of pepper spray. Or as Holly Pervocracy would probably say, a handgun. (Although as Holly also points out, one rarely has one’s handgun, well, handy when you tend to need them most: when around male friends, dates, and partners. Just sayin’)

But of course the traditional institutions of marriage were never meant for the protection of women. And the extent it ever was necessary, the advent of classical-liberal conservative institutions as manifested in the notions of, say, rule of law founded on principles of individual rights held self-evident in our and other constitutions has made it less so.

Sheesh! Where do they get these guys? Who’d want to marry one of them?

Oh, right. And at the end of the day, of course, Schulman says (after claiming, naturally, that some of his best friends are gay) marriage must remain forbidden to same-sex couples because if you let just anybody get married then the special role marriage carves out for women might be lost.

He says it as if that were a bad thing.

* As in “thou shall not covet thy neighbors wife, nor his house, nor his cattle, nor his man servant nor maid servant, nor anything else that is thy neighbor’s.”

Linda McClain of Feminist Law Professors continues a theme that’s been developing in light of the recent Prop 8 findings about marriage

I would like to invite the attention of feminist scholars and anyone else interested in the marriage debate to Judge Walker’s extensive findings of fact as well as his conclusions of law about the irrelevance of gender to marriage and parenthood.

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To that end, Linda Greenhouse, an experienced analyst of the U.S. Supreme Court, posted (last week) an insightful commentary “Hiding in Plain Sight,” in which she praises Judge Walker for “his unveiling of a central hiding-in-plain-sight fact: the change in society’s expectations about what partnership in a marriage entails.”

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Without making any predictions, she nonetheless takes the position that if Judge Walker’s opinion survives on appeal, it will be on the basis of his conclusion that to extend marriage to gay men and lesbians will not “redefine marriage,” since marriage has already undergone profound change “as the result of forces completely independent of federal judges.”

She said it here.

Continuing a theme she developed in a previous post (key point: whereas California once had myriad laws specifically related to the different sexes of married individuals it had repealed every one except the underlying requirement that there be two sexes in a marriage), McLain examines Judge Walker’s findings that outcomes for children of same-sex couples are no different than they are for opposite-sex couples.

The bottom line, though, is that Judge Walker’s ruling has basically validated Stephanie Coontz’s thesis in Marriage, a History, which was originally subtitled “From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage.” I’m pretty sure Coontz would say Walker’s ruling was the final blow against marriage as a key vehicle of the original Patriarchal patriarchy. Under capital-P Patriarchy, you may remember, marriage is not considered “a union between a man and a woman.” Instead it’s a union between families, generally arranged by the eldest living members of the respective families for the purpose of cementing economic, social, or political interests.

What makes McClain’s point about family law is that the Walker decision also suggests that the capital-P Patriarchal intention for children in real “traditional” heterosexual marriage — sealing the union with blood-relations — has been superseded by what modern opponents of same-sex marriage only imagine was the real intent: creating a safe, nurturing environment in which children can grow to adulthood.

All-round good stuff in that ruling. Although (update!) let’s hope they’re upheld on appeal!

Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon says

As you no doubt know, I love Kate Harding and usually nod firmly at her blog posts. But I have to disagree with this one she wrote about a woman named Neenah Pickett, who gave herself a year to find a husband and kept a blog called 52 Weeks 2 Find Him Blog. I firmly agree with Kate that narratives that tell women they must be passive (or passive aggressive) to “catch” a man are sexist and not as effective as advertised, and that the portrayal of men as being composed of nothing but tender ego and skittishness—-where any kind of expectation-setting from a woman is sure to scare them off—-is also ridiculous. But I can’t help but disagree with her about whether or not it’s a good idea to make it a goal to find your spouse and give yourself a time limit to do so, and it’s really not a good idea to advertise it.

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And the reason is quite simple: No one enjoys being objectified. Call us hopeless romantics, but most of us want to fall in love, and to have someone else adore us for our unique selves.

Read the quote in context here.

“the reason is quite simple: No one enjoys being objectified.”

This.

Nobody wants to be “a piece of ass” and nobody wants to be “a husband” because those are things, not people, to the individual seeking them.

In a reply in comments Amanda adds

Exuding the “I just need a wife, please fill that role and quickly” is perversely going to get that goal further and further out of reach, as the good ones rightfully want to be treated like utterly charming, unique individuals.

A year or two out of college my long-time partner came out and left me for another woman. She explained her decision to her friends with very generous words about my suitability as a partner in all regards but my biology. This combination of factors, it turned out, briefly made me the most eligible bachelor on the planet as far as a surprising number of impatiently single women in the neighborhood were concerned.

It wasn’t even as much fun as it sounds.

Meanwhile potential partners who weren’t impatiently single generally gave me a lot of space to get over what was a seriously traumatic separation for me.

That said, I think she’s a bit off the mark to label the behavior “desperate.” It’s something more like “instrumental.” Here’s what I mean.

Funny but true story: decades ago I was at a Halloween party. We were hanging out with a mixed group of friends and towards the end of the evening one of the men, who was dressed up like an old prospector, stands up, gathered up his various props, including a shovel and with absolutely no trace of self-awareness said “it’s getting late. I’m going to see if I can’t dig up a girl.”

That wasn’t about desperation, but it wasn’t exactly about forming a peer relationship either. Since his intention was just to get laid he didn’t particularly care who he got laid with. Which I’m sure made everyone he approached feel really unique and special… and previously engaged.

Which is pretty much exactly how I felt when I was being trolled for my long-term relationship potential. It wasn’t that they were desperate, it’s that they were driven by their purpose rather than by any person.

So yeah, it felt like a job interview. But worse, it felt like an interview for a job I wasn’t applying for.

It’s great if you say “enough dallying, I’m going to go out and meet people, reassess assumptions, criteria, and habits that make me unavailable or undesirable, and see what happens.” Saying “52 weeks from now I’m going to be married,” or for that matter “I’m going to go dig up a girl tonight” is something else altogether.

That’s what I thought Amanda meant.