Monday, April 01, 2013

The death twitches of the sexual revolution

Anthony Esolen, on what the feminists have made of romance:
... So it’s come to this: Even lust now is gray and dispirited. The girls celebrate Valentine’s Day by putting on a series of vulgar and angry skits, to instruct the boys in how rotten they are, and the boys, most of whom have no particular desire to treat girls badly, roll their eyes and go along with it, or file it away with all the other petty resentments of our lonely contemporary existence.  
Of course, there isn’t a feminist on my campus who will admit to these young women that if they really want to be protected from violence, they should marry a decent man and stay married to him, because such married women are less likely than any other group of Americans to be the victims of a felony.  
Nor will they call for a return to chivalry, because that would imply an exchange of gifts, from man to woman and woman to man; and gifts are incompatible with the squint-eyed reckoning of those who see all human relationships in terms of dominance ...

Read the rest here.

8 comments:

KyCobb said...

Martin,

First, there is still an epidemic of sexual assaults. Second, college educated women are the most likely group of women to get married and stay married. Single mothers generally are low-income and don't go to college. So the notion that angry leftist feminists on college campuses are destroying the American family is a myth.

Martin Cothran said...

KyCobb,

I didn't say angry feminists were destroying the American Family; I said they were destroying romance.

Maybe if there was a more well-defined way of conducting a romance these days and there was not so much distrust between the sexes being manufactured by the feminists' indignation industry the problem with sexual assault would not be so pronounced.

Mike Janocik said...

I never would have thought it possible, but C.S. Lewis was right. Modern liberalism (and it's twin sister, feminism) has even made sex boring.

Singring said...

'Maybe if there was a more well-defined way of conducting a romance these days and there was not so much distrust between the sexes being manufactured by the feminists' indignation industry the problem with sexual assault would not be so pronounced.'

Huh? I thought people who commit crimes were just plain evil - no social context required to explain.

Yet once again we find you making an argument (an awful one, but still an argument) that somehow societal factors influence criminal behaviour.

Why does this not apply to mass shootings, for example?

'I didn't say angry feminists were destroying the American Family; I said they were destroying romance.'

Oddly, most people today just don't agree with you and Esolen that Victorian England and rural 50s America were some 'romantic utopia' in which teenagers skipped home after school, hand in hand, to sit on the porch (or tenement wall) gazing into each others eyes with eternal love, perfectly happy and content.

You seem to take your image of past romance from romanticized TV shows, novels and poems - not reality.

The reality was that 'romance' and which expressions it could take was often dictated by family (i.e. the father), the social stratum and the Church.

It is absurd to suggest that this was some romantic wonderland - in many ways it was the exact opposite. Which is precisely why society has moved on.

I am very grateful I don't have to refrain from kissing my girlfriend in public just because we aren't married. And I'm grateful to the feminist movement for giving women the confidence to make their own decisions and view men and themselves with the necessary critical distance (as we all should) to know when they are being treated well or badly.

KyCobb said...

Martin,

"Maybe if there was a more well-defined way of conducting a romance these days and there was not so much distrust between the sexes being manufactured by the feminists' indignation industry the problem with sexual assault would not be so pronounced."

So, as always, its women's fault they are being assaulted. The one crime for which the perpetrator has no personal responsibility.

Josh said...

"I am very grateful I don't have to refrain from kissing my girlfriend in public just because we aren't married. And I'm grateful to the feminist movement for giving women the confidence to make their own decisions and view men and themselves with the necessary critical distance (as we all should) to know when they are being treated well or badly. "

Ah, the feminist movement; that great and wonderful thing which has produced the most healthy family-oriented society ever to exist. Gone are the days of illegitimate children, broken marriages, and child support. All thanks to the feminist movement.

In seriousness, the feminist movement has done little good. It has made women masculine and men feminine and condemned those who would question it. There is more to history than the Victorian era and the 1950's in rural America. Despite terrible life expectancy, we seem to have made it, so perhaps we shouldn't dismiss all of that history when it is today for the first time that birth rates are slowing.

Anonymous said...

Is there such a thing as a maninist? Should there be?

One Brow said...

In seriousness, the feminist movement has done little good. It has made women masculine and men feminine and condemned those who would question it.

YOu confuse "made" with "allowed to express". Frankly, I'm glad to be able to say I like baking cookies without worrying about ridicule.