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The Perversion of the Marriage Contract
Paul A Rahe has a post on the Main Feed, The Haunting Fear That Someone is Having a Good Time, where he talks about the absurdity of the modern view on sexual consent and how it removes passion from the relationship. The last several years have seen a rise in accusations of sexual assault on college campuses with the rise of Kangaroo courts treating accusations as truth without any investigation, frequently resulting in the expulsion of the accused without any opportunity to defend himself in a court of law.
Whether it is Mattress Girl or The Duke University Lacrosse team, real damage has been done to young men based on false allegations that were acted upon without any legitimate investigation or trial. This has resulted sexual consent contracts. I am not kidding. There is even an app! I’m sure most of you already know this.
For me, the real absurdity is how this happened. In the ’70s, no-fault divorce was passed in the US. This led to a rapid increase of divorces that lasted to the ’80s while there was also a steep decline in marriage rates (Census Data for the time period).
I grew up in the 90s and knew many kids whose parents were divorced. Many claimed they would never marry. And true to their word, the late 90’s and early 2000’s were marked by a rise in cohabitation. I get it. Why do you need a paper that says you love one another? It is just a paper and means nothing and its none of anyone else’s business. Right?
Not only this, but marital rape was enshrined in law across the US by 1993. Some may think, “Well that’s a good thing, right?” Violent assault was always against the law in the US, but marital rape was considered a misnomer because the marriage contract provided consent.
Wait. Hold on a second. Let’s follow this trail, shall we?
- 1960’s – Sex is acceptable outside of the marital framework
- 1970’s – No fault divorce weakens institution of marriage, leads to rise in divorce and lower marriage rates
- 1993 – The marriage contract is no longer considered a contract of sexual consent
- 1990’s – Rise in cohabitation, the questioning of why we need a piece of meaningless paper to say we’re in love
- Now: Sexual consent contracts
So, are you telling me we are issuing short-term marriage contracts???
What happened is we deconstructed marriage and what it meant to be married, divorcing it from sex and long-term commitment and making it solely about the individual. Marriage was no longer necessary for sex and if sex no longer needed marriage, why do we really need marriage? Once sex didn’t need marriage, it was completely removed from marriage. If Marriage didn’t confer any individual benefits, then why go through the process of marriage in the first place? Why not just live with the person you love?
Except it would appear that humans actually needed more than just anchor-less sex. Women have actually been harmed, but not by the men they falsely accuse. They would engage in activities with men they weren’t quite certain about, typically while inebriated, resulting in regret and sometimes depression. Usually, he blows her off – it was just a one night stand, right? If she were to get pregnant, abortion wasn’t hard to get, but this just led to more depression. The world around her said that free-sex and abortions were ok, so clearly the depression and regret has nothing to do with those, so it must mean there was something wrong with the actual sexual encounter… could it have been rape? So then a false accusation is levied against an innocent man. So rather than stop our paltry culture of the sexual merry go round and re-legitimizing the benefits of marriage, little contracts were drawn up to provide for these misled and misinformed youth to continue in their destructive behavior rather than change. There is a word for this and it is perversion.
Published in Marriage
The result of our inability to acknowledge that the Sexual Revolution’s destruction of courtship norms created a mess for everyone is women feeling raped, people calling seduction rape, a little contract for a one night stand, and unacknowledged feelings of bitterness triggered by humorous songs from a more civilized time.
We could straighten out this insanity easily if we could bring ourselves to say that we took a wrong turn back in something like 1965. But the type of people most responsible for that wrong turn will never say it. And we continue to listen to them.
Nothing we do will stop anything we 100%. We have the tools to teach, educate, impart wisdom.
Consequenceless sex is a myth. There is always a cost. Teaching young people to evaluate the risk and know what could happen would go a long way. It already has as fewer high schoolers are engaging in early sex now than when I was in school.
Newly graduated adults find no pleasure in it and have stopped engaging in it. The environment is actually ripe for change. They know something isn’t right. So start talking.
I agree it’s going to take a bottom up approach.
There does exist science, but it isn’t connected together yet. One example is in oxytocin production and that the same hormone that facilitates maternal bonding with a breastfed baby also facilitates bonding with a sexual partner.
The problem is it isn’t explained that way. Breastfeeding science talks about oxytocin and bonding. Sex science talks about the “feel good” aspects of oxytocin with no talk of bonding.
Its almost like it is deliberate…
I’m thinking mostly in terms of the actual cost of the welfare state in this. It costs society (via the government) quite a lot to mitigate the effects of a feral, unproductive population.
agreed
So, I’m to understand that since I’m religious and strongly supported Trump I’m comparable to a secret pedophile? These comment strings generate some real whoppers and insult many normal people.
The only solution to the destruction of marriage is for individuals to return in supplication and obedience to our Lord’s commandments. All else is trivial.
I think this history leaves out some important points:
Oh I 100% agree with this.
I may do another separate post later on the devolution of human sexuality as part of this.
As to your other points, sexual education is actually something worth having… and as I understand it, parents kept a tight lid on such discussion with their children which undoubtedly didn’t help. One of the things I’ve been teaching my young son (who already went through the “I want to marry mommy” phase) was that we marry someone who isn’t a part of our family who we want to be a part of our family. When we start sex education, that will be a primary staple in the conversation because even without shotgun weddings, that person is forever a part of your family whether you like it or not… so pick wisely who you choose to engage and feelings can’t be the only thing driving the ship.
And the other one – the “love is a feeling” trope has done a lot of damage to marriage, as well. Love isn’t just a feeling. It is a choice. I’m perfectly capable of being the monster that doesn’t feel loving towards my child who is using permanent marker on my tile floor (true story) while still acting in love.
I know I’ve posted this before (H/T: @midge), but it deserves re-posting:
Partial summary: Women are generally the gatekeepers of sex, men the gatekeepers of commitment. One of the effects of the sexual revolution has been to reduce women’s leverage over relationships.
I recall listening to a podcast a while back that discussed the debate over and aftermath of the expansion of welfare eligibility to unwed mothers, early in the 1950’s. Pregnant but unmarried was something like 1% at the time of the debate. Conservatives worried that if we subsidized bastardy the incidence would double or triple. Liberals replied that girls wouldn’t allow themselves to get pregnant just because there’d be a safety net — any increase would be a tiny fraction. Needless to say, it passed, and bastardy climbed by an order of magnitude in a decade.
I think it was Econ Talk w/ Russ Roberts, and the guest was talking about economic “decisions at the margin”, where normal ideas about “reasonableness” go to die.
Extra-marital sex is self-destructive behaviour, if the consequences are allowed to fall fully on the participants.
Well, not in my marriage. ;)
Jokes aside, I know what you mean but I think this over-states it.
I think a really under-sold benefit of marriage is that it expands your family. Obviously, this has it’s downside, but the difference in being “my daughter’s boyfriend” and “my son-in-law” is profound. There’s more commitment, but also greater joy, intimacy, and meaning to be found.
Oh, please. You don’t have to go back very far in history to the majority of the population living in unheated hovels with one bed, and the whole family sleeping together for warmth, if not limited space. Mommy and Daddy were doing the deed in the same bed with their children. In the dark maybe, but the children were certainly exposed to sexuality at an early age. Victorian prudishness was limited to the wealthy, and also came and went with the times.
Excellent point, and I should have mentioned that. I can’t empirically prove this, but I’d wager that the sexual revolution wouldn’t have been half the problem it has been if it hadn’t (roughly) corresponded with Great Society.
That’s where we part. If the parties involved are reasonably mature, conscientious, and cognizant of what they’re doing, it’s not inherently a problem.
Unfortunately, that’s too high a bar for a lot of people, and — as we were saying — our culture and laws disincentivize good behavior. Regardless, lots of people do it without issue or harm.
Not to be condescending nor antagonistic, but this is the kind of post I miss seeing on Ricochet.
Ha! I was actually thinking “Hey, a good ol-fashioned sex debate! It’s been way too long!”
If one limits the statement to physical consequences, yes. But I don’t.
I wasn’t limiting my statement to physical consequences.
But before I got any further, could you define “extra-marital”? I initially read it as meaning fornication, but I realize it could also mean, more specifically, adultery.
Just wanted to check to make sure we weren’t talking past each other.
That it’s nearly impossible to be both aroused and rational.
Different time, different era. I was thinking post-freud where even breastfeeding was considered “dirty”.
Maybe honest, but more often than not a losing proposition. Most likely, the only way you get some while being a “perfect gentleman” is if you are highly desirable to begin with.
Because its not my business to preach on this, I will simply challenge you to consider how it can be possible without buying into the lie that young men can’t exhibit self control.
Why thank you.
I like the video, but I quibble on statement that men have higher sexual desire than women. I think men are socialized to express that desire in a way women aren’t encouraged to, I also agree that women have different considerations in the mating process, but as for actual desire for sex, I think there isn’t much if any difference.
I would argue no one even tried this approach. 3 out of 5 of me and my siblings held off til we were more or less financially stable.
I think #1 is doing away with poor expectations and actions that reinforce them (like sex ed with free condoms rather than home ec with the baby simulation)
Really?
I think it said that men initiate sex more often than women and that men and women have different attitudes for wanting sex. While I agree socialization plays a role in this, I think it’s also biologically hard-wired.
We are talking about heterosexual mating–otherwise known as “what makes the world go ’round”.
And we’re dealing with a new generation who are brainwashed to think any kind of enthusiasm for the fundamental generative, species-preserving act is “creepy” and exploitative.
Has marriage been perverted? Yes indeed. The only reason for marriage is the protection of female sexuality: protection in both the sense that women aren’t as strong and are supremely physically vulnerable while pregnant, nursing and when protecting young children; and protection in the sense of keeping a particular woman’s reproductive activity to oneself, to ensure that the persons inheriting your name and property are really your issue.
Marriage makes no sense even for heterosexuals now, because women have rights at law, and men can determine paternity by testing. It never did, nor could, make sense for people of the same sex.
But the basic distrust of the reproductive drive and act is separate from what has happened with marriage, although it has ONE thing in common with that issue: the complete severance of the sex act from its reproductive purpose.
In my opinion, marriage is NOT a “contract”. A contract, I was taught, requires a definite term, defined duties, and consideration, in order to be binding. The mutual promises (if any) exchanged at the wedding are known by everyone present not to be binding. A wedding is a ceremony which marks a change in status.
All of these developments bode ill for the birth rate among the population we are discussing.
It really depends on the woman, but in general men are more susceptible to the readily available (meaning unintended) stimuli around them.
Heh, well, one’s always responsible for their actions. Some people eat too much food because it’s really hard for them to stop themselves, but no one would say it was impossible to exhibit self control. I meant it in a way that if your expectations are too high you’re likely to be disappointed, in a general, average-over-the-population sort of way.