Questions for Men and Women

 

Why do so many women and men treat woman’s fertility as a sickness? Why do so many (oh, so many) people ask a person who is pregnant if she or her husband are planning to get “fixed” after the birth of the expected child, as though her fertility is a sign something is broken?

Why are so many ob/gyn offices festooned with posters, pencils, pens, mugs, clipboards, paperweights, lights, boxes, calendars, and charts manufactured by companies that make contraceptive pharmaceuticals?

Why does Planned Parenthood have the right in many school districts to have “educators” teaching students as young as kindergarten what sex is like using stuffed toys? Why do federal regulations require that minors are allowed to be given contraception without their parents’ consent through Title X funding?

Why was abortion the leading cause of death in the world last year?

Aren’t these things related?

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  1. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Let me try taking your side here.

    A teacup seems like the sort of thing we ought to say has a function in Aristotelian ethics.  But it’s hard to say it has an activity.  It’s more passive.

    Maybe the answer is a simple case of reconsidering action along the lines of Aristotelian metaphysics: The teacup holding the tea is active because it’s acting as an efficient cause, and because the immaterial component of the teacup hylomorph is acting as formal cause.

    Setting that aside the moment, a simpler way of thinking through this might be just to say that the teacup has an activity proper to it, which we perform on it or which we perform while using it.

    In that sense, yes, you may be right–maybe it would make sense to say that pain and the blinking lights have a proper function–in which they are passively used as we perform the function ourselves.  I like that addition to our understanding of B.  (I like it, and who knows?  Maybe it’s even right!)

    With that in mind, it might be good to trace how this idea connects to your critique of conservative natural law ethics is.  Alas–it’s mostly lost on me; I think the path to the answer runs through the last paragraph of # 65, but I’m not sure whom you’re talking about there or where to go from # 65.

    • #91
  2. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    For example, consider the declining teen pregnancy rate, along with declining teen abortion rate, and rising average age of sexual debut (virginity loss). This is a huge accomplishment, a reversal of trends social conservatives have long complained about, and we should celebrate it! But where is the celebration?

    Subsumed, apparently, in the trendy new conservative worry that young people aren’t having enough sex anymore.

    Or consider the bizarre recent alliance between social conservatives and TERFs. Apparently, conservatives are antifeminist unless the feminists are TERFs because TERFs are anti-trans, and trans is even ickier than fem. Turning to TERFs to bolster our arguments about sexuality while otherwise lambasting feminism for wrecking men’s (and women’s) lives is sophistry.

    I want us to make up our goddamn minds. . . .

    Granted various fellow-travelers to the right of center ought to make up their minds.

    But some of us are just trying to figure things out and think clearly.

    I agree with Buddhism one moment, and disagree the next while supporting Plato.  Then I critique Plato and praise Aristotle, and the next moment I’m bashing Aristotle for his mistakes.  People think lots of things at a time, and it’s easy–indeed necessary–to agree with someone today on something with whom you disagreed yesterday on something else.

    That’s just life, logic, conversation–indeed, that’s just Ricochet.

    Reports of the heterosexual libido’s death have struck me as greatly exaggerated, and when we prematurely mourn the demise of something whose rampant vigor until yesterday we deplored as obscene in its all-too-rude health, it’s confusing. . . .

    Really?  Which conservative thought it was healthy?  I thought the only point pertaining to health was that it wasn’t.  E.g., Lewis’ remarks on sex-saturated modern culture in Mere Christianity.

    • #92
  3. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Stina (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (# 84):
    Conservatives sometimes react to pain and suffering by telling people to grin and bear it or to take it as a clue that they need to straighten up and fly right; but this is a little overly simplistic and in any case not very kind. It’s also (1) . . . ; (2) . . . ; and (3) . . . .

    If that’s what she’s saying, then I definitely 100% agree with this as a particular conservative movement failing.

    I’m just not certain it has been a fault present in the actual, recent debates she has brought it up in. Maybe it’s a meta issue…

    It could be a meta-issue. I think I have more reason than many to be alert to the meta stuff.

    That said, it’s a meta-issue I’ve seen affect how we treat one another here, and how women who are or could be young mothers believe they are treated by the conservative movement — even if few conservative would act, on a flesh-and-blood one-on-one level, to treat these young women in this way, what conservatives say to the world at large influences young women’s expectations of how they expect to be treated by conservatives, and what they must do to avoid mistreatment, not always for the better.

    So # 84 was more or less right?  Ok, cool.

    So the problem is that some conservatives are mean sometimes or are not very clear thinkers?

    @saintaugustine brought up equivocation earlier, and it seems to me equivocation is a common feature of conservative arguments regarding fertility. . . . For example, from earlier in this thread:

    Sweezle (View Comment):
    Does illegal immigration factor into this topic? Now that we have managed to create a country that reduces reproduction has the importation of new people who are more than happy to reproduce on our dime become more necessary?

    Arguments against interfering with natural fertility often bring up tribal survival like this. Why is it so common for conservatives to equivocate between religious promotion of fertility and let’s say more Darwinian or eugenetic promotion of (certain ethnic groups’) fertility?

    The equivocation I was thinking of was people who have a problem with one of A, B, or C and raise it as an objection to a different one from the same list–like one prominent Ricochettus who raised an objection to an ethics of A and thought he was refuting natural law ethics, which focuses one B (citation available if need be).

    You raise an interesting point, that a conservative might equivocate in another way, using a premise supporting one of A, B, or C as evidence for a different one from the same list. Granted–that would be a problem.

    Continued:

    • #93
  4. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    But I don’t recall seeing any example of such an equivocation, and you do not cite one here.  The Sweezle comment above is only about C, and includes no conclusion about A or B.

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    That makes the point of fertility brute biological reproduction so as to neither become extinct nor overtaken by invaders. Is that what I believe God wants me to have children for?

    I hope not. The Christianity I signed up for is an apocalyptic faith, not a fertility cult, and does not value souls by the number of offspring they could have had in order to perpetuate the species if only they had tried hard enough. . . .

    If the premise of an argument pertains to “nature” in sense C or B, and the conclusion is something about what G-d wants, that looks like an equivocation–or an argument needing an extra premise about how important C or B are to G-d.

    But if it’s an argument with premises and conclusions pertaining to C only, what’s the problem?

    (Not that I have a problem with critiquing natural law reasoning.  I myself have some concerns with Catholic moral theology.)

    • #94
  5. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Reports of the heterosexual libido’s death have struck me as greatly exaggerated, and when we prematurely mourn the demise of something whose rampant vigor until yesterday we deplored as obscene in its all-too-rude health, it’s confusing. . . .

    Really? Which conservative thought it was healthy? I thought the only point pertaining to health was that it wasn’t. E.g., Lewis’ remarks on sex-saturated modern culture in Mere Christianity

    I was using “all-too-rude health” tongue in cheek, hoping it would be funny precisely because the apparent “rude health” is not something we considered healthy, although it is arguably the opposite of “dead”.

    • #95
  6. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Reports of the heterosexual libido’s death have struck me as greatly exaggerated, and when we prematurely mourn the demise of something whose rampant vigor until yesterday we deplored as obscene in its all-too-rude health, it’s confusing. . . .

    Really? Which conservative thought it was healthy? I thought the only point pertaining to health was that it wasn’t. E.g., Lewis’ remarks on sex-saturated modern culture in Mere Christianity

    I was using “all-too-rude health” tongue in cheek, hoping it would be funny precisely because the apparent “rude health” is not something we considered healthy, although it is arguably the opposite of “dead”.

    I gather that I misunderstood something, and that you meant something differently than I thought you had.

    Good to know.

    Beyond that, I confess to having no idea what you’re talking about.  Is “rude health” a term I’ve never heard of, like I’d somehow never heard of the Kipling poem until a couple of days ago?

    • #96
  7. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    Granted various fellow-travelers to the right of center ought to make up their minds.

    But some of us are just trying to figure things out and think clearly.

    I agree with Buddhism one moment, and disagree the next while supporting Plato. Then I critique Plato and praise Aristotle, and the next moment I’m bashing Aristotle for his mistakes. People think lots of things at a time, and it’s easy–indeed necessary–to agree with someone today on something with whom you disagreed yesterday on something else.

    That’s just life, logic, conversation–indeed, that’s just Ricochet.

    Hopefully it is “life, logic, conversation… Ricochet.” Still there are ideas in themselves, and then there are what our ideas say about our alliances, and I think lately there has been so much focus on the latter in political conversation that the fact that “it’s easy–indeed necessary–to agree with someone today on something with whom you disagreed yesterday on something else” risks getting lost in “either with me or against me” stances.

    You’re used to working with ideas, without continually monitoring “whose side” expressing which idea “puts you on”. The more prevalent a siege or “survivor mode” mentality becomes on the right, the more people expect to be monitored merely for “whose side” they’re perceived to be on, rather than the content of their ideas. Denise remarked over on the Member Feed how destructive “Subconsciously [looking] at relationships as alliances” can be. When politics is perceived as

    an extension of war by other means. Arguments are soldiers. Once you know which side you’re on, you must support all arguments of that side, and attack all arguments that appear to favor the enemy side; otherwise it’s like stabbing your soldiers in the back—providing aid and comfort to the enemy.

    Yet at the same time, practical politics does require coalition-building, it does require being able to operate in conflict-theory mode, marshalling ideas as soldiers rather than for their own sake. The practical politicians willing to “get into the trenches” to use ideas as soldiers can resent those who “keep their hands clean” by playing ideas straight. When we reach the point where even those who don’t first think of ideas in terms of the alliances they create expect that others will treat ideas this way, then everyone has an interest in using up mental bandwidth tracking the apparent alliances created by airing ideas.

    • #97
  8. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    n that sense, yes, you may be right–maybe it would make sense to say that pain and the blinking lights have a proper function–in which they are passively used as we perform the function ourselves. I like that addition to our understanding of B. (I like it, and who knows? Maybe it’s even right!)

    That seems a reasonable interpretation to me.

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    With that in mind, it might be good to trace how this idea connects to your critique of conservative natural law ethics is. Alas–it’s mostly lost on me; I think the path to the answer runs through the last paragraph of # 65, but I’m not sure whom you’re talking about there or where to go from # 65.

    I looked up the last para of #65:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Three available sense of nature, not to be equivocated:
    A: how things work when we don’t interfere.
    B: the proper function of something.
    C: the laws governing the world.

    …Still, frustratingly enough, when pain is located in a particular body through C — brute biology — it’s often very hard to tell what the “nature” or moral of that pain should be for that body. The hypotheses, so voluble when addressing no-body in particular, are left with nothing intelligible to say. B and C collide, and the result is absurdity. I am OK with this absurdity, less OK with that strain in conservatism that disapproves of treating these things as absurd.

    What I had uppermost in mind is that laws governing the world do not result in structures corresponding entirely to “proper function”. A friend recently jokes to me he had violated the telos of his nose by using it to swipe his phone open when he couldn’t free up a thumb. The joke isn’t intended as a serious blow against the idea of “proper function” — indeed, it was meant in the lightest-hearted senses. A very small, very nerdy joke.

    But it does point out that things multitask beyond what seems like their “proper function”. Somewhat relatedly, natural (in the natural-science sense) limitations can prevent some things from ever really embodying a proper function at all. On the one hand, that a small molecule like histamine plays several roles in 23 different physiological functions is pretty awesome — that’s impressive parsimony! On the other hand, it’s hardly doing all those things well, or without counterproductive cross-talk between systems. We can visualize physiological systems as tending toward what we consider proper functions but never actually achieving them because of the limitations of biology. Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, but also jury-rigged as hell.

    If a devout Catholic, for example, has the resources to search for remedies for fertility-related symptoms that spare the fertility, and would only turn to birth-control pills as a last resort if other, fertility-sparing treatments weren’t working, and the symptoms could not simply be lived with, well and good. That would demonstrate admirable living-out of values. On the other hand, if doctors know birth-control pills treat the symptoms quite well and you didn’t think you could afford sinking resources into testing out fertility-sparing alternatives, is it so very wrong to admit that the jury-rigged nature of our bodies means that sometimes thwarting a “proper function” of the body (like fertility) is the efficient means of controlling “deviations from proper function” in the body (presumably the symptoms are this)? And, if we admit this, would that open the door to admitting that sometimes no “proper function” is really achievable within the limitations of biology?

    How much are the “proper functions” mental categories we assign because they help our reasoning and intuition, and how much are they things existing “out there”?

    • #98
  9. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    With that in mind, it might be good to trace how this idea connects to your critique of conservative natural law ethics is. Alas–it’s mostly lost on me; I think the path to the answer runs through the last paragraph of # 65, but I’m not sure whom you’re talking about there or where to go from # 65.

    I looked up the last para of #65:

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    …Still, frustratingly enough, when pain is located in a particular body through C — brute biology — it’s often very hard to tell what the “nature” or moral of that pain should be for that body. The hypotheses, so voluble when addressing no-body in particular, are left with nothing intelligible to say. B and C collide, and the result is absurdity. I am OK with this absurdity, less OK with that strain in conservatism that disapproves of treating these things as absurd.

    What I had uppermost in mind is that laws governing the world do not result in structures corresponding entirely to “proper function”.

    Sure; that’s why we distinguish different ways of defining the term “nature.”  That’s pretty much Natural Law Ethics 101.  I don’t follow your point.

    A friend recently jokes to me he had violated the telos of his nose by using it to swipe his phone open when he couldn’t free up a thumb. The joke isn’t intended as a serious blow against the idea of “proper function” — indeed, it was meant in the lightest-hearted senses. A very small, very nerdy joke.

    A wonderful joke, but entirely false.  Using the nose thus isn’t contrary to its telos–it’s just an alternative use alongside the telos.

    But it does point out that things multitask beyond what seems like their “proper function”.

    Indeed.  But so what?

    Somewhat relatedly, natural (in the natural-science sense) limitations can prevent some things from ever really embodying a proper function at all. . . . Our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, but also jury-rigged as hell.

    Ok, so we don’t live in a perfect world.  Neither Aristotle nor Aquinas ever said we do.  I still don’t see the point.

    And, if we admit this, would that open the door to admitting that sometimes no “proper function” is really achievable within the limitations of biology?

    It would only open the door to admitting that no perfect proper function is achievable in this world till Christ returns.  But Aquinas knew that.  Even Aristotle did not expect perfection.  What is your point exactly?

    How much are the “proper functions” mental categories we assign because they help our reasoning and intuition, and how much are they things existing “out there”?

    Rather a lot exists out there.  (The moral skeptic here, as usual, would be a scientific skeptic if he were consistent.  Without proper functions, there’s no medical science.  Or much else in biology.)

    • #99
  10. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    If a devout Catholic, for example, has the resources to search for remedies for fertility-related symptoms that spare the fertility, and would only turn to birth-control pills as a last resort if other, fertility-sparing treatments weren’t working, and the symptoms could not simply be lived with, well and good. That would demonstrate admirable living-out of values. On the other hand, if doctors know birth-control pills treat the symptoms quite well and you didn’t think you could afford sinking resources into testing out fertility-sparing alternatives, is it so very wrong to admit that the jury-rigged nature of our bodies means that sometimes thwarting a “proper function” of the body (like fertility) is the efficient means of controlling “deviations from proper function” in the body (presumably the symptoms are this)? . . .

    Potentially, yes.  If that’s all you’re getting at, I don’t know whom you think you’re disagreeing with (beyond maybe a minor quibble with the rigors of Catholic theology).

    For my part, I’ve been agreeing for more than a decade!

    I’ve even made some preparations in this very thread for the emergence of this point: See #s 60 and 94.

    A colonoscopy is not only an intervention which is permissible in natural law ethics because it supports proper function.  It also is, in itself, a profoundly unnatural use of a body part.  We undermine proper function in a small way to support proper function in a big way.

    In principle, even Catholic theology agrees; I would imagine it’s official somewhere in Catholic teaching that a woman can have a hysterectomy to deal with cancer and is free to have sex with her husband later.

    Along similar lines, say one worries about the overall psychological and mental health of an exhausted wife already blessed with a horde of children but thinks marital sex with contraceptives contributes to the health of the husband-wife friendship while also helping to avoid the sins of Job 31:1 and Matthew 5:28.  Marital sex with contraceptives seems permissible under generic natural law ethics in this situation.  It’s not consistent with Catholic theology as I understand it, but I do not understand why.  (That is one of my concerns with Catholic moral theology. I think there is another lurking somewhere around here.)

    • #100
  11. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    A wonderful joke, but entirely false. Using the nose thus isn’t contrary to its telos–it’s just an alternative use alongside the telos.

    But it does point out that things multitask beyond what seems like their “proper function”.

    Indeed. But so what?

    This may represent the cause of our prior impasse, and it might be something where you and I simply differ from Catholics on what is ethically reasonable. You wrote later,

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Along similar lines, say one worries about the overall psychological and mental health of an exhausted wife already blessed with a horde of children but thinks marital sex with contraceptives contributes to the health of the husband-wife friendship while also helping to avoid the sins of Job 31:1 and Matthew 5:28. Marital sex with contraceptives seems permissible under generic natural law ethics in this situation. It’s not consistent with Catholic theology as I understand it, but I do not understand why. (That is one of my concerns with Catholic moral theology. I think there is another lurking somewhere around here.)

    What I have understood Catholics to claim — often — is that recognizing sexuality as a multitasker and using artificial contraception to select for some tasks and not others would damage sexuality’s telos, even for a married couple using contraception to plan for children (rather than using it to plan not to have children altogether). That is, I believe Catholics claim artificial contraception is in fact contrary to natural law ethics. This creates the strong impression, at least, that alternative uses of an organ (or indeed any thing) alongside its intuitive primary use may be morally suspect.

    Hence the nose joke. The nose joke captures what more than one sensible person my age has gotten out of  Catholics’ appeal to natural law as a justification for avoiding artificial contraception. Non-natural-law arguments such as, “We believe it’s important to be open to life,” we understand, but the natural-law arguments we have understood Catholics to be making regarding sexuality (and sometimes other things) did seem to dictate fairly rigidly confining the use of things to their perceived “proper function”. If natural law doesn’t have to be this confining, that’s actually a surprise to me.

    The natural-law material I’ve read tends to be written or edited by Catholics. I don’t know if it’s my own bad luck in sources or Catholics’ particular take on natural law that gave me the impression that natural-law reasoning was rather quick to declare alternate uses “telos violations” and thus perverted. But I don’t think I was unreasonable in forming that impression, given the material I absorbed. As I said, I’m not the only one who’s been left with this impression, else I wouldn’t know other people making jokes about perversion of their nose telos ;-P

    • #101
  12. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):

    A wonderful joke, but entirely false. Using the nose thus isn’t contrary to its telos–it’s just an alternative use alongside the telos.

    But it does point out that things multitask beyond what seems like their “proper function”.

    Indeed. But so what?

    This may represent the cause of our prior impasse, and it might be something where you and I simply differ from Catholics on what is ethically reasonable.

    I’d be shocked if it were.

    A use alongside telos but consistent with it is not at all the same thing as a use against telos. I don’t think Catholics have been against the former.

    You wrote later,

    Saint Augustine (View Comment):
    Along similar lines, say . . . It’s not consistent with Catholic theology as I understand it, but I do not understand why. (That is one of my concerns with Catholic moral theology. I think there is another lurking somewhere around here.)

    What I have understood Catholics to claim — often — is that recognizing sexuality as a multitasker and using artificial contraception to select for some tasks and not others would damage sexuality’s telos, even for a married couple using contraception to plan for children (rather than using it to plan not to have children altogether).

    Not all multitasking interferes with proper function. But yes–assuming your “and not others” means working against proper function.

    That is, I believe Catholics claim artificial contraception is in fact contrary to natural law ethics.

    When intended as such, yes.

    This creates the strong impression, at least, that alternative uses of an organ (or indeed any thing) alongside its intuitive primary use may be morally suspect. . . .

    But that equivocates two unequal things. Are impressions so illogical?

    Non-natural-law arguments such as, “We believe it’s important to be open to life,” we understand, . . .

    Also a natural law argument, when such openness is understood as proper function.

    . . . but the natural-law arguments we have understood Catholics to be making regarding sexuality (and sometimes other things) did seem to dictate fairly rigidly confining the use of things to their perceived “proper function”. If natural law doesn’t have to be this confining, that’s actually a surprise to me.

    It’s not, for more reasons than one.

    First, I don’t think it’s that confined even in Catholic ethics. It’s just not good to work against proper function.

    Second, as with colonoscopies, working against proper function in one repsect may serve proper function in a greater respect. A looser natural law ethics than Catholicism’s might allow for contraception on these grounds–as far as I can tell–just as Catholicism allows colonoscopies.

     

    • #102
  13. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    This is a huge accomplishment, a reversal of trends social conservatives have long complained about, and we should celebrate it! But where is the celebration?

    Subsumed, apparently, in the trendy new conservative worry that young people aren’t having enough sex anymore.

    I’ve noticed that. I think that’s part of the infiltration of libertarians into conservatism, though. Atheism is more prominent in conservatism now than it was in the 90s.

    Trust me, I’m celebrating this fact. But it flies in the face of all those boomers who have spent the last 30 years pushing sex ed on the basis that “kids can’t help themselves” and they have no self-control.

    So I think those who are being “concerned” are more concerned for their lies being shown as lies than any real concern for the kids.

    • #103
  14. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Or consider the bizarre recent alliance between social conservatives and TERFs. Apparently, conservatives are antifeminist unless the feminists are TERFs because TERFs are anti-trans, and trans is even ickier than fem. Turning to TERFs to bolster our arguments about sexuality while otherwise lambasting feminism for wrecking men’s (and women’s) lives is sophistry.

    That seems an unfair characterization.

    I find it surprising I make the same arguments as TERFs on trans issues (because they are the right arguments on this). So… don’t agree with feminists ever? That’s a bit like Rubin taking every position Trump disagrees with, principles be damned.

    They are unlikely allies on this one subject. That doesn’t make them allies anywhere else. I do not think we should look that gifthorse in the mouth. But mostly, the pointing at TERFS has been to demonstrate just how far the left has gone that the virulent feminists couldn’t even go that far.

    • #104
  15. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    When I went to college, I was fortunate enough to be around some Christians pretty deeply committed to chastity. And fortunate, I think, to be around Christians who didn’t see heteronormativity as an end in itself. After all, drunken parties were filled, weekend after weekend, with extreme displays of heteronormativity that we rightly recognized as debauchery — nobody got virtue points because at least their debauchery was extremely heteronormative debauchery.

    Is this a thing in conservatism?

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    realize some thoughtful conservatives argue rising age of sexual debut might be a result of youths’ failure to form relationships, period, resulting in the younger generation getting married late or not at all. I realize one reason young women postpone sex — because they’re more interested in building a successful life for themselves outside the home — also strikes those who believe women’s happiness generally can’t be located outside the home as problematic. Yes, the conservative mindset does leave us uniquely suited to see the dark side of social trends, even trends that seem to fit our values, but man, can we ever be sore winners!

    Is it at all possible for us to be concerned at the loss of relationship without it being tied to sex? Loss of all relationship is a problem. People are lonely! And it’s not just loss of romantic relationship, but familial and platonic ones, too. Should we not address that because it sounds contradictory?

    I feel like you’re placing boundaries because of perception and not truth. Sure, some of the arguments get garbled, but even Jesus couldn’t avoid messages that sounded contradictory, so I don’t think that contradictory messaging is solely a byproduct of imperfect messengers.

    But also, see previous comment on increase of atheism in conservatism. That’s going to have a role in contradictory messaging.

    We are not a cohesive voting block and because of that, there’s going to be contradictory messaging. Our fault lines are also becoming more stark. TradCons are not going to find common ground on culture issues with Conservatarians. It just is not going to happen. And you will see incredibly different arguments coming from those respective camps.

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Honestly, I think we should worry less about the purported demise of male and female as sexual beings. I would worry more about promoting an ethic of chastity, including chaste singlehood for those who don’t feel like a good-enough fit for the traditional-marriage mold.

    Or how about both?

    Because if male and female don’t exist, there are no children.

    You might then say other cultures can produce the babies, but that doesn’t help our culture. If our culture is to survive, it needs to be passed down to another generation.

    But I agree that there is a place for chaste and unmarried life and that the virtue in that has largely been gone in protestant American culture.

    • #105
  16. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    What is wrong, in the poem, with reduced fertility in Kipling’s poem? Not that it does violence to the human dignity as such but that it risks “a tribe [being] wiped off its icefield, or the lights [going] out in Rome”. That makes the point of fertility brute biological reproduction so as to neither become extinct nor overtaken by invaders. Is that what I believe God wants me to have children for?

    Let’s see… there’s a biblical tension here that I want to do justice, but not related to the place unmarried chastity has in Christianity. In other words, I have made my views on singleness clear and nothing I say next should contradict that. I view these as exclusive.

    Old Testament promoted culture and faith as inheritance and downplayed conversion. In fact, conversion in Ancient Judaism is a thorough rejection of all previous attachments, and as such, it wasn’t a common thing to occur, so they relied on hereditary passing on of culture and faith. It is kind of a duty to have another generation to pass the inheritance to.

    Christianity is far more focused on conversion and passing the faith on by sharing it with others. The lack of requirement to completely change cultures to cleave to another people is absent. You get to keep your family, culture, and people where it does not conflict with Jesus’ teachings.

    But the tension still exists – both passing of culture (like American independence, freedom, our history, familial values) and faith can be done through kids. Our faith can be done through conversion which is better accomplished by unmarried and chaste ministers (see Paul in I Corinthians!). The idea of America as a pseudo Israel I find kind of blasphemous, even though I know it is prevalent in our culture since the Great Awakening; believing we can kind of pass our culture on through conversion without requiring forsaking previous attachments is kind of conceited and makes up our cultural attitudes on immigration.

    So as Christians, we need both. To pass on our heritage and culture, children. Cultures and their civilizations can handle a few who don’t do that, but they can’t handle an entire movement that rejects it.

    • #106
  17. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Stina (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Or consider the bizarre recent alliance between social conservatives and TERFs. Apparently, conservatives are antifeminist unless the feminists are TERFs because TERFs are anti-trans, and trans is even ickier than fem. Turning to TERFs to bolster our arguments about sexuality while otherwise lambasting feminism for wrecking men’s (and women’s) lives is sophistry.

    That seems an unfair characterization.

    It does seem that way, but hear me out:

    I find it surprising I make the same arguments as TERFs on trans issues (because they are the right arguments on this). So… don’t agree with feminists ever? That’s a bit like Rubin taking every position Trump disagrees with, principles be damned.

    They are unlikely allies on this one subject. That doesn’t make them allies anywhere else. I do not think we should look that gifthorse in the mouth. But mostly, the pointing at TERFS has been to demonstrate just how far the left has gone that the virulent feminists couldn’t even go that far.

    The loudest voices on the right raising the alarum about the threats they believe transgender acceptance poses to society have adopted a super-duper conflict-theory stance about it, proving extremely ready to shame fellow voices on the right who aren’t inclined to join them in conflict-theory strategies to defend the world against the threat they believe transgender acceptance poses. And it’s difficult to justify operating in conflict-theory mode while also being eclectic in one’s choice of alliances on a particular topic. (Conflict theory is a with-me-or-against-me approach which makes eclectic political alliances extremely hard to justify. Usually, conflict theory treats such eclecticism as an existential threat.)

    It would be illogical if the choice to be eclectic in one’s political alliances did not come with a responsibility to respect a politics that operates in mistake-theory mode. Eclecticism in political alliances comes with a responsibility to rein in your conflict-theory-style attacks on those who disagree with you, especially attacks directed toward those who are generally in broad agreement with you, just not in 100% agreement with you on some particular issue. Else you’re behaving, without any logical warrant, as if you have a right those who disagree with you don’t: namely, the right to switch between mistake theory and conflict theory whenever it’s convenient for you without being accused of “treason” for doing so.

    Who gets the benefit of our doubt, how, how much, and why, is a yuuuge question in politics. Conservative skeptics of transgender alarmism are left wondering, “Why are you giving the benefit of the doubt here to TERFs here rather than to conservatives who simply find your hot-takes on the threat transgender acceptance poses to society overblown?”

    • #107
  18. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    “Why are you giving the benefit of the doubt here to TERFs here rather than to conservatives who simply find your hot-takes on the threat transgender acceptance poses to society overblown?”

    Probably because they don’t see those conservatives as reliable allies as they have pre-emptively jumped ship before and are likely to do it again.

    The Republican Party is absolutely a mutely crew of alliances but I think you may be overplaying the loyalty that any of those groups have demonstrated to each other. Evangelical trad cons may be the most abused in that alliance, where rhetoric is heavy at election time, but actual movement appears non-existent. I’m sure Fiscals could make an argument on that.

    There is no party loyalty here. That has been hammered into our heads over the DJT wars. We are nothing but individuals with no moral obligation to anyone but ourselves. So why, then, should anyone be surprised when any of us form alliances elsewhere? Some of us actually recognize that numbers win battles. If the numbers can’t be had here, go elsewhere.

    • #108
  19. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Stina (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    When I went to college, I was fortunate enough to be around some Christians pretty deeply committed to chastity. And fortunate, I think, to be around Christians who didn’t see heteronormativity as an end in itself. After all, drunken parties were filled, weekend after weekend, with extreme displays of heteronormativity that we rightly recognized as debauchery — nobody got virtue points because at least their debauchery was extremely heteronormative debauchery.

    Is this a thing in conservatism?

    It is in the sense that the current trend on the right seems to be to be much more forgiving of sexual debauchery if it’s the kind of debauchery that otherwise comports with stereotypical “old fashioned” — that is, female-blaming and male-excusing — sexual norms, indeed more forgiving of that kind of debauchery than forgiving toward the prissy wusses who find such debauchery off-putting.

    Now, people putting a good word for female-blaming and male-excusing sexual norms may justify it merely as pushback on the current trend toward male-blaming, female excusing norms. But the problem with rhetorical pushback is, where does it stop? Pre-Christian patriarchal societies could treat women as chattel, as having so little dignity in their own right that, for example, if paterfamilias ordered one of “his” women to commit abortion or infanticide, she would be the one in the wrong if she refused. There’s nothing in Christianity obligating Christians to accept perfectly egalitarian sexual roles, but they certainly must be more egalitarian than that.

    Obviously, pro-life people want to stop short of the paterfamilias model, where lives of women and children are at the all-too-literal disposal of paterfamilias. But the rhetoric of pushback, always pushback, never concede to those you’re pushing back against, can’t stop short. It has no mechanism for doing so. It doesn’t make space for acknowledging points of balance, much less for acknowledging Christians who believe the balance between complementarianism and egalitarianism shouldn’t eliminate complementarity, but should lean somewhat more toward egalitarianism than many complementarians seem to favor.

    • #109
  20. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Thanks, @saintaugustine and @cm, for the conversation. I may not be able to get back to this particular thread, but I expect these issues will come up again — and next time, with more mutual understanding, I think :-)

    • #110
  21. Stina Inactive
    Stina
    @CM

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    It is in the sense that the current trend on the right seems to be to be much more forgiving of sexual debauchery if it’s the kind of debauchery that otherwise comports with stereotypical “old fashioned”

    That is emphatically unfair.

    Out of loyalty, those where sexual mores were important have been dragged along off hill top after hill top, listening to our strategic betters about how all those hills aren’t worth dying on.

    I have made anti-divorce arguments here. I have made arguments against putting off marriage. I have argued teens are fully capable of taking responsibility for sex – including saying no.

    And yet, when I make an argument about the ideal of husbands and wives, of anything sexual, you keep coming in saying we gave up on that so why are we fighting this.

    I did not give up. Many trad cons did NOT give up. We were pulled along on the road of party loyalty, giving up battle after battle with hardly a fight.

    So now we ally with another group, and it’s about conflict theory and treason?

    • #111
  22. Saint Augustine Member
    Saint Augustine
    @SaintAugustine

    Stina (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    It is in the sense that the current trend on the right seems to be to be much more forgiving of sexual debauchery if it’s the kind of debauchery that otherwise comports with stereotypical “old fashioned”

    That is emphatically unfair.

    Out of loyalty, those where sexual mores were important have been dragged along off hill top after hill top, listening to our strategic betters about how all those hills aren’t worth dying on.

    I have made anti-divorce arguments here. I have made arguments against putting off marriage. I have argued teens are fully capable of taking responsibility for sex – including saying no.

    And yet, when I make an argument about the ideal of husbands and wives, of anything sexual, you keep coming in saying we gave up on that so why are we fighting this.

    I did not give up. Many trad cons did NOT give up. We were pulled along on the road of party loyalty, giving up battle after battle with hardly a fight.

    So now we ally with another group, and it’s about conflict theory and treason?

    I don’t think Midge is saying that.  She’s talking about other conservatives who do something a bit different.

    I’m not quite sure whom she is talking about, but sources are always a potential problem.

    My sources on conservatism these days come from two websites and the podcasts: NRO, Ricochet, Ricochet podcasts, Daily Wire podcasts, Al Mohler podcasts, and maybe one or two other podcasts.  In the past I’ve been known to read a fair amount of WORLD magazine, and I like to think that in studying some of the sources of conservative ideas (the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, John Locke, etc.) I’m studying conservatism.  I also know a thing or two about nice Baptists in Texas and Georgia, and I’ve done some reading in good originalist Constitutional law.

    I think Midge is at least partially thinking of some other sources who tend to be less kind or less reasonable, but I’m not so clear who they are.

    • #112
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