Tag: Sex

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Further to a discussion with @6foot2inhighheels I thought the Ricochet community may have some thoughts. Said 6foot2: “The revelation that men have distinctly different motivations and impulses that are at odds with female cultural assumptions came to me late in life, and from an unexpected source; a young man who explained everything in one simple […]

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So Anthony decided to resurrect his inner “Carlos Danger” and share the Weiner again. Huma Abedin, a.k.a., Mrs. Danger and your White-House-Chief-of-Staff-in-Waiting has announced she has had enough. Quite frankly, one is tempted to say, “Who cares? The world is spiraling out of control and this means nothing.” The announcement that the couple was separating […]

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Have I got a (INSERT HERE) for you!

 
At Home
The author at home on most nights when he’s not busy commenting on Ricochet.

Have you often looked at a guy surrounded by beautiful women and said to yourself, “Self, that’s not fair. He really should share the wealth.” Well, get aboard the Progressive Train, ladies and gentlemen. Oh, wait. Can’t say that. That’s too gender specific — and violent.

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If you’ve spent much time online I’m sure you’ve seen references to the “Darwin Awards” which routinely honor some benighted soul who, through a lack of wisdom and foresight, manages to take himself out of the gene pool (or nearly so) in some particularly painful, though humorous means. (Example here.) We forget at our peril […]

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Making love is quite an art What you require is the proper squire To fire your heart… – Cole Porter (You’re Sensational) We’re not quite empty nesters but since the first of the year our life has become decidedly quieter. Our three oldest children no longer make our home their daily abode and Xerox spends […]

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I would like to offer a bit of encouragement to a certain segment of men. I’m uncertain how this will be received, and afraid that this encouragement may seem small or insignificant. It means something to me and so I offer it here for everyone’s consideration. It is for any man who feels envious (or negative […]

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Government, Govern Thyself

 

shutterstock_214071850The purpose of anti-child pornography laws is to protect innocents from exploitation and humiliation, particularly by adults, but also by their peers. Ironically, these very laws — not the actions of the teens involved — are directly to blame for precisely that outcome in a case out of Cumberland County, North Carolina.

Via Reason — though I also recommend this article from the Fayetteville Observer, which has a number of important updates — two North Carolina high school students were charges with multiple felonies last month for exchanging and storing nude photographs of themselves and each other on their phones. The girl subsequently pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge and is on probation, but the boy is fighting the charges and potentially faces 10 years in prison and registry as sex offender.

A few details make the case particularly noteworthy and offensive:

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I was lucky. Twenty-two years ago my beautiful bride came with a set of in-laws that I truly loved. While they were not ones to preach, I considered my in-laws righteous people. They worked hard, never swore or drank, and they quietly showed their faith in small ways. They passed that all on to their […]

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It’s one of the baser traits of humanity that we sometimes oppose something we don’t like for the same reasons we appeal to in defense of something we do like. A good example of this illogic is a Catholic politician who says both: “I’m pro-life, but I don’t want to impose my religious views on others; we […]

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Today head-slapper: According to a new Harvard study—based on data gathered from focus groups, interviews, and several surveys, including one of roughly 20,000 11-to-18-year-old boys and girls from 59 public and private secondary schools—nearly a quarter of girls preferred male over female political leaders. What’s more, when asked about their gender preferences regarding managerial roles […]

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Gregor Samsa, if You Only Knew!

 

Kitab_al-Bulhan_--_devilHow does a man feel about his wife making a life out of promiscuity? Well, this one is writing in New York Magazine, so he does not call it adultery: He says he’s a feminist.

That’s right folks, this guy is here to tell you, you men ain’t feminists until you approve of being traduced. If your wife isn’t climbing into bed with you to tell you about whomever she’s been busy with making the beast with two backs — you ain’t feminist, not really!

This is everything that gets conservatives to pull out all the stops and just scream about the coming polygamy and the madness of the lotophagi. Of course, this is not the first guy to take to the bottle after his wife betrays him. He has more reason, being that she’s so blatant about it all. But I bet when he says “oceans of red wine,” he means a bit of red wine. He does not strike me as a manly drinker — or a man, for that matter.

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Interesting point from Canada’s Institute of Marriage and Family: About 88 percent of Canadian teens say they expect to marry someday. This is a good thing since there is ample evidence that marriage remains the gold standard for family formation, offering benefits to adults and children alike. Preview Open

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A taboo is a subject, word, or activity that is avoided because it is offensive or embarrassing. It seems to me that children who are not raised by their married biological parents are subject to a new kind of taboo. They are not encouraged to discuss what it is like to live in a situation where […]

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This is an excerpt from a post I wrote this morning for Covenant, the weblog of The Living Church, for which I am an associate editor. I offer some thoughts prompted by the Episcopal Church’s 78th General Convention, which will meet in Salt Lake City on June 25-July 3. Here’s a sentence I spent most of my […]

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So Albert Mohler has used the term “erotic liberty” to describe the ongoing campaign to allow sex without moral limits to trump everything, including religious liberty. Fred Clark at Patheos comments: “Mohler is describing a group of people as less than human . . . .” The term “erotic liberty” is a “dishonest, reductionist, hateful phrase.” He […]

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Contributor Post Created with Sketch. 50 Shades of Useless Sociology

 

shutterstock_251895064“It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.”Graham Greene

50 Shades of Grey: never has a book caused so many random acts of sociology, with people exclaiming what the book “says about women” or “means for society.” A Google search will turn up varied exclamations that the book is the apocalyptic forbearer of all things pro-feminist, anti-feminist, or pro and anti-capitalist. It also apparently has implications for class warfare, abuse, romance and the death of chivalry. Good grief. Despite my promise not to join this collection of chaos by opinion, I suspect I will.

My intent is only to state that the desire and act of sex itself is fraught with simplicity. There is no great mystery to it, only a juvenile fascination with the subject by artists. That cloak of mystification is buttoned tighter by the faux-Freudian analysis of people who will find “deeper meaning” in any thing, or any act, when, in reality, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Promoted from the Ricochet Member Feed by Editors Created with Sketch. Cohabitation, Cultural Data Points, and The Line of Best Fit

 

shutterstock_154243622Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day said that a good culture is one that makes it easy to be good and a bad culture is one that makes it easy to be bad. As conservatives, we know that culture does not come from above. Rather, the culture — good or bad — is a composite of all of our little decisions. No one action makes the culture bad or good, but they still move the culture, imperceptibly, in one direction or the other.

An anecdote: Mrs. SoDak and I will have been married 25 years this spring. When we were engaged, I went to rent our first apartment. When I mentioned that we would be getting married at the end of the month but beginning the lease at the start of the month, the landlady straightened up, looked squarely at me, and asked if we would be living together before the wedding day. When I replied that Mrs. SoDak would be living with her parents until the wedding night, she relented, though she still required that I bring in a wedding license to prove that we would in fact be married before she moved in.

These days, she would be sued for housing discrimination but, at the time, it was a completely normal part of the cultural landscape. It was completely reasonable to do as you wished with your private property and it was completely normal to frown on cohabitation. That little incident was just one among many, many examples that encouraged marriage and discouraged cohabitation.

Contributor Post Created with Sketch. Salon and the Single Virgin

 

Why is virginity so hard for modern culture to understand? Even modern conservatives often struggle with the concept. A great many of us who remain virgins until marriage do it for religious reasons, and the religious — at least Christian — take on virginity is not always very practical. Sure, religious folks are keen to point out that abstinence provides 100% protection against unwanted consequences, like premarital pregnancy and STDs. But the Christian argument as to how virginity brings about the wanted consequence of harmonious mate selection typically neglects opportunity costs, to the detriment of us all.

Let me explain: a nice Lutheran virgin at Salon recently wrote about what happens when guys find out she’s a virgin and that she desires to stay one until marriage: