When decades ago feminists promised to liberate women, they didn’t say it would be liberation from morality. But the movement that once protested the viewing of females as sex objects, now is turning them into sex rejects.
A case in point is Feminista Jones, who recently appeared on the Jesse Lee Peterson Radio Show. Described by Salon.com as a “sex-positive black feminist” and “social worker,” Jones wrote in a recent article that “you don’t have to love someone to have sex, but you should, at the very least, respect your partners and yourself enough to make what goes on between you pleasurable and safe.” And how many “partners” should a person have? Jones told Peterson, “A person can have as many sexual partners as they want.”
After Peterson mentioned that such promiscuity makes you a “whore,” Jones objected to the use of the word; not surprisingly, she rejected the concept of shame as well, maintaining that it doesn’t actually serve to control behavior. (I wonder, has she ever heard of political correctness and its social pressure?)
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Of course, we might first note that while Jones rejects traditional sexual mores in typical relativistic style — implying that Peterson’s whore label merely reflected his values — she certainly doesn’t mind applying hers. After all, why “should” you “respect your partners and yourself”? Is that divine injunction? Or just the best of leftist dysfunction? What it is, is hypocrisy that brings to mind C.S. Lewis’ comments about such people in his book The Abolition of Man:
Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people’s values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. And this phenomenon is very usual. A great many of those who “debunk” traditional or (as they would say) “sentimental” values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.
Yet the debunking process has been so thorough that, as a lady friend of mine put it, “Years ago you knew who the bad girls were; now you know who the good girls are.” That is, if you can even identify good.
Just consider the blurring of the distinctions between good and bad in the sexual arena. For instance, the 1983 film Trading Places and the 1990 comedy Pretty Woman both portray prostitutes in a positive light. In 1996’s Independence Day, one of the main female characters is a stripper who defends her choice of profession by saying, “My baby’s worth it.” And the pattern is generally the same: These women are portrayed as intelligent, well-spoken, responsible, and well-adjusted. They just have a different job than you — you know, the butcher, the baker, the bordello maker.
Then again, because society is keeping up with the (Feminista) Joneses, the job isn’t as different as it used to be. For instance, the Daily Mail ran a 2010 article entitled, “How did the oldest profession become a career choice for middle-class girls?” and wrote, “Something strange is happening to [prostitution]…. It’s switching off its red light and becoming respectable.” How did this happen, they ask? Refer to my previous paragraph.
The consequences of this surround us. For example, consider the 2006 Duke University rape frame-up case, in which three white lacrosse players were falsely accused of rape by black stripper Crystal Mangum — who is now in prison for murder — and were put through the wringer by a corrupt district attorney. Sure, race was a major factor. But there was another: All involved, in the media, university, and prosecutor’s office, behaved as if they were blithely unaware that intoxicated strippers aren’t exactly the most credible witnesses. They instead turned reality on its head and placed disproportionate onus on the college students. And was this just life imitating art, art that had already turned reality on its head? Whatever the case, such things are the least of the downsides of the consequence-free-promiscuity myth.
One thing Peterson and Jones did agree upon — that men and women view and react to sex differently — brings to mind a memorable experience from my athletics days. I was playing the National Amateur (tennis) Circuit and overheard one of the young ladies in the women’s event talking on the phone. She’d just had a sexual encounter with one of the guys, and she was beaming, giddily talking about him as if she’d found her knight in shining armor.
The next day or thereabouts, she was crying her eyes out.
While I don’t know whether or not the young man “respected her in the morning,” he obviously had jilted her. It’s an old story — involving a jarring, heart-rending reaction.
Her fallen knight, however, wasn’t shedding any tears.
To frame this scientifically, some studies indicate that the hormone oxytocin, released during sexual congress, creates a romantic bond in an individual. I’ve also heard that the coitus-induced release of “bonding” hormones such as oxytocin, and perhaps vasopressin, is greater in women than in men. This would explain the sexes’ different reactions to post-coital unrequited love.
But while I don’t like boiling people down to chemicals and while we can’t be sure of the science, of the phenomenon there’s no question: Women generally form an extremely strong bond with the first fellow with whom they have relations.
And the rupturing of that bond is generally disastrous. Since the woman never again wants to experience such excruciating emotional pain, she hardens her heart, never letting another fellow get that close. In addition, since her dream of becoming “one flesh” with a man has been shattered and now appears a pipe dream, she directs her energies elsewhere (this can intensify a careerism that supplants motherhood).
Note that men can and do suffer broken hearts as well; the only thing that varies is the likelihood and severity.
Consequently, sexual promiscuity also fosters the “divorce mentality,” where the bond-breakup pattern becomes second nature. For just as ankle bones’ “bond” becomes weaker with every damaging twist of their tissues (ligaments), the romantic bond generally becomes weaker with every relationship. For those who like scientific explanations, as former Department of Health and Human Services official and obstetrician/gynecologist Dr. Eric Keroack put it, “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.”
There is one last consequence of promiscuity. “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, [n]or hell a fury like a woman scorned,” wrote William Congreve. Jilted women are deeply hurt and can feel great rage; a man has disappointed them, a man has crushed their dreams, and that man cannot be trusted. This is often then extrapolated to all men — and this is how many a feminist is born.
And it is a major reason young women turn to liberalism in college. Sure, academia’s leftist indoctrination cannot be overlooked, but the reality is that modern universities — with their coed dorms, sexuality courses, and party atmosphere — are occasions of sin on steroids. And if you delve and observe, you’ll notice that a woman’s embrace of leftism often coincides with her first broken heart. You won’t find many women who were chaste before marriage who are leftists, and you won’t find many loose women who are not.
And, of course, this helps explain why the Left works to destroy traditional sexual mores. Votes can be won through the bedroom just as they can through the schoolroom.
