"We should teach both young men and young women to recognize each other's vulnerability and humanity—even when a partner may hold more power than they do by certain measures—and to engage with their lovers as individuals, rather than as representatives of an identity group."
Bravo to Kat Rosenfield! Every semester in my into to lit class we discuss poems, stories, and films about love, romance, and sex, which explores the uncertainties of it all. I have sometimes asked the class during discussions how many people have been in love--it's voluntary and no one has to raise their hands. Twenty years ago about 50% of the class eagerly raised their hands, and now it's down to about 10% who look around the room first very tentatively. Recent research on Gen Y, Z, and some Millennials tells us they are delaying getting involved in romantic relationships and marriage, fearful of making mistakes. Rosenfield is correct in that the trope of the "ruined woman" is playing out where women are stamped with a "V" (victim) rather than an "A" (adultery). So very, very American in its Puritan roots but neglects to note that even the Puritans embraced the pleasure in sex, and had a very high pregnancy rate at the time of marriage.
I could not agree more. I raised four Millenials and took what seemed to be endless suggestions from my follow Boomer parents about how dangerous the world was. When my eldest son, now 29 (he lives in India), traveled through Europe with a friend when they were 19, several friends asked me how could I possibly let him do such a thing? Ditto when we let our kids play in the woods near our home when they were in elementary school. Today, I'm sure I'd have been reported to social services!
It's probably too much to quote the entire last paragraph but suffice it to say I enjoyed the article.
As a Christian conservative, I must politely say though that two profoundly important aspects of courtship were left out of the article which add to the depth and purpose of our relationships- childbearing and lifelong companionship.
I don't need any 1950's-era tropes to make the point, just Penguins, and other monogamous creatures. Courting has until recently, always been seen as the beginning to a lifelong adventure that includes the obvious outcome of intercourse, pregnancy, and child rearing.
I understand that what I am saying tastes like Gaul on this site, but I do believe it is critically important because of what that understanding does to both young men and women when they comprehend that the courtship rituals, though fun, spontaneous, and intoxicating are only the beginning to a life of partnership with both their spouse and the children they will raise. It clarifies the partners they are looking for and adds depth to the personalities, dates, conversations they will have.
As a new father I couldn't be more happy with my wife and sleepy soundly knowing that my kids will grow up with a strong and loving mother- so much more mature and superior to any of my young and casual encounters who, thankfully, didn't produce offspring.
Finally, at the end of life, when those passions are gone, I will have a woman by my side until death and will get to enjoy the fine wine of a long monogamous courtship.
Thanks for you comment Richard, personally I think it is a perspective that either comes through faith or age. I'm only 29 but have seen the outcome from married great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents on both sides of my wife and I's family trees. My kids will grow up knowing nothing else, as my wife and I have- almost 100 years of experience.
I would prefer to see my friends trust the wisdom of the past and avoid the heartache, but I fear for my friends, that they will be forced to live through the pain of choosing to reinvent the wheel.
Basically, I simply hope for their sake, they don't need to learn the lessons with time.
Well I'm between the two of you in age (47), and religion-wise I'm an atheist who was born-and-raised Catholic, so make of that what you will. I nonetheless give a wholehearted endorsement to the importance of courtship. I don't mean this (necessarily) in the traditional sense of being a defined period between engagement and marriage (that's one possibility), but it does involve the delay of sex in the pursuit of a monogamous relationship. Or to be blunt and somewhat crass - don't screw someone you just met, and don't ditch someone you just screwed. Viewing sex as more than just a transactional activity between two virtual strangers helps to solve a lot of these problems.
On a somewhat unrelated note, sexual mating strategies have a different affect on different groups within a sexual hierarchy. For example, the liberalization of sex has been an overall boon to men on the top of the pecking order - the proverbial alphas of the group, but has been an utter disaster to those at the bottom end of the pecking order. I read recently that something like 30 - 40% of college age men haven't had sex in the last couple of years. We can all guess what type of men they are: low status, less favorable looks, not ambitious, likely living at home with their parents etc. So to say, blanketly that the liberalization of sex is "bad" is to miss the nuances of where one is on the pecking order. It certainly hasn't been bad for the alpha males. This brings me back to my original point: I find that most of the modern hard third wave feminism movements and policy positions are advocated by ugly women or women not really interested in strong long term heterosexual relationships (trans etc) where the feminists that stopped at 2nd wave and couldn't make the plunge tend to be better looking. When reading this article, I already could guess with high accuracy that Kat is very attractive. I wish an ambitious writer would look into this deeper. Why is this the case? My guess is for women further down the pecking order: ugly, fat, older, etc cultural and even political safeguards are probably on net better. For example, creating a work environment where ZERO sexual courtship is allowed, not even mutual, prevents that attractive coworker from using her looks to advance above the less attractive coworker. More examples could be given, but this looks like fertile territory to get at the nuances of these discussions.
"Love hurts" seems to miss the basic issue of the "Me Too" movement. Men in a position to provide opportunities, advancement and jobs have been using that as leverage for sex with women (and men).
Indeed, Sally, this *was* the basic issue of #MeToo, but sadly what made me become disillusioned with it was that at some point it changed. I realized this during the Aziz Ansari kerfuffle, when one prominent reaction was "if the whole point of the Me Too movement was just to say that we shouldn't be raped ...". Somewhere along the way the emphasis shifted from exposing things most normal people agreed we're wrong (abusing power for sex) to recasting and redefining our basic understanding of ideas like "sexual assault" and "consent". Perhaps I'm unfairly coloring an entire movement with the behavior of a fraction of its adherents, but that's the problem with "hashtag movements" and other decentralized forms of social protest. Nobody really has the authority to say what it's "really about", and so it largely is what people perceive it to be. And arguably at this point it has become a grab-bag of various gripes about male behavior, of varying levels of severity but which are all being treated as an equivalence class of predatory offenses.
Girls are uniquely vulnerable. They need some direction and some protection. And power is, indeed, the issue. Females (heterosexual) have an evolutionary desire to give power to a strong male, I suspect. And they are decidedly bad at judging what "strong" means. They need some solid, common sense advice in identifying these bad men/boys and upholding their own worth with the good guys.
A lot of that comes not through advice, but experience, don’t you think? I have never felt I needed or wanted someone else to lead me, not that I didn’t do my share of stupid things (in hindsight), but that’s how I found out more about what I wanted and where I wanted to go.
"We should teach both young men and young women to recognize each other's vulnerability and humanity—even when a partner may hold more power than they do by certain measures—and to engage with their lovers as individuals, rather than as representatives of an identity group."
Thank you for this.
Bravo to Kat Rosenfield! Every semester in my into to lit class we discuss poems, stories, and films about love, romance, and sex, which explores the uncertainties of it all. I have sometimes asked the class during discussions how many people have been in love--it's voluntary and no one has to raise their hands. Twenty years ago about 50% of the class eagerly raised their hands, and now it's down to about 10% who look around the room first very tentatively. Recent research on Gen Y, Z, and some Millennials tells us they are delaying getting involved in romantic relationships and marriage, fearful of making mistakes. Rosenfield is correct in that the trope of the "ruined woman" is playing out where women are stamped with a "V" (victim) rather than an "A" (adultery). So very, very American in its Puritan roots but neglects to note that even the Puritans embraced the pleasure in sex, and had a very high pregnancy rate at the time of marriage.
I could not agree more. I raised four Millenials and took what seemed to be endless suggestions from my follow Boomer parents about how dangerous the world was. When my eldest son, now 29 (he lives in India), traveled through Europe with a friend when they were 19, several friends asked me how could I possibly let him do such a thing? Ditto when we let our kids play in the woods near our home when they were in elementary school. Today, I'm sure I'd have been reported to social services!
Bummed I missed the discussion on this in yesterday's happy hour. Just reading now. Kat Rosenfield is a magnificent writer.
It's probably too much to quote the entire last paragraph but suffice it to say I enjoyed the article.
As a Christian conservative, I must politely say though that two profoundly important aspects of courtship were left out of the article which add to the depth and purpose of our relationships- childbearing and lifelong companionship.
I don't need any 1950's-era tropes to make the point, just Penguins, and other monogamous creatures. Courting has until recently, always been seen as the beginning to a lifelong adventure that includes the obvious outcome of intercourse, pregnancy, and child rearing.
I understand that what I am saying tastes like Gaul on this site, but I do believe it is critically important because of what that understanding does to both young men and women when they comprehend that the courtship rituals, though fun, spontaneous, and intoxicating are only the beginning to a life of partnership with both their spouse and the children they will raise. It clarifies the partners they are looking for and adds depth to the personalities, dates, conversations they will have.
As a new father I couldn't be more happy with my wife and sleepy soundly knowing that my kids will grow up with a strong and loving mother- so much more mature and superior to any of my young and casual encounters who, thankfully, didn't produce offspring.
Finally, at the end of life, when those passions are gone, I will have a woman by my side until death and will get to enjoy the fine wine of a long monogamous courtship.
As a nonChristian non-conservative, I agree with your points completely. I'm old; perhaps it's a perspective that comes with age?
Thanks for you comment Richard, personally I think it is a perspective that either comes through faith or age. I'm only 29 but have seen the outcome from married great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents on both sides of my wife and I's family trees. My kids will grow up knowing nothing else, as my wife and I have- almost 100 years of experience.
I would prefer to see my friends trust the wisdom of the past and avoid the heartache, but I fear for my friends, that they will be forced to live through the pain of choosing to reinvent the wheel.
Basically, I simply hope for their sake, they don't need to learn the lessons with time.
Well I'm between the two of you in age (47), and religion-wise I'm an atheist who was born-and-raised Catholic, so make of that what you will. I nonetheless give a wholehearted endorsement to the importance of courtship. I don't mean this (necessarily) in the traditional sense of being a defined period between engagement and marriage (that's one possibility), but it does involve the delay of sex in the pursuit of a monogamous relationship. Or to be blunt and somewhat crass - don't screw someone you just met, and don't ditch someone you just screwed. Viewing sex as more than just a transactional activity between two virtual strangers helps to solve a lot of these problems.
On a somewhat unrelated note, sexual mating strategies have a different affect on different groups within a sexual hierarchy. For example, the liberalization of sex has been an overall boon to men on the top of the pecking order - the proverbial alphas of the group, but has been an utter disaster to those at the bottom end of the pecking order. I read recently that something like 30 - 40% of college age men haven't had sex in the last couple of years. We can all guess what type of men they are: low status, less favorable looks, not ambitious, likely living at home with their parents etc. So to say, blanketly that the liberalization of sex is "bad" is to miss the nuances of where one is on the pecking order. It certainly hasn't been bad for the alpha males. This brings me back to my original point: I find that most of the modern hard third wave feminism movements and policy positions are advocated by ugly women or women not really interested in strong long term heterosexual relationships (trans etc) where the feminists that stopped at 2nd wave and couldn't make the plunge tend to be better looking. When reading this article, I already could guess with high accuracy that Kat is very attractive. I wish an ambitious writer would look into this deeper. Why is this the case? My guess is for women further down the pecking order: ugly, fat, older, etc cultural and even political safeguards are probably on net better. For example, creating a work environment where ZERO sexual courtship is allowed, not even mutual, prevents that attractive coworker from using her looks to advance above the less attractive coworker. More examples could be given, but this looks like fertile territory to get at the nuances of these discussions.
"Love hurts" seems to miss the basic issue of the "Me Too" movement. Men in a position to provide opportunities, advancement and jobs have been using that as leverage for sex with women (and men).
Indeed, Sally, this *was* the basic issue of #MeToo, but sadly what made me become disillusioned with it was that at some point it changed. I realized this during the Aziz Ansari kerfuffle, when one prominent reaction was "if the whole point of the Me Too movement was just to say that we shouldn't be raped ...". Somewhere along the way the emphasis shifted from exposing things most normal people agreed we're wrong (abusing power for sex) to recasting and redefining our basic understanding of ideas like "sexual assault" and "consent". Perhaps I'm unfairly coloring an entire movement with the behavior of a fraction of its adherents, but that's the problem with "hashtag movements" and other decentralized forms of social protest. Nobody really has the authority to say what it's "really about", and so it largely is what people perceive it to be. And arguably at this point it has become a grab-bag of various gripes about male behavior, of varying levels of severity but which are all being treated as an equivalence class of predatory offenses.
Yes, I think you are right. This worries me a lot since it will diminish the seriousness of the original problem.
Girls are uniquely vulnerable. They need some direction and some protection. And power is, indeed, the issue. Females (heterosexual) have an evolutionary desire to give power to a strong male, I suspect. And they are decidedly bad at judging what "strong" means. They need some solid, common sense advice in identifying these bad men/boys and upholding their own worth with the good guys.
A lot of that comes not through advice, but experience, don’t you think? I have never felt I needed or wanted someone else to lead me, not that I didn’t do my share of stupid things (in hindsight), but that’s how I found out more about what I wanted and where I wanted to go.