Posted on 03/21/2005 9:49:25 AM PST by MisterRepublican
CARBONDALE -- On the dance floor at Gatsby's II, a popular bar at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, a tall brunette drinks beer from a plastic pitcher while she grinds her backside into a man's body.
A silver disco ball hangs overhead while a blond woman in a pink, pleated miniskirt writhes on her partner's leg.
A girl notices that her boyfriend's attention is wandering. With a manicured hand, she grabs his face and plants a Hollywood-worthy kiss on his mouth.
On this sticky dance floor, littered with plastic cups and packed with gyrating bodies, women are the hunters as much as the hunted.
Traditional stereotypes dictate that men want sex, and women crave love. But, on today's college campuses, students say those gender lines are blurrier than a pair of beer goggles.
When a University of Illinois sorority girl observed over lunch at a Champaign cafe that "guys aren't looking for love," her friend chimed in: "I don't think we can blame it on the guys. I'm not looking for love, either."
Girls are just as bad as boys now," another woman said.
"To guys, [sex is] still like scoring," said author Tom Wolfe, who spent two years on college campuses researching his new novel. "The strange part is that it's become that for girls, too. They'll say, 'I scored Jack last night . . . finally!'''
A federal government survey of 4,600 college students found that slightly more male than female undergrads are virgins.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
I have. My wife had a deep vein thrombosis while carrying my son that resulted not only in her throwing an embulis to her lung, but it completely decanualized the veinous system in her left leg as well. Until she had a tubal done (in a catholic hospital, choke on that) I (we) lived in absolute fear every time a condom broke.
Complete and utter bravo sierra. I hate to break this to you, but intimacy with my wife is better after 14 years of marriage, even though her tubes are tied, than it was a dozen year ago when she was still fertile. There is absolutely nothing sterile about our love life, or our family life.
"Making love" is intercourse that's open to new life. It says, "Our love is so great that it becomes tangible, bringing forth new life."
I guess women should all stop at menapause then. After that it's not making love anymore, it's sterile sex. Gads, and I'll bet you don't even see your own hubris.
Quite the contrary. Medical history is actually something of a hobby of my wife's, and as a result we have quite a little library dedicated to that end. In addition to that, there are many occasions where I politely listen to her when she shares of her hobby.
Life in the early 20th century was rough. Although Pasteur's work was well established, antibiotics had not become a part of common medicine, and the antibiotics that existed were primitive narrow spectrum drugs compared to the marvels we have today. As a result: The strep infections we commonly deal with today were potentially fatal in 1900. Bronchitis was a rapid pathway to pneumonia, and the latter was often fatal. Tuberculosis was a real killer and not a rare inconvienance. Diseases now unheard of, like typhoid and paratyphoid preyed on adults and children alike.
Common middle aged ailments of today like adult onset diabetes, or high blood pressure were death sentences in 1900. There was no angioplasty to open arteries, there were no stints, there was no open heart surgery. When the ticker ailed, you became weak and died. Even the things we consider minor (yet common in middle aged people) like gall stones, kidney stones, ulcers, were many, many, many times more likely to be fatal in 1900 than today. And to top it all off, there were no treatable forms of cancer in 1900.
You can pretend that it's the infant mortality rate skewing the figures all you want, and it still won't be true. The truth is we routinely survive things today that we didn't survive 100 years ago, and that's reflected in our life expectancy.
"No - on this thread!"
That's fine, I have very thick skin. :)
Selfishness equals happiness?
Grownups don't think that way. Are you sure you're old enough to drive?
Then tell us that it doesn't affect us...
A people who equate fertile marriage with slavery (assuming they think slavery is a bad thing) is guaranteed to become extinct.
What you endorse is selfishness, consumption, and greed. What we endorse is sacrifice and dedication so our culture will have a future.
It's human nature, the difference between men and women...if a man has an affair, his wife assumes he enjoyed it...she wants to know if there is an emotional bond. That's what she values. If it was "just a fling," she's more likely to forgive.
If a wife has an affair, most guys can't forgive that, because they're afraid she enjoyed it. Women seek intimacy through emotional bond, men seek intimacy through sex.
Wasn't much different when I went to college in 1977.
This statement is simply, flatly, insane. If you think the propagation of the human race is "an unfortunate side effect" of your pleasure, you're too far gone even to reason with. You are so deeply into redefining reality to be what you want it to be, you have no connection to reality anymore.
I am a being with free will. I have the right to define sex however I choose.
Can you define mathematics however you choose? Chemistry? Physics? Hardly. As I say, you think you make up your own reality. Sanity is conforming one's behavior to reality, not engaging in continuous attempts to declare that you can reconstruct reality they way you want it to be.
"It seems to me that, among other benefits, the long-term financial outcome would be improved, because the couple would be motivated to be financially responsible from their earliest years of earning."
Sounds like a good plan. It assumes alot though, such as stable parents that will room and board the adult child, they have money available to save for college, and that the kid actually wants to go to college vs. work.
"Many young people spend the majority of their pay on things of no lasting value during their single years, and then start out their marriage with both debt and feckless habits."
So true. I watched a couple of friends go immediately into debt buying $3K+ engagement rings (this was '83). Didn't make sense to me. Of course, they thought I was crazy for blowing the money I saved in the Army on a cross-country motorcycle trip. But for me, the memories were worth every penny. Luckily, I had the parents who roomed and boarded the adult child. After I met my wife, we saved $10K living at home until we married after a two year courtship. And while I never went to college (she graduated before we met), we've had a stable financial foundation since day one. I like your plan. It would've worked for us had I gone to college instead of back to the Army.
You're wasting your time, you know.
NO, NO, NO!!!
Well, that's true. The first assumption was already agreed in principle among the original parties to the concept (three Catholic families and one Traditional Anglican :-).
Whether the parents have money to contribute to college is, of course, up in the air ... but a child over 18 who is working and living at home certainly could and should be saving for independent living, whether or not that includes college.
It's true that not all young adults will want to attend college; my oldest son wants to be a carpenter. We were looking at the college scenario because of the article, but the Army or other work without college education is a solid possibility, too. Our aim was to explore options for marriage at earlier ages, to avoid the unmarried promiscuity that is the topic of the article. The scenario I proposed allowed for marriage in the early 20's, but also for full-time college attendance after marriage.
"Sexual intercourse is reserved by nature for a lifelong, exclusive, male/female relationship for the begetting and raising of children, and the mutual care of the spouses. This is intuitively obvious and proven by common experience. Therefore, those who reserve intercourse for marriage are happier than those who don't..."
This would be true if everyone's nature were the same. We're not all the same though. We all react differently to the various events, sights, and sounds that occur around us. Closer to the subject of this thread, we all react differently when we become sexually aroused. I don't think nature intended us all to react the same way, or live our lives the same way. I think saying that those who reserve intercourse for marriage are happier is a very broad assumption on your part. It's a tough thing to gauge. At some point you have to ask, "Did you save yourself for marriage"? (not a question I ask people I meet). Then, you have to evaluate their happiness based on what you see, which in most cases is only what they want you to see.
"I think my hypothesis still applies in the case of marriage insofar as past behavior predicts future behavior."
You could be right but I disagree. I think how the marriage evolves dictates sexual behavior. If a partner is satisfied at home it'll cut down on the chances of cheating. When things get dull and stale and there's no romance or sex or whatever satisfies your partner, eventually he or she will consider cheating and then maybe go through with it.
"I think men have to act a lot "sluttier" to get that title..."
Strange but true. Maybe society is cutting us some slack because we're always horny? That's my best guess.
"You didn't invent sex. It's illogical to assume you can willfully redefine what it means."
So, who defines what sex means... and what's their definition?
So you believe an agrarian and an informational society place equal demands on its maturing citizens? Are you asserting that early seventeenth agricultural society. for example, demanded the same preparation for assuming one's responsibilities as this 21st century informational one? All the extended preparation for a career isn't the main factor in the delay in marriage? Kids starting at what, 16 or so should go out in the world, get married, begin a family, perform the necessary work to support said family, AND attend classes?
Why would you spend the time to post this unless my "nagging" was bothering you, in which case your conscience must be bothering you?
Your reply is not responsive to my comment. I didn't say that nags aren't bothersome, simply that they are not helpful or effective. As far as my conscience is concerned, you haven't a clue, and your use of the word "must" reflects a weakness in your rhetoric.
I notice you didn't answer the question.
What question?
A question was posed. I'm not surprised that one with certitude of the perfection of one's position would dismiss it out of hand. Proselytizers have little interest in debate.
Your opinion is just that.
I thought you might try this way out.
The trouble is, when you say that your sexual encounters are meaningless, you're saying that your most serious actions (possible generation of new life/possible contraction of serious disease) are meaningless, in which case either you regard yourself as meaningless or life as meaningless; in which case you must be profoundly unhappy.
I quoted the term "meaningless tryst," I didn't coin it. I understood the meaning of the phrase to be a sexual encounter of which the author of the quote disapproved. I never said I would consider the encounter meaningless. Given that, the remainder of your demeaning inferences about the meaningfulness of my activities or degree of my happiness fail as they are based on false premise.
There is a way out of this. You can repent and serve the Truth.
Your opinion is just that.
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