koshergrl
Diamond Member
- Aug 4, 2011
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Ive written before, in the context of the abuse that female writers take online, about this poisoned streams potential origins. The Santa Barbara case hints at one such source the tension between our cultures official attitude toward sex on the one hand and our actual patterns of sexual and romantic life on the other.
The cultures attitude is Hefnerism, basically, if less baldly chauvinistic than the original Playboy philosophy. Sexual fulfillment is treated as the source and summit of a life well lived, the thing without which nobody (from a carefree college student to a Cialis-taking senior) can be truly happy, enviable or free.
Meanwhile, social alternatives to sexual partnerships are disfavored or in decline: Virginity is for weirdos and losers, celibate life is either a form of unhealthy repression or a smoke screen for deviancy, the kind of intense friendships celebrated by past civilizations are associated with closeted homosexuality, and the steady shrinking of extended families has reduced many peoples access to the familial forms of platonic intimacy.
Yet as sex looms ever larger as an aspirational good, we also live in a society where more people are single and likely to remain so than in any previous era. And since single people have, on average, a lot less sex than the partnered and wedded, a growing number of Americans are statistically guaranteed to feel that theyre not living up to the cultures standard of fulfillment, happiness and worth.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
This tension between sexual expectations and social reality is a potential problem for both sexes, but for a variety of reasons social, cultural and biological its more likely to produce toxic reactions in the male of the species. Such toxicity need not lead to murder (as it usually, mercifully, does not) to be a source of widespread misery, both for the men who wallow in it and the women unfortunate enough to be targets for their bile. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/douthat-prisoners-of-sex.html
Ive written before, in the context of the abuse that female writers take online, about this poisoned streams potential origins. The Santa Barbara case hints at one such source the tension between our cultures official attitude toward sex on the one hand and our actual patterns of sexual and romantic life on the other.
The cultures attitude is Hefnerism, basically, if less baldly chauvinistic than the original Playboy philosophy. Sexual fulfillment is treated as the source and summit of a life well lived, the thing without which nobody (from a carefree college student to a Cialis-taking senior) can be truly happy, enviable or free.
Meanwhile, social alternatives to sexual partnerships are disfavored or in decline: Virginity is for weirdos and losers, celibate life is either a form of unhealthy repression or a smoke screen for deviancy, the kind of intense friendships celebrated by past civilizations are associated with closeted homosexuality, and the steady shrinking of extended families has reduced many peoples access to the familial forms of platonic intimacy.
Yet as sex looms ever larger as an aspirational good, we also live in a society where more people are single and likely to remain so than in any previous era. And since single people have, on average, a lot less sex than the partnered and wedded, a growing number of Americans are statistically guaranteed to feel that theyre not living up to the cultures standard of fulfillment, happiness and worth.
Continue reading the main story
Continue reading the main story
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This tension between sexual expectations and social reality is a potential problem for both sexes, but for a variety of reasons social, cultural and biological its more likely to produce toxic reactions in the male of the species. Such toxicity need not lead to murder (as it usually, mercifully, does not) to be a source of widespread misery, both for the men who wallow in it and the women unfortunate enough to be targets for their bile. "
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/01/opinion/sunday/douthat-prisoners-of-sex.html