Friday, April 07, 2006

sex. it's not a conversation i enter into with many people. there are some particular friends that come to mind, a certain conversation and stumbling over words.
in the last, i mentioned abstinence. it's personal, but perhaps no more than the rest of this blogness.
i was the last virgin bride.
ok, that's not true- hopefully, i wasn't the last. i'm not sure why i was so determined on the matter, because goodness knows it was a notion against my more natural inclinations.
but it was a principal i would not loose. and really i didn't have any explantion, other than the Bible says not to. well. the bible says not to do a lot of things that i often find myself doing. so, really.... that's no excuse. honorable- but maybe not completely honest. i just knew that i would be so mad at myself if i did it. there was something instinctual that told me that if i gave in, i would lose out on something better.
this is the one rare instance where i excersised a bit of patience.
on so many levels i do not regret my decision. but i have baffled a few, i think. and when i frown and shudder when i am informed that my friends do not see the value of that decision, it has always been a struggle to offer up a decent defense. often, i try to bring up the point that it cheapens marriage. but to the unmarried- why should it matter. i sputter about the emotional scars it leaves and the intimacy problems it could cause later down the road. blank stares. maybe intimacy is less the goal, and physical release moreso. i don't really know.
then, i picked up To Own A Dragon by Donald Miller. I'm not supposed to read it because I am a girl... but i'm a very nosy girl. and i like what he has to say usually. and it's good. i like his chatter, i feel at home in his words, they give me hope.
so he was talking to a bunch of frat boys about women and sex, and they wanted to know how it could be wrong when it feels so right. huh. good question.
AND! he told them (and me, but he didn't know i was listening). it really kind of boils down to good old fashioned pavlovian conditioning. men used to have to do quite a mating ritual to get the booty- get educated, become finacially and emotionally stable, establish their identity within society, memorize poetry... the stuff that made up a good old-fashioned man. and then... then maybe they could get married and. have babies!
but things went wrong. men started being very dominant. society has never been perfect, but there seemed a time where (Western) men suddenly stopped respecting women, the system stopped working for some reason. and women got mad, they felt helpless, so they fought to be citizens. i don't think that this was really wrong. but for some reason, they stopped fighting to be strong women, and instead, fought to be men- with different equipment.
i didn't know that i was so conservative. but things went really wrong at this point. women began to treat men the same way men were treating women- using them, detaching. feminism became pretty anti-feminine as far as i can tell.
and so, society suddenly lost its leverage in turning out well-mannered, ambitious, creative and kind men.
i think ambition is really the key word here. a man used to have to do whatever it takes to keep the species going- it required some miraculous feats.
but most women... and girls will give it up quite freely these days. i don't think that most of them really just can't get enough. i think it makes them feel pretty and loved and important.
it's very sad. and it might just be making it tougher on the girls that don't want to go that route. but if they want attention from boys, then there is a price.
i genuinely think that the common cheapness of the everybody's doing it phenomena is seriously eroding the integrity of the entire country.
a co-worker told me some crazy statistic (that i can't remember) that the majority of major accomplishments to art, literature and science were achieved by unmarried men. (a long time ago for the most part- they were not nearly as sexually satisfied as most unmarried men of now)
they were driven by some desire... whatever could it have been?
what could happen, i wonder, if that same desire were to return? i think that there would be a lot more superheroes, a lot more revolutionaries and wise, compassionate leaders. i think that a serious lot of greed and boredom and laziness could be replaced by some good, old fashioned, uh. unsatedness.
i know that there a million exceptions, that every man whose getting some action out of wedlock is not a lifeless, soulless brick. but i can't help but believe that there is a serious connection between personal and moral integrity and the threat of collapse our fledgling country might be facing.

1 comment:

Bryan Tarpley said...

i have always looked at the catholic vow of celibacy for the priesthood as some crazy masochistic manmade nonsense. indeed, it is mostly to blame for the altar boy incidents. what hit me like a ton of bricks the other day, however, was just how powerful and holy you would have to be to voluntarily give up the goods. i'm sure people like paul and that Jesus guy drew a lot of pent up... strength from it.