On Intimacy
"If women do, by and large, wish to reunite s*x with love, to regain male commitment, and to restore trust and civility between men and women--the most appealing aspects of traditional morality--then we are going to have to be prepared to put up with some of its restrictions, too. Instead of embracing the "slut within us," as Naomi Wolf advises, we should reject her, just as we should reject men who use and discard women."
"Of course, we may continue to do as we do now and pretend that women are every bit as s*xually free and nonchalant as men. But if we do wish to carry on with this pretense, then we should not express astonishment or resentment when men behave more badly than they used to, or show less inclination to stay with us, or that s*x generally feels more meaningless. After all, when something becomes widely and cheaply available, its value usually goes down too."
"The new understanding of s*xual differences might simply be found in the old understanding if we were willing to restore it and polish it up a bit. That understanding recognized the unique and often mysterious traits we instinctively think of as masculine and feminine, traits that have persisted despite all the idealogical sandblasting of the past three decades. They are too subtle and elusive to be inscribed into law. They confound both poets and social scientists. But they are differences that complement each other--that ignite passion and s*xual attraction, give love its depth and emotional sustenance, and ultimately form women into mothers and wives and men into fathers and husbands.
By denying these differences, we prolong the period when we are s*xually vulnerable; we waste the opportunity in our passionate years to find lasting love and everything that goes with it--home, children, stability, and the pleasure of s*x as an expression of profound, romantic, and monogamous love. We have traded all this away for an illusion of s*xual power and, in doing so, have abandoned the customs that used to protect and civilize both s*xes, that constrained men and women but also obliged them to live up to their best natures. We might now be more free. But we enjoy less happiness, less fulfillment, less dignity, and, of all things, less romance."
-What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us
"Of course, we may continue to do as we do now and pretend that women are every bit as s*xually free and nonchalant as men. But if we do wish to carry on with this pretense, then we should not express astonishment or resentment when men behave more badly than they used to, or show less inclination to stay with us, or that s*x generally feels more meaningless. After all, when something becomes widely and cheaply available, its value usually goes down too."
"The new understanding of s*xual differences might simply be found in the old understanding if we were willing to restore it and polish it up a bit. That understanding recognized the unique and often mysterious traits we instinctively think of as masculine and feminine, traits that have persisted despite all the idealogical sandblasting of the past three decades. They are too subtle and elusive to be inscribed into law. They confound both poets and social scientists. But they are differences that complement each other--that ignite passion and s*xual attraction, give love its depth and emotional sustenance, and ultimately form women into mothers and wives and men into fathers and husbands.
By denying these differences, we prolong the period when we are s*xually vulnerable; we waste the opportunity in our passionate years to find lasting love and everything that goes with it--home, children, stability, and the pleasure of s*x as an expression of profound, romantic, and monogamous love. We have traded all this away for an illusion of s*xual power and, in doing so, have abandoned the customs that used to protect and civilize both s*xes, that constrained men and women but also obliged them to live up to their best natures. We might now be more free. But we enjoy less happiness, less fulfillment, less dignity, and, of all things, less romance."
-What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us
posted by Erin | 6:29 PM
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