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However, it seems that this is a problem that goes beyond the formal business world, and has pervaded society in general to the extent that many – perhaps most – people think the government (i.e. taxpayers) should bear the costs of their life choices.

The example most in the news today is the demands for subsidized abortion and birth control that have become a feature of the presidential campaign. You’d think that our country’s women’s top priority is getting the government to subsidize their sexual choices, whatever they may be.

Following what I was getting at yesterday, sex has always incurred some expense. Like it or not, men pay for sex (or its results) in one way or another. Traditionally, you’d pay by getting married and taking the woman on as your responsibility, or you’d pay a fee for a one-off (prostitution). If you took it without paying for it, as in adultery, rape or fornication, it was a crime, or something like that. If we were honest with ourselves, we’d have to admit that it still is a quasi crime; as the old system has been replaced with something significantly more confusing, sex crime laws have become far broader in scope and can be applied to any number of situations (such as prostitution) that used to be considered beyond the purview of the law.

Additionally, despite false promises of free sex from the 60s and 70s, when feminists used to get support from men by promising we’d all be getting laid for free when we had “equality,” it turned out that sex still had a lot of associated costs. Pregnancy, of course, is one of the biggest. At first, we socialized that, but then welfare reform threw the costs entirely onto fathers (not mothers, mind you). Combined with welfare reform, we had VAWA, which significantly increased the costs of marriage and cohabitation by legally handicapping men in relationships with women. So great strides have been made in restoring a heavy cost to sex, but this hasn’t been enough, because women have grown accustomed to sexual license with whomsoever they please, and the men they generally like either a) don’t have the money, or b) are desirable enough to not have to pay.

Although the latter is a bit counterintuitive (wouldn’t women desire men who pay for them?), it’s a function of female sexual psychology. Women generally use sex to ensnare the man they want (and they typically have high expectations), and then they begin to draw resources from him. It works in simple societies where people hold each other to account, but in more cosmopolitan settings it breaks down for a couple reasons. First, there are more than enough women to go around, so it’s easy to drop one and pick up another, and secondly there are other means for women to gain resources, such as jobs and welfare, and as long as those resources exist men who have no trouble procuring sex see no reason to provide for women, even if they have the means. And who can blame them? Although it’s a social catastrophe, it’s a perfectly reasonable attitude from a personal perspective, because, after all, the individual man didn’t create this mess in the first place.

Here’s a scenario:

A handsome young investment banker making six figures can go out to a bar and take his pick. Let’s call him Mark. Mark picks up a young woman named Amanda, she goes home with him, they have sex, and he enters her number into his phone, leaving her only a promise to call again. Perhaps he intends to do so, and perhaps not. Whatever the case, he feels no guilt or responsibility, because the woman, who happens to be in law school, also has a job at a nonprofit, and makes more hourly than the average young man in their city, so he doesn’t need to provide her with anything. Additionally, if there’s an “accident” (but in all likelihood there won’t be, because Mark is careful about these things) there’s a Planned Parenthood down the street. Not only does it provide her with birth control, but it will treat STDs and abort unwanted children resulting from her nightly excursions.

Sounds fine, so what’s the problem?

The problem is that this young woman, despite being a student and having a job, is essentially on the dole. Her nonprofit is funded in large part by state and federal grants, as is her tuition. Her sexual care at Planned Parenthood is also funded largely by taxpayers. Her life, including her sex life, is paid for by the average working Joe, but she isn’t sleeping with Joe — oh no: she’s sleeping with Mark, a guy who easily could afford to feed, clothe and insure her, but who doesn’t have to because of Joe. Although it isn’t really his fault, Mark is a freeloader.

Joe, for his part, makes do with monthly trysts with a mid-level prostitute, which he can barely afford after taxes and child support. Joe, who is an HVAC repairman, is paying for all the Amandas in his state, his ex-wife Lisa, and his hooker, who is named Elena.

Interestingly enough, Joe and Amanda have met. Joe was called in to fix the AC in her nonprofit’s office on a sweltering summer day. Because the AC was broken and the atmosphere was stifling, Amanda had unbuttoned the top part of her blouse, and poor Joe couldn’t help but look at her breasts. Amanda was furious, and called his supervisor, who apologized profusely, and when Joe got back from the job he caught hell. Fortunately, he wasn’t fired, but it sure was humiliating. Not as bad as having to deal with his ex-wife’s lawyer, but close—

I suppose we could say “life’s unfair,” and that would be entirely true. But should we make it that unfair? Should we set things up so that Joe has to support Amanda as much as Mark?

According to our nation’s single women, the answer is a resounding “YES!” Married women, however, have a significantly different take on it, for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure single women are consciously aware of how selfish they are being. I think they fully intend to find some man to support them, and think the only way they can do that is to have unfettered sex with all the Marks of the world they can get their hands on in the hopes that one of them will some day give in and marry her. The problem is that it’s a trend that reinforces itself; the more Amandas we have giving it away for free the less likely any given Mark will be to actually support any of them. The competition will escalate, desirable men will become even more reluctant to give women any financial support, and the screeching for more entitlements for single women will grow louder and louder.

It is exactly this trend that has led to the bizarre, unprecedented fixation on women’s sexual entitlements in our current election cycle. When you socialize the costs of a private activity – and sex is about as private as it gets – you create an unnatural imbalance that rewards the few at the expense of the many. You also run the risk of inflating costs to unsustainable levels, and I think that’s something young women ought to think hard about. But they won’t.

[Note: This is from W. F. Price's now-defunct personal blog Welmer, also his old screenname]

Perhaps nothing illustrates our society’s blindness concerning the true nature of female sexuality as clearly as the widely held belief that rape is anathema to female desire. If my suspicions are correct, this fiction is likely tied to the same paternalist sub-theology that is responsible for feminism, the family law industrial complex, and widespread, legalized discrimination against men. However, before I get into any speculation here, let’s take a look at the evidence.

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If Hutson’s inference is correct, more than half of women likely have fantasies of being raped, and in perhaps up to one in four women these are their preferred and most common fantasies. Other studies are referenced in the article as well, if you care to research them yourself.

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If anything caters to tawdry female fantasies, it is romance novels (as well as soaps and dramas). 54% is no coincidence here. Furthermore, Whiskey remarked in one of the comments on my “Mad Men = Female Porn” post that “Mad Men had a couple of rape scenes where the bad boyfriends rape the women the they love.”

So, it being established that rape fantasies are a core component of female sexuality, Hutson goes on to explore why this might be the case. He offers up a number of potential explanations, including, among others, sexual blame avoidance, “male rape culture”, and biological predisposition to surrender. While I reject outright the “male rape culture” explanation (I will explain why shortly), sexual blame avoidance makes some sense, and probably is more relevant to American culture in particular, but I think the biological predisposition to surrender is the most likely explanation.

Suggesting that some “male rape culture” that makes rape normative exists in America is ridiculous on its face. For one thing, rape was originally treated as a crime against men first, and society second. In Deuteronomy, for example, the rapist is punished mainly for his transgression against the husband if the woman is married, and against the father if she is not. This concept continued to be reflected in criminal law until quite recently, when the state took on the role of the father, and then finally the husband as well. In fact, the spate of Mexican rapes of young women and girls that accompanied mass immigration over the last fifteen years or so was in part the result of a cultural misunderstanding. In the old Catholic tradition, which still has considerable influence in Mexico, rape was not considered much worse than fornication (which was a big no-no), and could in many cases be expiated by marrying the victim — this is why the victims of these rapes were almost exclusively unmarried young women; raping a married woman is seen as a far more heinous crime in that particular culture. Rather than a cultivating a “rape culture,” what we see men doing in societies around the world is criminalizing and discouraging rape because it is contrary to their interests.

As the authority of the state has increased over all Americans, we still see the same principle of rape being a crime against more than simply the female victim, but the offense against the husband or father is no longer relevant — instead it is the jealous state (paternal authority) that is now the aggrieved party. So morally speaking (from the feminist point of view), there is little difference between now and then, but practically speaking the scope of prosecution has widened considerably. Given these circumstances, any suggestion that there is a “culture of rape” in America is absolutely ridiculous.

Because rape is a very primal threat to men, acting on a deep-seated insecurity about his relationship to the women in his life, it is likely that the taboo against acknowledging this aspect of female sexuality is rooted in men’s desire to have a more comfortable and less stressful view of the women upon which they have invested so much of their emotional well-being. It is little different from the husband who sees his wife as a “good girl,” only to find out the truth the hard way when she commits some sexual indiscretion.

Despite the comfort that this taboo may bring to some, I would argue that it is a dangerous thing to deny the truth of human nature — even sexuality. Not only does this blind men and keep them from gaining a deeper understanding of the women around them, it also leads women to feel confused and ashamed about feelings and desires that they apparently have little control over. It is possible that the high rate of false rape accusations and obsession over the subject in America is in fact a result of confused, repressed feelings, which lead some mentally disordered women to project their fantasies onto innocent men.

We have to accept that there are dark, uncomfortable aspects to both male and female sexuality, and that neither gender in particular is any more guilty than the other. In fact, neither is guilty at all; we are sexual beings equipped with emotions and desires that, although often mysterious, serve a greater purpose than our rational minds can comprehend.

[Comment by same fundie in response to a comment about Biblical leniency with regards to rape]

Sorry, Warren, I’m not too shocked by those passages. The Bible is not meant to be read like a British tabloid.

As for the Jewish rape angle, you’ll have to think about when the relevant books were written. Well before 300 BC for the most part.

Then, let’s take some European pagan practices into account. Fortunately, we have some good documentation from the Romans. I seem to remember a certain sack of Judea by Titus Flavius Vespasianus. Some coins were minted commemorating the Roman victory that portrayed a bound Jew and his weeping wife, under a caption that read “IVDEA CAPTA“.

Somehow, I doubt these women were all appointed to positions as consular interns.

Condemning the ancient Hebrews on the basis of contemporary “morality” is laughable. I hope you can do better next time.

I will say, however, that the one man who successfully did challenge their morals – in the 1st century AD no less – inspires deep humility in me.

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Agreed. But men should know of these urges as well. We’ve really got to stop fooling ourselves about women.

I’m starting to doubt whether most women can be trusted to moderate their behavior without male authority to guide them.

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Lukobe, given that the source of so much male misbehavior is female influence, and that this has traditionally been kept in check by other males’ influence, I don’t know exactly how that should be answered.

Perhaps it is simply the provenance of men to govern both men and women.

Maybe men can more effectively govern men by better governing women. In fact, I think that is the best answer. The men in power today have failed miserably in their duty to govern women.