http://www.crisismagazine.com/june2002/feature3.htm

This certainly isn’t the first time I have wished that some academic authority would shut up about the sex lives of college girls. But then, I wish everyone would shut up about the sex lives of college girls, college girls possibly included. It’s too bad the world seems increasingly reluctant to value them in any other way. I see some of the skankier posts from male-presumably-academics on bulletin boards like these, and I despair: “girls can do anything, as long as they’re hot” is the worst fucking compromise formation ever, but it seems to be where mainstream “feminism” is headed.

You seem to be trying to disagree with Kass while your life seems to confirm all of his points.

First, you state that your husband COURTED you. One of Kass’ points is that far fewer people are courting or being courted by anyone anymore.

Secondly, if I don’t misunderstand you, your husband may have not known you were a virgin, but he did know you weren’t sleeping with him, no? So, while you profess that the fact you weren’t sleeping with him had no bearing on the passion and effort with which he courted you, how do you know?

But you ignore the fact that single people get married, then divorced, then remarried, etc.

It seems people are profoundly unhappy with singleness and with marriage. Which pretty much equals being fundamentally unhappy, by the law of the empty remainder (or whatever that logic rule is called).

If people were fundamentally happy being single they wouldn’t marry. If they were fundamentally happy being married, they wouldn’t divorce. They seem to be just plain unhappy.

Not really. Certainly, Bloom was a very prominent first-generation Straussian (people who studied directly with Strauss) and the best known popularly. But Harry Jaffa, Joseph Cropsey, Harvey Mansfield, Roger Masters were all equally or more so prominent. Cropsey is Strauss’ literary executor and was the editor of the omnibus anthology History of Political Philosohy, not Bloom (who did contribute an article to the anthology, however).

“This was the great irony of Closing of the American Mind: a best seller condemning liberalism (sexuality, rock music, etc.), but omitting all discussion of homosexuality.”

If I remember the text of Closing of the American Mind correctly, Bloom actually spends a good deal of time discussing his view that post-sexual revolution sexuality was a whimpy, pale and pathetic imitation of real sexuality. You don’t have to agree with that (I don’t necessarily buy it myself), but Bloom is fairly forthright in that he wants better sex. His route and your route to that might be different, but it’s the same goal. The book also pretty transparently has homosexual hints even if you don’t know that Bloom himself was gay.

“The real subtext here is a miscogynistic dislike of the sexual power women (allegedly) wield over men. Good looking young men date women, not powerful middle aged male professors. I can’t say this is a common sentiment amongst homosexual men, but it is some subgroup of them.”

If I’m not totally off-base, Bloom was very aware that handsome young men and beautiful young women were not attracted to the ugly and elderly. Bloom had a specific riff on Lysistrata’s scene where the elderly women demand the attentions of the handsome young men. Besides, he himself had no trouble catching handsome young men.

Kass fails to recognize that as soon as men, and by men I mean manfully, manly men, stop giving away to these post-modern hussies in tanktops and convertibles with all their sad, lonely and confused come-hithers and everything will be right with the world again.

Got to run; one of the gals is taking me out for dinner and the opera—and no, not ever on the first date.

Here’s the subtext. Strauss’ greatest proponent was Alan Bloom. As depicted in Saul Bellow’s novel Ravelstein (where Paul Wolfowitz has a walk on part) and in fact, Bloom was a flamboyant homosexual, famed for his toy-boy conquests. This was the great irony of Closing of the American Mind: a best seller condemning liberalism (sexuality, rock music, etc.), but omitting all discussion of homosexuality.

Even before ‘Closing of the American Mind’ was written, Bloom was a star speaker, lecturing to hundreds at Cornell and U of Toronto, receiving adulatory reviews (from men and women). His charisma, I can personally attest to, was quite palpable.

The real subtext here is a miscogynistic dislike of the sexual power women (allegedly) wield over men. Good looking young men date women, not powerful middle aged male professors. I can’t say this is a common sentiment amongst homosexual men, but it is some subgroup of them.

Two sources:

Off the top of my head*, for at least part of the Victorian era the average duration of marriage in Britain was 12 years. Of course one major factor in that statistic was high maternal mortality, just one of those things that the availability of contraception has helped to reduce…

[*will try and find data if I have time and if anyone’s interested]

Why are the most shallow so impressed by this cliché?

Kass bemoans both Enlightenment values and the civil liberties of American women:

“The celebration of equality gradually undermines the authority of…husbands over wives and fathers over sons.” (and one presumes, fathers over daughters.)

And he believes that the right of women to control their own bodies is a causal factor in the destruction of marriage and courtship:

“…our liberal approach to important moral issues in terms of the rights of individuals… [birth control] [abortion] and procreation as governed by a right to reproduce—files in the face of the necessarily social character of sexuality and marriage.”

Kass’s argument is a great example of the philosophies of the radical christian right.

He hides behind romantic flurishes about “love” and “courtship” but don’t overlook his argument that places the blame on “A nation dedicated to safeguarding individual rights to liberty and the privately defined pursuit of happiness…”

Personally, as a pill popping, car owning, frequent flyer, degree granted, athiestic slut, I’ve never found my personal liberty (as found by SCOTUS in the “liberty” clause of the 14th Amendment) to be incompatible with romantic courtship or love.

Money quote:
Last night walking out of a restaurant my husband said “I’m happy to be married to a pill popping, ect. ect.”

Someone repeated conservative phrase “A society is only as good as the families that hold it up”. Dickensian England perhaps had “strong families”, at least in Kassian terms, but it was well, quite Dickensian. When Portugal was ruled by fascists, they “protected families”, run petty repressions at home and colonial wars. Now we are ruled by protectors of families who run a little experimental concentration camp, play guitar when a city is drawning (very, very classic!), sell legislations to the highest bidder, defend marriage and in general, fight for morality.

Ah, they object to make certain contraceptives available over the counter because it could “increase sexual activity of teenagers”. Or kill a clump of 4 cells, I do not know which is worse.

Morality is the set of sex taboos and our divine right to screw other people.