Ye Ladies of Easy Leisure

Most young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused…

I don’t wonder. If I had to sit through a lecture like this, I’d be sad and confused, and I’m an old fat man.

Prof. Kass is getting the “lonely” vibe, I believe, because the friends of the young women he talks to tend to flee when they see him approaching.

What about male sexual virtue? What’s happened to that in the last 60 years? Why is it all about the women?

I demand equal attention.

The girls I know in and out of college don’t seem any more depressed than anyone else. They’re just regular people.

Maybe the dating scene is a tad different than in Mr. Kass’ day, but that’s just because he is a tired, old man.

As to marriage, Now that we’ve all graduated there seems to have begun a storm of weddings. The whole business took everybody by surpise.

Maybe it was all those serious (and sexual) relationships they were involved in during school.

Sad, lonely, confused, and not dating? At the University of Chicago? Who’da thunk it?

On the other hand, Kass seems to be attributing this sad condition to hedonistic indulgence in the “pleasures of the present”…whoah, dude, are you an ethnographer? Just what sort of methodology is it you guys are practicing these days on campus anyway? (And just what the hell _is_ Social Thought? I’ve never been able to figure that out.)

That excerpt is from an old (1997) article in The Public Interest.

http://www.thepublicinterest.com/notable/article7.html

Kass ends the essay with these words: “Men, as Rousseau put it, will always do what is pleasing to women, but only if women suitably control and channel their own considerable sexual power. Is there perhaps some nascent young feminist out there who would like to make her name great and who will seize the golden opportunity for advancing the truest interest of women (and men and children) by raising (again) the radical banner, “Not until you marry me”? And, while I’m dreaming, why not also, “Not without my parents’ blessings”?”

Ah, but there is! And her name is Wendy Shalit. She is all the rage in conservative circles, and wrote a book called “A Return to Modesty.”

I’ll give anyone here ten to one odds Kass has some deeply repressed and freaky sexual urges. I bet he watches hentai.

I’ll no longer be able to think about Kass without thinking about his views on ice cream, which I had the odd experience of learning about for the first time in our comments section.

Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone –a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive. I fear I may by this remark lose the sympathy of many reader, people who will condescendingly regard as quaint or even priggish the view that eating in the street is for dogs.

Eating is a fundamental act, something you should take seriously and devote your full attention to, something that needs to be cultivated to appreciate and do well. Isn’t there some truth to that?

Um, no. How does it follow from the fact that eating is in some sense fundamental that we should devote our full attention to it and do it well? Compare breathing, or digestion.

I wasn’t making an argument, I was describing a reaction. Either it resonates with you or it doesn’t.

Okay, I see that. It almost resonates with me. Kass has a characteristic move, which is to appeal to this kind of response. But if that’s all he has to offer, then he has nothing, since it is also easy to come up with gut reactions that oppose the ones he wants to invoke.

and fun! Kass forgot to mention the negative effects that fun has had on civilisation since it has been liberalised by such dangerous movements as the Fun Revolution and the widespread sale of Fun Pills.

I first suspected that the ice-cream quote had to be made-up but no, there it is right there on page 148 of Kass’ The Hungry Soul. Goodness gracious, it must be difficult for someone of such rarefied and exquisietly attenuated sensibilities to be an inhabitant of this planet. His elucidation of the ars amatoria is a case in point:

For it is a woman’s refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man’s lust into love.

Does this seem a plausible accounting of love? Perhaps it’s what P.G. Wodehouse would call “the gruesome early Victorianness” of it’s diction or perhaps it’s the way this quote gives one the sense that Mr. Kass has only experienced human amatory interaction as an impartial observer, (perhaps from an unpopulated mountain or through an inexpensive telescope) but I would say no, it does not convince. The word sociopathic is perhaps too strong a term, but it captures the flavor of the passage. For, as other commenters have implied, a creepy, lascivious undercurrent is running all through this viper’s nest of weirdness.
Seriously though, Mr. Healy may be inclied to mock pedants like Kass but I prefer my bigots like him, which is to say loud, proud and out of the crankcase closet. Fly your freak-flag proudly Mr. Kass, it’s that much easier for me to cross the street should I see you coming towards me on the sidewalk.

Much more troublesome are those who are the like of Maggie Gallagher and who insist that,

For many people this [homophobia] is the main issue. It’s just not my issue.

The odd “…cf. the Roman Empire…” moments aside, she seems to want to arrive at her destination (anti-gay-marriage) without ever having traveled through anti-gay to get there. It’s a circuitous route indeed and I think that goes a long way to explain the tortuous quality of her reasoning. But the fact that one has to strike such poses bodes well for gay marriage in some ways. There was a time not so long ago when it wasn’t the least bit necessary to represent your argument against gay marriage as being motivated by anything other than a dislike of gays. It’s funny that what Gallagher so genteely characterizes as this “overlapping and parallel moral debate” seems to be pushed further and further towards the fringe with each passing season. It takes a certain amount of clumsiness to make Maggie Gallagher’s arguments seem sophisticated. Mr. Kass, though, has managed it.

It’s not even the opinions that get me – it’s the bloated, farting, tumescent pomposity. Point, and jeer.

on the other hand, kass has finally proven that south park republicans do exist. for his essay is surely influenced by cartman:

“You get your bitch ass back in the kitchen, and make me some pie!”

This guy is the Chair of the Presidents’ committee on bioethics?

Geez, I think I can see where that’s going:

“Mr Pasteurs’ theory of very small animals as disease carriers, and his experiment thereof will only lead to men in our society being more confused and depressed about the wooing of sheep than they already are, for if sheep are seen as throwaway animals simply to be “experimented on” who knows where it may lead?“

Sounds like not very well researched shouting. Going on assumptions about what is thought to be common knowledge of an earlier time. No body had pre-marital sex before the sexual revolution? Some statistics I have read have said that nearly have of the births in Victorian England were out of wedlock. Besides, look at the liberal Europeans and their relaxed concepts of sex. They seem to be able to do that and have a stable society. Go figure.

THe exerpt had a lot of talk about the good old days and how it used to be. It is also true that in America it was common in the old days that people would have sex before marriage, in fact waiting to see if the woman could get pregnant to determine her suitability for marriage. Also true was the pervaisiveness of prostitution, the wife as property and beatings. Woo woo! Let’s go back in time.

What’s really wrong with America (among other things, of course) is the fact that an irrational nincompoop like Kass can actually be taken seriously as a bioethicist. It’s like taking advice from George W. Bush on how to succeed in the oil bidness, or in foreign policy.

This is an argument against tenure, and against the U. of C. What a pervert Kass is. Sounds like Limbaugh talking about blow jobs.

Let’s not forget all the young men who seek the solace of other young men because they’re not getting the goods from the virtuous young ladies.

Sigh. Those were the days.

Did you steal this from my craigslist want ad?

Apparently, as mine had “discreet, bisexual” in it.

Man, so what exactly do blue balls secrete that, given sufficient time, alters the brain to change “lust” to “love”???? That’s a new one on me, for sure. Howcome I love my kids? I’m not a pervert (at least in that manner), so it isn’t sexual unavailability. Does Kass want to bone his mother?

This guy is really, really messed up.

PS: Ice cream cones are over 100 years old at this point, FWIW.

God, what an incredible, spectacular, overbearing asshole. I was about to say, “fuck Leon Kass to the power of 10,000”, but then I realized I mean “don’t anybody, ever, fuck Leon Kass, to the power of 100,000,000,000.”
Signed,
a pill-popping, body-piercing, career-oriented, degree-granted, sexually confident, frequent-flyer, atheistic slut.

So Ignatius J. Reilly finally got his PhD, did he? How nice for him. Now if only people would read more Boethius…

Where is the love?

I will probably be skewered for saying this, but instead of discounting Mr. Kaas because he offends our post sexual revolution sensibilities, we should listen.

I believe he is making a valid point. He believes that something important to the relationship between men and women and to our own happiness has been lost.

I disagree in the way he is trying to make his point. Mr Kaas’ return to modesty and virtue, as they were acted out in his day, is no more pleasant to my mind than today’s drivel about “negotiating relationships”.

Mr. Kaas’ talk about modesty and virtue is really about finding protecting and fostering love. To my mind, his world is closer to the mark of what we should be talking about, than our talk of today about “having a heathly realtionship”.

Its about love dammit! We don’t discuss love in America. We talk about being healthy. Of being in a healthy relationship. Of negotiating with our partners. I want what I want and you want what you want, so we will negotiate a compromise.

Love is secondary in our world, it was of primary importance in Mr. Kaas’ world. In my mind, Mr Kaas is at least pointing in the right direction.

I do not love thee, Dr. Kass.
The reason is, that you’re an ass.
And this I know, and hold it fast,
I do not love thee, Dr. Kass.

Ah, he’s just jealous he didn’t get any when he was a kid.

And don’t even get him STARTED on HOT DOGS… and GIRLS EATING hot dogs…
in PUBLIC!

And corndogs. Don’t forget the corndogs, redolent of race-mixing owing to the difference in color and … er, size. And the copious use of mustard. Clearly meant to acclimate us all to the notion of alternative modes of penetration and to ensure that it’s seen as “just as good as” normal modes, by which I mean “mode,” of course. (It’s a subtle argument. You may see it from time to time.)

Oh, they’re tricky, those liberals.

I believe he is making a valid point.

About what? His fantasy world? Does he see these unhappy women, those who have “lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests” all the time, or just when they’re not bobbing for extra credit in his lap?
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Having been in several of his classes at the University of Chicago, I’ll put forward that Leon Kass is a truly gifted teacher, a graceful and talented writer, and a moral philosopher whose premises are all based on ideas that were really last “current” a thousand years ago. To Professor Kass, St. Thomas Aquinas is a modern philosopher.

I love and completely agree with ed’s comments from above:

“Trampling Mr Kass is a bit like trampling Henry James. He shouldn’t, clearly, be in a position to make decisions on bioethics or influence policy in our time. But he is quaint, and I kinda like him.”

Kass is a great man to have an argument with, and a nice counterpoint to us relativist humanists, but the thought of him being Surgeon General is terrifying.

Please remember that one of Mr. Kass’ goals is to ‘offend’ and turn off the ‘unserious.’ He is a Straussian-extrordinaire, therefore he is writing esoterically. His over-the-top crabby old man statements are meant to get people all riled up on the surface, but he expects the serious reader to look past all that.

Let’s pretend he deserves a serious reading and what he’s trying to get at: I think it is that he believes true friendship can only exist between men, and that having women running around pretending to be equal just makes society too hard to control. Since he believes (like Strauss) that there really is no ‘natural’ order to things besides the strong doing what’s to their advantage, he thinks men should get back in control (by *persuading* the women that it’s in their best interest).

I also think he really believes that men cannot control their sexual desires without the help of ‘virtuous women,’ or at least that they have no reason to. In this, he is not so different from the orthodox Muslims who believe every piece of skin must be hidden.

In any case, try not to be distracted by what he means to distract you with: the liberals’ reaction to the ice cream comment is exactly the sort of thing Straussians laugh about behind closed doors.

Let me guess, in part two he starts in on those uppity Negroes?

Kaas fails, somehow, to condemn the live-for-today ethos of ecclesiastes.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life. And also that every man should eat and drink, and enjoy the good of all his labor, it is the gift of God. And also eating ice cream and doing the wild thing is not so bad. So be not a cramped U of C loser or the pit awaits you, dumbass.

I think the mail-order bride industry is a fairly recent phenomenon

In the 1800s, there was a market for brides in the thinly populated west. I can’t remember exactly who advertised or what the terms tended to be (and I’m about to be late for a meeting) but, basically, once a deal was struck, a lady from the east would embark on a grueling weeks-long trip to meet and marry the man she would spend the rest of her life with.

Let’s play word association! Name the first three words that come to mind when you think of Leon Kass. I’ll start: doddering, impotent, bughouse crazy. Okay, four words.

On preview: Oh, Dave. That’s so very thoughtful, and so very wrong. I’d reckon that love, as you describe it, has wrecked more lives than it’s enriched.

Now I am late.

For it is a woman’s refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man’s lust into love.

Shorter Leon Kass: “Being a pricktease pays off.”

Hasten to add: of course, once alternative modes of penetration, not to mention corndogs with lots of mustard, are seen by society as being “just as good as” normal modes, including hot dogs, the normal mode will no longer be enjoyable.

Just ask this woman.
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I wonder if the good professor is familiar with the life of Émilie du Châtelet.

Regardless, there appears to be, for accurate description’s sake, one too many letters in the gentleman’s surname.

I should start by saying that I know Leon Kass and his family. I have been a guest at his house and he at mine. His wife, Amy, also a professor at the U of C, is the finest teacher I have ever known. So, discount what I have to say as you see fit. I am certain that Leon fully expected to catch flak for his comments. Whenever you enter into public discourse, you have to expect some pie-in-the-face (or should I say, ice cream?) reaction. He doesn’t need me to defend him. But I’d like to defend him nonetheless, at least against the personal, ad hominem attacks that he’s caught, here and on other sites.

What you might want to understand is that his stated concerns for young people generally, and young women particularly, are sincere and carefully considered, not code for a desire to demean and subordinate women. His relationship with his wife and daughters is respectful, loving and equal and I suspect that, if you knew them, you would like and approve of their family. Naturally, my assertion that Leon is a good man with a good family doesn’t provide a shred of support for his argument, but I don’t want the attacks on his character to go unrebutted.

See, what happened with Amy and Leon was they saw all their favorite students spending tremendous effort and thought on how to advance their careers or get into grad school or improve their minds but hardly any on who to marry. They believe (as I do) that the decision as to whether and who to marry is the most important choice a person can make and that the smart, talented young people they saw on a daily basis were messing it up. Being from the U of C, they naturally concluded that what everyone needed was a 636 page tome of assigned reading in the classics. So they assembled a book, “Wing To Wing, Oar To Oar: Readings on Courting and Marrying.” It is about what you’d expect from two lifelong U of C scholars tackling the subject of marriage. Lots of different authors with different, interesting takes on the topic. In their own words, the book was offered “in wisdom-seeking rather than wisdom-delivering-spirit, as writings that make us think, that challenge our unexamined opinions, expand our sympathies, elevate our gaze, and introduce us to possibilities open to human beings in everyday life that may be undreamt of in our philosophizing.” pg.19. If you are honestly interested in the subject or what they think, I recommend the book to you.

So disagree with his fundamental points all you like. Tell him you think that, for all the problems that he elegantly identifies in today’s young people, his diagnosis is flawed and his prescription is wrong. I have, to his face. But, before you impugn his motives or attack his character, consider that you really do not know what you are talking about.

Might be kind of fun to see him up for Surgeon General. Well, as long as I see that ice cream quote plastered everywhere, and as long as he slinks back to Chicago in defeat.

The first step to self-knowledge is knowing that you are ignorant.

You folks, with all your snarky comments, have any of you read a book on love? Studied the nature of love? If you had, then you would understand where Mr Kaas was coming from. Notice, I did not say that you would have to agree.

But, at least you’d be able to make an argument that wasn’t just an attack on Mr. Kaas.

Pathetic. You wear your ignorance like a shield and sustain it with you outrage that someone dares to question the nature of things.

K. Hannigan — to my mind, saying that people should spend time thinking about whether and who to marry is completely unobjectionable. I’d like to know though what you think about Kass’ motivations in the “women one fooled around with and women one married” crack — does he consider his daughters the type of women one marries or one fools around with? Do you not see just how objectionable it is to say that dichotomy is a good thing? Or how disrespectful of women? To say he is a good husband and father seems kind of pointless to me — a good father doesn’t spend his time fretting about his daughters (or other people’s daughters) remaining virgins until they marry.

Chapter 1 you tell her, you love her with all your heart
Chapter 2 you tell her, you’re never never never never never gonna part
Chapter 3 remember, the meaning of romance
Chapter 4 you break up, but you give her just one more chance

At the risk of debasing this eloquent discourse, to paraphrase the words of Paulie from “The Pope of Greenwich Village”, “Leon, you sound like half a fag.” Why are the most repressed the most deviant? Is it not more important that our society glorifies violence and abhors sexuality? I can not go to Blockbuster and rent a video where a partially clad woman is filmed engaging in a real, consenual sex act, but I can go to Blockbuster and rent a movie where a partially clad woman is engaged in a simulated sex act, and then subsequently has her head “non-consenually” removed by a sharp instrument. Go figure. Europeans, discounting the Germans, of which I am not far removed, and who seem to have a similar fascination with nationalistic violence and perverted sex as we do, seem to have a much more healthy view of sexuality and violence. Alternately, to pander to Leon…..

Charlie: I didn’t do anything, Paulie. I didn’t hit her. I didn’t do nothin’.

Paulie: You can’t do that man. I mean you don’t abuse ’em once in a while they’ll shit all over you. I don’t mean you walk around morning to night whackin’ ’em upside the head like someone from the other side but you terrorize ’em once in a while just to keep ’em in line. Know what I mean?

What would it take to change the mores of our society, where violence is bad and sex is good? If I beat up that ice cream cone in public would that be acceptable?

“But, before you impugn his motives or attack his character, consider that you really do not know what you are talking about.”

This is certainly correct, as regards my knowledge of Leon Kass’s personal character. Surely it is equally correct as regards Leon Kass’s knowledge of the “necessary conditions” for men to truly love their wives, or the nature of women’s “genuine longing”, let alone whether “most” young women are in fact “sad, lonely, and confused?”

I’m assuming Part II of Mr. Kass’s tripartite essay will be titled something like, “Honor Killings: Really So Bad?”

Assuming that he counts as well as he reasons, parts four and five of same will be “The Other Side of Bigotry,” and “Human Rights: Why Bother?”

[with apologies to the residents of Tuna, Texas]
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Funny, jeremy osner.

But I would start with Allan Bloom’s “On Love and Friendship” It’s not an easy read, but it does have a lot of humor, so you might like it. It also gives a good overview on the nature of love and how it has been discussed and thought of over the centuries.

Just remember for 6in of sausage you don’t need to buy the whole pig.

Realistically, this betrays a very low opinion of men suggesting that the only reason they have for committed relationship is sex. Sad.

And to you grand moff texan, I’d suggest Bloom’s ” The Closing Of The American Mind”

Dave,

You say “The first step to self-knowledge is knowing that you are ignorant.

You folks, with all your snarky comments, have any of you read a book on love? Studied the nature of love? If you had, then you would understand where Mr Kaas was coming from.”

Isn’t it ignornat to assume we haven’t? Maybe we’re just “snarky” because we have.

(And I wonder wonder, mm-bop a doo-wah, who, wah, who wrote the book of neo-conservatism?)

Male sexual modesty prevents me from describing the vast number of sad, lonely, and confused unmarried women I have sexually enjoyed, and regularly too. But to be fair, I was sad, lonely, and confused when it was their turn to enjoy me.

According to Stephanie Koontz’ book, Marriage: a history, Kass has it pretty much wrong all the way around. The first wave of discontent with marriage, in the teens of the twentieth century, was associated with feminism — the second wave, in the twenties, came at a time when the suffrage movement was exhausted — the third wave, in the late sixties, was centered not among the hippie dippy teens, but among the marrieds of the fifties. In fact, the fifties acually was the peak period for marriage, and since then marriage among the adult population has reached the same levels as it did in the forties. As for the premise that women’s control of their sexuality would be matched by male loyalty, that didn’t pan out — those fifties marriages were broken up by the male part as much or more than by the female party. In fact, the wiser move by women is not to expect a constant male partner, and to hone her skills accordingly. Love — if love is defined as defining one’s life around another person’s emotional response to oneself — is certainly not the best basis to build one’s emotional, sexual and economic life around. However, as long as you prepare yourself for the consequences of having your love life interrupted, it is eminently affordable.
Mr. Kass needs to meet that other U.of C. conservative prof, Gary Becker.

Love is secondary in our world, it was of primary importance in Mr. Kaas’ world. In my mind, Mr Kaas is at least pointing in the right direction. – dave

I agree that love is more important and is given short shrift in relationships today (btw — why does it have to be a man wooing a woman? why can’t a woman woo a man?) … but the relationship described as ideal by Kass doesn’t sound like love to me … it sounds like as much of a business transaction as prostitution with an added dash of manipulation on the part of the woman guaranteed to turn the man into a blithering misogynist: a man gets sex in exchange for a woman getting whatever she wants from her husband. And should the woman be dissatisfied, she withholds sex until she gets what she wants from the man.

That doesn’t sound like love or anything that would turn a man’s lust into love (and what of the woman … what turns her lust into love?) to me … it sounds like a recipe for exploitation and bitterness.

Do you want the cow for the milk, or because you like the cow? Isn’t that the real difference between lust and love?

Dude, you gotta get off the farm. Conversely, I could hook you up with some websites. Or some rich creamery butter.

Well Locutor, you are right. I do not know what everyone has studied and mastered. Perhaps if folks wrote more thoughtful responses, instead of just attacking Mr. Kaas, I would.

Real relationships really are about meeting each other’s needs, and part of that is being aware of each other’s needs, and being aware of which of them each is willing and able to fill, and which must be taken care of outside the relationship. It’s very messy, compared to fiction. But instead of being a letdown, I think it’s much more beautiful than your idea of what love is. – pdf23ds

Bingo.

Part of the reason why college kids are having difficulties in the relationship world is that too many people don’t realize what a relationship is actually about. Too many college kids conceptualize relationships in terms of romantic comedies, etc. … in fictional terms. They do not understand that the beauty of a relationship is not some guy wooing some gal and sweeping her off her feet, but two people who care deeply for each other, who are responsive to each other’s needs and who are comfortable enough with each other to communicate their needs to each other.

From my experience, the “traditional” view of dating and marriage espoused by Kass is far from dead on college campuses but rather is what is doing damage to dating and marriage … if only because people, stuck in their traditional views of what a relationship should be like, are missing what really would be the best relationships for them. Just because a guy sweeps a girl off her feet doesn’t make him the best guy for her … it may be her best friend, whom she has mentally desexualized, because he’s approached her as a friend rather than as a suitor, and enframed as someone akin to her “brother” who would really give her what she needs, both sexually and emotionally, in a relationship, while the guy who has sweeped her off her feet even as she played “hard to get” might not really respect her needs (after all, he pursued her even as she was ostensibly communicating she wasn’t to be gotten) or might just be interested in playing games (e.g. she was playing “hard to get”, so maybe he was merely playing “suitor” … all without realizing it).

The sexual revolution has still not lived up to its promise of liberating relationships. In part because some people do think “why buy the pig when the sausage is free” or “why buy the cow when the milk is free” … but really a large part of the problem I saw on my college campus was that too many people, even in an age where sexual mores are in some sense looser, were still stuck in stifling sex roles which inhibited their ability to search for and find truly loving and mutually respectful relationships.

Is now the same as whenever mr. kass grew up (the 1930s?)

if the answer is no, his observations are worthless without acknowledging that fact. if he states that “women are in the workforce” that is not a neutral fact in the context of his argument, it is part of a greater societal change that, were he to discuss it, might color the rest of his train of thought. but that’s inconvient to his argument. now, he a brilliant guy i assume, so therefore such an elementary mistake strikes me as willfull, or to put another way, he’s a another asshat republican putting his conclusion before his facts or logic.

let’s take it further. all his chivalry shit is very modern indeed. for most women for most of history, marriage meant very simply–how many sheep could you family afford to give away to get rid of you to whomever was interested. oh, and by the way, if you were known to be a woman of “loose virtue” (read, raped) then it was going to take more sheep.

again, i’m sure mr. kass knows this. he’s such a fucking lying sack of shit it makes me want to vomit. trying to defend this tripe makes YOU a lying sack of shit as well. come up with a better argument grounded in reality or piss off, sez me.

Pdf23,

I have been in love. The sweetest love of my life. While in the midst of it I realized what bunk all this talk about needs fullment was.

I knew, with all my heart, that he would never ask me for anything that I wouldn’t give, nor I of him.

Knowing that he existed and loved me calmed my heart and made everyhting else in life easier.

Yes it ended, badly and messy. Perhaps it was all just a fiction inside my head, but what a grand fiction it was.

I like where this thread is going… somewhere deeply bizarre and surrealistic.

Dang, here I am, married for 22 years, and it turns out I’m just an anachronism. And I’m morally reprehensibile and everything.

Where I did go wrong?

I’ve got to see this Book of Love
Find out why it’s true.

Thanks jeremy. Hadn’t thought of that one for ages.

Brackdurf: chortle!

jeremy, you’re a pervert.

I have to point out that Kass brings out the best in all of us: a few of these comments almost made me spew Coke on my monitor.

Ooh, flirting now too! Shouldn’t you be at work?

Dave, why on earth would you–or Kass–assume any of us had no knowledge or understanding of love?

Unfortunately, (w/r/t Kass, at least) it’s what we’ve come to expect from conservatives–the just-too-precious-for-words belief that they alone possess any finer or nobler feelings. Aside from making them feel oh-so-special, it also helps to rationalize all that racism and cultural insularity.

Did anyone notice the small print in the upper right corner of Leon Kass’ website? It’s a link that says “A Website of Focus on Family”. Yup, this is more Dobson propaganda.

I understand this is merely part 1 of Kass’s essay, but unless he is to add other angles to the other 2 parts, he makes an unnecessarily reductive argument that sex is the consideration in courtship and marriage. Kass has so far ignored the elephants of finance and nonsexual control in the relationship (though I admit that many issues surrounding control can’t be easily separated from other issues). I hope Kass expands his essay along those lines. For anyone who discusses the causes of, say, marriage and divorce rates without discussing the economics behind them is being irresponsible.

But for now, on to what he has discussed:

Anyone who seriously contemplates the present scene is — or should be — filled with profound sadness, all the more so if he or she knows the profound satisfactions of a successful marriage.

Kass then goes on to describe terms of a “successful marriage” that, I daresay most, women would consider a failure now, and probably did in times when that form of marriage was more common (if it was ever).

While there has always been sex without love, easy and early sexual satisfaction makes love and real intimacy less, not more, likely — for both men and women.

Can he back this up? Can you? My experience has not borne this out. I think it depends on the person. Some people are prepared (as much as they can be) to handle or at least adjust to the mental requirements of casual sex with different partners. Some people are prepared for sex with their respective singular partners until they die. Some are prepared for celibacy.

I certainly agree that one benefits from more thorough consideration before choosing. Reserve is a great idea if one is not developmentally (or otherwise) ready to handle a particular kind of relationship, be it a fleetingly or long-term sexual one, a marriage, a platonic one, etc.

I think it is best when one may choose when to give and receive pleasure and the context in which one does so. If anything, I think people show a greater respect for marriage by avoiding it until they feel they’ve lived up to it. It may be that they need to alter what to expect from marriage, and further, what within themselves is capable of adjusting to marriage, but those are different topics than the one in which Kass has so far engaged.

I love his weird assertion that there’s no reason for men to marry because it’s just so easy to bed a woman you desire, pretty much any time you’re feeling desirous. Where does Kass get the idea that getting laid is that easy? Is he a super stud? Do women swoon around him and lose all sense of reason? Because of if I polled all of my single friends, men and women, none of them prudes, I doubt any of them would say it’s quite so easy as Kass implies.

And, hell, even it it were, I’m not sure why that would stop anybody from getting married because they, you know, fall in love with somebody else.

The multitude of failings of modern morality are all the fault of those Victorian fashions that started to display the female ankle. The next thing we knew women were in bloomers riding bicycles, which was tantamount to admitting to the entire world that they had two legs that could be spread apart. The freedom of the bicycle led to the horrors of unchaperoned picnics, and sped women down the road leading to the backseats of automobiles. It’s been downhill ever since.

Eating is a fundamental act, something you should take seriously and devote your full attention to…

ONLY when a major portion of the day is consumed in procuring food. Food is a necessity of life, it should not be an obsession.

Eat to Live, don’t Live to Eat!

If I could go way back up to #48 …

Dave, what does the word “negotiation” suggest to you that you think has no place in relationships? To me it seems like avoiding abuse and rape, at worst, and one partner feeling taken advantage of or taken for granted even in the best cases.

This is amazing – it is EXACTLY the same argument that the Wahabbi Sect of Islam (Saudi Arabia) uses to justify the idea that women be kept covered in a black tent from head to toe in order to keep good muslim men virtuous.

And to you grand moff texan, I’d suggest Bloom’s ”The Closing Of The American Mind”

You can’t be serious? Or is the reference to protesting the closing of the American mind to closed-mindedness another attempt at irony?

I never felt the need to trade in my intellectual self-respect in order to be able to trade on my “white” male identity. I’ve also never been impressed by the use of Roget’s as a strap-on to sodomize the crone of archaist escapism that is the limit of conservative social imagining.
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“the destigmatization of bastardy”

that’s the twat point for me

maybe we’ve figured out why men don’t want to get married, but I recently heard from a friend that married women do an average of 14 more hours of housework a week than their unmarried peers…ESPECIALLY if they were married to Republicans! So for one or two times a week of conjugal sex, you get 14 added hours of housework??? Not a good tradeoff!

all kidding aside, Kass and company should decamp to Saudi Arabia where I hear female modesty is still highly prized…look how well they’re doing as a political community…

Damn! Should have spell checked.

I would just like to note that I’m glad to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my husband’s motivation for marrying me didn’t include the idea that marriage was the only way he could get into my pants.

I dunno, K. Hannigan. Nobody could possibly object to:

“writings that make us think, that challenge our unexamined opinions, expand our sympathies, elevate our gaze, and introduce us to possibilities open to human beings in everyday life that may be undreamt of in our philosophizing”

And in between hoots of laughter, folks have pointed out that Kass holds fast to unexamined opinions, has narrow sympathies, is unable to elevate his gaze, and cannot see “possibilities open to human beings in everyday life … undreamt of in [his] philosophizing.” Part of the trouble with his writing on this topic is its utter banality. It may be the banality of another age, but its fustiness doesn’t make it smarter.

And for someone who believes that love springs from sublimated lust to accuse *other* people of having a limited view of love is a little too much.

In addition to their banality these ideas do have consequences in the blighting of lives, so yes people will respond vigorously, and if you choose to make uninformed, broad-brush arguments about sexuality and bring back the virgin|whore dichotomy etc. etc., one of the responses you can expect is merciless ridicule. Some of it’s over the top, yes. Most of it’s pretty entertaining.

under all statistical studies I’ve heard, single women are happy, healthier, etc. than married women

I believe Kass addresses this when he points out that “most young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused” — the single women may think they’re happier; but they lose “the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests.”

Dave, did you read the entirety of Kass’ article? Specifically, did you notice the following?

Even if it is true that the great majority of Americans still profess a belief in God, He is for few of us a God before whom one trembles in fear of judgment. With adultery almost as American as apple pie, few people appreciate the awe-ful shame of The Scarlet Letter. The sexual abominations of Leviticus—incest, homosexuality, and bestiality—are going the way of all flesh, the second with religious blessings, no less.

(Emphasis mine.)

You may find Kass’ arguments about “love” compelling, but you have to also acknowledge that in Kass’ view, what you and your ex-boyfriend felt for each other wasn’t love–it was a sickness, and it was repugnant.

Good ol’ Alan Bloom felt the same way, of course–in public, at least…

Seems to me that Margaret Atwood might be able to go after Kass for plagiarism.

As a child of the sixties who still beleives in the great benefits of the sexual revolution, and as a gay, out and proud man who has had both a lot of casual sex and two long-term very fulfilling gay relationships (not to mention one marriage with a lovely Belgian female when I was very young), I find Kass’s philosophy and stance regarding modern sex in america – BULLSHIT.

hey, the title of the piece………..taken from the Pogues’ song, no? cool.

In our society we do not talk about the nature of love becuase that would involve making judgments.

Damn! Should have spell checked.

Or seen a movie, or read a book. Love figures prominently in a number of them.

Another example of someone who confuses morality with sex. Sex outside of marriage is not Evil, although I can see how confused thinking would lead someone down that path.

A deeper view of morality is when it is directly linked to compassion. How much compassion we have for others defines our own level of morality, and this is the essence of the teachings from Jesus, Budha, Ghandi, Krishna and the few enlightened spiritual teachers.

Cheers
BazzaQ

So Administration bioethics policy is being set by Andy Rooney. That makes me feel better.

Seriously, such ideas are not “quaint,” they are dangerous. My wife’s grandmother, in El Salvador, was either seduced or raped by a rich man (we don’t know which it was, but to tell the truth, at that time there was no meaningful line separating seduction from rape). She had her reputation destroyed, could never marry, and was forced to live her life in poverty. Kass blames her for her fate. Fuck Him and his mother!! Every serious historian knows that this was the dark side of Victorian “morality”– rich women had the power to protect their virtue, poor women did not. I’ll take the present, with its alleged morality crisis, over that past any day.

Uncle Kvetch, together we’ll face the world.

Gah! I hate that song.
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Are we thinking of the same song, GMT?

And to those who defend this dinosaur, his personal charms are irrelevant to the views he expressed. Perhaps he is a benevolent dictator to his wife and daughters–that doesn’t make his dictatorship ethical.

And speaking of love, how can anyone say he knows anything about it whatsoever? Subsumed lust is not love. It’s nowhere close to it.

And his last fallacy (a common one) is in assuming that his acquaintance with *college students* gives him any real insight into how functioning adults work in our society. College students are in transition, still making their personalities, easily swayed by their heroes, and for the most part, utterly ignorant of the real world and real relationships, because they haven’t been on their own yet. It is an irritatingly common failing of many academics, to think that what they observe in students rarified lives can be extrapolated to the majority of the population.

>Well, Mr. Quimby, does male sexual modesty

If Mr. Quimby isn’t still around to speak for himself, I would venture (not having any such experience myself, mind you) that Lawyers, Guns and Money might be more overriding concerns in that particular case.

Speaking of songs, BTW, there is one great benefit to me from being exposed to this idiocy.

I used to want to stick a fork thru my frontal lobes anytime I was forced to listen to “Paradise By The Dashboard Lights”, but now I’ll think of Mr. Kass’ demonstrated unworldliness and just howl with laughter all the way thru it.

Fuck you all. Its obviously much more fun and “liberating” to make fun of this guy than to address any of the points that he is making, or to wonder why these topics might be important.

A society is only as good as the families that hold it up. With the sexual revolution of our society came a whole bunch of weird shit that has affected our nation in a lot of different ways.

Are they good, bad, hard to say? I dont know. But I find it hilarious that no one wants to admit that Kass might have a point about how unrestrained sexual activity will negatively impact a society as a whole.

“all their favorite students spending tremendous effort and thought on how to advance their careers or get into grad school or improve their minds but hardly any on who to marry. They believe (as I do) that the decision as to whether and who to marry is the most important choice a person can make and that the smart, talented young people they saw on a daily basis were messing it up.” – This seems like a nice, innocuous, gender neutral statement, until you notice that Kass has put all the onus on the women to “fix” this relationship situation.

Bingo! Once again it’s the women who are supposed to clean up the “mess” (for those who believe there is a mess). With these folks, it’s always about the women changing their behavior, not the men.

Woo hoo! Let’s bring back the double standard! That sure made everyone happy and women’s lives hunky-dory!

So let’s see; a “virtuous” woman is one who treats the man in her life as a pathetic animal who can be controlled and exploited by the strategic deployment of her sexual favors, while a woman who has sex because she likes it and likes and/or loves the other person is a dissipated whore bound for eternal damnation. I’m not against virtue or modesty, I like them in men and women–but Kass’ definition of it reeks of fear and dislking of ALL women (the virtuous ones who control him through sex and the “slutty” ones who may either reject his overtures or laugh at this incompetence as a lover). I guess I KNEW there were people out there like this–it’s just sort of depressing to have the evidence rubbed in your face . . .

The “hah hah I was being sarcastic” remark strikes me as marking Kass as a troll.

You know, the kind who post incendiary remarks to stir up hornets’ nests in newsgroups and on message boards all over the internet?

“Straussian” is academic-ese for trolls, it seems.

Amen Janet, (#155) I would just like to note that I’m glad to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my husband’s motivation for marrying me didn’t include the idea that marriage was the only way he could get into my pants.

I could make numerous comments about Mr. Kass and his article, but I really think that Janet’s statement says best my reaction. and this: Kass you don’t know jack shit about love.

Basically, if the profs in Social Thought could just get the world back to the the way the Greeks ran things—when men didn’t really need women for sexual pleasure, just procreation—they would be much happier.

All the Social Thought profs, huh? Like, say, John Coetzee?

When I was young a male fooling around was “sowing his wild oats” and a woman fooling around was a “slut”.
This is what the conservatives embrace?
Whatever happened to equality?
My wife is my equal. I do not talk up to her or down to her. She is my equal!
She is better at some things than I am. I am better than her in some things.
We know our limitations and we accept them.
The conservatives don’t know their limitations, (like Limbaugh the uber sexual male).
Get out of our lives and govern the country!

To respond to Jimbo’s comment, marriages lasted longer because there was greater social stigma on divorce, not because those marriages were happier. Granted, this is anectdotal, but I’m 49, and can remember when the word “divorce” was whispered around children, and recall with great clarity a friend’s grandparents, who hadn’t spoken to each other in decades. They were miserable, but they stayed married, by God because that’s what people do. People stayed in abusive marriages “for the sake of the children.”

I also had at least three friends my age who discovered at some point that their parents’ wedding date was only 6 or 7 months before their birthday. ;-)

Dave, I just read 116 … given that you don’t believe in communication, or even in the plateau phase of relationships, I imagine you have a string of ex-boyfriends.

What pdf23ds said at the comment currently identified as #168.

“I guess you could say that marriage is an unhappy state for human beings that we have been liberated from. But then why do people continue to get married? You could say social pressure, but isn’t exactly the lack of social pressure for marriage that Kass laments and those of you criticizing him say is a positive development?”

Well, does a relationship you only stay in due to social pressure sound like a very happy one to you? If marriage is currently an unhappy arrangement, making people feel really guilty for not being happy and making them feel worse if they leave is hardly going to make it any better.

How long did those old marriages last, given a different lifespan?

“Fuck you all. Its obviously much more fun and “liberating” to make fun of this guy than to address any of the points that he is making, or to wonder why these topics might be important.”

One… what points? The essay was built on an utterly fantastic notion of how relationships work both today and historically.

Two… not wrapping your argument in incredibly sexist bullshit (blaming everything on women, the open endorsement of the promiscuity double standard, and on and on) ought to be a prerequisite for being heard in our society. That shit is not harmless and not acceptable. Go ahead, accuse me of being close-minded… I’m not sorry that I think open sexism should be as much a disqualifier from the public discourse as open anti-semitism. The appropriate tone for an argument with someone like this isn’t respectful dialogue, which merely legitimizes what they’re saying, it’s “crawl back under your rock.”

“Men and women today are fundamentally unable to form lasting relationships. I don’t think anyone would seriously debate this, given existing statistics.”

Give the statistics, then. “There exist statistics!” is not a particularly persuasive argument. I know plenty of men and women in lasting relationships. Until I see some reason to believe otherwise, I’m not going to take them as bizarre exceptions.

I think the guy has a point. I am an attractive, intelligent (if I do say so myself) unmarried woman in her late 30’s and I AM a little sad and lonely to be honest. I have been bounced around from long term relationship to relationship – always with a guy who wasn’t “sure” if he wanted to commit. And I know lots of girlfriends like me. Look at all the Hollywood stars for example who don’t have children cause the men keep dumping them. Granted we women have high expectations and want to be treated well. But if this continues, and men remain unevolved nincompoops, the western world will die out, slowly. And, wait, I think it is already. Women have had our evolution and I am glad for it. But unfortunately, we have evolved without the corresponding evolution of the men. Something has to change between the sexes- or we will just fade away, a footnote in history.

Ben Wolfson: I absolutely overstated my case by smearing the entire Social Thought faculty, and I stand corrected. I would still argue that a lot of ridiculous ideas about sexuality/culture still emanate from the Bloom/Straussian wing of that department, regardless of who else they hire.

Kass’s argument–not uncommon in American conservative circles–can best be understood as an attempt by gamma males to change the sexual rules of a game that they are losing to alpha males. Under rules that allow sexual experimentation, a woman can sleep with multiple partners and weed out the impotent, the premature ejaculators, and the sexual unimaginative. Many American conservatives find themselves disadvantaged under such rules. They seek a return to rules of courtship and abstinence that protect them from competition against the more sexually successful alpha male.

This article ain’t about love, baby.

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.”

Don’t forget, Kass has an innate loathing of eating ice cream in public – something even Miss Manners considers acceptable

This is the standard Straussian U of Chicago line about women. ie that modern society has ruined the relationship between men and women, reduced it to casual and base sexuality (just like the end of the Roman Empire– remember by the way that that is a piece of ‘history’ provided by Edward Gibbons, to spin his line that immorality destroyed the Empire).

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:

– Ravelstein by Saul Bellow – a thinly disguised account of the last days of Alan Bloom

– Leo Strauss and the Politics of the American Empire by Anne Norton – an insight into the Straussians and their interpersonal relations as well as their impact on US foreign policy

It does not matter if it is the man or the woman. But if someone has the sense to say no, then two individuals pay attention to pursuing the relationship of two souls instead of using the relationship of two bodies as a substitute.

“Well, does a relationship you only stay in due to social pressure sound like a very happy one to you? If marriage is currently an unhappy arrangement, making people feel really guilty for not being happy and making them feel worse if they leave is hardly going to make it any better.”

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.

Shorter Leon Kass: Young women these days, what with their dating and sex and threesomes and all of that! Why when I was young blah blah blah …

As much as I would like to see as marginal this man’s delicate sensibilities and antediluvian yearnings for a better patriarchy, a quick Google search confirmed that his conservative views did not go unnoticed by the Powers That Be, and he has been scooped up for the War Upon Us All. On the plus side, I learned he and his wife of forty years are avid bird watchers.

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