March 25, 2022

"[M]illennials and Gen Z in particular seem wedded (old monogamy alert!) to the idea that the 'normal' way of doing things is almost always oppressive and must be either reclaimed or disavowed."

"Especially in the sexual realm, anything that could be viewed as traditional or average is passé. As the lecturer and essayist Phil Christman wrote in a Substack post, his students 'have a bias, so strong that I wonder if it’s hard-wired, to believe that complexity itself is new. In the past, people were drones who acted on the tenets of Religion, or Society, or The Way Things Were Then, whereas now people think about what they do.'... So for generations coming of age today... unprotected sex becomes the appropriately mysterious (if vaguely nauseating) 'fluid bonding.' If you need an emotional bond to want sex with someone, it sounds more inscrutable, and thus tolerable, if you call yourself 'demisexual.'... And monogamy, the most old-fashioned arrangement of all, must be smuggled into acceptability via the label 'radical.'"

Writes Christine Emba in "How radical is ‘radical monogamy,’ really?" (WaPo). 

She's bouncing off this Vice article by Nick Levine, "What Is 'Radical Monogamy'?" Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner" — and then there's "the more informed and conscious choice" of monogamy that gets the spicy label "radical monogamy." 

Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation."

“Radical monogamy works for me because I've always wanted a gigantic love. I wanted to be one person’s joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine,” they say. "Then I grew up and I was told that was ridiculous, unrealistic and unhealthy, so I gave up on monogamy and practised polyamory. But now I’ve come around to believing that all those other people’s messages were wrong. If approached with intentionality, effort and a willingness to grow, it is possible to have a love that’s big and magical.”

I spent some time trying to figure out who "they" referred to before realizing that Levine was still quoting Vincent and Vincent must use "they" as their pronoun. That was confusing! Apparently, the notation that an individual goes by "they" is now dispensable. That was boring! Vice has moved on to demanding that the reader step up and figure it out. 

But about the substance of that indented quote. It made me laugh because of the way it ended with the dream of "a love that’s big and magical." In the end, for all that straining to be radical, it comes back around to a puffy romantic vision. 

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! 

It's okay, you can still have your "intentionality." The intentional pursuit of magical love!

71 comments:

gilbar said...

Especially in the sexual realm, anything that could be viewed as traditional or average is passé. As the lecturer and essayist Phil Christman wrote in a Substack post, his students 'have a bias

so, SOME students feel that way.. And That Means: ALL Students Feel that way?
My guess is: The LOUD students say that they feel that way; and few students Really do

IF they WERE wedded to the idea that the 'normal' way of doing things is almost always oppressive,
Some one should ask them what these 'normal' ways are?
Serial divorce, like their grandparents? Or single motherhood like their moms?
It's been A LONG Time, since 'normal' was normal

My guess is; these students (like ALL students) want SOMEONE to LOVE
The teens i know sure do. The dream hasn't changed. Reality SUX

TRISTRAM said...

See this is why grammar matters., Also, when do we start letting people change the meannng of stop, yeield, left run only? It's ony words descrbing an understanding right? What's the problem if my understanding of No Turn on Red is different? It doesn't hurt anyone, right?

Misinforminimalism said...

If you want big and magical love, that's unconditional and undying, and that never fails, trying to get that from a person is a recipe for disaster. Demanding that is inhumane. Thinking you can give it is hubris.

Christopher B said...

Among Gen Z but even amongst younger Millennials I see a goal to create a uniquely self-actualized life, you might even say a brand, but it must be done in a way that is entirely compatible with the current limits of social discourse. What's the best way to do that? Explode the apparent number of choices one gets to make.

In the end, even non-conformists are taking their direction from the crowd.

tim maguire said...

30 Rock did an episode where Jenna and her boyfriend, who thrived on having a daring and transgressive relationship, discovered to their shock and dismay that they really liked falling asleep in bed together wearing comfortable clothes and waking up at a decent hour. To get over the shock, they imagined it as this radical ironic role play called “normaling.” Thereafter, they pretended that going out for brunch or buying towels at Bed Bath & Beyond was this dirty secret they had. Meanwhile, everyone around them was just shrugging, “that’s not some weird sex thing, it's just couple stuff.”

So, anyway, it’s not that new. And it’s not “radical monogamy,” it’s “normaling.”

rehajm said...

Just use proper nouns.

iowan2 said...

These "think" pieces, never examine why things formed they way they formed, 100 years ago, or 5 thousand years ago.
Why are things as they are?

Doing that explains that the deep thinkers aren't really deep, or thinkers.

We are animals who's only true purpose is to reproduce. The social structures evolved to provide the best way to make that happen.

David Begley said...

Speaking of pronouns, you can now add your pronouns to your LinkedIn profile. Mine? Beep, bop, boop.

Kevin said...

Its okay, you can still have your "intentionality." The intentional pursuit of magical love!

It’s magical because it’s monogamous.

Most of the free love hippies of the 60’s eventually figured that out.

Eleanor said...

We had a sexual revolution, and men won. The next step is to convince women they got what they wanted so if men decide they don't like the way things are, it's women's fault.

Kevin said...

Most young people today get love from their pets.

You almost never find your pet asking for an open relationship or Netflix and chilling behind your back.

David Begley said...

Just checked my LinkedIn profile and they now won’t one enter really custom and satiric pronouns like I did.

Censorship and progressive conformity at LinkedIn.

Jamie said...

Kids these days... I'll bet Thanksgiving dinners in Jericho's ancestral home are a hoot.

That said, I wish... er... them the best in pursuit of Disney princess love, and hope that... er... they learn what all of us who have felt it eventually learn: that's how it starts, but if it's going to last, it can't stay simply "magical"; it has to evolve into something stronger but less flighty.

On the plus side, Jericho's "intentionality" thing at least suggests that - oh, heck, that Jericho has already tumbled to the fact that "love" is most importantly something you do, not just something you feel.

MartyH said...

Can you have a monogamous relationship with someone whose personal pronoun is “they”?

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Brainy Quotes: “Absolute is a game with only one player where Absolute forgets itself so it would have a reason to fulfill the motion while returning.”
Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun

AMDG said...

“I want a love that is magical”

So what he wants is a constant state of infatuation.

A few thoughts:

1. Love is not magical, it actually requires a lot of work.
2. Sounds like he would be more fulfilled if he practiced serial monogamy.
3. My strong objection the use of they/them is not based on transphobia. It is because I object to practices that make language confusing.

What was once LGB as expanded to LGBTQIA2S++. I can’t even provide an understandable definition over half that. How is that productive?

Lurker21 said...

One ad line from a Fifties or Sixties film: "A New Kind of Love." I forget which movie. Maybe it was more than one. Didn't Boomer activists, rebels, and dropouts believe that their relationships would be different from their parents' marriages?

Or go back even further to the Twenties when advanced young people were trying not to live and love like their Victorian parents. "Intentional" or "conscious" or willed relationships have been around for a long time.

This is not so much a generational thing as a matter of class or coterie or subculture. Or if it is generational, it's not unique to recent generations, but appears again and again in younger generations, maybe ever since they were conscious of being the younger generation.

Beware, though: what begins by being conscious, intentional, and willed eventually becomes a habit that one either accepts or rebels against. Whatever pronouns you choose, you will end up being your parents.

Lloyd W. Robertson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bob Boyd said...

Can a person whose pronouns are they/them have a monogamous relationship?

Gulistan said...

As usual, Larry David is on the case with "they":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30gxmVLaBJI

Enigma said...

Darwin award winners all. Traditions are traditions because they have proven to be sustainable. Teenage rebellion is fully normal and highly functional for adapting to changing times, but we used to have enough functioning adults around that the teens came to adopt functional lifestyles by their 20s.

Millenials and Gen Z: Enjoy the last days of your culture. As with the Roman orgies and 1960s-1970s Playboy generation, todays' fluid gender identity generation will be remembered with a mix of curiosity and disgust by the grandchildren of the squares and normies.

As the very right wing Paul Harvey used to say: "And that's the rest of the story." Ironically, the woke would likely click with his absolutist self assurance.

Mr Wibble said...

I know that every generation thinks it invented sex, but apparently us millennials are the first generation to think that we invented monogamy.

Temujin said...

This is one fucked up generation.

Anyway, this comment- "Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation." - avoids the reality issues that are an ignored part of the equation.

The 'old monogamy' gave us some marriages that did not work out. Fine. It gave us some instances of bad matches staying together. Fine- that happened and still happens a lot. But here's what else that old monogamy gave us:

Stable family structures, particularly in the Black community, which used to have a high education rate, and a low crime rate. Huh? Really? Yes, really.

It also gave us a steady reproduction rate. Parents were having kids. Imagine that. Supplying the species with a next generation of humans. That is how the older generation used to get cared for, and how the younger generation moved into job positions. The kids are what used to make this world go. Today, we don't make enough kids to keep the species going. In our case, the dirty secret is that without illegal mass immigration, we aren't making enough kids to keep our society going. There will come a future time when all of Western Civilization, Russia, Japan and others will simply get old and fade away.

In the meantime, the youngin's will be figuring out who wants to have some fluid bonding, and signing agreements to touch each other. We're so sophisticated, we're sophisticating ourselves right out of existence. These people cannot even declare what a woman is. How are they going to figure out what to do with the woman when they find one, or more troubling- realize they are one?

Mr Wibble said...

The old monogamy gave us some bad marriages, but the new non-monogamy is arguably orders of magnitude worse. The hookup culture has devalued women and turned them into insecure basket cases. It's created a generation of men who are either players or incels.

West TX Intermediate Crude said...

Shorter WaPo:
"History began, like, 20 minutes ago. We'll figure it out as we go along."

Jefferson's Revenge said...

For some odd reason as a 69 year old married man, I know a number of 35 year old women, single, some divorced. Most are reasonably attractive and come from wealthy families. They are all quietly miserable and are becoming desperate to find a guy and, I assume, have children. One almost got to the point of tears in describing it. I had sympathy till I realized that almost all of their first listed criteria was that the guy be "cute". After, of course, came the wealthy, kind, succesful, etc. lists but, candidly, they lost me at cute. It was like talking to a junior high school student. Who taught them that cute is an important criteria in what I presume would be a male partner of about 35 to 40 years old? When I was 35 I was somewhat immature but this is a whole different level of childish-ness.

mccullough said...

Every generation thinks they invented sex.

Everything changes except the avant-garde.

AlbertAnonymous said...

Absolute Garbage!!!

They’re monogamous, but can’t be monogamous like past generations, they have to be “better” because past generations suck (probably racist and misogynistic and homophobic).

This quote is classic projection:

“Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner" — and then there's "the more informed and conscious choice" of monogamy that gets the spicy label "radical monogamy.”

So past generations were reflexive and blind and felt morally superior, but MY brand of monogamy is intentional and spicy.

Who’s the one trying to be morally superior? Fuck off.

Robert Cook said...

"Every generation thinks they invented sex."

Every generation also thinks they invented kinky sex (in all its variations).

Every generation thinks they are the first generation to have actually lived, the first to encounter all the complications of living life.

Michael K said...

The left, especially the hard left, lives in a world of Magic. Magic will solve the energy problem. Magic will make everything peaceful and idyllic. No more wars, unless needed to hide the results of Magic beliefs.

hombre said...

Sexual immorality is a primary tool of The Enemy mentioned regularly in St. Paul's letters. Lefties have been grooming our children for years.

The recently emerging use of the term "groomer" in this context is edifying. Hopefully, someone besides normals will take notice.

ccscientist said...

Monogamy has a lot to do with children and even inheritance, which in the past was life or death for those children (just enough land to inherit to be able to survive). A woman who cheats may have children from that cheating which means the man is raising children that are not his, and maybe even risking his life for children that are not his. A man who cheats may be wasting family resources and time on other women. Emotionally, cheating means that you cannot depend on the spouse because they are dividing their affections. Life may throw a curveball. You might be crippled in a car wreck. Will your polyamory lover(s) take care of you? Will they be there when you get old?

Bruce Hayden said...

“Can you have a monogamous relationship with someone whose personal pronoun is “they”?”

My partner lives with a guy who uses “we” as a personal pronoun a lot. But it has worked out for the best since I used “I” a lot when I would say “I bought xxx”. Somehow though she isn’t as happy when I say “we want to watch xxx on TV”. Women: applying situational logic for 10,000 years (or, with my partner, 23 years now).

Jeff said...

This is the same old same old: Men trying to get women to accept having sex without commitment. Nothing ever changes.

Robert Cook said...

"This is one fucked up generation."

Every generation thinks this of the generation(s) following behind them.

Ampersand said...

The hunger for a transcendent mode of being has been with us for quite a while. What has been around much longer is our inescapable instinct to survive. Eventually, survival prevails.

wildswan said...

Maybe Gen Z isn't taking anything seriously? I say that because masking was completely accepted by them and then completely dropped in a week for political reasons (SOTU). Maybe that was easy for them because masking games have always been their reality. Maybe the effect of growing up with social media is an impenetrable social mask that only their generation can really understand. Then for such a group masking games in which they figure out a seemingly avant garde way to achieve normal human desires would be child's play. Why be so ridiculous and torturous? There's time for every purpose and there have been other societies where everyone wore a tightly fitted mask. Sheridan wrote about one such society in The Rivals. The East Germans had their Stasi society depicted in The Lives of Others. Jane Austen got a lot of good pages out of the one around her.

Temujin said...

"This is one fucked up generation."

Robert Cook: "Every generation thinks this of the generation(s) following behind them."

That doesn't mean my statement it isn't true.

Bruce Hayden said...

"Every generation thinks they invented sex."

“Every generation also thinks they invented kinky sex (in all its variations).

“Every generation thinks they are the first generation to have actually lived, the first to encounter all the complications of living life.”

Not sure if it is every generation, but periodic generations. Can’t help comparing what they are saying and doing to what we said and did a half century ago as older Boomers. Free love, sexual exploration, etc. And to an extent a half century earlier in the Roaring 20s.

Robert Cook said...

"This is one fucked up generation.'

"Robert Cook: 'Every generation thinks this of the generation(s) following behind them.

"That doesn't mean my statement it isn't true."


It means your statement is meaningless. It is a subjective perception/evaluation. Every generation is essentially the same as all preceding generations, each making contributions to humankind and each making terrible mistakes detrimental to humankind. Only the superficial externalities change.

Bruce Hayden said...

“Anyway, this comment- "Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today.... because it is often predicated on heteronormativity and misogyny and very frequently breeds boredom, disloyalty and stagnation." - avoids the reality issues that are an ignored part of the equation.”

It actually does work. Those who engage in monogamy (though maybe serial monogamy) tend to be much happier long term. Everyone has a sell-by date, and after that, it becomes increasingly difficult to acquire a monogamous partner. Scottsdale is full of women who tried to trade up husbands at maybe 40, and found themselves competing, unsuccessfully, with women of the next generation younger. For women, the more men they have been with, the harder it seems to be to get a good one. So, I, along with many others here, are at an age when companionship is maybe more important than sex, and getting old alone gets scarier and scarier.

I was surprised that Millennials still did it, but last Labor Day weekend, my kid got married. Two others from their 5 member friend group in HS had done so in the immediately preceding months, and a fourth had gotten married the year before, and showed up with an infant in their arms. It was just time for them - they are through grad school, and securely started in their careers. But it wasn’t just those kids. After the lockdowns, weddings are back in popular demand. The age just seems to depend on where they are, in their lives, when. My kid’s HS friend group mostly got doctorate degrees, so got married about 30. Their friends who didn’t go to grad school, but finished college, got married in their mid to later 20s, and those with less education married even younger. Try booking a June wedding - my bet is that it is still going to be hard this year.

My bet is that in 20 years, the members of the younger generations that destained normal monogamous heteronormative relationships are going to greatly envy their peers who accepted those norms. The Peers with well raised kids, and expectations of Gand kids. A half century ago, we might have called it the revenge of the squares. These institutions didn’t grow up over the millennia through accident, but, rather, because they work better, for more people, than the alternatives.

Narr said...

I got yer big love right here, Jer.

Perhaps every generation--at least those since modernity set in a few centuries ago--is unique in their challenges, successes, and failures.

It's safe to say, though, that the post-Boomer generations are the first to have been marinated in contempt for the struggles and achievements of earlier generations.

Even my lefty-lib colleagues on campus laughed in agreement when I imitated a student, outraged that anybody honored Lincoln, "Who did absolutely NOTHING for LGBTQ people!"

NorthOfTheOneOhOne said...

Levine quotes an activist, Jericho Vincent, who declares that the "old monogamy of our parents and grandparents [that] doesn’t really work today....

I kind of wonder if ol' Jericho realizes that the "old monogamy" goes back a lot farther than his grandparents and has been the default for the average person throughout history. He likely does, but he's an activist and isn't going to let that stop him from saying something stupid to get attention.

Howard said...

Robert Cook: the kids today, generational oneupmanship has been documented for millennia. However, we should be more mindful and sympathetic to the complainers who are experiencing accelerated aging and redundancy. Specifically they lash out against the firm and fertile youth from the shadow of their increasing wasteline and decreasing libido brought on by overconsumption of the Standard American Diet.

Readering said...

Trying to picture my grandparents practicing polyamory. My head hurts.

Temujin said...

Jesus, Cook. You really do twist your mind far beyond the point of things. I use the evidence of my senses. That's enough for me.

It is one fucked up generation. And I say based on personally seeing and reading about my grandparents generation, my parents, and my own, as well as those after mine. I don't need your approval to see that. And for the record, I was seeing it coming long before they started making up pronouns that change on the fly while they were getting increasingly unsure about what a woman was.

As for this being my subjective view? Of course it is. But being as objective as I can, given the evidence of my senses, I've come to that conclusion. I can come to no other. And I'm fine with it.

gilbar said...

Robert Cook shows he's More Clueless than usual, when he said...
Every generation is essentially the same as all preceding generations


Oral Contraceptives made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
Easy no fault divorce made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
Increased Wealth and Welfare made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
Capital Punishment for Adultery made No difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
NO Punishment for ANY type of sexual activity made No difference, according to Cook

According to Cook: Every generation is essentially the same as all preceding generations

Jesus Motherf*cking Christ! Cook, are you REALLY That dumb?? Or is it an act?

Kai Akker said...

---Trying to picture my grandparents practicing polyamory. My head hurts.

Geneologies and the genetic testing that sometimes goes with that show they had their version of it.

There is nothing new under the sun.

n.n said...

We had a sexual revolution, and men won.

Its has been my observation that most men and women want the same thing: a mutually rewarding (e.g. love, lust, care, children) union for life.

n.n said...

"polyamory... Geneologies and the genetic testing that sometimes goes with that show they had their version of it.

There is nothing new under the sun."

No, there isn't, but we strive, and many, most of us succeed on many, most principles of our faith. That said, show me the fitness function!

Ted said...

When the pronoun "they" is used in reference to a particular person, why is it still treated as plural?

Even though it sounds jarring, it would make more sense to write: “'I wanted to be one person’s joy and delight and I wanted them to be mine,' they says.”

Howard said...

Such hysterical machinations from the Putin Cucks. The sky is falling... The sky is falling.

gilbar said...

Kayaker said...
There is nothing new under the sun.

Oral Contraceptives are only about 60 years old (before that, people who f*cked; got pregnant)
Legal Abortions are only about 50 years old (before that, people who got pregnant; had kids)
Chemical Castration drugs (puberty blockers) are a recent development
Insurance PAYING for sex changes is as new as O'Bama care

There is A LOT new, under the sun

John Christopher said...

Fun story: I matched with Christine Emba on a dating site and she immediately unmatched when I mentioned recognizing her byline.

Mikey NTH said...

The chattering classes are still trying to convince people that monogamy is old fashioned and that they need to change with the times and ditch that. I seem to recall reading these sorts of arguments, open marriage, and such, that were printed from the late 1960's onward.

Bruce Hayden said...

Its has been my observation that most men and women want the same thing: a mutually rewarding (e.g. love, lust, care, children) union for life.

Actually, both sexes have secondary, more basic animal level, sexual strategies, layered over their monogamous evolutionary newer sexual strategy. Primary sexual strategy for (cis) women is a quasi monogamous relationship with a (cis) man, who will dedicate his resources to raising what he believes are his children. But their secondary, more ancient, strategy, is to optimize the quality of the sperm she collects to create her children. The result is that cuckoldry of husbands is an age old problem. For men, the primary strategy is to have kids in a quasi monogamous relationship where the (supposed) fidelity of his wife (supposedly) guarantees that his resources will go to raising his own kids, and not those of another man. His secondary strategy is to spread as many oats around, on the side, so that he can maybe have some bonus kids survive, that he doesn’t have to support, or at least at the level he supports his legitimate children.

The problem that arises though, when a significant number of women quit demanding long term monogamy for sexual access to their wombs, is that the richer, stronger, bigger guys, the alphas, get a larger proportion of the females to breed with, as do many of the betas, leaving the soy boys and loser guys with their meager left overs. This has similar problems, as polygamy does, only potentially much worse. We see this a lot these days in black inner city communities, where most kids are born out of wedlock, and single mothers struggle to successfully raise their kids as single parents. Guys brag about how many baby mamas they have had, without taking responsibility for raising their kids. Fatherless boys often end up as running in wild juvenile packs, terrorizing their community, until they end up dead, or in prison. And girls raised fatherless often follow their mothers into single parenting. At least with polygamy, there is a father there. But even there, with the number of available partners reduced because the alphas are taking more of their fare share, the excess males have to do something, and that very often involves. Arguably, this is one of the big causes of Islamic Jihad that has been a bane on our civilization for much of a millennium and a half.

Robert Cook said...

"Jesus, Cook. You really do twist your mind far beyond the point of things. I use the evidence of my senses. That's enough for me."

It may be enough for you, but it does not make for a compelling statement of objective reality.

Robert Cook said...

"Oral Contraceptives made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
"Easy no fault divorce made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
"Increased Wealth and Welfare made NO difference, according to Cook: He's THAT "clueless
"Capital Punishment for Adultery made No difference, according to Cook: He's THAT clueless
"NO Punishment for ANY type of sexual activity made No difference, according to Cook

"According to Cook: Every generation is essentially the same as all preceding generations."



Yes.

You're looking at superficialities. Human beings qua human beings remain essentially the same over the eons in their thoughts, emotions, perceptions, drives, and behavior. This is why great literature of the past, even of thousands of years ago, shows us people we know them today. Even graffiti of the past shows us people as we know them today.

Robert Cook said...

"---Trying to picture my grandparents practicing polyamory. My head hurts."

Hmmmph!

When I was an adolescent, I became interested in some of the "literature" my father had in the house. By this I mean mostly PLAYBOY and PENTHOUSE magazines, but he also had a couple of books on his bookshelf that caught my attention. One was "THE PEARL: A Journal of Facetive and Voluptuous Reading." It was a collection of 19th Century British Erotica that had been published in a periodical of the time. I read much of the book over a period of time, when my dad was out of the house. The sexual acts depicted comprised pretty much all and any one would find in porn of today.

Howard said...

I think the problem with you people is you don't spend a lot of time with the younger generations. Either that or you hang out with a small sample of morons and dunces.


I spend most of my considerable free time with my grandkids and at their sporting events and with my young workout friends, my impression is that the people coming up are a better version of my generation who have learnt from our mistakes.

You are just projecting your own feelings of doubt and dred as you approach your private final solution shuffling off to Buffalo.

I'm optimistic as fuck about the future. It must blow to dream of dystopia.

RMc said...

Robert Cook shows he's More Clueless than usual, when he said...
Every generation is essentially the same as all preceding generations


I'm guessing whatever generation produced Cook is the worst, by definition.

Joe Smith said...

All the punks are radicals with mommy and daddy's money, or with the government bankrolling them.

Joe Smith said...

'Every generation also thinks they invented kinky sex (in all its variations).'

Well, Biden appointed a guy who likes to fuck dogs to be the new deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy.

Robert Cook said...

"Well, Biden appointed a guy who likes to fuck dogs to be the new deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy."

I don't know the point or relevance of your comment, but humans having sex with (non-human) animals is not new by any means.

Josephbleau said...

"Levine tells us there's "reflexive monogamy" — "blindly accepting that it is somehow morally superior to have just one sexual partner"

These people are uneducated. The reflexive property is that for any x, x=x so reflexive monogamy is fing yourself. The symmetric property is if x=y then y=x so you are fing only one other person, you are x and the partner is y. So say symmetric monogamy if that is what you want to talk about. And if you don't understand the words, use more evasive and less precise language.

Josephbleau said...

"I don't know the point or relevance of your comment, but humans having sex with (non-human) animals is not new by any means."

Robert, Are you being nominated to a court by Beiden? I just wondered.

Rollo said...

The "new monogamy" has demands and expectations that ensure that it will face the same problems that many people had with the "old monogamy" fifty years ago. For most people, it's not going to be magic forever. What then?

Gender indeterminacy brings new problems. If you're uncertain about your own gender it makes it harder for people to relate to you. Say what you will about older gender roles, they did at least make for less confusion in human relations. The more unique or anomalous or indefinable you are the more likely it is that you will end up alone.

Joe Smith said...

'I don't know the point or relevance of your comment, but humans having sex with (non-human) animals is not new by any means.'

Your reading comprehension is as low as your IQ...

cubanbob said...

Men, yes men as understood by the average non elite person, like sex when they are young especially if there is no commitment. However eventually when they fall in love do not tolerate or brush off as nothing when their emotions get crushed by their lover having other lovers. I believe that men's egos are more fragile than women's when it comes to affairs. Especially when it comes to kids. Nothing new in my comment. Notwithstanding birth control, abortion, welfare and the relative lack of stigma Cook's fundamental point is true. All the nonsense passes once men and woman reach a point in their lives when life gets serious. Even Howard is right when he says kids today are on balance better than their parents. If they are not, then it's our fault.

realestateacct said...

Just finished the Edith Wharton novel "Glimpses of the Moon" written in the 1920's in which a couple who live in the moment discover monogamy.

autothreads said...

Robert Cook said...
"Well, Biden appointed a guy who likes to fuck dogs to be the new deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy."

I don't know the point or relevance of your comment, but humans having sex with (non-human) animals is not new by any means.


True, but when has a society ever knowingly honored people who practiced beastiality with positions of power and influence?