Dating Explained

part of Heather Has Two Mommies and loosely related to Using the Internet to Pick up Babes and/or Hunks
Out for the evening in San Diege, California.

Zen

"If a man speaks in the forest and there is no woman there to hear him, is he still wrong?"

Women Explain

"Men are like a fine wine. They all start out like grapes, and it's our job to stomp on them and keep them in the dark where they will mature into something you'd want to have dinner with"

Feminists Explain

In the words of Adrienne Rich, a poet who won the National Book Award, the white male dominant culture depends upon "compulsory heterosexuality" to retain "physical, ecnomical, and emotional access" to women. The "interest" which "boys and girls are supposed to show" in dating during their teenage years is only a consequence of "phallocentric social conditioning."

[Source: Kramarae, Cheris and Treichler, Paula, A Feminist Dictionary, Boston: Pandora Press 1985.]

A women's convention banned the handing out of pamphlets on grounds that "you put the woman you're handing something to in a position where she has to say no, and everyone knows how difficult in this culture it is to say no."

In Revolution from Within, Gloria Steinem asserts that teenaged girls who dot their i's with little hearts and smiley faces are acting in obedience to "a smiling, always cheerful mask" the patriarchy forces them to wear.

Male vs. Female

Sign above the bumper cars building at Glen Echo (Maryland) amusement park, now run by the National Park Service A group of female artists accused New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art of sexism because 95 percent of the paintings in the museum were by males, whereas 85 percent of the nude statues are female.

Miguel Gonzales of Honolulu was sentenced to an anger-management class after he assaulted his girlfriend. He showed up drunk for one class, and his instructor allegedly became enraged and beat him, leaving him brain dead. The instructor, Charles Mahuka, was on parole for attempted murder.

Animals

"A woman needs four animals in her life. A mink in the closet. A jaguar in the garage. A tiger in bed. And an ass to pay for it all." -- Anne Slater in The Rich are Different .

Happy Couples

When Maria Ramos and Darryl Johnson decided to have sex on a New York subway track, their passions were interrupted by an oncoming train. Johnson suffered a dislocated pelvis, neck injuries and lost part of his left foot; Ramos was unhurt. The couple sued the transit authority for $10 million, alleging "carelessness, recklessness and negligence" because the transit authority sent a train along a rarely used track without warning commuters of the change.

Sell Your Bad Memories Here.  Everett, Massachusetts Sell Your Bad Memories Here.  Everett, Massachusetts

The last word in Narcissism

A letter to the advice column of the *Syracuse Herald American*, March 5, 1995:

Dear Pat: My therapist has encouraged me to write you and share a ritual I conceived of to celebrate my decision to lead a single life. Next month I will be 30. Instead of being depressed about hitting "the big 3-0," and being unmarried, which is something I have decided against, I'm having a different kind of wedding party. In front of close friends, I plan to marry myself. I will ask for their blessings, anticipating some will read poetry, others may play a song on the guitar, or read something they have written especially for me. Then I will place a beautiful jade band on my "ring finger," symbolizing my marriage to myself.

Instruction and Advice for the Young Bride

On the Conduct and Procedure of the Intimate and Personal Relationships of the Marriage State for the Greater Spiritual Sanctity of this Blessed Sacrament and the Glory of God

by Ruth Smythers beloved wife of The Reverend L.D. Smythers, Pastor of the Arcadian Methodist Church of the Eastern Regional Conference

Published in the year of our Lord 1894 Spiritual Guidance Press, New York City


To the sensitive young woman who has had the benefits of proper upbringing, the wedding day is, ironically, both the happiest and most terrifying day of her life. On the positive side, there is the wedding itself, in which the bride is the central attraction in a beautiful and inspiring ceremony, symbolizing her triumph in securing a male to provide for all her needs for the rest of her life.

On the negative side, there is the wedding night, during which the bride must pay the piper, so to speak, by facing for the first time the terrible experience of sex. At this point, dear reader, let me concede one shocking truth. Some young women actually anticipate the wedding night ordeal with curiosity and pleasure! Beware such an attitude! A selfish and sensual husband can easily take advantage of such a bride. One cardinal rule of marriage should never be forgotten: GIVE LITTLE, GIVE SELDOM, AND ABOVE ALL, GIVE GRUDGINGLY. Otherwise what could have been a proper marriage could become an orgy of sexual lust.

On the other hand, the bride's terror need not be extreme. While sex is at best revolting and at worse rather painful, it has to be endured, and has been by women since the beginning of time, but it is compensated for by the monogamous home and by the children produced through it.

It is useless, in most cases, for the bride to prevail upon the groom to forego the sexual initiation. While the ideal husband would be one who would approach his bride only at her request and only for the purpose of begetting offspring, such nobility and unselfishness cannot be expected from the average man. Most men, if not denied, would demand sex almost every day. The wise bride will permit a maximum of two brief sexual experiences weekly during the first months of marriage. As time goes by she should make every effort to reduce this frequency. Feigned illness, sleepiness, and headaches are among the wife's best friends in this matter. Arguments, nagging, scolding, and bickering also prove very effective, if used in the late evening about an hour before the husband would normally commence his seduction. Clever wives are ever on the alert for new and better methods of denying and discouraging the amorous overtures of the husband. A good wife should expect to have reduced sexual contacts to once a week by the end of the first year of marriage and to once a month by the end of the fifth year of marriage.

By their tenth anniversary many wives have managed to complete their child bearing and have achieved the ultimate goal of terminating all sexual contacts with the husband. By this time she can depend upon his love for the children and social pressures to hold the husband in the home.

Just as she should be ever alert to keep the quantity of sex as low as possible, the wise bride will pay equal attention to limiting the kind and degree of sexual contacts. Most men are by nature rather perverted, and if given half a chance, would engage in quite a variety of the most revolting practices. These practices include among others performing the normal act in abnormal positions; mouthing the female body; and offering their own vile bodies to be mouthed in turn. Nudity, talking about sex, reading stories about sex, viewing photographs and drawings depicting or suggesting sex are the obnoxious habits the male is likely to acquire if permitted. A wise bride will make it the goal never to allow her husband to see her unclothed body, and never allow him to display his unclothed body to her. Sex, when it cannot be prevented, should be practiced only in total darkness. Many women have found it useful to have thick cotton nightgowns for themselves and pajamas for their husbands. These should be donned in separate rooms. They need not be removed during the sex act. Thus, a minimum of flesh is exposed.

Once the bride has donned her gown and turned off all the lights, she should lie quietly upon the bed and await her groom. When he comes groping into the room she should make no sound to guide him in her direction, lest he take this as a sign of encouragement. She should let him grope in the dark. There is always the hope that he will stumble and incur some slight injury which she can use as an excuse to deny him sexual access. When he finds her, the wife should lie as still as possible. Bodily motion on her part could be interpreted as sexual excitement by the optimistic husband. If he attempts to kiss her on the lips she should turn her head slightly so that the kiss falls harmlessly on her cheek instead. If he attempts to kiss her hand, she should make a fist. If he lifts her gown and attempts to kiss her anyplace else she should quickly pull the gown back in place, spring from the bed, and announce that nature calls her to the toilet. This will generally dampen his desire to kiss in the forbidden territory.

If the husband attempts to seduce her with lascivious talk, the wise wife will suddenly remember some trivial non-sexual question to ask him. Once he answers she should keep the conversation going, no matter how frivolous it may seem at the time. Eventually, the husband will learn that if he insists on having sexual contact, he must get on with it without amorous embellishment. The wise wife will allow him to pull the gown up no farther than the waist, and only permit him to open the front of his pajamas to thus make connection. She will be absolutely silent or babble about her housework while he is huffing and puffing away. Above all, she will lie perfectly still and never under any circumstances grunt or groan while the act is in progress. As soon as the husband has completed the act, the wise wife will start nagging him about various minor tasks she wishes him to perform on the morrow. Many men obtain a major portion of their sexual satisfaction from the peaceful exhaustion immediately after the act is over. Thus the wife must insure that there is no peace in this period for him to enjoy. Otherwise, he might be encouraged to soon try for more.

One heartening factor for which the wife can be grateful is the fact that the husband's home, school, church, and social environment have been working together all through his life to instill in him a deep sense of guilt in regards to his sexual feelings, so that he comes to the marriage couch apologetically and filled with shame, already half cowed and subdued. The wise wife seizes upon this advantage and relentlessly pursues her goal first to limit, later to annihilate completely her husband's desire for sexual expression.


Maybe it is time to return to Heather Has Two Mommies


MIT Center for Political Correctness, room NE43-414 / 545 Technology Square / Cambridge, MA 02139 USA / (617) 253-8574

Reader's Comments

i know what uncomfortable sex is like. It is a hard process for some to overcome. I have stayed with the same man though for 6 years. We have three kids. Our relationship has grown so incredibly close because I communicated with him my needs and he his. I also patiently listened and became aware of his needs. I accepted the fact that he is not perfect nor am I. We work together on bettering ourselves. He is the most loving and patient man I have ever met. I want to encourage you that there is hope in a man becoming a man. you may not want to face the reality of GOD causing it to happen but I have proof of GOD doing the work in a man to make a man. Pick up a Bible and read boldly. Start to encounter people that believe in the Bible. You do not have to aggree with them but I guarantee You will be graciosly given the answer to your needs getting met. I will give you over to Him in prayer now............. I hope you sleep well and know someone does care about you and the beautiful person you are.

-- dawn hoffmeister, September 11, 1997
LOL! This is great!

-- Chance Platt, March 3, 1999
Hehe, ...this is a laugh! And I might add, a lot of fundamental truths among these lines ...and that's scary. Phallocentric social conditioning is prevalent.

-- Carole Gray-Weihman, June 30, 1999
It is better to have a thousand voices who can't seem to get along than to have one voice that can only agree with itself.

Email me or visit my home page! Of if you're interested in making a difference in the world check out one of my pet projects.

Thanks for the thoughts. Oh, and these links open in a new window so you can come back here by closing your browser window.

-- jon d, August 5, 1999

Thank you for thumbing your nose at the alterna-establishment, Political Correctness [or, as you term it, 'Appropriate Inclusivity'], and the whole 'Social Construction' milieu.

Your humour is much appreciated. And I hope it pisses a lot of people off.

For those who are somewhat less amused by these pages, ask yourself the following question concerning a favorite academic theory [Marxism, Social Construction, et. al.]: "Is there really much out there that <insert theory> does *NOT* explain?"

If you have a lot of trouble answering this question, then you are no longer examining a theory. You are believing a religion.

Regards,

Paul

-- Paul Cox, September 28, 1999

The Urban Legends Reference Pages take a look at the "Advice and Instruction for Young Brides" here: http://www.snopes.com/weddings/newlywed/advice.htm

The gist of it: The wording gives it away. Although the use of the word "sex" to indicate the sex act was sort of known in the very late 1800s (it previously had been used only to indicate gender), its use in that form then would have been quite cutting edge. One wonders if a minister's wife would have thrown it about with such abandon. Surely "conjugal relations" would have been the term of choice.

Other language usages give one pause: " . . . and turned off all the lights . . ." Would people in 1894 speak of 'turning off' lights? Usage changes more slowly than the technology around it, and at that time even though electric lights were in use in many households, one would still term the act of shutting them off as "putting out" or "extinguishing," not "turning off." The days of gas lamps weren't that far in the past.

Whether or not you buy these arguments, this last bit is interesting (and fits in with the theme of this "Dating" page):

Don't take it too seriously, but enjoy it all the same...But be careful who you pass it along to: In 1996, a Seattle ombudsman was fired by the city council after forwarding it to a female co-worker. His action was deemed misconduct.

Barbara "some cardinal rules are cuckoo" Mikkelson

(The source of the Seattle firing is mentioned on the page as an article from the Seattle Times, Oct. 22, 1996, by one David Schaefer, "City Council Fires Ombudsman").

-- David Cohen, November 5, 2000


Dating is any social activity undertaken by, typically, two people with the aim of each assessing the other's suitability as their partner in an intimate relationship or as a spouse. The word refers to the act of meeting and engaging in some mutually agreed upon social activity. Traditional dating activities include entertainment or a meal. In many cultural traditions, a date may be arranged by a third party, who may be a family member, acquaintance, or professional matchmaker. Recently internet dating has become popular. Although dating etiquette in Western culture has become more relaxed during the twentieth century, there are considerable differences between social and personal values ---------------------------------------------------------------------- travis perth dating

-- travis richards, March 4, 2009

Close your eyes and think of England

http://www.telegraph.co.uk. 06 May 2009.

A couple were arrested after being caught having sexual intercourse on the Queen's lawn outside Windsor Castle. The pair, in their early thirties, stripped on a private grass bank at the castle, where Her Majesty was in residence.

"They even ignored the Please Keep Off The Grass signs".

The couple, who were described by police as "respectable people with respectable jobs", were said to be "mortified" by their actions.
A police source said they were put in cells overnight to sober up before being cautioned for outraging public decency. Jonas B.



-- Jonas B, May 11, 2009
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-- shirley jones, February 19, 2010
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