There really does seem to be a strain in the Republican party that's trying to roll back the acceptability of premarital sex at all. I just can't help thinking that's going to be a hard sell.
Bobby Smith, who chairs the Laurens County Republican Party, explained that "people feel the platform has not been adhered to. We want candidates to believe in and uphold the party's platform."
Sounds like there's some backstory here.
"You won't be able to mess around no more when you're adhered to this platform!"
I just can't help thinking that's going to be a hard sell.
Or a limp one.
Probably the least surprising aspect of this story is that the setting is South Carolina.
Are we quite sure that this doesn't exemplify a law of the intertubes formulated by a person who shares a name with a famous 19th century American poet and short story writer?
Probably the least most surprising aspect of this story is that the setting is South Carolina anywhere.
I can't believe this is happening at all. They truly have gone nuts, without even the semblance of self-aware self-interest. I'm not sad; it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. But the depths of this surprise me.
7: I dunno, I'm not finding this significantly crazier than, say, nullification or secession, both of which also came out of the rich tradition of South Carolina conservatism.
This is what happens when passionate stupid people get involved in politics. I'm looking at you, Tea Party.
passionate stupid people
They better be married!
I'm not finding this significantly crazier than
...anything else coming out of the Republican Party these days.
passionate stupid people
Surely some revelation is at hand.
Surely the Second Dumbing is at hand.
I, too, have a compassionate and moral approach to teen pregnancy (IYKWIM).
14: so say the self-styled prophets of the Third Great Alseepening currently creating a vast, new Combed-Over District.
Hey, did everyone see that Obama's runnin' scared, and moved the G-8 out of Chicago to dampen the upcoming Days of Rage? Ha! Actually, I hope they move NATO too. Summit-hopping is both the best and worst thing to happen to contemporary anarchist activism.
But nullification and secession are, like, abstract concepts. If you think for a second or two, the craziness reveals itself (although I'm personally all for secession). But "no contraception" and "no porn" and "no pre-marital sex" is right blatantly contradictory to people's lives. I know that you can't ever push authoritarians to feel internal inconsistency, but this is really striking.
8: How are nullification or secession crazy? They were motivated by an evil agenda, but the self-interest of that agenda is not hard to figure out.
18: Yeah, what I find so weird about that is that I don't think there's anyplace in the country, red state or not, where premarital virginity is a norm anymore. That's not someone preserving their way of life, that's someone aspiring to a way of life they're unfamiliar with.
20: I think there are plenty of places where people claim it's a norm.
Since I doubt that there are any people eligible for public office who are virgins who've never looked at porn, I think the purpose of the pledge is to ensure that you're willing to engage in really embarrassing public hypocrisy.
I'm actually interested in the answer to 20 and 21. Is there any place where premarital virginity is in fact a widely practiced norm, outside e.g. intentional communities of Mennonites? I'd say no, but I live in the middle of Sodom and so may not have a representative sense.
How are they going to explain away the fact that they don't have eight to ten children after as many years of marriage?
Seriously? I mean, I've got rural family, and fairly culturally 'red' rural family, where they'd be judgmental about perceived inappropriate levels of sexual behavior. But adults having had sex with other adults before marriage? I thought that cat was well out of the bag everyplace.
There might be places where you'd have a lot of religious people who were opposed to premarital fornication, but I really didn't think that there was anyplace where the level of that class of religiosity was high enough that premarital sex would violate a community-wide (rather than a particular congregation) norm.
God had different plans for them, Megan.
God had pretty consistent plans for people back when there wasn't any contraception.
25: Everything statistical I've ever seen suggests that if there are areas like that, they're geographically small -- there's no place big enough that higher levels of religiosity or political conservatism shows up as a lower lever of premarital sex on a statewide level.
29: When the circumstances change, God changes his plans. He's flexible like that.
I mean, I'm sure actual premarital sex is probably pretty consistent. But I would assert there are significantly large (possibly not in population, but in area) regions where people would at least be expected to lie about it.
If this doesn't get alameida to comment, I'm gonna be really worried.
There was some polling data in the last couple of days in the NYT? or somewhere; anyone else remember seeing it? I was surprised by the percentage of people who still [claim to] think sex before/outside of marriage as wrong. I live in a secular Commie blue bubble, of course.
But I would assert there are significantly large (possibly not in population, but in area) regions where people would at least be expected to lie about it.
Mmmaybe. But I still really don't think so.
34 doesn't surprise me much if you ask the question like that -- abstractly, 'is it wrong'. What I'm thinking is that I don't think there's anyplace significant where a single adult would feel worried about social penalties outside of a particular church community for being known to be in a non-marital sexual relationship. I don't think there's anyplace left where knowing that someone over twenty wasn't a virgin would be a significant social fact about them.
2: Sounds like there's some backstory here.
Yep, and I'm going to guess it was this regarding the local sheriff last summer.
"The fact that there was an affair, I understand that's a private matter, but it became public when he took the lady to North Carolina in a public vehicle to have an abortion," Smith [same chairman - JPS] said.
Whereas, the Laurens County Republican Party adheres to a set of core principles and beliefs, primarily but not exclusively expressed in the South Carolina Republican Party's Platform; and Whereas, the revelations regarding Sheriff Chastain's private and public conduct demonstrate repeated failures to act in accordance with these core principles and beliefs; and Whereas, Sheriff Chastain's conduct, in addition to falling below the standards expected of Republican elected officials, has breached the public's trust and confidence in his ability to effectively perform the duties of his office; and Whereas, a formal admonishment by the Laurens County Republican Party is appropriate and necessary; Therefore, be it resolved, that the Laurens County Republican Party does call for the resignation of Sheriff Ricky Chastain for his recent conduct.
36: If I stop to think about it, I know that you're right. On first seeing the data, though, it still surprised me that so many people still give a damn. There wasn't any demographic data, which would obviously reveal a lot.
35: I have been informed by other sources that I'm wrong.
And there's probably all sorts of places where you could get social penalties for very sedate levels of sexual behavior depending on the other social issues; I don't mean to say that it's not an issue at all anyplace, just that I didn't think the line was at virginity.
OK, but that's still the comparatively easy case (and the one in the post). But I still don't get why the Republican Party is coming out against contraception. How can that work for them? How can it possibly be part of a strategy? Since it isn't, where is the better judgment, if only on the most self-interested level?
38: I'd think there's just a lot of very open hypocrisy on that question. Extrapolating from the rural end of my family, I wouldn't be surprised by lots of them saying 'premarital sex is wrong' on a survey, although none of them bat an eyelash at being aware of it socially including involving family members. If I picked at the contradiction, I'd get an irritated "Oh, it's wrong, but of course it happens."
37: he took the lady to North Carolina in a public vehicle to have an abortion
Oooh! Violating the Mann Act even! Tsk, tsk, tsk.
Yeah, I guess I had figured the only places you had to lie about that, other than to preserve your grandmother's alleged illusions, would be in tiny rural communities where everyone basically went to the same church, or one of two identically conservative churches or whatever.
It was however the case that my older cousins scandalized their small upper-Midwest town by being outed as nudists, who held nudist parties. That's a little bit different than just having sex with your age-appropriate het partner though.
41: I figured this was one of those fairly cynical moves where it's understood that everyone who is not a psycho-Xtian understands that they really don't want to ban contraception, just make it a little more inconvenient, and the psycho-Xtians are gullible enough to believe that they do want to ban it.
If I picked at the contradiction, I'd get an irritated "Oh, it's wrong, but of course it happens."
And furthermore, I'd expect that if someone were to bring this issue to the attention of the Laurens County Republican Party the response would be an irritated "Oh, of course it happens, but it's still wrong."
Oh, you know what, Utah. Virginity pre marriage has to be pretty much the norm in lots of rural Utah.
Which is to say that I'm not really understanding how weird everyone in this thread seems to think this is. It's not at all contradictory for premarital sex to be happening all over the place and for local norms in certain places to still be firmly against it.
I may be using 'norm' idiosyncratically, or just wrong, here. What I mean to say is that I don't think there's any community of any size left in the US where people would be surprised or shocked to find out that an adult member of the community wasn't a virgin. No place where an adult man would worry about getting caught buying condoms because people would start guessing who he might be using them with, no place where a woman would worry about making sure that the neighbors didn't know she had an overnight guest (barring concerns about the specific identity of the guest, or about too many different overnight guest by local standards).
There are probably lots of communities where people pay lip service to the idea that premarital sex is wrong, but I don't think there are any significant communities left where being known to have had premarital sex marks you as deviant.
Also note that these requirements are for people running for public office, who may quite plausibly be held to a higher standard than your average citizen.
Especially if you don't think of it as 'pre-marital', as in, the young people before they marry at twenty-two. If you think of, say, divorced adults in their forties, would the pledge still say they shouldn't be having any sex? Or looking at porn?
Hasn't there been a fundamentalist subculture that has sort of seceded from popular culture over the past couple of decades? Homeschooling, their own radio and TV shows, etc. Lots of kids who would be in their 20s-30s now, and a disproportionate share of R activists. Would any of us have a good intuitive sense for what norms would be among that subculture?
This thread could really use some insight from people who actually come from very conservative, religious backgrounds. I know we have a few.
There should be an Unfogged Commenter Pledge. Are you allowed to have porn open in another browser window while commenting?
48 is what I was thinking of, too, and I still think that small town Utah is a plausible candidate.
Or alternately, social-science research. I mean, I like expressing libertine solidarity as much as the next deviant, but I'm not going to pretend I have any real clue what's what in small-town South Carolina.
Urple did, I know. Of course, he also lives in an alternate universe where the laws of nature are funnier than they are here.
AWB grew up serious Baptist, but in Kansas City rather than far out in the woods someplace, so maybe not the right kind of sheltered community. UPETGI came from an evangelical background as well, I think.
53: I think you mean, are you allowed not to?
"no pre-marital sex" is right blatantly contradictory to people's lives
Why do you people lie so much?
AWB grew up serious Baptist, but in Kansas City rather than far out in the woods someplace, so maybe not the right kind of sheltered community
I don't know about that; I suspect that a sufficiently motivated religious group can create a very sheltered community even in a major metropolitan area. Look at Hasidic Jews.
I imagine Blume fits the criteria pretty well.
Are you allowed to have porn open in another browser window while commenting?
Urple did, I know.
I imagine Blume fits the criteria pretty well.
I know that you can't ever push authoritarians to feel internal inconsistency, but this is really striking.
The whole authoritarian mindset is about getting people to do ludicrous things because they are ludicrous. Only chicken-shit authoritarians demand that people do things that they were already inclined to do.
a sufficiently motivated religious group can create a very sheltered community
Sure, but the question is whether you have an area -- a town, say -- in the contemporary USA where the community as a whole, not some self-segregating religious group that has created an intentional community, has a strong norm of no sex outside of marriage. The only example that seems plausible to me is Utah, which I guess in some sense is a gigantic religious intentional community. I'd guess that in e.g. small town Arkansas there are plenty of people who claim to be fundamentalist Christians but as a practical matter it's the normal thing for people to have sex before and outside of marriage.
My parents were virgins when married, and would undoubtedly approve of re-envigoration of that norm. There's lot of people like them out there -- and they're only faux southern, and have never been rolling-on-the-floor-speaking-in-tongues Xtians. They know none of their 4 kids were, but, as noted above, that doesn't make it right.
Only social misfits my age were able to get to 25 a virgins. But there were surely plenty of those as well.
Porn is a different matter. Even someone my age can have had fairly limited exposure: until I was 30 people didn't have computers, so you had to either buy a magazine out in public, or go to a movie in a theater. Oh, we were late with the VCR, all the better to have the kids read rather than watch The Little Mermaid 50 times a wee -- but you still had to go to a separate section of the video store, and go to the conter with a tape. I'm no prude, but I haven't seen much of it, and I'd be willing to bet that my wife hasn't seen 30 minutes of porn in the last 30 years.
Is there any doubt that within four days someone is going to unearth a sex tape with three of the people proposing this involved in a fivesome?
Alternatively, it's a mixture of incremental radicalisation (I want to be the candidate. How can I be the Rude Pundit's craziest girl in the whorehouse?) and disruption trolling (if I shit myself publicly the adults have to deal with it and stop doing what they were doing).
That is, all you have to do is define community as the small group of people who pull the party strings in a smallish county (that lost nearly 5% of population in the 2010 census). Presto changeo.
I'd guess that in e.g. small town Arkansas there are plenty of people who claim to be fundamentalist Christians but as a practical matter it's the normal thing for people to have sex before and outside of marriage.
We may be back to differing definitions of the word "norm" here, but I wouldn't see that sort of situation as incompatible at all with the people who run the local Republican Party considering it a very very bad thing indeed that there are people (even in their own community!) fornicating with abandon like that, and resolving that while they may not be able to stop it entirely, they're certainly not going to encourage it by allowing anyone who's done such a thing to run for office under the aegis of their party.
Right, no one is disagreeing with that. But the (my) question is whether, anywhere, outside of a narrowly defined intentional religious community, no-sex-outside-of-marriage is in fact an operational norm, such that a person who had sex outside marriage would be shocking or acting in contravention of community norms. Even (maybe especially) in small town Arkansas, I say no.
Right, no one is disagreeing with that.
Are you sure about that? It seemed to me that that was what this whole argument was about. If it wasn't, I'm not getting why everyone's so shocked about the SC thing.
But the (my) question is whether, anywhere, outside of a narrowly defined intentional religious community, no-sex-outside-of-marriage is in fact an operational norm, such that a person who had sex outside marriage would be shocking or acting in contravention of community norms. Even (maybe especially) in small town Arkansas, I say no.
I think "outside of a narrowly defined intentional religious community" is doing most of the work here.
Basically I'm thinking of "norms" in this context as being primarily aspirational rather than descriptive. A behavior can be quite widespread in practice and still well outside community norms. People will do it, but they won't talk about it, especially not to anyone in a position of authority.
But I'm not speaking from personal experience, which is why I'd still like to see some comments from people who can. (I've probably spent more time in small towns in Utah than most people here, but still just as a tourist.)
There's really a ton of polling on this, and I vaguely remember at least two semi-recent sociology-ish books. I seem to recall, in the aftermath of the recent contraception coverage stuff, numbers in the neighborhood of 49% of Republican/R-leaning respondents saying extramarital sex is wrong, with a pretty steep age gradient. Just because I'm too lazy to find links doesn't mean it's ok!
My other anecdata for the LB/Halford position is my relatives in rural Maine. Some of those little towns it's like a regular Peyton Place! I'm sure there are community members who disapprove of all the fornicatin' (I disapprove somewhat myself, given its effects among a people who are too stubborn or stupid to use birth control) but there's certainly no scarlet letters being applied -- it's just regular gossip that anyone might be expected to hear at any given kitchen table.
Back in 2007, 38% of all responders said premarital sex was always/almost always wrong. Looking at the more in-depth report now, for partisan breakdown etc.
Interestingly, blacks were split 48/49 on the question.
I dunno. Seems to me all this discussion of sexual norms overlooks the fact that the Laurens County GOP is not asking that candidates stop looking at porn, nor insisting people remain virgins until marriage.
I was raised in a super-Catholic family, to the point where I didn't report my rape in a usefully timely manner in large part because I expected slut-shaming from my mother, which turned out not to be very true in that instance. I did marry my abusive ex a year after that because my mother, decidedly not a virgin at marriage, said that because I had had premarital sex she was going to cut off all my access to my little brothers and I (still almost catatonically depressed) thought I was choosing the better option.
My Catholic elementary school classmates, at least in a facebook sample, seem to have typically had a child or two in their late teens or earlyish 20s and now as we get into our 30s are getting married and growing their families that way. I am at the top end of the HS class lesbian baby boom, but another who's also in an interracial relationship welcomed a baby this month, another is helping raise her brother's kids after one of our other classmates divorced him, and the last and her partner are far more financially successful than the rest of us and also seem to be going out more and having more fun. None of the gay guys from the boys' high school seem to have kids of any sort.
a vast, new Combed-Over District.
I appreciated that, Sifu!
I've skipped over the middle section of this thread, but 72 seems to get it right. In any number of communities, people may know full well that people are doing it, but they also know that we don't talk about that, because it is not to be endorsed: it's not in the realm of acceptable discourse.
I suppose it's been pointed out that the whole Rush Limbaugh et al. hullaballoo about contraception is really about the unacceptability of premarital sex. At least for women.
fornicating with abandon
I'm not familiar with that move. Is it a rubber band or something larger? And where does it go?
As for the Mormon community, virginity before marriage remains very much the norm. I would guess that most, many 75%, of my cousins were virgins when they married, but if they weren't, NOBODY talks about it. Engagements tend to be short. Not very many "serious" boyfriends or girlfriends before marriage, at least for the cousins who married fellow Mormons (90%). Also, there is barely time for it. In high school, they do a lot of group dates. Then there's one year of college for the boys before their missions. After the mission, boys are on the marriage market in a serious way. Even some of my super-coolest cousins ended up following exactly this pattern.
the whole Rush Limbaugh et al. hullaballoo about contraception is really about
Trying to use sex as a wedge to destroy Obamacare.
Ok, looks like the breakdowns (always or almost always wrong / sometimes or not at all wrong) were, in 2007:
All adults: 38/59
Protestant: 49/48
Catholic: 29/67 -- interesting
Secular: 8/88 -- woo secular!
Among protestants--
White evangelical: 71/28
White mainline: 26/69
Black protestant: 51/46
Catholics--
White, non-Hispanic: 27/69
Hispanic: 33/64
By church attendance--
Weekly or more: 62/36
Monthly or less: 29/68
Seldom or never: 14/82
Republican: 50/46
Democrat: 32/65
Independent: 30/67
Conservative: 55/42
Moderate: 30/66
Liberal: 18/80
Men: 34/63
Women: 42/55 -- huh.
Age--
18-29: 28/67
30-49: 35/62
41-64: 41/57
65+: 54/42
Part of why I found it interesting that blacks had such a higher disapproval was that far fewer blacks (54%) than whites (%82) or hispanics (70%) had ever been married.
82: Only 10 left in stock--order soon.
84: It may have started out as that, but the crazies got hold of it and turned it into disapproval of women who have sex out of wedlock, I'd say. The Republican Party is fighting amongst itself about how the latter doesn't play well, so shut up about that, and remember that it's about the iron fist of government stomping on freedom of religion. Which is, erm, about freedom to disapprove of sex out of wedlock, which means .... uhh ....
Uh-oh.
I just realized that 16 would have been funnier if I had spelled "Asleepening" correctly. Make a note of it, everyone!
Make a note of it, everyone!
Oh, we have.
The All-seepening sounds like some terrible apocalyptic signifier involving maple trees.
Yeah, what Jackmormon said about Mormons. I could imagine a county Republican party in rural Utah proposing something like this pledge. If any of my Mormon relatives weren't virgins when they married (and I'm sure some of them weren't), nobody talked about that fact at all, and everyone's freaked out that my little brother (mid-20s) is living with his girlfriend.
Mormons are apparently trying to deal with the phenomenon of internet porn by having a decade-long moral panic about "pornography addiction."
Just a note that from 37, this pledge undoubtedly arose from the specific case of the wayward sheriff. (Encyclopedia Brown worked with Marisa Tomei to make plaster casts of the tread marks to prove it was the sheriff's car.) Why it would even be a response at all is of course a valid question.
Mormons are expected to be virgins, and in some communities, their religious leaders push them to get married very young because otherwise they might be tempted to have sex. I have been informed in a tone that suggests that they are morally superior to me that they have to get married after knowing someone for three weeks because they don't believe in premarital sex, whereas I presumably slept with everyone in town before getting married at 28. These are the only two options, you see. I'm surprised the SC line hasn't been in the latest legislative session, where they are trying to ban all sex education because sex before marriage is "always devastating." (Getting married at nineteen and being divorced with three kids at twenty-five, though, is not devastating at all.)
That said, surveys say about 50% aren't virgins, and probably a lot are lying.
Where I grew up the norm was to give everyone plausible deniability. Sister and fiance are living together? It's okay, they have a two bedroom place, right? Cousin and fiance bought a condo together? Well, it makes sense financially, and it has two bedrooms, so?
I endorse 80. And Stanley, really? Where do you put it? On the engorged penis-like clitoris of the female hyena.
94 cont'd: it's like thundersnow isn't teaching you any veterinarianology at all...
There are probably lots of communities where people pay lip service to the idea that premarital sex is wrong, but I don't think there are any significant communities left where being known to have had premarital sex marks you as deviant.
But norms also restrict what people are likely to learn about each other. In the case of extramarital sex, in quite a lot of communities, incidence is normally much higher than visibility, precisely because of norms - the non-virtuous get to live in shame and pretend they're virtuous; the virtuous can live happily in ignorance; and every once in a while when a violation comes to light the entire community can, by enthusiastically condemning, reinforce the idea that it's uncommon.
I find it plausible that there could be many places where the same pattern holds true for premarital sex.
96 is pwned by, but in a way an elaboration of, 72.
My boyfriend's Dad wanted us in separate bedrooms at their house, but then his younger brother got married, and they helped me move into my boyfriend's apartment (which did make a lot of financial sense, so they supported it), and his Mom never cared, so now we sleep in the same room at their house. But then his Dad is kind of homophobic--though it gets explained away by stories about bad experiences with YMCA instructors. It's not really the norm in their town/city which is way more conservative than I am.
How are they going to explain away the fact that they don't have eight to ten children after as many years of marriage?
No need for contraception. Just look at the demographic history of nineteenth century France.
The one conservative religious area I'm familiar with, i.e. rural Poland, didn't seem to have much of an expectation of no pre-marital sex. If a woman got pregnant, then depending on whether she had a reputation of sleeping around, and depending on whether the pregnancy occurred within a serious relationship, would either become a social outcast if the father didn't want to marry her, or, if she was perceived as virtuous, the boyfriend would come under very, very heavy pressure to marry her. If he didn't, he would be the social outcast. None of this reality would have stopped a near unanimous agreement that pre-marital sex is wrong. Even now, a significant number of conservative Poles will say it's wrong, in spite of the fact that they'd also be shocked if someone remained a virgin until marriage.
The lengths some people will go to to prevent premarital sex between monogamous couples.
What we need instead is a public discussion of the ways that the nuclear family is destructive -- and a way of convincing the resentful reactionaries that their feelings are rooted in the way that the social norms enforcing the nuclear family have hurt them.
The gay guy I worked with until today gets his health insurance through his husband's employer. It's shitty that he has to pay Federal income tax on the value of that benefit when a heterosexually married couple wouldn't, but I can't help but think (while still 100% behind gay marriage) that it's shittier that health care is tied to one's job and/or nuclear family and not simply the right of every person. Not everyone is going to be respectably coupled.
The italics in 102 should have been a blockquote. That was from the post of Kotsko's that Bave linked to.
In my Southern conservative town, the white upper and middle class university students (women?) the norm is definitely no premarital sex, exception possible for your future husband if you are engaged (but deny if asked). But these people get married or at least engaged by their last year of university. It is weird how many married undergrads are around. My friend from small town Texas felt super guilty for sleeping with her now-husband before they were engaged. She was terrified that somehow the gossip was going to cross several state lines and everyone would know .
I also almost hooked up with a guy who was saving himself for marriage. Well, we ended up in bed and then he told me. He was 28 or 29.
I also almost hooked up with a guy who was saving himself for marriage. Well, we ended up in bed and then he told me.
Yes, we know.
105: Did I tell that story already? Damn it. I do that in real life too, tell the same story over and over. I am an 80 year old man at heart.
Anyway! The point of my comment was to say the first bit. So ignore the second bit.
Did I tell that story already?
Yeah, you did. It's a good story, though, so worth telling twice.
Re Mormons, I think gswift might characterize things a little differently.
108: I'm not so sure that characterization is really inconsistent with what JM and Bave were saying.
Are you trying to usurp nosflow's throne, teo?
You could have at least provided a link to wherever in The Archives Hydro has already told her story.
Fine, fine. Although I find it a bit peculiar that you don't remember that thread.
112: I am not. It would be a futile endeavor.
Oh, that one! It sounded familiar, but I didn't realize it was so recent. Geez. Maybe I need to stop drinking.
I'm not so sure that characterization is really inconsistent with what JM and Bave were saying.
What they said is pretty consistent with my experience as well. I'd definitely guess the number of people actually pulling off staying chaste until marriage as closer to 50 than 75 percent. Out of five of us one sister pulled it off. Possibly my older sister as well but it's impossible to know because she'd never admit to something like that. Yeah, not talked about at all.
Mormons are apparently trying to deal with the phenomenon of internet porn by having a decade-long moral panic about "pornography addiction."
I love that stuff. For fun I read the Out In The Light site out loud to my wife when we're drinking. Like this episode where a neurosurgeon tells us porn stimulates the brain just like drugs do.
The story in 114 is worth re-telling. I missed it the first time around.
Yeah, what I find so weird about that is that I don't think there's anyplace in the country, red state or not, where premarital virginity is a norm anymore.
Evangelical christian communities.
There might be places where you'd have a lot of religious people who were opposed to premarital fornication, but I really didn't think that there was anyplace where the level of that class of religiosity was high enough that premarital sex would violate a community-wide (rather than a particular congregation) norm.
This seems to be making the obviously false and quite frankly bizarre assumption that the Laurens County Republican Party in South Carolina hasn't been entirely taken over by evangelical christians.
I'm sure there are plenty of republicans in the county who don't personally care much about premarital sex, but they would almost certainly understand that to be a common moral norm among the religious, and also one that they wouldn't mind at all if their political leaders were held to.
No place where an adult man would worry about getting caught buying condoms because people would start guessing who he might be using them with,
Not directly on point, but a proprietor of a rural convenience store recently refused to sell me condoms because I wasn't wearing a wedding ring. I told him that I was actually married, I've just lost my ring, but he didn't believe me.
We have had a big hazing incident this past spring, kicking a sorority off campus for 3 years and suspending rush week for everyone. There was slut-shaming down by the river.
It's not quite the same as an expectation of virginity, but tormenting someone over their sluttiness, and having that be as effective torment as this was, certainly comes from the same prudish background.
Do I like to sing "Slut-shamed down by the riiiiiiver, slut-shamed down by the riiiiiiver, to the tune of "Born on the Bayou"? Yes, yes I do.
Is it general practice in America for men to wear wedding rings? That does surprise me. Certainly only a small minority of married men do here, small enough that you can't infer anything from the absence of one.
117 Like this episode where a neurosurgeon tells us porn stimulates the brain just like drugs do.
I think heebie already covered that with the bit about dopamine in the anal cortex.
125: I don't honestly know the overall statistics, although I feel like yes, most married men do. I have a friend who's told me she would be furious--and I think she's dead serious about white-hot furious--if she ever caught her husband not wearing his wedding ring. I clarified if that included playing sports or doing yardwork or diving in the ocean or whatever, and she said those were okay to remove it if he was in her presence but otherwise absolutely not. She sort of seems to think that the presence of a wedding ring is effectively defusing what would otherwise be an irresistable sexual magnet for other women. Or something.
Of course, tying back to the thread, she's also said--and again I think was completely serious--that she'd divorce him if she ever found out that he looked at any pornography.
Is it general practice in America for men to wear wedding rings?
Yes, if they're married.
125 Is it general practice in America for men to wear wedding rings? That does surprise me.
Yes; at least in large swaths of American culture a man who is married and not wearing one would be perceived as trolling for extramarital sex, I think.
Pwned on preview.
120
Not directly on point, but a proprietor of a rural convenience store recently refused to sell me condoms because I wasn't wearing a wedding ring. I told him that I was actually married, I've just lost my ring, but he didn't believe me.
Maybe he believed you about being married but not about the "lost" part.
The whole story is a bit strange. Why is he stocking condoms if he doesn't want to sell them? Are you sure you were dealing with the owner and not some random busy body clerk?
To the thread more broadly, at least where I grew up I had the perception that one was expected to think that premarital sex is wrong, even if one also expected that everyone would have it.
In the "things that made me go 'wtf?'" department, at some point there my parents mentioned to me that my dad had been nominated for some kind of position of responsibility in my parents' church, but the fact that my mom had been divorced when they married would make some people uncomfortable with approving it.
Is it general practice in America for men to wear wedding rings?
Only in rural Utah.
My paternal cousins were all expected to be virgins until marriage and they were not given any instruction by their parents about sex or contraception. This lead to one of them having a kid at 16.
My sister's in-laws expected her and her husband both to be virgins on their wedding night. The expectation was somewhat less demanding for him than for her. My parents had the same expectation for my sister and me, again slightly less demanding for the male. I was mildly chastized by my Dad when it became clear I was sleeping with my wife-to-be prior to the wedding.
I'm really surprised at people upthread expressing doubt that virginity until marriage is at all taken seriously. We have had abstinence-only education being pushed at the national level and Rick Santorum is running second in the GOP primary. There's shitloads of hypocrisy surrounding the subject, but it's still the gold standard of sexual behavior for a huge swath of the US.
I'm really surprised at people upthread expressing doubt that virginity until marriage is at all taken seriously.
Didn't mean to doubt that anyone took it seriously -- I meant to doubt that there was any significant region where people who took it seriously (as applied to single adults) were most of the population. I'm thinking, for example, that there really aren't a lot of places these days where a single adult sex-haver couldn't comfortably teach school without concealing the fact that her boyfriend spent nights at her place.
136 seems wrong to me. I don't think there are many places where she'd lose her job over the issue, but I think there are plenty of places where she'd feel like she needed to conceal the fact from co-workers to avert disapproval.
Really, re: wedding rings? As 125 says, I don't think any of my male friends who are married wear rings. I have one, sort of, but I haven't worn it for years. My wife doesn't wear her wedding ring, either, although she does wear her engagement ring.
And within-family issues are different. My parents are bizarre, admittedly, but they're both godless urban liberal heathens, and still nonetheless very avoidant of any implication that their kids were having sex before marriage.
137: As I said above, I may be way overgeneralizing from rural Pennsylvania -- I've been kind of figuring that country is country, but I suppose that's not always the case.
I'm thinking, for example, that there really aren't a lot of places these days where a single adult sex-haver couldn't comfortably teach school without concealing the fact that her boyfriend spent nights at her place.
This type of thing is so loaded with respect to urban vs. rural living, though. As soon as your community is 50K or larger, this is relatively easy to conceal, and it just becomes a non-issue because people don't know each other's business, though.
Small towns are like high schools, where you can't really escape having your business be public, and I think both of those locales are susceptible to shaming the hell out of people who have sex.
As soon as your community is 50K or larger, this is relatively easy to conceal, and it just becomes a non-issue because people don't know each other's business, though.
Ease of concealing seems like a totally different issue. I thought LB was referring more to whether the schoolteacher would be comfortable in the faculty lounge telling an anecdote that happened to involve her boyfriend staying the night, or if she'd think better of it (or purposefully leave that detail out of the story).
Something that might explain why my sense of this is off: do people think there's a big social distinction between the pressure on never-married adults to be chaste and the pressure on divorced adults to be chaste? When I'm thinking of single adults shamelessly having sex in small-town rural America, the specific people I'm thinking of are, come to think, divorced 20 to 40-somethings, who seem to move through serial-monogamy sexual relationships pretty much the same way liberal urbanites do.
Would you people who think no premarital sex is still a strongly socially enforced value think of it as much more no pre-marital sex, but non-marital sex for someone who'd been married would be a less big deal? Maybe?
142: Yeah, this is what I meant. Not assuming she could get away with it, but being comfortable talking about weekend plans with the boyfriend that implied he was waking up at her place.
LB has got to be right about this one. Why else Republican sex scandals be consequence-free?
Small towns are like high schools, where you can't really escape having your business be public, and I think both of those locales are susceptible to shaming the hell out of people who have sex.
I don't think there'd be anywhere in the UK where that'd be the case (for people of nominally white/Christian origin). Even in small rural communities. Maybe on the Outer Hebrides?
My parents would be seriously disturbed if I didn't have pre-marital sex. The way they would see it is either he's asexual or we didn't teach him the right values. But I come from at least two generations of people who not only had pre-marital sex, but told their kids about it as something perfectly normal.
146: Huh. That was what I was thinking of when I repeatedly invoked 'adult' -- that I completely bought the idea of a strict social norm (enforced with a great deal of hypocrisy, but enforced) for teens and early twenties, but that it would go away for people who were thought of as real grownups. But if the real social line some places is ever-married/never-married, and a single 35-year-old is subject to different social pressure than a divorced 35-year-old, I believe it, but man, people are strange.
Both my parents had a ton of pre-marital sex, but they were the generation who lived through WWII. From various things that people like Emerson have said here I get the impression that millions of Americans scarcely noticed the war, so that might underlie expectations having changed less than in Europe, if that's in fact the case.
I think the split in mores where the US got significantly more prudish than the UK is later -- my theory is that it was some kind of synergy between AIDS and evangelical Christianity in the 80s.
Also the UK secularised a lot earlier. My grandfather is from a small town in the West Riding (of Yorkshire) -- so not some urban sophisticate -- he's also 98 [last week!]. As far as I know, he's never had any religious beliefs whatsoever, and I don't think that's particular uncommon in that generation.
Are you sure you were dealing with the owner and not some random busy body clerk?
No, although he certainly gave off that impression. But I didn't actually ask if he owned the place, nor did he explicitly say so.
The first US member of congress who proclaimed publicly that he had no religious beliefs did so ... let's see, yes, five years ago.
An evangeliceral church here fired a part-time child-care provider, because they found out that she was living with boyfriend.
There's something about this keyboard where I keep hitting keys and the cursor moves, and I rewrite a sentence but forget to type some word. The last sentence should have said "her boyfriend."
156: But the other words were as intended? If so, what's an evangeliceral?
158: I saw that one after I posted the second comment. Luckily, when I'm in the office I have a keyboard. I've been trying to figure out what keys I'm hitting.
Umm, 158 s/b 157. I can't blame that one on the keyboard.
My mom expects my brother and me to go through the whole sleeping-in-separate-rooms charade when we stay at her house with our significant others, even though she knows quite well what happens when we're sleeping elsewhere. I've been wondering whether she'll change the rules for my brother and his girlfriend, now that they're about to have a baby (out of wedlock! scandalous!).
Because if so, it'd be almost as if she's rewarding them for their failure to deploy contraception correctly.
145 -- Because then the goddamn liberals (hippies, commies -- same difference) win. Tribalism always trumps values. Intratribal, though, where there's no victory for the hated other in play, everything is different.
160:
My mom expects my brother and me to go through the whole sleeping-in-separate-rooms charade when we stay at her house with our significant others, even though she knows quite well what happens when we're sleeping elsewhere.
Not judging, but thinking about that kind of foursome would make most people very uncomfortable...
Certainly only a small minority of married men do here
I would say "bare minority" rather than "tiny minority".
But if the real social line some places is ever-married/never-married, and a single 35-year-old is subject to different social pressure than a divorced 35-year-old, I believe it, but man, people are strange.
The pre-marital sex thing is signficantly related to ideals about sexual "purity" in marriage. With divorcees, that element obviously goes away entirely.
165: Jesus never talks about premarital sex, but he's unambiguous in condemnation of divorce. Once you've crossed that line you might as well eat babies (another sin not directly condemned by Jesus).
I don't think there'd be anywhere in the UK where that'd be the case (for people of nominally white/Christian origin). Even in small rural communities. Maybe on the Outer Hebrides?
Yes, there. The shotgun teenage wedding is still a thing; I went to one in the 1990s. (They're still together.)
I think the split in mores where the US got significantly more prudish than the UK is later - my theory is that it was some kind of synergy between AIDS and evangelical Christianity in the 80s.
I'd put it a lot earlier than that - 19th century. The thing about Victorians wanting to conceal the legs of their tables because they found them indecent was a Victorian joke told by the British about the Americans.
With divorcees, that element obviously goes away entirely.
I'll believe that that's the thinking, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, even trying to empathize with someone who believes extramarital sex is a sin. Isn't someone who's had sex, but only within a marriage, still 'pure' in a way that a divorced person in an extramarital relationship isn't?
I'd put it a lot earlier than that - 19th century. The thing about Victorians wanting to conceal the legs of their tables because they found them indecent was a Victorian joke told by the British about the Americans.
Although in The Domestic Manners Of The Americans, Fanny Trollope goes off on a servant she hired who was surprisingly slutty and unashamed about it by her standards.
who's had sex, but only within a marriage, still 'pure' in a way that a divorced person in an extramarital relationship isn't?
That's the distinction from fornication, isn't it?
I'd put it a lot earlier than that - 19th century. The thing about Victorians wanting to conceal the legs of their tables because they found them indecent was a Victorian joke told by the British about the Americans.
By the British aristocracy about the American aristocracy, that is.
Once you've crossed that line you might as well eat babies (another sin not directly condemned by Jesus).
Jesus did, however explicitly urge forgiveness of adultery. He was silent on the question of lesbianism, group sex, BDSM, water sports and dogging, among other things, so Republicans have a certain amount of room for manoeuvre.
When my girlfriend T. first visited my parents' house, she and I slept in the same room without anyone batting an eye. She was surprised that my parents didn't put her in a guest room or something. I was surprised at her surprise, because not only had she already met my parents and knew they were godless cosmopolitan* liberals, not only do her own parents have basically similar attitudes, but I'm pretty sure she knew they knew we often had breakfast together, which has certain implications. And even more importantly than that, we were due to move in together two weeks later. (Funny story about how that worked out, but anyways.) So even though there was no reason to expect that my parents would mind premarital sex, T. still expected to not be allowed to share a bed with me. It was a bit weird.
As a data point, FWIW, this fits with 143 - she and I are both never-married, rather than divorced, even though divorced seems like it would be more plausible in some ways. Interesting.
I suppose I should think a lot about this kind of thing these days, since people have been asking questions about marriage fairly often. It's come up in conversation between us ("the m-word"), my parents have asked about it, and, yesterday, even my boss. T. and I were on a cruise last week, and as part of the general catching-up when I got back, my boss asked me if we'd got engaged. Because that kind of thing apparently happens on cruises a lot.
* Funny to call them cosmopolitan since most of my life they've lived six miles outside a town of 1,800 people, but still.
Right. Marital sex is good -- everything else is either fornication or adultery. I suppose if you think that once someone's divorced, they're so lost to decency they're not worth policing, that would make sense, but I thought evangelical communities were pretty accepting of divorce generally.
Also the UK secularised a lot earlier. My grandfather is from a small town in the West Riding (of Yorkshire) -- so not some urban sophisticate -- he's also 98 [last week!]. As far as I know, he's never had any religious beliefs whatsoever, and I don't think that's particular uncommon in that generation.
Contra this, my father - who definitely was some urban sophisticate - received the vocal and sustained disapproval of his girlfriend's parents when they discovered that he was an atheist. This would be about 1965 or so.
168: No. They may not have sinned, but they're not longer sexually pure.
I think most people who believe extramarital sex is a sin would think that divorcee sex was "wrong" if asked the question in the abstract, but they would basically be unbothered by it in reality. Similar to your 42.
171: in Victorian England, humour was restricted to those of noble birth. The lower orders made do with gin.
that kind of thing apparently happens on cruises a lot
The theory being they can't get away? I will never understand the cruise.
We don't even own a separate room.
Although in The Domestic Manners Of The Americans, Fanny Trollope goes off on a servant she hired who was surprisingly slutty and unashamed about it by her standards.
That's more about American servants though, I think, than Americans in general. I mean, if a mistress can't give her maid grief about every aspect of her private life, what's the world coming to?
we often had breakfast together, which has certain implications
You have to make twice as much coffee and share the last Toaster Strudel ?
167: This probably is right, though -- at the upper-class level, the English stereotype of Americans in the late 19thC, AFAIK, was that young women were a lot socially freer because they were expected to be more reliably chaste. An English girl would be compromised under circumstances where an American girl wouldn't suffer any social penalty. This comes up in Anthony Trollope a fair amount, and of course it's part of what's going on in Daisy Miller.
they knew we often had breakfast together, which has certain implications
I'm glad to hear there's someone else who can't properly enjoy breakfast with their pants on.
176: So purity is about literal virginity rather than sinlessness. I so do not have the hang of this stuff.
Speaking of the UK, who would one go about discovering the membership of the Cabinet in any given historical year? I'm trying to figure out who "H--t--d", "Y-----h", and many more are in a political-comedic poem from 1813.
Strict Catholics of course would have a different view of post-divorce sex. They would expect divorcees to not have sex at all exactly like pre-marriage people. In fact, I'm pretty sure strict Catholics feel sex outside trying to conceive even within a marriage is not okay. Which is why they are against contraception.
Let's put it another way: are there any counties in the USA where more than 50% of women are still virgins when first married? The social science of my butt says no, except maybe in Utah.
I'd say the difference between the US and UK on these issues is mostly due to a greater degree of evangelical Protestantism in the US. Mainline US Protestants and Catholics are roughly in line with the majority UK views, I think. This was also true in the 19th century.
I will never understand the cruise.
I didn't find it difficult to understand.
Yeah, the "plenty of sex after divorce" thing pretty clearly illustrates the gap between the official logic of the rule and the actual motivation and history of the rule.
Officially all sex outside of marriage is fornication. This was easier to propound when you also ban divorce. But, whatever the motivations of the people who set the rule, the rule became popular and lasted because of the urge to preserve the value of your daughters for the marriage exchange and in general to control the sexuality of those sexy young women. Once an anomaly is introduced, the older divorced woman, the rule falls apart and we are left with the irrational, controlling motivation.
Although in The Domestic Manners Of The Americans, Fanny Trollope goes off on a servant she hired who was surprisingly slutty and unashamed about it by her standards.
If your name's "Fanny Trollope", you're always going to be more sensitive to these things than the median.
In fact, I'm pretty sure strict Catholics feel sex outside trying to conceive even within a marriage is not okay.
You don't have to actively be trying, but you have to be open to the chance. Somehow this allows you to use the rhythm method.
I share Halford's butt.
I do think, though, that even non-evangelical Americans run more prudish than their secular equivalents in the UK. My parents are weird about stuff, but I think they're less weird here than they would be in the UK, Cyrus's girlfriend expected his parents to be uptight in the way mine are -- it may be due to evangelical influence on the culture, but it's not just that there are more evangelicals and the evangelicals are uptight.
Minivet, in what sense does the Wikipedia page for Liverpool only have about half his cabinet? It looks OK to me. I suspect Y-----h is Lord Yarmouth, a notorious sportsman and playboy who was a friend of the Prince Regent. Can't do H--t--d.
Is this good enough?
For example, H--t--d and Y----h could be Hertford and Yarmouth.
Of course most of those guys had between three and five hundred different names and titles at different times in their lives, so you may have to do some real sleuthing. For example, the Marquess of Hertford had previously been known as the Earl of Yarmouth, and the aforementioned Earl of Yarmouth had previously been known as the Marquess of Hertford.
195 is certainly right. Note that they were father and son.
"how would one go about discovering the membership of the Cabinet in any given historical year? I'm trying to figure out who "H--t--d", "Y-----h", and many more are in a political-comedic poem from 1813."
Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tory_Government_1812%E2%80%931827
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tory_Government_1809%E2%80%931812
"Y-----h" and "H--t--d" might be Francis Ingram-Seymour-Conway, Marquess of Hertford, who was Chamberlain of the Household, and his son Francis Seymour-Conway, Earl of Yarmouth, who was Vice-Chamberlain of the Household and Lord Warden of the Stannaries. Stop laughing at the back there.
America was likely always more prudish than Britain, but Britain had a reputation for being polite and prudish. I'm pretty young, but I think it's in my lifetime that the dominant image changed from "no sex please, we're British" to "rude drunk slut island."
Pwned by everyone! I will have to seek a post as Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds.
"rude drunk slut island."
See: Hogarth, William. c. 1750.
Although I know what you mean.
The office of Lord Warden of the Stannaries still exists, but unfortunately there is no longer a Master of the Buckhounds. That means H.M. Representative at Ascot is an independently appointed office, currently held by the Duke of Devonshire, Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish. Yes, that is a person who is currently alive.
"rude drunk slut island."
See: Hogarth, William. c. 1750.
Or, indeed, the fuzzy memories of several thousand GIs, c. 1944.
The office of Lord Warden of the Stannaries still exists
Of course it does. We cannot allow a stannary gap.
Peregrine Andrew Morny Cavendish I love this name so much.
Ireland has gone through a whopping change in my lifetime. When my parents got married most people probably were virgins. Nowadays probably more people than not already even have kids when they get married and outside of the traveller community hardly anyone would be a virgin.
My mother wouldn't put her own unmarried children in the same room as a boyfriend / girlfriend even though she knows, really. When I was younger and in a long term relationship we operated a don't ask, don't tell sort of thing.
I wouldn't be surprised to hear of an unconcealed sexual relationship between divorced adults being remarked upon, and vaguely disapproved.
And Halford, rules like the one in the OP don't have anything to do with majorities of a population. Subtract all of 'them' and then see where you are: you know, minorities, Democrats, commies, godless heathens, kids these days.
187: I think Utah sort of works as a reductio. You have a significant portion of the population pushed into early marriages, and they're still not getting above 50%.
I think that it's wrong to think of it as a literal sin, but about reputation. Why are there shotgun weddings in an age where they're not necessary to care for the child? Because if they get married, the fact that they were having sex is retroactively made okay, because she wasn't a slut, but in love with her future husband and suffered a moment of weakness. It doesn't count if you marry the guy.
Why is it not a big deal for divorced people? Two reasons: no one's going to have an expectation of virginity. And divorce went from being unheard of and not talked about to very common very quickly, and I'd be willing to bet that a divorced woman 60 years ago had to be very discreet. The motivations aren't consistent because they're an old model slapped onto a recent social change.
Who can name what "Stannaries" means without looking it up? The clue's in the periodic table.
I did look it up, because I didn't have a vestige of an idea. Didn't connect it to the periodic table, though.
Residual local power in Cornwall, appropriated by the crown.
It basically means Cornwall - it's an old Cornish word for "tin mines" I think. The Cornish Nationalists used to have (probably still do but I don't go to those conventions any more) a "Stannary Parliament".
Oh, the Wikipedia page sounds like it means special courts in various tin-mining locations, not just Cornwall.
Didn't know there were any anywhere else (in Britain,I mean).
Peregrine whatsisface (son of Deborah Mitford) owns in addition to all his English property, lands in Ireland at Lismore Castle and controversially nearly all the fishing rights on the Blackwater river. http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/blackwater.html
If you live round here you don't much like him either.
201, 203 -- was there not an entire genre of English literature devoted to contrasting the sexually repressed Englishman (where sexual repression was a decidedly national characteristic) with the liberated ladies of France/Germany/Italy/wherever?
Not saying that was the reality, at all, but "The British are prudes and sexually repressed" had a lot of play abroad until recently, when it's been replaced with exactly the opposite stereotype (which may be equally false, for all I know).
That stereotype existed, but it was complicated: it was a class thing, I don't think anyone ever thought of the English working class as sexually cold, and wasn't it connected to a stereotype of the English upper class as generally sexually weird rather than simply repressed? Public school homosexuality, getting spanked by prostitutes, accidentally killing oneself through autoerotic asphyxiation? The image I have of a sexually repressed Englishman is of a guy in a bowler hat who never acknowledges sexual feelings because he's unable to achieve orgasm except while being bitten by a Jack Russell terrier in the presence of a choirboy.
which may be equally false, for all I know
Road trip!
When my parents come to town, I make them sleep in different rooms because I don't want them having sex under my roof.
What about in the crawlspace under the house? They could break it in.
218.last: LB gives good specificity.
I picture the English Are Prudes thing as the Monty Python "Every Sperm Is Sacred" surrounding dialogue, where he's explaining to her that they are allowed to have as much sex as they want, because he can wrap up his johnson.
What about in the crawlspace under the house? They could break it in.
It's saving itself for the children. Maybe the four of them could work something out together.
223: not the "You don't have to go leaping straight for the clitoris like a bull at a gate. Give her a kiss, boy" scene from the same movie?
Maybe the stereotype is that they're clutzy at love-making and find it undignified?
Like most things English, the sexual repression was a class thing. The aristocracy and the working class have shagged themselves (and each other) helpless since time immemorial. The middle class, since the heyday of the Clapham Sect, has tried to rise above the temptations of the flesh, to show its moral superiority to both. It's generally been pretty unconvincing, to say nothing of fragile.
227 is correct AFAIK. I did a couple posts about this a while ago.
That post, which is admittedly pretty far from my usual focus, followed from this one, which addresses a somewhat different (but still interesting) topic.
Back to the article about a SC county Republican Party in the original post:
The e-mail inquiry drew an immediate telephone response from Chad Connelly, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party...
"If we are wearing the same uniform," Connelly said, "I want to be sure we are kicking the ball toward the same goal, or are you moving against me."
Connelly said he does not believe the Laurens County Republican Party will move forward with this specific process for determining who is, and who is not, a true Republican. "I don't think you will get to that stage," he said.
However, he added, some kind of vetting process must be in place, now that the Republican Party is in such a dominant position in state politics and government.
"We have Democrats running as Republicans," Connelly said, "because it is the only way they can get elected. And then we wonder, why didn't they vote the way we thought they were going to vote. The pressure is on for them to say what they are."
Connelly said President Clinton in the '90s proved to Americans that "character doesn't matter."
I wasn't aware of too much of a stereotype of the British as slutty, but 218 sounds accurate to me. I liked the novel Fortysomething, in which wanting to have sex with the person of the opposite sex he's married to apparently makes the main character unique among BBC employees.
I understand milkmaids were teh hott in the olden days for reasons of (a) they were obliged to keep themselves & everything in the dairy very clean so as not to contaminate the milk (b) usually free of smallpox scars due to cowpox-acquired immunity.
233: They were also, of course, skilled at milking (IYKWIM).
they were obliged to keep themselves & everything in the dairy very clean so as not to contaminate the milk
Whoops,
they were obliged to keep themselves & everything in the dairy very clean so as not to contaminate the milk
Contemporary descriptions of the milk that was sold in cities lead one to suppose that their efforts were in vain.
(Emir, I shall be in your fair country later this week. I apologise for not suggesting a meetup, but I'll be drowning in family until we come back.)
Thanks, chris, Ned, and ajay.
The link in 195 gave me all the remaining names except S--t (one syllable).
This thread is suddenly reminding me of my sixth grade English teacher once lecturing the class about how sex in marriage is beautiful but extramarital sex is a sin. Supposedly in the context of explaining a novel we were reading? Hard to believe this kind of thing wouldn't have lots of parents complaining if they knew....
I think you know.
Experts in dairy, they were often known to prepare a delicious dessert beverage, whose allure would attract the young people from miles around. There was a relatively recent song about it and everything.
And I'm definitely remembering a lot of rhetoric of the form "young ladies, think how disappointed your husbands would be if on your wedding night they find out you've already given away your great gift to them" from school and/or church when I was young. Some people love them some hymens, I guess. I don't really understand the appeal.
241: Efforts to establish a school to formalize the transmission of this knowledge foundered on the high proposed tuition.
My niece was just accepted by University of Winchester in Wales. Does that mean she is going to start calling everyone c__ts?!?!?!
244 It's a long way from Winchester to Wales, are you sure of that?
246: Google Maps gives about 125 miles from Winchester to Cardiff, which is nothing by US standards. (Obviously it's still true that Winchester is not in fact in Wales.)
Does that mean she is going to start calling everyone c__ts?!?!?!
Why on earth did she stop in the first place?
245: Really? Scott was chummy enough with the administration that it wouldn't have been odd to refer to him imprecisely as a member?
Maybe not, at least as early as that. From your previous comments I got the impression the poem was about the court rather than the administration as such. In which case I dunno.
No, it uses the word "administration," and has Liverpool, Eldon, Sidmouth, etc.
Here it is with my fillings-in - I rather like it despite not knowing the references.
ONE evening last May, as the Administration
Were fishing for gudgeons in Manchester Square,
A plank started out from its regular station,
And the junto sunk down in the punt in despair.
They were dragg'd to the shore by some friends that were boating,
Hertford caught Yarmouth's whiskers and Liverpool's nose;
Vansittart kept Bathurst and Harrowby floating,
While he threw out two buckets, and fish'd up George Rose.
Like a county address, they were laid on the table,
The Faculty scrubb'd them, and open'd their veins;
They were buried in dung from the Regency stables;
They were tickled with feathers, and coddled in grains.
Eldon long remain'd cold, but they dreaded to pain him,
As deciding he often look'd thus; --still they hope--
At last a tobacco-smoke clyster per anum
Reopened his lips, and he murmur'd, No Pope!
Melville's skull long resisted th' electrical shock,
And Sidmouth was hours ere enabled to feel;
S--t was flat as a flounder, Grant stiff as a block,
But Rose started up, and cried out, No repeal!
Thus reviv'd, to their punt they ran highly elated,
And not with sound oak, but with rags, stopp'd the hole;
Their hooks with the Treasury worms they rebaited,
And Camden was ballast, and Castlereagh, Pole.
And a-fishing again they are gone on the Square,
But I'm told that the rags are condemn'd by the nation:
Of sinking again, let them therefore beware;
There is not one chance of their resuscitation.
238: I will be much befamilied, myself, so probably wouldn't be around. (it's my father's anniversary Mass. My mother will be preparing a simple repast of cold meats and salads for after. So only 3 kinds of meat plus some salmon, 5 or 6 salads, cooked potatoes, home made brown bread, white rolls, asst. condiments, with homemade coffee cake/ apple tart /sponge with cream & jam to follow. Seriously, that is the low key version.)
252. Typical stuff of the time, but there are five S***t members in the Commons at that date and none of them looks a good bet. Perhaps a peer?
Would poetic license allow "Stuart" to be one syllable?
I think there are accents that would render it close to 'Stirt' rather than 'Stew-art'.
Oh, maybe it's another reference to Eldon, using his old name John Scott.
But in the previous stanza Eldon was revived, whereas S--t remains flat.
Could it be this guy?
Or Stuart-Wortley, MP for the most ludicrous of all the rotten boroughs?
257. I'd guess that's it. I've just flicked through Hansard for 1813 and if it's a peer he never spoke.
258 Stuart-Wortley doesn't seem to have been in the government and the other guy wasn't even in Parliament. Possible, but unlikely.
I'm saying William Scott and going to bed. Night all.
Ah, Eldon's brother! Slightly more likely than Sir Charles Stuart, the Ambassador to Portugal.
I think it's in my lifetime that the dominant image changed from "no sex please, we're British" to "rude drunk slut island."
I had thought the stereotype was that the English were still sexually repressed, when sober, but as they're now all binge drinkers, the antecedent of the conditional doesn't hold for long.
Now that I've finally clicked through, abstinence before marriage is one of the least shocking of the required pledges:
You must uphold the right to have guns, all kinds of guns.
"All kinds of guns"?
You must endorse the idea of a balanced state and federal budget, whatever it takes, even if your primary responsibility is to be sure the county budget is balanced.
I suppose this is unsurprising if you assume they mean "endorse the idea" literally, as in simply paying lip service to it, not actually supporting policies that would achieve it.
You must have [a] compassionate and moral approach to Teen Pregnancy.
What does this even mean?! These don't sound like Republicans to me! These sound like RINOs! "Compassionate and moral"? I want "stern and unforgiving"! We already tried "compassionate" conservativism and it brought us even bigger government! Republican in Laurens County are RINOs! RINOs!
Also, this is one of the things that infuriates me like nothing else:
Also included in the resolution portion of the Laurens County Republican Party's documents, which were acquired unsolicited by The Clinton Chronicle by someone interested in the local party's actions
IF YOU HAVE THE ENTRE RESOLUTION PORTION OF THE DOCUMENT, WHY THE FUCK DIDN'T YOU POST IT??!! WHY ONLY POST A FEW SELECTIVE EXCERPTS? ASSHOLES.
I kind of like allcaps URPLE.
But in the previous stanza Eldon was revived, whereas S--t remains flat.
For purposes of meter, maybe. Was William Scott at all important?
265 is great. This would be a great start to a novel:
"Horner's got an agenda," Dr. Longrich, 35, said in an interview. "He has this hit list of dinosaurs that he's trying to get rid of." Sitting in his lab at a desk littered with snake skeletons and empty Coke cans, he added, "Sometimes it's fun to kind of pick a fight."
Horner is a real hero hereabouts. I don't know if he's still banging the drum for T Rex as a scavenger, but he was certainly convincing.
I assume a "compassionate and moral" approach to teenage pregnancy is opposing Magdalene Laundries as well as abortion.
Tripped up by the awful German language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Horner
(I hadn't known that he just married a student more than 40 years his junior. I suppose this isn't a problem in Laurens Co SC.)
Plus: he just married a 19 year old volunteer at his lab, at 65, in Vegas; wants to create a hybrid "chickenosaurus"--Horner's really Mineshaft gold, so to speak.
Goddammit. Wouldn't have been pwned, but for this phone!
Passing quickly by the chickenosaurus, I just wanted to record my appreciation of 241 and 243.
264: There's a YouTube of the county party chairman addressing a tea party gathering--you can be viewer #42.
And from something I looked at it appears that the thing was precipitated by the Immoral Sheriff in 37.last seeking re-election as a Republican.
I always liked Torosaurus, personally.
http://www.cosmoetica.com/DSI6.htm
Lot of good stuff about the guy in this interview. The marriage isn't going to affect his public standing, I wouldn't think. Nor will a bunch of whiny Yalies who want to keep 'their' dinosaur.
269, 279: Carp's interview offers The Good Times of the Dinosaurs as a potential title.
The Carnegie Museum has specimens of both Triceratops and Torosaurus; I happened to be there shortly after the original Horner paper came out and took a careful look at them to see if they looked like the same species. Not that I really have any expertise, of course, but they looked pretty different.
That said, I'm generally in favor of this lumping business, even though it's leading to the deprecation of a lot of dinosaur species from my childhood.
Wow, I quoted 258.1 without comprehending it at all.
269 really is a great quote.
It's a shame the study of dinosaurs is reduced to observing fossils and trying to figure them out. They should make it a more experimental science: clone the torosaurus and triceratops and you'll have your answer.
The problem with lumping vs. splitting is that the notion of a species isn't as well-defined as we'd like it to be. (Of course it's much more well-defined than totally goofy notions like "genus.") On the one hand, there are good arguments for splitting animals where there's almost no skeletal differences at all, while on the other hand there's way more hybridization in nature than people used to think.
My inclination is to be anti-lumping, though arguments like "these were males and females of the same species" are pretty cool.
The whole lumping/splitting thing seems like guesswork to me. I don't know how you can hope to do better than: "here's the bones we have. It's possible these similar seeming bones were actually the same species, but who can say?" We might as well be arguing about what color they were.
You can certainly imagine having compelling evidence for "X is actual a juvenile Y." For example, a complete growth sequence. AMNH has a fantastic protoceratops growth sequence on display. The problem is that we're talking about animals where they don't have that kind of information yet.
It's kind of impossible to actual prove whether two bones come from the same "species" because the concept is so poorly defined at all, and particularly poorly defined when discussing animals which were not alive at the same time. Nonetheless more specific arguments, like "they're different genders of the samish species" or "different ages of the samish species" are things that you can reasonably hope will be settled with good evidence over time.
It's a shame the study of dinosaurs is reduced to observing fossils and trying to figure them out.
Yeah, this is one of the things I've been realizing from looking at recent research in paleontology. It's amazing how much of what we "know" is basically guesswork.
We might as well be arguing about what color they were.
You really do need some newer dinosaur books; this is one of the things people do indeed argue about these days.
Yeah, would some future macropodus sapiens paleontologist be able to recognize that fossils of pygmies and the Dutch came from the same species?
Teo's right, there's some fantastic research into feather color in feathered dinosaurs recently.
This is a really interesting recent discussion that touches on the lumper/splitter issue.
OT: They had a cheesy presentation on NPR on the research on whether you want your political leaders to be hedgehogs or foxes, based on the work of some business school professor. And the reporter presented it as a brand-new idea without mentioning Isaiah Berlin at all. Infuriating!
some future macropodus sapiens paleontologist
An intelligent paradise fish
?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macropodus_opercularis