When I think about contraception, my thoughts generally run to things like this:
“Is this condom on inside-out? Oh, crap.”
“I guess IUD’s aren’t necessarily a good idea for some women unless they like bleeding from their vagina every day for six months.”
“Has anyone ever actually used a female condom?”
Over on Complementarian Loners, an MRA-adjacent “relationship” blog written by a couple of Catholic converts, the bitter divorced dude who calls himself 7man has some more, well, advanced ideas about contraception. By “advanced” I mean, of course, “odd and terrible.”
He starts off with this proposition:
A man and a woman cannot develop a great relationship if contraception is part of it or if they met while she was using hormonal artificial birth control. REAL committed, trusting, exclusive sexual intercourse is essential.
Oh, it gets weirder from there:
Birth Control is a misnomer since this is her speaking through her body saying, “I control when I will give birth, not God, not a man.” It doesn’t require any respect for fertility since fertility is subverted. This puts the woman in the dominant position and she then determines when and under what conditions she will ACQUIRE his seed rather than being open to RECEIVE. (Is woman not a vessel?)
I’m pretty sure a woman is a person, dude.
Usually the contraception is done by the woman, it messes with her body; she blocks the ability to receive and the whole exercise becomes taking pleasure from the other. Of course, she can always lie about taking it or not taking it. This is in essence lying with the body. A man can lie too if he withholds his gift by vasectomy or by condom.
In his profile on the blog, 7man refers to his ex-wife as “BatShitCrazy” (apparently that’s just one word now), but I think she demonstrated some pretty clearheaded and rational thinking in getting herself away from a guy who can refer to his semen as a “gift” without giggling.
[I]t is women acting as succubi. And so the ultimate end of a failed attempt to block PROCREATION is abortion. After all, God surely did not do his part and create a soul for the life that she did not intend to receive, right? Does her hamster prevent God from fulfilling his part of creation? Not likely! …
I am left with the impression that subverting fertility may be just as much an abomination to God as is divorce.
I hope you mention that right up top in your Match.com profile, dude, because that’s the sort of shit women need to know right off the bat before they send you any misguided “winks.”
Oh, and apparently men and women can’t have good sex unless the man controls everything and the woman cannot leave:
Can men and women have what they so deeply desire (in a relationship) while withholding the central gift of self? Have Christians stopped to consider the word PROCREATION? We participate in the CREATION of God in our act of sexual intercourse. We assist in CREATION of a body, but God provides the soul. CREATION is intended to occur in conjunction with a COVENANT. Can intercourse be unitive if this element is totally removed from the act of marriage, in the one-flesh-union?
A COVENANT is an OATH, a BINDING and a COMMITMENT. This is more than a contract or a whim. The sublime pleasure of sexual intercourse cannot happen when such aspects are blocked. The kind of fulfilling sex that every person longs for and rarely experiences is also precluded when the woman endeavors to control the relationship. In order for her to feel the fullness of the union, she must be claimed in a COVENANT to one man PERMANENTLY.
I can only imagine Mr. 7man explaining all this very earnestly to his date as they munch on breadsticks at the local Olive Garden, after which the unfortunate woman excuses herself to go to the ladies room and, as soon as she is out of his eyesight, slips out the back door of the restaurant and literally runs the entire way home.
7man closes with this little puzzler:
[S]uccumbing to passionate desire is easier without the risk of pregnancy and therefore commitment is not essential prior to the parting of thighs. Does this ever turn out for the good?
Yes. Yes it does.
ladiesadie:I do not “think” I am a writer. I write for a living. I have been in the written/visual communication industry for over 25 years. Longer than many commenters here haved been breathing.
Oh my sweet lord. Sweetie, I stopping being managing editor of a newspaper 25 years ago. I did an entire career in the Army after that. I am far from the oldest person here.
You are, if you don’t mind my saying†, out of your depth, no matter who is paying you for your writing. Don’t mistake hasty typing, or idiosyncratic punctuation; nor even weak English for ignorance or youth. Presumtion, like assumption, will bite you in the ass, every time.
Bless your heart for trying.
† and it’s still true even if you do mind it
Hey guys, I dare you to follow this link.
(It’s just some Christians with a serious spanking fetish. These folks would fit right in.)
Sweet suffering jesus. I read that thread. I am agog. Not so much at the silly projection (women who are frigid just need a proper man to wallop their bottoms, with Godly passion), as at the idea that they actually believe the things they are saying.
That the actual version of events they post (the “lack of reasoned response”) is what they saw. It’s disheartening.
I will pray for them.
“lack of reasoned response” = lack of acquiescence
I’ve never understood why people think that they are superior just because they refuse to get direct help from anyone else around them. It’s like they have this idea that they’re more hardcore and WORTHY (of what, I do not know) because they SUFFERED and DID IT ALL BY THEMSELVES and NEVER ASKED FOR HELP.
I don’t know about you, but one of the things that I have most learned as an adult, and especially as a parent, is how to accept and ask for help in a gracious and respectful way. It is not WEAKNESS to need help, to ask for help, or to receive help when you need it, and I find it ridiculous that so many people who say “I never got help” as though it’s a badge of honor are the same people who add in the Christian Morality thing, even though their main man Jesus was all about helping people and accepting help from others.
I’m not really sure what “benefits” Sadie expects to get if she finds herself submissive to a man. No man is a god, no man is perfect- completely putting yourself at the mercy of someone who is likely to be a predator and an abuser seems like a completely bad idea, especially after being married to Mr. Put A Hit Out On His Wife.
I like the idea of a truly omniscient, all powerful, all loving God. Imagine having such a being out there who is caring for all of humanity! How cool! But the truth of the matter is that a world in which such a God actively engages with us cannot possibly exist or things would not be the way they are now.
So, honestly, I can’t understand why a woman should submit to a man who simply THINKS that he is god. It seems to me that putting your life in the hands of an imperfect human is a recipe for disaster.
Oh, and RE: Spanking? It terrifies the shit out of me. My parents spanked me as a child, and it makes me get full of dread and sickness in the pit of my stomach. Being spanked makes me think of being forced to wait, bent over the bed, while they picked out the implement that I was to be hit with.
The whole idea of spanking makes me want to throw up.
So no, I wouldn’t be getting wet, unless you’re talking about me pissing my pants.
Ugh, no kidding. I consider myself a kinkster, and I find it repulsive, too. Between people like that and the whole Fifty Shades bullshit, it’s getting to where I feel like I can’t say “I get off on submission” without adding “but not, you know, creepy gender-essentialist or abusive or everyone-else-has-to-be-kinky-like-me-because-God-says-so submission, just, you know, me submitting to my partner because we are both into that.” Seriously, people. It is totally possible to be a woman who likes being bossed around and/or spanked by dudes or a dude who likes bossing around and/or spanking ladies without those being divinely ordained roles which everyone else must enjoy as much as you do.
(Also, can’t you pseudo-Gorean types pick on some other kink for a while, just for variety? I’d almost be entertained by an impassioned screed on how since you, personally, really enjoy pretending to be a horse while your partner pees on you and calls you “stupid poopy-hooves,” all men/women everywhere secretly crave golden showers of horsey humiliation. Why must it always be my sort of D/s that you creepify?)
Reading the comments on the original post, because of all strains of misogynistic idiocy, complementarianism is closest to my heart (I’m friends with a ton of them). Highlights:
Chemicals, your ladybrainz can’t handle them! (Sucks to be a depressed woman; I assume their cure is spanking.)
7man is worried about his precious bodily fluids:
He’s also incensed that someone–a WOMAN, no less–might have the temerity to expect actual evidence rather than simply the assurance that there totally is evidence out there:
Ugh, the whole CDD thing is so creepy. On so many different levels, too. For a start, do they have to make a marriage sound so much like raising a child?
“CDD is the husband loving his wife enough to patiently guide and unselfishly cherish her.”
Ick. They could change out the word “wife” for “daughter” with no other changes in that sentence at all. And that dynamic is just repeated over and over again. I wonder how much this shit overlaps with the whole “marry your Daddy and give him a symbolic key to your vagina while you wear a ring he gives you” purity ball crap.
Can someone more familiar with fundamentalists explain this bit to me?
“A Christian couple is to be a reflection of Jesus and His Bride. ”
His what?
@Polliwog
Yeah, the only upside to the various groups mangling kink beyond all recognition (consent? what consent? having a vagina IS consent) is that at least it’s not my kink that they’re appropriating and turning into something horrifying.
The Bride of Christ is the church; the idea comes from Ephesians 5. You can tease complementarians by asking them “So, you think Christ and the church are co-dependent equals?”
But even if you believe in the Bible completely, Christ doesn’t guide the church on an ongoing basis, people are basing their beliefs on things he said and did in the past. So how do you get from “read this thing that Jesus said and make it a basis of how to live a good life” to “ask your husband for permission before you post a blog comment? Much less “spank your wife so she’ll get wet”.
A reading from the Book of (Ephesian) Trolls:
Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing.
Husbands, spank your wives, even as Christ also spanked the church, and called it a dirty, naughty little church;
That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the whapping of paddles,
That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing, but probably some bruises and such from the spanking; but that it should be holy and say, “Tee hee” to Christ its Lord, and never post blog comments without Christ’s approval.
Meh, they just mean “Christ is in charge because he’s God, so men should be in charge too.”
To fundies’ credit, I’ve never known one before who actually thought that women weren’t allowed to do anything without direct permission, which, you’re right, doesn’t make any sense because it’s not like the Bible gives you specific permission for everything, either. It’s more common to hear that women shouldn’t do things that their husband has specifically forbidden them to do, and more common still to hear that it just means that men get the final word if there’s a disagreement that can’t be resolved.
The latter is also the wishy-washy version practiced by people who want to call themselves complementarians but also realize how skeevy it can be; as long as they have normal, healthy relationships where you never actually get into a completely unresolvable argument, they can claim that they agree with the doctrine while still letting it have zero effect on their actual lives.
Yeah, it’s at the point where “seek your husband’s opinion and respect it” becomes “wait for him to approve your blog comment like you were 8 years old” that the whole thing goes from traditional marriage (not my thing but hey, the Bible does sort of advocate that) to hardcore 24/7 D/s. Which is also fine if that’s your thing, but not something that any religion actually advocates as far as I’m aware.
And for the eleventy billionth fucking time – CDD people, please learn the concept of TMI. Random people on the internet respect your right to practise your kink, but that doesn’t mean that they necessarily want to hear details.
Aww, they’ve completely redone that site and taken off all the good stuff! There used to be an enormous catalog of shitty Christian spanking-porn ebooks!
That is a shame. It would have been particularly funny when contrasted with the “porn is bad, we hate porn, now let us tell you our sexual fantasies in explicit detail” stuff.
Hang on, I think I may have found them.
“Because everyone knows the Bible admonishes parents to physically discipline their children, it was imperative to this person that this difference in the Greek words be pointed out, thereby setting a wife apart from her husband’s physical chastening.
This person was right; the Greek words are different.
However, two words do not write the entire story!
For example, in 1 Peter 3:6, Peter uses Sarah as an example of the kind of wives we should be, and he uses the word hupakouo to describe how she obeyed Abraham. Notice that was the same word used when speaking to the children in Ephesians. As mentioned earlier, many Christians agree that physical discipline is acceptable for children.
“But, we’re not talking about children. I’m not a child! I am a grown woman!” True, but I wanted to point out the same word for obedience was used in reference to both wives and children.
Even as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters ye are, as long as ye do well… 1 Peter 3:6
In 1 Peter 3:2, he uses the stronger word for fear, phobos, to describe the kind of respect we’re supposed to have for our husbands in our conversations. This is the same Greek word used in Philippians 2:12, where we are instructed to work out our salvation with “fear and trembling”.
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. 1 Peter 3:2
Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Philippians 2:12″
Ick. Also, my entire family are Christians of one denomination or another, and somehow not one of them agrees that their faith demands that they hit their children.
Porn as religious instruction? Wonder how that sells…
Why is the husband in the “Husbands” section dressed up like he’s going to Ren Faire?
http://www.christiandomesticdiscipline.com/husbands.html
Also, my entire family are Christians of one denomination or another, and somehow not one of them agrees that their faith demands that they hit their children.
The funny thing is that the CDD people don’t all agree about spanking children. So yeah, women actually have less bodily autonomy than children in their view (particularly odd wrt girls).
Porn as religious instruction? Wonder how that sells…
Well, if that’s the only way you’re allowed to read porn…*goes to check Oglaf*
So, reading through this stuff, I have a question…what if the wife doesn’t do anything that deserves “correction”? Does the husband just make stuff up to punish her for? If she wants to be spanked does she do something bad on purpose? Or are they just assuming that women are always in need of “correction” for something?
I…think you’re allowed to just spank for fun? You’re definitely allowed “reminder” spanks to keep her in line.
As if these guys would ever run out of flaws to punish their wives for.
I don’t understand why these people can’t just be honest and own their fetish. I mean really, this shit?
“Now that you know what your wife “REALLY” wants, talk about it, try to understand her, and try to meet her needs. If she has asked you for the physical, but you just can’t bring yourself to do that, well then at LEAST give her some occasional “me man, you woman” stinging swats either in passing, or when she is getting a bit feisty or sassy… you know the kind, the ones that make her go “Mmm hmmm, He’s a man, my man, and he is in control!”. The “I’m HIS girl….” kind of playful, or warning swats. You can’t imagine just how good they make her feel. Oh, she will say “ow!” feign a pout, or even give you the old “What was that for?!”, but deep down she is shivering at your “manliness”, and thinking, “Hmm, I had better watch myself or he may just take me over his knee”, and the thought of that causes her to tremble with excitement, anticipation, fear and feelings beyond words.
I will make one final confession, and I bet if your wife were brave enough she would too… Many, many times before I was brave enough to approach my husband with this subject, even years before, when I would do silly things, like overspend, or pay a bill late, I would secretly hope that at some point he would be stern enough to just turn me over his knee and wear me out. Not because I was a freak and the thought of pain turned me on, NOT AT ALL. It was just because I was longing, aching, to feel his authority in some way. It wasn’t in a manipulative way. I didn’t plan to do those things, but when I realized I had messed up, and before he found out, I would fantasize about him coming home and taking matters in hand. The thought of pain terrified me, but the thought of my man taking that place, that authority, that appealed to me.”
If you weren’t rolling your eyes and going “sure, honey, I totally believe you that it wasn’t because it turned you on” by the end of that then you are a much kinder person than I am.