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.
7man: It doesn’t really matter that you stand behind them. We assume you do.
What matters is that you are wrong. Wrong in that you misunderstand the religion you profess. You misunderstand sex. You misunderstand the ways in which men and women interact.
You are wrong in that you denigrate women’s existence, agency and moral free will.
You are wrong.
@Linds
I honestly didn’t know that I was forgetting to un-Ponify it, though now I’m going to deliberately leave it ponified to share the comedic glee I get from the pony versions of troll posts with everyone.
Certain parts of you are vessels too, buddy.
Well, now, pecunium, on what basis do you determine 7man to be wrong? If one espouses moral relativism, he can’t be “wrong”, he can only be “different”. He is certainly entitled to have his opinion, and I don’t think anyone is calling for birth control to be made illegal.
I agree with 7man though I am not a Catholic. Birth control is wrong for Christians. However, I do not support making non-abortifacient forms of birth control illegal. So there is no reason to feel upset about his opinion.
Shut up, Sunshine. If you can’t understand why 7man is wrong, you are dumber than you appear.
Ok, if moral relativism = everyone has their own morality, then what’s the belief that morality has evolved through countless years and civilizations each having their own established code of right and wrong, and through socialization and education, pass down the codes which get updated by each generation of people that go by called?
” Birth control is wrong for Christians. ”
Because you speak for all Christians now? My very religious Christian catholic-ish parents never had a problem with the pill, so you’re sure as hell not speaking for them.
“on what basis do you determine 7man to be wrong?”
Because he says lots of stuff that are easy to disprove by counter examples. Things like “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.”
*Glances at sunshinemary’s blog to see if it’s gotten any better in the last two weeks*
Nope, it got worse. Apparently equality is unnatural and would be boring because “everyone would be the same”.
/tangeant
If you read Psalm 127,, you will see what I am talking about Kyrie:
Psalm 127
A song of ascents. Of Solomon.
1 Unless the Lord builds the house,
the builders labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the guards stand watch in vain.
2 In vain you rise early
and stay up late,
toiling for food to eat—
for he grants sleep to[a] those he loves.
3 Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
4 Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
5 Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
They will not be put to shame
when they contend with their opponents in court.
You see, for Christians, children are a blessing and reward. Why would we work to avoid receiving blessings and rewards?
Why?
And don’t just repeat 7man’s arguments; tell us what you think.
Cliff: The blather about souls is based on the idea that human free will is messing up God’s predeterminism; i.e. God has all these souls lined up for pregnancies that “Evil Women” prevented from happening.
Since predeterminism (and predestination; which are different things) are both heresies, our boy, once again, needs to speak to his confessor.
If I thought he were sharing all this with his confessor… well I’d pray for that poor priest.
Is it really moral to bring a child into the world if you know you can’t treat them well?
It seems perfectly in-keeping with the Christian morality with which I was raised to avoid a blessing you wouldn’t do justice to, a blessing that you’d mistreat no matter how hard you tried…
Pecunium’s explanation corresponds well to USian Catholicism, but it is not the majority position in the rest of the world and it wasn’t the position of the Church in Quebec as recently as two generations ago.
More importantly, what the laity believes is of little consequence compared to the institutional beliefs of the Church at its highest echelons, because the Church is a hierarchical organization and not a direct democratic one. Its influence is that of the Pope and cardinals, most of which hold to the most traditionalist anti-abortion, anti-gay and anti-B.C. beliefs.
The Church Pecunium is familiar with is a branch of the Church in which it has never been a dominant institution and where its members have even been persecuted in his country’s history, and certainly were being considered second class citizens by the majority of American Christians in living memory. Where the Catholic church has actually been in power, like in my own country (and yes, I said country, not province… sue me) or in Spain or Italy, it has always been a monstrous organization that anyone on the Left should oppose on principle, if only because the Church has been murdering so many actual leftists.
Oh, ableist bullshit, how adorable you always are. Hormones are bad, kids, alright? There is never any reason to use them or keep from getting pregnant for health reasons. Never. (For more fun reading, Manboobz, I suggest 1Flesh.)
Part of me wants to sit this dumbass down and explain the consequences of PCOS and endometriosis for fertility without treatment. But I doubt his tiny brainparts could reconcile the conflicts of reality with his fantastical belief system.
@sunshinemary
All I’m getting from those verses is a pleasant assertion that having lots of children is cool (plus some utter bizarreness about a big family…giving you an advantage in court cases? Wevs, man). It doesn’t follow from that, however, that avoiding having children is wrong. Being offered a good meal is cool too, but that doesn’t make it wicked to say “No thanks, I’m full.” Even if you’re not actually full but have some other reason for not wanting the food on offer.
You don’t read the news at all do you?
I really wish people would learn what moral relativism is. There are multiple strains, and not all versions of relativism believe that a person must tolerate all variants of moral behavior.
Shouldn’t those souls go to Heaven, then, and the women be lauded for saving them from sin?
Or if the problem is that predetermined events aren’t happening, all I can say is that every time someone sneezes it changes the course of history in some way or another. If God thinks he can micromanage events just by sending the right souls down, he’s wayyy behind on chaos theory.
If one espouses the most simplistic, context-ignorant idea of moral relativism, punching random people in the face can’t be “wrong,” only “different.”
That’s why very few people actually believe in that brand of moral relativism, and I’m pretty sure none of the regulars here do.
“You see, for Christians, children are a blessing and reward. Why would we work to avoid receiving blessings and rewards?”
That’s stupid, even for you. Since I’m talking about my mother, you can easily guess that she did had children (actually she have three, and would have had four if not for sickness). But she married my father at 19 yo, at which age she was still studying and not ready to get pregnant. And after that she waited 2/3 years between each kid so that they could take proper care of us, one at a time.
And all that doesn’t even really matter, she (while being basically the poster girl for the good Christian woman) did take birth control and would happily take it again. Whether or not you judge her for it or not doesn’t matter for shit.
And you’re quoting the old testament, which contains things about the evil of mix fabrics, advice on when to sell you daughter into slavery, forcibly marrying rape victims to their rapist and a bunch of horrible stories about murders and rapes. No Christian today, fundies included, lives by the full content of this old book.
Bless your heart, sunshinemary. Bless your heart.
You do realize that Fox News is actively lying to you, don’t you?
sunshinemary, you’re a brave soul, but engaging with these very tolerant-minded people is a waste of time. Why they can’t at least accept that, in their own lingo, this “works for us”, I don’t know, yet they expect us to actively celebrate whatever it is they do.
Just to be clear, I don’t care if they accept it or not, but since they seem to be all about accepting all sorts of perversions, why only the ones they happen to like, if 7man and I are indeed perverts?
I asked 7man before I posted this and he said, “sure, post it if it pleases you.”
Sunshine: You flounced off before answering my question last time, so here it is again: You talk as though the bible and Christian morals ought to hold sway for everyone. What of those of us who aren’t Christian? Why the hell should we be bound by morality that isn’t necessarily our own? If your answer is that we shouldn’t, you really need to stfu about your morality and life choices being universal.
sunshinemary: Did you read my comment… the long one; about how the Catholic Church doesn’t actually say what he says it does? Or the one about free will and predeterminism? Because I explained why he is wrong, you seem to have chosen to ignore it, and gone on to pretend it’s just that I don’t like it. Not being very honest there.
And it’s not that I am a moral relativist. It’s that your morals (I am including 7man, in that your), and mine are in conflict. You don’t even use “moral relativism” correctly; what you are talking about is actually ethical subjectivism; though your desire to see your morals as absolute values for all people in all places at all times; and the reasonable inference that you would be happy if they were imposed on others is probably a major part of that confusion.
If you think no one is calling for BC to be made illegal… have you looked at the various attempts to limit access to it? I’m not talking about making BC a non-covered object on insurance, I’m talking about laws to make it legal for a pharmacists to impose his religious values onto me, and onto my family.
This, BTW is a hot mess of inchoherent babble: However, I do not support making non-abortifacient forms of birth control illegal. So there is no reason to feel upset about his opinion.
Your personal opinion on hormonal BC (and would you be so kind as to explain what you mean by non-abortifacient… does EC come under that heading?, how about the IUD?, it’s relevant to your actual arguments that we are all talking about the same things), has nothing to do with whether I have any grounds to be upset with 7man for being wrong.
Just to be clear, I’m not upset with him. I don’t know him, and he’s not a big enough presence in issues of policy; so far as I know, to care.
If you want to see the sorts of things I actuall get upset about, that’s one example. If you hit the link you will get more. Fools misrepresenting Catholic doctrine aren’t important enough to get upset with, not unless they are elected officials, bishops, or have the sort of Bully Pulpit of a Bill Donohue.
That section of that song (Psalm) is about breeding an army of children to help you win your battles. That is what the quiverfull movement is all about. Out breeding the enemy in the ongoing religious wars. I don’t know how these folks managed to create old testament Christianity and completely disregard the teachings of the guy they named their religion after, but sunshinemary is an excellent example of it.