Free Northerner is a “Dark Enlightenment” blogger who describes himself as “a Christian and a reactionary monarchist from British North America” who,
after a period of red pill exploration … decided to embrace Christian masculinity. I am working to improve myself for God’s glory. My plan is to find a wife and raise a large family with traditional values.
If any woman ever decides to marry him – and I sincerely hope no one ever does — she should be aware that her Darkly Enlightened husband does not believe there is such a thing as marital rape.
In a recent post, Free Northerner set forth the essentially the same argument as his fellow reactionary Vox Day: that the marriage contract provides “sexual consent … for life,” and that those who argue for the existence of marital rape are thereby undermining the legitimacy of marriage itself. And then he adds some tweaks that make his terrible argument even more terrible than that of Mr. Day. But we’ll get to those in a moment.
First, his basic claim:
Marital non-consent is an impossibility: if there is non-consent, there is no marriage; if there is marriage, there can not be non-consent.
So if a wife doesn’t want sex and her husband forces it on her – whether she is screaming no and fighting her husband, or if she is so cowed she can’t say a word – her “no” simply doesn’t count, because of the one time she said “I do.”
Free Northerner, a man of many short paragraphs, attempts to give a Christian justification for his stance:
The basis of Christian marriage is laid out in Genesis and reiterated in the Gospels. The man and wife become one flesh.
Can a person commit a non-consensual act upon their own flesh?
The very idea is absurd.
Indeed, he argues that anyone who believes that there is such a thing as marital rape isn’t a real Christian:
Any statement that there can be non-consent in marriage is an attack on the fundamental basis of Christian marriage and the Christian family.
And, furthermore, that anyone who says “no” to their spouse is a sinner:
The Bible is very clear that you should not deny your spouse sex. Someone who does is sinning.
But, hey, he’s no monster. If your spouse says no, even if this is Very Wrong because the Bible Told Him So, Free Northerner does acknowledge that it might not be so terribly polite or practical to go ahead and rape have perfectly justifiable marital sex with them.
All that being said, this should not be taken as encouragement to take your spouse if the spouse is saying no. Your spouse may be sinning and consenting, but it would not be the loving thing to do and might be sinful in itself. As well, from a practical standpoint, the law does frown upon it.
Free Northerner then pulls a very Warren Farrell-esque move. You may recall that in discussing his incest research in the 1970s, Farrell, the intellectual grandfather of the Men’s Rights movement, suggested that much of the trauma of incest might come not from the incest itself but from society’s negative attitudes towards it.
Free Northerner makes the same argument, a bit more forcefully, with regard to marital rape, claiming that the real trauma of marital rape comes not from one spouse forcing sex on another but on the notion that this violation is a violation.
That is, the real trauma of marital rape is caused by the idea of marital rape.
Here’s how he puts it:
The trauma of rape does not primarily come from its physical aspects, but rather its psychological aspects. The trauma comes from the violation.
If this is so, it stands to reason if there is no sense of psychological violation, there is no trauma.
The creation of the concept of marital rape, creates the idea that a spouse can be violated in marriage where the idea didn’t exist previously. Undesired sex that would have been an unpleasant duty is made traumatic by removing the psychological aspect of duty from it and imputing a psychological aspect of violation to it.
I think it likely, the psychological trauma of marital rape only becomes a reality because of the belief that there can be such a concept as marital rape. Pushing the concept of marital rape increases the likelihood of trauma from marital rape; the very concept of marital rape creates the trauma of marital rape.
Anyone with any degree of real human empathy can see that this is pernicious bullshit.
And in fact, Free Northerner has it completely backwards: it’s the fact that people don’t take marital rape seriously that makes it worse.
Even though marital rape is now illegal in the United States, numerous surveys reveal that both men and women take it less seriously than stranger rape, and there are still many who, like Free Northerner, don’t believe that it is rape at all. As late as the mid-1990s, fully half of the male college students answering one survey on the topic said that it wasn’t possible for husbands to rape their wives.
Yet numerous studies suggest that marital rape can actually be more traumatizing than stranger rape, both emotionally and physically. Rape by an intimate partner represents a profound betrayal of trust; it may be part of a broader pattern of mental and physical abuse, and it is likely to be repeated. Most wives who are raped are raped more than once, with a third of them raped twenty or more times. And contrary to what many believe, survivors of marital rape are often subject to more extreme physical violence than survivors of stranger rape.
Despite all this, many wives remain trapped in violent marriages without any outside support. Many raped wives are financially dependent on their husband-rapists and find it difficult if not impossible to leave; meanwhile, they’re often pressured to stay by friends and relatives who don’t even consider what happened to them to have been rape. Thus their trauma is made worse by the cultural denial that marital rape is rape.
It’s not the idea of marital rape that causes trauma; it is the fact of it. It is marital rape apologists like Vox Day and Free Northerner who enable it in the first place – and make the trauma worse once it happens.
@LBT
A girl can dream can’t she?
Dream killer!
XD
Who knows. Maybe Kate will indeed prove how special she is, and not come back.
Haven’t caught up on the thread, so you fine folks have probably already ninjad me a good 50 times over. Without further ado:
I really, really loathe this poltroon’s argument for why marital rape is so violating, and his conclusion that the concept floating around is causing the violation.
Even worse, when I read those two specific paragraphs, I noticed something even more hideous. if you just took out “marital” every time it appears, replaced “spouse” with “significant other”, and took out “in marriage”, then it gets more generally sickening.
Friendly note: If the exact same frame of ‘logic’ used for one argument can be easily switched to saying something you (presumably) acknowledge is horrible, the frame might be a very, very bad one to use.
So, no, you moronic cretin: the trauma of marital (and non-marital) rape does not come from the idea that rape should be traumatic; the trauma comes from the violation of the the victim’s boundaries and trust. GRAWR!
Sorry for the teal dear. Time to catch up with what the rest of you spectacular Mamotheers have been up to.
…the fuck is an “unripened” person?
I’m guessing unripened meant inexperienced? I dunno, I don’t speak asshat so it’s just a guess.
Errr, Kate? Not up for answering questions, then? Alrighty.
Nah, Kate would rather be smug and overuse smileys than answer questions.
@hellkell
She could try a combo. Answer the questions smuggly! Or does she not have any good answers :p
Well, it was a straight forward question — why do you believe there would ever be a “need” to rape your wife?
She couldn’t answer that without grossing herself out, perhaps? Special Snowflake syndrome or Stockholm Syndrome? The world may never know.
“The reality is: a woman who consistently does not want to have sex with her husband is a HUGE red flag.”
Wow. I mean, it’s certainly a dealbreaker for some people, and that’s fine, but that statement is acephobic (gross to asexual people) as fuck. I’m not myself, but I have at least one friend who is, and they deal with enough feelings of being broken and useless as relationship material without people spreading messages like this.
First Let me address Mr. Free Northerner (Nice meaningless name by the by) I am a real Christian and Not only will I tell you that martial rape is a real and terrible thing but that the point of this existence is not to raise a large family and set up your own little “kingdom” because that is the way of this “world” which Christian are supposed to reject.
More to the point when did this idea that marriage is just one long unending sexual consent and only for the purpose of sex? Speaking for myself, I find this so strange. If I was to ever get married, it would be to experience life on all level with someone who I have a deep profound connection, I mean yes sex is a part of this but it not even a large part. I just cannot understand the thinking these red pill fools have.
I gotta say, being all “sex! marriage is all about the sex!” doesn’t really line up with any of the versions of Christianity that I was exposed to as a child.
@cassandrakitty
I mean does it even line up with any non-MRA idea of marriage at all?
I never found one.
Even back in the ye olde days that MRAs love to go on about I’m pretty sure that sex wasn’t the only reason people got married.
Kate:
People can live without sex. If you like copulation, than living without it can be highly unpleasant. However, no amount of uncomfortable and undesired celibacy can excuse assaulting someone, EVER.
Yes, if a wife (or a husband) starts declining all offers of intimacy there is probably some problem, somewhere, and the couple may want to consider talking about the problem and trying to find solutions.
THERE ARE REASONS THAT A GOOD SPOUSE MIGHT DECLINE INTIMACY.
For a man*, he might have an ED that he isn’t ready to face yet, or he might be having other problems like nightmares that he doesn’t want to deal with yet, or his partner might have started snoring and he doesn’t want to embarrass them by pointing out that sleeping in the same room as them was starting to drive him up a wall because he just can’t handle that noise anymore, or any of a thousand other things.
For women*, the same kind of deal, only sans ED as a reason, and add in things like vulvodynia, or a yeast infection that makes things un-comfy and she’s still in the first few days of treating it, or her partner any of a thousand other things.
There are also reasons that bad spouses might decline intimacy.
You can’t tell what is what until both parties are willing to talk** about it. That can be hard, because the reasons may feel silly to articulate like:
“I’ve been worrying that I’m not good enough, and if I did X you might not love me as much anymore, even though I KNOW you love me, and my feelings are stupid, but I still feel that way”
or as embarrassing as
“So, I’ve been trying to avoid telling you this, but I’ve been worried about ______ physical condition, and I didn’t want to…”
or as tough as
“I’ve been thinking about this, and I’m not sure I feel like this marriage is working out”
Kate: No one ever needs to rape their partner, intimacy or no. Just, no. Savvy?
Disclaimers:
* I’m being a little cis-centric here, because I’m fairly sure Kate is cis, since Mark. However, the same ideas go for anyone. Feel free to swap gender names and pronouns, as needed. So, yeah, there might be a woman worried about ED, or a man worried about an inexplicable vulvodynia.
The partner could also be either gender. If I offended anyone, feel free to let me know.
**I don’t mean to imply that talking fixes everything. I’ve just been dealing with the hypothetical situation of a marriage that was working well for both partners, who love/loved each other, when BOOM: sudden lack of intimacy.
In cases of abusive marriages, no talky. Get the heck out, if you can. Have all the virtual hugs I can send, while you’re at it.
Oh, and the partner could just not like sex. Forgot that reason.
Not liking sex is okay, too.
I remain confused as to why not letting each couple figure out what they do and don’t expect from each other sexually, and how they’re going to work things out when their expectations aren’t lining up well, isn’t an option.
Sorry for the additional teel-deer. They just feel like coming out of the bushes, today. Pity I don’t have a camera.
Back in the ye olde days, sex was one of the last reasons why people got married. Sex can be theoretically had anywhere with anyone. Marriage is a legal construct, an arrangement, usually between families, in which property is passed from male to male– at least in the western world. So there’s that.
I’m usually not very confused by anything here, but today I just kinda drew a blank. All I can think to say to “Kate” is that “scare quotes” around the word “rape” invariably mean you are “questioning” whether or not “rape” actually even “exists” or “happens”. Which I’d say you knew going in, but then I read some more of your writing, and I realized you are a dumbass as well as a creep. But since “Kate” flounced passive-aggressively away I think I’ll just chalk up reading today’s comments as a side effect of the new allergy med I’m trying.
@Lili Fugit
I even take that idea one step further, That love until very recently had little to do with Marriage.
Hey North Americans, is anyone going to watch the Camelopardalids meteor shower tonight? (Live streaming video at the link, in case you’re interested but can’t see it.)
I fear we have too much cloud cover here to see it well tonight, but one of my favorite memories is the time I went with some friends to a state park in Malibu (ON THE BEACH! No, actually, up in the mountains) to watch a truly stunning meteor shower.
@cloudiah
not watching. I didn’t even hear of it until now :p also too tired/out of it.
Took a trip to Minterville due to poor descision making on my part and found Kate describing how she’s gone “Full Misogynist”.
Not to play arm-chair psychologist, but she may be have been influenced by her marriage to a man who write-vomits sad rants that denigrate women in order to entertain insecure men. Just a hunch.
Her bold acceptance of garden variety sexism is followed by a long, sometimes hilarious list of female bad behavior that show why women are childish excuses of human beings (unlike male alfalfas, presumably).
Turns out women morally fail in all sorts of gender-specific, totally different than male ways:
It’s hard to pick a favorite, but this one’s a doozy.
So is she talking about all women not married to Mark Minter, all female non-TeRPers or just certain “types of women”? I’d ponder this further except I’m going to be busy saying nice things about wealthy women and unslaving the young men in my basement in order to win the respect of the fine upstanding citizens of Minterville.
The fuck is this?
If she thinks register-her is a good idea, what a fucknut. She totally deserves the MRA fleas she gets.
It’s cloudy up in Vancouver, too, cloudiah D: Also I have to be up for training for work tomorrow morning, so not a good night to stay up finding somewhere dark.