PoAC: Musings on Dr. Dobson
Mar. 11th, 2006 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
velvetpageA week or so ago, I dug up a book that had been taking up shelf space since we were married - a lovely, hardcover, gift edition of Dr. Dobson's advice book for newlyweds, "Love for a Lifetime." It has languished on a forgotten shelf for nearly seven years, and I've never felt the need to read it.
When I came across it, I briefly considered simply pitching it. I think I know who it came from, but they'd never know we threw it out, so that's not an issue. I have huge issues with many things that Focus on the Family does, and quite a few issues with Dobson's child-rearing and educational advice as well - some of it is just plain bad. So I wasn't expecting too much worthwhile advice from this book. Still, I decided to dip into it, just to remind myself of how the Christian right thinks about the institution of marriage, and to possibly critique it a bit.
Disclaimer: These are completely unresearched thoughts. I haven't looked anything up or read any other viewpoint. It's all me against Dr. Dobson.
First, the two pages he devoted to the sexual revolution are deserving of attention.
They include phrases like "unmitigated disaster," which is not really surprising. They point out that the morals of all of human history were turned on their heads in a very brief span of time, and the result was chaos that had a profoundly detrimental effect on the family. He attributed to the sexual revolution:
1) An increase in marital infidelity
2) An increase in premarital sex
3) An increase in the spread of STDs
4) An increase in homosexuality and other "deviant lifestyles"
5) An increase in the number of children born out of wedlock and thereby suffering from lack of good homes
6) A huge increase in the number of divorces.
In short, the entire breakdown of society can be found in the sexual revolution.
Let's take this one part at a time, shall we?
I think #1 and #2 are probably partially true. There are probably plenty of people, male and female, who permitted themselves some infidelities at that time, and for whom those infidelities led to divorce. There are certainly plenty of girls, in particular, who become sexually active before being married - something that was probably rarer before the sixties. I do not, however, agree that this was entirely brought about by the sexual revolution; I think it would be more accurate to say that what was already happening was brought out into the open and celebrated as freedom from traditional constraints. If you listen to the music from the eras just before that, you get an awful lot of sexual references. I'm not prepared to believe that Cole Porter became as famous and as popular as he did by singing songs about things that didn't happen in an awful lot of lives. No, it was happening, but nobody acknowledged it openly. There's a big downside to keeping all mention of sex as a private thing: it means the darker side of sex, the side connected to power, control and the abuse thereof, was also hidden. More on this when we get to #6.
Again, #3 can be partially attributed to the fact that it was discussed more. In Victorian times, many doctors had dolls in their desks to show to prudish ladies so that they could point to the part of their bodies that hurt, without having to mention them by name. Probably, they didn't know the names. I know of one elderly lady, deceased now a few years, who didn't know what a gynecologist did and had never been to see one. The cancer she had might have been caught sooner if she'd known and taken advantage of the knowledge. The secrecy surrounding sex and reproductive functions was detrimental to women's health. The sexual revolution gave women permission to understand their bodies for the first time without fear of censure (or at least, with gradually diminished fear of censure.) If there was more disease spread, it was at least as much a matter of ignorance as it was of loose morals; and I question how much more disease was spread, as opposed to how much more we now know about it. If stats on STDs weren't available until midway through the sexual revolution or later, then how can a comparison between before and after be legitimately drawn? We simply don't know how much disease there was before, because people didn't talk about it and because some of the diseases in question had not yet been identified (and in a few cases, were not yet circulating.) Conclusion: more, almost certainly; as much as Dr. Dobson claims, certainly not.
4) I don't want to even dignify this with a response.
5) This is true, up to a point. It's also true that fewer unwanted babies were abandoned or given up for adoption after this point, because girls weren't necessarily forced into giving up their babies. Abortion and birth control both became legal during this time, which of course is another evil that Dr. Dobson expounds upon. I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, it was happening in a hidden way, and a lot of people were badly hurt by it; on the other, bringing it out into the open didn't necessarily diminish the hurt. I see the side effects all the time of girls who had babies too young, kept them, and had no resources to do well by them - but I question if they would have done any better, forced to marry the person who got them pregnant or quietly give the child up. A few more babies up for adoption would probably be better for the children than some of the homes that they end up in now.
Aside: Have you ever tried teaching the historical meaning of the word "bastard" without offending half the kids/parents in a class? It's difficult, believe me.
Now the biggie: #6. More divorces. The breakdown of the family.
This is, basically, true. Many families break down, not because of any particular abuse, etc, but because the people involved simply aren't committed enough to each other to make it work when the going gets tough. Fifty years ago, they didn't really have that choice. So they either worked it out, or they lived in misery in the same house for the rest of their lives, or possibly one abandoned the other. The relative ease of divorce nowadays has allowed marriages to break down that might have been saved and might have worked, but it also allows for a legal end to a big mistake - in other words, it allows for a second chance. If it also allows for some irresponsibility in regards to marriage, that is the price society pays for allowing people second chances.
Without quoting stats I haven't actually researched, it seems to me that domestic violence is still fairly prominent in our society. This is not an increase over previous generations; it's just an increase in the reporting of it. These families need to break down, for the safety of all concerned, but especially the abused partner and the children. Women now can report abuse; be believed; be supported by the court system; and end the relationship. How often could that have happened before the sexual revolution? My impression is, very rarely. For those families, divorce was an improvement.
My conclusions: Dr. Dobson significantly under-represents the importance of improved reporting and openness about sexuality and reproductive health, and their effects on the institution of marriage. He idealizes the family unit, failing to recognize some of the benefits that may accrue to some families through divorce and forcing a very insular view of sexuality - a view that is not supported by anyone who has actually studied history. There was no idealized time when marriages worked well most of the time, people were consistently faithful, and children were raised in harmonious environments. I don't have a great deal of appreciation for people who manage to ignore historical reality because it suits their agenda to do so.
When I came across it, I briefly considered simply pitching it. I think I know who it came from, but they'd never know we threw it out, so that's not an issue. I have huge issues with many things that Focus on the Family does, and quite a few issues with Dobson's child-rearing and educational advice as well - some of it is just plain bad. So I wasn't expecting too much worthwhile advice from this book. Still, I decided to dip into it, just to remind myself of how the Christian right thinks about the institution of marriage, and to possibly critique it a bit.
Disclaimer: These are completely unresearched thoughts. I haven't looked anything up or read any other viewpoint. It's all me against Dr. Dobson.
First, the two pages he devoted to the sexual revolution are deserving of attention.
They include phrases like "unmitigated disaster," which is not really surprising. They point out that the morals of all of human history were turned on their heads in a very brief span of time, and the result was chaos that had a profoundly detrimental effect on the family. He attributed to the sexual revolution:
1) An increase in marital infidelity
2) An increase in premarital sex
3) An increase in the spread of STDs
4) An increase in homosexuality and other "deviant lifestyles"
5) An increase in the number of children born out of wedlock and thereby suffering from lack of good homes
6) A huge increase in the number of divorces.
In short, the entire breakdown of society can be found in the sexual revolution.
Let's take this one part at a time, shall we?
I think #1 and #2 are probably partially true. There are probably plenty of people, male and female, who permitted themselves some infidelities at that time, and for whom those infidelities led to divorce. There are certainly plenty of girls, in particular, who become sexually active before being married - something that was probably rarer before the sixties. I do not, however, agree that this was entirely brought about by the sexual revolution; I think it would be more accurate to say that what was already happening was brought out into the open and celebrated as freedom from traditional constraints. If you listen to the music from the eras just before that, you get an awful lot of sexual references. I'm not prepared to believe that Cole Porter became as famous and as popular as he did by singing songs about things that didn't happen in an awful lot of lives. No, it was happening, but nobody acknowledged it openly. There's a big downside to keeping all mention of sex as a private thing: it means the darker side of sex, the side connected to power, control and the abuse thereof, was also hidden. More on this when we get to #6.
Again, #3 can be partially attributed to the fact that it was discussed more. In Victorian times, many doctors had dolls in their desks to show to prudish ladies so that they could point to the part of their bodies that hurt, without having to mention them by name. Probably, they didn't know the names. I know of one elderly lady, deceased now a few years, who didn't know what a gynecologist did and had never been to see one. The cancer she had might have been caught sooner if she'd known and taken advantage of the knowledge. The secrecy surrounding sex and reproductive functions was detrimental to women's health. The sexual revolution gave women permission to understand their bodies for the first time without fear of censure (or at least, with gradually diminished fear of censure.) If there was more disease spread, it was at least as much a matter of ignorance as it was of loose morals; and I question how much more disease was spread, as opposed to how much more we now know about it. If stats on STDs weren't available until midway through the sexual revolution or later, then how can a comparison between before and after be legitimately drawn? We simply don't know how much disease there was before, because people didn't talk about it and because some of the diseases in question had not yet been identified (and in a few cases, were not yet circulating.) Conclusion: more, almost certainly; as much as Dr. Dobson claims, certainly not.
4) I don't want to even dignify this with a response.
5) This is true, up to a point. It's also true that fewer unwanted babies were abandoned or given up for adoption after this point, because girls weren't necessarily forced into giving up their babies. Abortion and birth control both became legal during this time, which of course is another evil that Dr. Dobson expounds upon. I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, it was happening in a hidden way, and a lot of people were badly hurt by it; on the other, bringing it out into the open didn't necessarily diminish the hurt. I see the side effects all the time of girls who had babies too young, kept them, and had no resources to do well by them - but I question if they would have done any better, forced to marry the person who got them pregnant or quietly give the child up. A few more babies up for adoption would probably be better for the children than some of the homes that they end up in now.
Aside: Have you ever tried teaching the historical meaning of the word "bastard" without offending half the kids/parents in a class? It's difficult, believe me.
Now the biggie: #6. More divorces. The breakdown of the family.
This is, basically, true. Many families break down, not because of any particular abuse, etc, but because the people involved simply aren't committed enough to each other to make it work when the going gets tough. Fifty years ago, they didn't really have that choice. So they either worked it out, or they lived in misery in the same house for the rest of their lives, or possibly one abandoned the other. The relative ease of divorce nowadays has allowed marriages to break down that might have been saved and might have worked, but it also allows for a legal end to a big mistake - in other words, it allows for a second chance. If it also allows for some irresponsibility in regards to marriage, that is the price society pays for allowing people second chances.
Without quoting stats I haven't actually researched, it seems to me that domestic violence is still fairly prominent in our society. This is not an increase over previous generations; it's just an increase in the reporting of it. These families need to break down, for the safety of all concerned, but especially the abused partner and the children. Women now can report abuse; be believed; be supported by the court system; and end the relationship. How often could that have happened before the sexual revolution? My impression is, very rarely. For those families, divorce was an improvement.
My conclusions: Dr. Dobson significantly under-represents the importance of improved reporting and openness about sexuality and reproductive health, and their effects on the institution of marriage. He idealizes the family unit, failing to recognize some of the benefits that may accrue to some families through divorce and forcing a very insular view of sexuality - a view that is not supported by anyone who has actually studied history. There was no idealized time when marriages worked well most of the time, people were consistently faithful, and children were raised in harmonious environments. I don't have a great deal of appreciation for people who manage to ignore historical reality because it suits their agenda to do so.
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 06:41 am (UTC)I'd always been under the impression that there was already SOME movement towards being more open to divorce before the sexual revolution, albeit nothing like what happened at that point.
Also, I think there are many other significant contributors to the breakdown of lifelong monogamous marriage (not that you necessarily meant that this was the only factor). One of them is that increase in leisure time you mentioned in responce to my comment last week... with more leisure time, we have the luxury of expecting and demanding more from our relationships. We have TIME to do things other than work, sleep, work, sleep. Another factor which may be impacting things to some extent is our lifespans, and specifically, the portion of our lifespans during which we are still able to be self-sufficient. With a longer lifespan added to the copious amounts of leisure time, it becomes more and more difficult to find someone who is capable of spending that much time for that long with you without growing apart.
Or, that's my theory. Of course, looking at some lifespan statistics from 1850 and from now, and ignoring infant mortality, it looks like the actual difference in lifespan is about 2(calculated at age 80)-16 (calculated at age 20, at which point you'd think infant mortality is no longer much of a factor) years. So, if someone gets married at 20 in the 1850s, they have 40 years to look forward to, and in 2003, 56 years.
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0005140.html
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 10:43 am (UTC)I shall be 50 this year but I don't feel old, just decrepit.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 12:12 pm (UTC)Of course, that's the factor you didn't mention. While marriage might have been "till death do us part" before the sexual revolution, death was much closer than it was now, and not just in terms of life expectancy. Some people did live into their nineties, but many women died in childbirth, many people of all ages died of diseases that are now preventable, etc, etc - there were just as many blended families in America in 1900 as there are now, except that they were blended because the partners had been widowed.
All of this means a different approach to monogamous marriage. You don't go into it on a whim after being asked by a near-stranger, as happened regularly in the past; you go into it after several years of getting to know someone, discussing expectations, and choosing how much to commit. I believe it can still work - I'd better believe that, hadn't I? - but I am not my grandmother or my great-grandmother, and my marriage will reflect the different person that I am.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 09:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 01:33 pm (UTC)I have no love of Focus on the Family as evidenced here:
http://catarzyna.livejournal.com/34246.html#cutid1
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 02:08 pm (UTC)My dad is big on the historical revisionism aspect of Christianity. He used to make the point that, a hundred years ago, women were fighting for the right to stay at home, the right to NOT work in factories. I took a women's history course in university and was finally able to refute the argument, which had always sounded wrong to me. It wasn't the women who were fighting not to work; it was the morally-superior men who were fighting to keep them out, and the weapons they were using were things like lower wages for women (if it's not worth it to work, then they'll stay at home where they belong.) So, in the interests of protecting the morals of working women, they succeeded in forcing women to work longer, harder, in a smaller variety of industries, and with fewer protections in those cases where they had no choice but to work. My dad hasn't made that point since. :)
My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-12 02:52 pm (UTC)I don't think I was a bad child at all, did I do bad things? Most certainly but I don't know that it is much different than any other child. As a teacher you have a different perspective than most parents, you see first hand how child-rearing can affect society.
Good for you!!!!
Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-13 07:13 pm (UTC)Every child does things that need correcting. That's part of childhood. Most, if they're corrected firmly, consistently, and lovingly from the outset, will grow up reasonably self-disciplined and well-behaved. If the parents have done their job, they'll also be able to think for themselves. My dad managed to do that, even while he preached at us. He expected us to fill in points at dinner table discussions, he expected us to bring up examples and point out how they applied - he taught using things I consider logically flawed now, but for a child and teenager, they started me on the road to becoming an adult who could think for herself, and I hope I manage the same with my children.
Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-13 07:21 pm (UTC)mentally illparent is never easy no matter the level of the illness.You seem well-adjusted despite it all and you are probably more responsible for being the oldest who carried most of the burden. The key to raising children after your own childhood is know what to improve and what to leave behind. I'll be honest, I am very afraid of becoming a parent. I know what needs done but will my children be mentally ill from biology alone? Will my OCD effect them negatively? Can I handle the added stress? I could go on but I'll spare you. I simply am not ready for parenting but you seem to have a good parenting plan.
Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-13 07:44 pm (UTC)Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-13 07:48 pm (UTC)I sometimes wonder how I am sane!;-)
Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-13 10:01 pm (UTC)While I would never downplay the role medication can play in controlling mood disorders, I also believe that a combination of therapy and meds is usually best, and the reason it works is that certain outlooks on life are less prone to mood disorders than others. People with an overall positive, take-charge-gently attitude tend to be unlikely to suffer depression, or to stay in it long when they do, because they can literally talk themselves out of parts of it, at least some of the time. The ability to develop these patterns of mind is always there, even after the mood disorder is diagnosed, but it's hard and it takes constant practice. I think part of the reason I have never succumbed to depression is that I have that habit of mind, and my husband is good at encouraging it in me when I start to lose perspective.
So, short answer: you're sane in part because you have the habits of mind and the knowledge and understanding of your background to keep yourself on a more even keel than your family members did. OCD is controllable, and a minor case of it might even be a good thing if you can get it to focus on your work.
Re: My personal filter
Date: 2006-03-14 12:30 pm (UTC)AKA... self-preservation! The OCD makes things feel like torture sometimes. I hate it! I wish I could give it up for Lent, but then I gave Christianity up instead.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 03:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 01:04 pm (UTC)There are several excellent books and magazine articles (one in a fairly recent issue of American Heritage) on these subjects....
1. Possible, but not nearly to the extent that Dobson believes. The main difference was that it was publicized, and that women were openly cheating as well. Men had always had more leeway in sexual matters, and were often expected to have at least a few sexual encounters with a prostitute or "loose woman" before marriage so they'd have some experience. "Good girls" were expected to remain chaste until marriage.
2. True, at least for girls. However, the use of the Pill made it much, much more difficult to tell if a girl had had a lover prior to marriage since she wouldn't be risking pregnancy. Besides, so what? There is zero correlation between premarital sex and the success of a later marriage.
3. Possible, but so what? Until AIDS, an STD could be cured with a simple course of antibiotics. What hurt people was not knowing that they had STDs, as ignorance could lead to pelvic inflammatory disease, complications with pregnancy, and so on. And the post-60s rate of syphilis and gonorrhea was nothing compared to the post-Civil War epidemic of STDs, which sterilized an entire generation of women and could be inherited by their offspring.
4. Completely and utterly wrong. The statistics haven't changed since Kinsey, who did the majority of his interviewing *before* the Sexual Revolution. The only difference today is that homosexuals aren't necessarily compelled to pretend that they're straight, marry spouses of the opposite sex, and spend their lives being miserable.
5. a) is true; the illegitimacy rate has skyrocketed in many places. However, in some places the statistics are skewed because the children women who kept their names upon marriage were counted as illegitimate; also, many couples have the baby first while engaged, and then have a lavish wedding after the woman has recovered from the birth. b) is a real sticking point for the Christian Right, since girls who otherwise would have hidden their shame by going away when their bellies began to swell and then signing away the child for adoption are keeping and raising their children. Many of these children do live in homes that are struggling financially, but this is largely because women are paid less than men and because many states (under the influence of the likes of Mr. Dobson) have slashed their welfare, daycare, and healthcare budgets.
Interestingly enough, marriage statistics from the Colonial Era show that fully one-third of the pious Puritan brides Dobson lauds were between three and six months pregnant on their wedding day.
6. In terms of absolute numbers, correct. However, America has ALWAYS had the highest divorce rate in the world. And easier divorce meant that women who'd been abandoned by their husbands now had the right to be free of their unwilling mates.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 01:54 pm (UTC)The poverty of single-parent families is a big issue for me, because I see these kids in my classroom on a regular basis. It's ten times worse in the States, because their social safety net isn't as good as Canada's. At least here, it's not going to bankrupt someone to have a baby without insurance. Still, you don't have to look far at my school to find a parent who works her butt off to provide for her child/ren, with no family support, usually living in subsidized housing and unable to afford anything in the way of extras for her offspring.
This is just one of the many reasons that I support universal subsidized daycare - a dream that appears to be moving farther away from reality with our new government.
Obviously
Date: 2006-03-13 03:08 pm (UTC)Obviously you have failed to misunderstand the situation. It was God's miracle that these premature babies who were born after 3-6 months survived and became our ancestors. Surely you would not sully the names our gradnmothers by suggesting they ever had sex! Shame on you.
Sure there may be a surprising number of these miraculous births when you go back through your genealogy tree... But each and every one is testament to the Christian Purity of our ancestors!
My aunt was actually the one who commented on this when she did a genealogical history of my family. Apparently it was fairly common for the first children to be born 4-6 months after a wedding. But because there aren't really any real statistics for this information, the Christian Right can safely pretend it never happened.
Re: Obviously
Date: 2006-03-13 03:20 pm (UTC)Actually, this is common knowledge among colonial historians, and the American Heritage article came out nearly twenty years ago. But since they're evil secularists....
Re: Obviously
Date: 2006-03-13 07:34 pm (UTC)The real difference between then and now is that the girl was generally forced to marry the man who got her pregnant. I'm sure there was more than one case where she figured out she was pregnant, the man in question was gone or otherwise unavailable, so she found a nice farmboy, enticed him, and forced him to do the decent thing and take someone else's bastard as his first-born. Certainly that scenario has come up fairly often in the literature I've read.
My thoughts
Date: 2006-03-12 02:40 pm (UTC)Infidelity is part of human behavior. Many studies have demonstrated that women are quite capable of being just as sneaky at this as men traditionally are.
2) An increase in premarital sex
This might be true, especially with the sexualization of our culture and of youth, but youngsters were just as hormone-driven back in the bad old days as they are today. They were just more tightly controlled and permitted to marry much younger.
3) An increase in the spread of STDs
STDs have always been a hazard- and would be much worse if we did not have ways to treat them. Education helps prevent the spread of STDs, but the religious people are determined to halt any kind of sexual education at all, which will probably increase the spread of STDs. In fact, this is happening, and in unusual ways as youngsters who are trying to stay 'pure' are using other ways to have sex- with sometimes devastating results. Oral versions of syphillis and gonnorrhea are on the rise, along with herpes. They get the warts on their lips and in their mouths and throats from oral sex.
4) An increase in homosexuality and other "deviant lifestyles"
The only thing that has increased is the willingness to be 'open' about being gay. Otherwise the number of people who are homosexual is about the same. People are born gay- they do not become gay.
5) An increase in the number of children born out of wedlock and thereby suffering from lack of good homes
Again this is a product of poor sexual education and cultural factors. The number of children born out of wedlock has been fairly consistent in all kinds of society. It is their treatment that has changed. In the older cultures, the child was taken from the hidden mother. In today's society, with the retreat of social safety nets, the mother who does not give her child up for adoption must keep it and struggle to raise it.
6) A huge increase in the number of divorces.
This is mainly due to the liberalization of divorce law. I expect that a century ago, the divorce rate would have been just as high if it was permitted and easier to get. Much of this is due to the lack of premarital education for the couple, plus youth, incompatibility that is masked by the hormonal and emotional rush of falling in love, and the longer lives we live. Marriage as we know it is a relatively recent invention, and the whole institution should be reexamined in the face of modern culture. there are two elements to marriage: legal and religious. Some people do not include the religious element, and others do not include the legal element, and their marriages (or more properly, partnerships) last much longer. This needs to be addressed, but I doubt that anyone will ever do so. It's too explosive.
Re: My thoughts
Date: 2006-03-12 03:04 pm (UTC)Kinsey
Date: 2006-03-12 03:17 pm (UTC)1) An increase in marital infidelity
2) An increase in premarital sex
...
I think #1 and #2 are probably partially true.
One problem here is, prior to the "Sexual Revolution", most of these topics were completely taboo to study, so there are very few reliable figures to go on. Luckily, Alfred C. Kinsey, PhD decided they were important enough to buck the taboos. Kinsey gathered copious amounts of data on the sexuality of over 10,000 people. He started his research in the 1930s, and published two major reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male in 1948 and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female in 1953. I think even Dobson would agree that this data is before the "Sexual Revolution".
Kinsey found that about 50% of married males had some sort of extramarital sexual activities. 26% of married females had extramarital sexual activities by age 40. He also found that over 60% of males, and over 50% of females, had premarital sex.
A cursory review (via Google) of the Focus on the Family website showed no usage of these figures of Kinsey (actually, much venom against Kinsey), which leaves me to wonder how they can make any claims about what the sexual revolution did, while discarding the only published hard figures about sexuality before the "revolution".
Studies after that point are rare as well, but I find it notable that a NHS study started during the height of what I might call the "Sexual Revolution" found that premarital sex for women in 1970 was as low as 31%. It increased again by the mid-80s, after the initial impact of the revolution had worn off. Studies since the mid-80s show a drop again, most likely due to AIDS fears.
So, basically, the "facts" reported in Dobson's book are made up, fabricated out of whole cloth, and most likely incorrect. He basically said what he felt ought to have happened, confident that most readers would be convinced merely by the ring of truth, by its "truthiness" as Cobert might say. Knowing Dobson, he included references that don't even say what he claims they say.
Re: Kinsey
Date: 2006-03-13 07:19 pm (UTC)Dobson included almost no references in the course of the section on the sexual revolution - other than one or two to his own books on the subject, and one to a marriage counsellor firmly ensconced on the religious right who was probably quoted quite accurately. Since this wasn't designed as any kind of scholarly work, he didn't need to.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 03:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 08:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 05:03 pm (UTC)The point about STDs is, I think, completely erroneous. Any close reading of literature in a historical context can point out numerous cases of well-known authors and writers who suffered from and were treated for all kinds of STDs. Sweating cures, doses of mercury and other toxic chemicals, and suchlike. And during the Second World War, for example -- before the 'sexual revolution' -- there was a vast amount of propaganda directed to the Allied soldiers on getting examined for STDs, because syphilis and chlamidiya and other diseases were rampant amongst the enlisted men and the officers. They were getting it from prostitutes, mostly, but they were spreading it to other women along the way...including their wives, when they returned home from the war or on leave.
STDs are merely discussed more today because there are now more and better ways of diagnosing them, as well as treatments to cure or alleviate the suffering involved with having them. We can't compare figures from today with figures that don't exist.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-12 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 05:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 05:29 pm (UTC)I still have a few traditional views on marriage. I truly and honestly believe that both partners should endeavor to marry a virgin. I respectfully but completely disagree with
I honestly and truly believe that sex is meant to be the cement between two married people, whatever gender. As a Christian, I believe that the ecstasy, tenderness, and closeness of sex "done right" is a picture of the relationship that God wants with each one of us. "Done right," sex is an expression of vulnerability and an acceptance of the vulnerability of one's partner. It builds trust, heightens the emotional component of love, and of course is the vehicle for procreation. Premarital sex lacks the component of commitment that adds the extra dimension to this. I say this having been sexually active both before and between my marriages. I honestly regret that I could not offer the gift of my virginity to my husband. Thus far, our marriage is successful despite this, and all indications point to continued success, but it doesn't take away that regret.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 07:40 pm (UTC)I say this, having been a virgin on my wedding night - and therefore with no first-hand experience of that element.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-14 01:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 12:31 pm (UTC)In a way, some of my opinions are left-overs from going to Seventh-Day Adventist schools. I'm definitely trying to sort out what I actually believe from what I was trained to believe (at a rather crucial age), and sometimes it gets a little muddy.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-13 10:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 04:50 am (UTC)Briefly: I don't think the Sexual Revolution caused the Divorce Revolution, they were parallel phenomena. One thing to bear in mind about how divorce lost its stigma: in the 60s I remember my parents saying as a political truism that "no divorced man can become President." Who was the first to break this barrier, giving divorce its final sheen of respectability?
Ronald Reagan.
Yes, that's right, the Hero of the Conservative Revolution. Reagan could realistically be considered a hero or at least a symbol of the Divorce Revolution or of what early in the 20th century was called "Free Love" -- but someone I imagine Dobson doesn't mention that.
I don't know a better way to get a sense of the ebb and flow of family and sexual culture, how it doesn't just change in one direction, than Lawrence Stone's Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0061319791). One thing Stone makes clear that Dobson does not, for instance, is how much less important prostitution became in general sexual culture after the Sexual Revolution. Before 1965 a young man's first sexual experience was very likely to be with a prostitute; after 1965 this became rare.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-03-15 11:09 am (UTC)