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Notes -
Divorce statistics shouldn't be a necessary condition to explain the male aversion to wifing up a woman with a past. If women's feelings such as the ick are legitimate, so are men's feelings and preferences.
If someone asked me why I don't eat roadkill, I wouldn't pullout graphs and studies about the longitudinal effects of consuming motorway by-product—I'd just shrug and say the thought of eating roadkill is revolting.
I have to say that I found the roadkill metaphor extremely insightful. My belief that female promiscuity is unwise is fundamentally disconnected from my opinion that female promiscuity is unappealing. I don't think less of the moral character of a woman who's been raped - indeed, the crisis might even present her with an opportunity to demonstrate her virtue in some way. But it does give me the male equivalent of the proverbial ick, just as it would if she'd had casual sex voluntarily, or been divorced, or tripped and fallen down the stairs onto a man.
I think that this is also why I feel a profound discomfort when I see other men list things like "five or fewer sex partners" as their standard for a woman. Because they're obviously using the more rational standard of the woman's wisdom - they're judging who's wiser, the woman who's had sex with five men or the woman who's had sex with twenty. But in my gut, this looks to me like, do I want the barrel of wine with five spoonfuls of shit in it or the barrel of wine with twenty spoonfuls of shit in it, and I'm just thinking, uh, no, I don't want any of the shit-wine, thanks, I don't care how exactly the shit got there, I don't care to grade it on a curve, and if that's all the wine I can afford I'd rather just be a teetotaler.
I'm pretty sure you can safely eat roadkill if you manage to find the right roadkill and you cook it right. But I'd still rather just not do that.
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