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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   31710 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 23, 2025

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Got an interesting article to share, with a goofy-ass twist.

https://farhakhalidi.substack.com/p/in-defense-of-male-centered-women?triedRedirect=true

So, my first thought is that it is rare to see a writer lay out so explicitly their hang-ups with sex positivity. She makes the case that heterosexual men exploit the “unwritten rules” of the dating game to string along women for sex, and in doing so, traumatize them through sheer carelessness.

I don’t completely disagree with her assessment of the situation, although I’m confused as to what her policy prescriptions are, and I think she’s in a “Be Careful What You Wish For” scenario.

If you’ll indulge me as I put on my over-analysis hat, the heterosexual dating marketplace can be viewed through an economic lens, with men and women modeled as agents within the marketplace.

The author is making the case that the current status quo privileges men’s interests at the expense of women’s. Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.

The optimal behavior for women, operating collectively as a self-interested guild within the heterosexual marketplace is to coordinate to demand maximal investment from men in exchange for romantic/sexual relationships. In other words, to collude, act as a monopolistic cartel and engage in price-fixing schemes.

Like every cartel ever, this is hard to enforce because every individual member’s incentive is to undercut the group-set price. It becomes especially hard to enforce in cases of romantic relationships, where people are not fungible economic actors with identical goals of maximizing profits, but flesh-and-blood human beings with radically different goals, desires, and libidos.

The solution that allows women to set a “price floor” for relationships, in spite of both those factors, is to use social technology to align their interests. In this case, that technology would be “slut-shaming”. Any woman who engages in behavior that undermines the interests of Women as a Collective (like being willing to be Chad’s booty call) is declared persona non grata at Mimosa Mondays and banished from the bookclub.

None of this will be new to the average Mottizen, although God knows we never get tired of re-hashing the gender wars. What I find especially interesting in this salvo is the delivery source. In another essay, the author explicitly rejects the patriarchal norms of the conservative community that she grew up in. Despite that, she still converges on advocating for basically traditional conservative sexual morality in women’s dating life.

My concern is that I’ve never really heard of a secular society with those kinds of restrictions on sexuality; the only places that successfully curtail premarital sex do so explicitly through a religious point of view. The Taliban has successfully prevented Afghan women from traumatizing themselves from Hookup Culture, but whether this is better for Women As A Class is left as an exercise for the reader.

The punch line to all this? The author, Farha Khalidi, is an Onlyfans star! She is the bête noire of conservative patriarchs across the globe, and every social system (that I’ve ever heard of) that frowns on premarital sex would consider what she does to be much worse.

So it begs the question: what, exactly, is she advocating for? Quite frankly, I’m not sure. If I had to guess, I think she wants a secular, sexually conservative sororiarchy, where women watch out for their gender’s collective interests and stop each other from undercutting their bids. Either way, an interesting point of view.

Even if women would prefer a longer “runway” towards consummating a relationship, it’s the men who get to set the timetable, with their implicit threat of walking away otherwise.

Have to snort if THAT is how this is phrased.

The guy gets to "set the timetable" with their "implicit threat of walking away."

That's generally not how negotiations are framed. A woman has just as much power to walk away, and just as much power to define/set a timetable... assuming she's capable of keeping to her own commitments. "Look, I'll have sex with you by the 5th date if and only if we are exclusive and you've spent ~$400 on me by then" is a valid way to filter out fuckboys... if the guy can reasonably expect that she will keep such a promise.

And a guy is going to walk away only when he doesn't value the sex that highly and/or has multiple other women he can try to hook up with, which devalues sex with any given one of them. There really ISN'T an imbalance in bargaining power here! There's just women who aren't able to state their position and then enforce it, so they don't even attempt to bargain.

From the perspective of virtually every guy who ISN'T trying to solely extract sex, the woman is the one setting EVERY timetable, and even if he does have the power to walk away, he knows he can't/won't cajole her into sex unless and until SHE really wants it, he wouldn't even dream of trying to force the issue.

There was a time in my life when I figured that religious rules against premarital sex were at worst arbitrary and at best outdated given modern contraceptives.

Now, I have to accept that they're an ingenious way to create a Schelling Point where both men and women can be truly sure that they'll be getting the thing they're hoping for, and, much like closing on a house, every material part of the transaction will occur at approximately the same time so nobody can duck out of the bargain before coughing up their side of it.

That is, since it is clear many women are susceptible to being manipulated, and some large subset of men are hardcore manipulators, don't set up a complex set of unwritten rules that can be exploited and that women barely understand. Just tell everyone "no sex until marriage" and don't allow any bend whatsoever. That's a rule that everyone CAN follow and can be policed more directly. Men who want sex... get married. Women who want commitment... get married. Don't agonize over how many dates or how long you have to be with them before giving it up, and don't let guys make implicit promises they fully intend to break.

Maybe it is arbitrary, but no less arbitrary than any other boundary you could set, and a hell of a lot easier/more intuitive to enforce.

One of Willy’s more off-putting qualities was his pathological need to gamify sex. On top of the not totally atypical notes app list he kept cataloging every woman he’s ever slept with, fit with a plus or minus sign, Willy had an obsession with using ‘automation’ as a method to get girls. He’d send automated texts, the contents of which ai generated, to thirty something women at a time and kept a spreadsheet of how many responses he’d get in return, how many turned to a follow up date, and how many to sex.

Willy got a similar thrill when girls would send him text-walls expressing their distraught feelings to him, upset with his behavior. He enjoyed defusing them like a bomb, and getting them to be happy with him again, no matter the number of lies necessary and no matter how little he cared about them – he’d laugh at their gullableness.

In a slightly saner world, Willy would probably be dead. One of these girls' fathers or brothers would have confronted him by now and beaten some sense into him or just put him out of our misery.

But noooooooooo instead the sociopaths are allowed free reign so long as they don't run completely afoul of the law because we've left the sexual marketplace to be regulated solely by social shame and rumor-mongering and removed any implicit threat of violence. And Sociopaths aren't effected by social shame.

Men who want sex... get married.

/r/deadbedrooms would like a word. It's interesting you brought up closing on a home, and said marriage makes it so that neither party can get what they want without coughing up what they were offering it. It just doesn't hold up under scrutiny though. Virtually the only way to make the arrangement fair like you claim it is would be, is to make it so that you can have as much sex with your wife as you want, consent be damned, legally. But I doubt anyone has the heart to go through with that. So you are left with one side that can defect at will, and the other losing most of their assets and income.

Thé traditional arrangement is that spouses don’t have the right to say no to each others’s sexual requests absent extenuating circumstances.

That was part of the religious rules, yes. Before the modern concept of martial "rape", a man was entitled to take his marital rights from his wife. Consent didn't enter into it; she gave consent when she agreed to marry him, and such was irrevocable.

This is an absolutely essential part of the marriage bargain. Sex is the payment that a man receives for supporting and protecting his wife. Saying that a wife has the right to, at any time, stop providing that payment because she does not feel like it, is ridiculous. Doubly so because the typical man disgusts the typical woman, which means any society where the majority of men get married is a society where the wives are laying back and thinking of England, and will stop performing this unpleasant chore at the first opportunity.

To help conceptualize the absurdity, imagine a pro-worker's rights party in government passing a law that an employee is at any time entitled to stop doing useful tasks for a company, but that the company is legally obligated to continue paying that employee his full salary. Oh, and at any time the employee can decide to quit and receive half of the company's assets. What happens to the employment market in such an scenario? Solve for the equilibrium.

Societies which abide by the zeroth commandment cannot survive. Either we get our heads out of our asses about this, or, more likely, we get replaced by a culture that still understands how marriage works, like Muslims (or, more likely still, AI makes all of this irrelevant, but I have never liked "run for the singularity" as an exit strategy).

(or, more likely still, AI makes all of this irrelevant, but I have never liked "run for the singularity" as an exit strategy).

We are just rushing ahead to make a prophet of C.S. Lewis. 1945, "That Hideous Strength":

"Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?”

Ransom replied, “Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned towards us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would he be who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side.

On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.”

I agree on inter-society competition favoring cultures that can actually reproduce, with a small caveat that if your low-fertility society can siphon off kids from high-fertility societies fast enough AND assimilate them properly, then it can persist even without breeding the next generation on its own. But that's a theoretical construct that the west at best imagines itself to be like.

But I'd also like to point out that

  1. A nitpick: Sex is no longer equal to fertility nowadays, given contraceptives exist, although I suppose a thorough-enough nullification of bodily autonomy can remedy this.
  2. More substantially: Women traditionally aren't just a possibly-fertile hole, they also need to provide semi-skilled labor around the house, and need to have decent social skills and personality to boot. A society in which women are available for sex and possibly child-bearing but fail at all the tasks and interactions that follow is one with marriages so miserable that men will voluntarily refuse to marry.

Reducing marriage to the provision of sex alone may not be entirely off the mark, but it ignores a large part of what makes it important.

It’s interesting to note when reading through the New Testament how much of the Pauline epistles is about being good husbands/wives- and we know from Roman moralists that Roman men(the feelings of women were not recorded) often felt this way, that marriage just kinda sucked. The church fathers also go on about the same topic- being a good husband or wife.

Before the modern concept of martial "rape", a man was entitled to take his marital rights from his wife. Consent didn't enter into it; she gave consent when she agreed to marry him, and such was irrevocable.

Small reminder that the marital debt worked both ways; men also gave consent to women about having sex when they married, because now being one flesh the wife's body belongs to the husband and the husband's body belongs to the wife. And there were cases of women complaining that their husbands were not having sex with them (sometimes men are incapable, or not in the mood either, imagine!). And the religious viewpoint (from Catholic church rules) was that ideally you were not having sex because you were so goddamned horny, you were not to treat your wife lustfully. Sex was for procreation and as part of marriage, it wasn't about getting your rocks off for selfish pleasure. And there were rules (though very much probably not followed tightly) about not having sex around important holy days.

So there was a lot of rules around sex within marriage, not simply "okay your husband is horny, lie back and let him at it". Besides, forcing an unwilling partner to let you fuck them can be no fun too, see the complaints from guys about "she just lies there and lets me do all the work, and waits for it to be over".

Small reminder that the marital debt worked both ways; men also gave consent to women about having sex when they married, because now being one flesh the wife's body belongs to the husband and the husband's body belongs to the wife. And there were cases of women complaining that their husbands were not having sex with them (sometimes men are incapable, or not in the mood either, imagine!).

Well, yes; the husband is also supposed to screw the wife on a regular basis, and is in breach of his marital duties if he doesn't. But, for obvious reasons, this is a much less common problem than the opposite; the man bites dog to the dog bites man.

Besides, forcing an unwilling partner to let you fuck them can be no fun too, see the complaints from guys about "she just lies there and lets me do all the work, and waits for it to be over".

Now, in this, I actually agree that the husbands are being unreasonable, like a boss who demands that you smile at the costumers and ask how their day is going. Bad enough that the job has to be done; being forced to pretend to enjoy it is just adding insult to injury.

But, for obvious reasons, this is a much less common problem than the opposite; the man bites dog to the dog bites man.

That is so, but I think it helps to remind everyone on here that sometimes the man does bite the dog, just so this place doesn't sound like Rapez'R'Uz when it comes to marital duties. It's supposed to be reciprocal! Indeed, it is "better to marry than to burn", but phrasing it like "the only purpose of marriage is so that the guy has a flesh-and-blood fuckdoll" is not making marriage sound more attractive to young women.

I think it's also important to remember that marital rape as a crime came about because it wasn't simply cases of "she says she's not in the mood and we haven't had sex for six months so I insisted and she gave in", but "he gets drunk and/or is angry and violent, so several times he beat me bloody then had sex so violently that yes, it inflicted physical pain and damage". We have to remember that laws get made not because of reasonable people trying to reconcile opposing views but because assholes took advantage of "well there isn't a law against it, now is there?"

All this is different to trying to reconcile differing levels of libido and interest in sex, which is often a problem too. I genuinely do think sexual desire in women is linked to the hormonal cycle so it ebbs and flows in a way that sexual desire in men does not, and that's a large part of the problem for guys who do honestly feel "if I don't get laid soon I'll explode" (blue balls) versus women who are "honestly, I'd prefer a bar of chocolate and a romance movie".

And I have to end with the anecdote, which I read in the notes to the Hollander translation of the "Divine Comedy", about a guy in Dante's time who claimed that the reason he slept with men was because his wife wouldn't have sex with him so look, he wasn't one of those sodomites really. To which I can only say, because of the social tolerance of having affairs so he could have kept a mistress, the availability of prostitutes, and the fact that he could have engaged in casual sex (paid for or unpaid) with working-class women such as the servant girls in his house, dude. Come on. You sleep with guys because you like sex with guys, and your wife has nothing to do with it.

That was part of the religious rules, yes. Before the modern concept of martial "rape", a man was entitled to take his marital rights from his wife. Consent didn't enter into it; she gave consent when she agreed to marry him, and such was irrevocable.

Every time you DreadJimmers bring this up, I wonder what your model of a marital relationship is like. It's obviously not one where you and your wife actually love one another. So if your wife is not in the mood, or she's injured or sick, or you've just had a raging fight, or you're drunk and stinking and gross her out, you believe in the Good Old Days she'd just have to spread 'em anyway, no recourse, and if she resists, you could beat her until she stops resisting, and that is the past you want to return to?

You can look up traditional Catholic teachings on ‘the marital debt’ if you’d like, quite a bit more nuance than Jim portrays. Pre-Vatican II seminary textbooks are mostly in the library of congress.

That’s probably the closest to how this was supposed to work in practice.

I think the Orthodox churches also had/have similar rules, because they tend to be even less relaxed than pre- and post-Vatican II Catholicism (e.g. rules around fasting, where the Western church leaves a lot more wiggle room and is much less stringent on what counts as fasting).

For a fun historical look on the history of marriage, according to the American 1903 Catholic Encyclopedia, see here:

[Marriage] is usually defined as the legitimate union between husband and wife. "Legitimate" indicates the sanction of some kind of law, natural, evangelical, or civil, while the phrase, "husband and wife", implies mutual rights of sexual intercourse, life in common, and an enduring union. The last two characters distinguish marriage, respectively, from concubinage and fornication. The definition, however, is broad enough to comprehend polygamous and polyandrous unions when they are permitted by the civil law; for in such relationships there are as many marriages as there are individuals of the numerically larger sex. Whether promiscuity, the condition in which all the men of a group maintain relations and live indiscriminately with all the women, can be properly called marriage, may well be doubted. In such a relation cohabitation and domestic life are devoid of that exclusiveness which is commonly associated with the idea of conjugal union.

Divorce This is a modification of monogamy that seems to be no less opposed to its spirit than polyandry, polygamy, or adultery. It requires, indeed, that the parties should await a certain time or a certain contingency before severing the unity of marriage, but it is essentially a violation of monogamy, of the enduring union of husband and wife. Yet it has obtained among practically all peoples, savage and civilized. About the only people that seem never to have practised or recognized it are the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands, some of the Papuans of New Guinea, some tribes of the Indean Archipelago, and the Veddahs of Ceylon. Among the majority of uncivilized peoples the marital unions that endured until the death of one of the parties seem to have been in the minority. It is substantially true to say that the majority of savage races authorized the husband to divorce his wife wherever he felt so inclined. A majority of even the more advanced peoples who remained outside the pale of Christianity restrict the right of divorce to the husband, although the reason for which he could put away his wife are, as a rule, not so numerous as among the uncivilized races. ...The Oriental Churches separated from Rome, including the Greek Orthodox Church, and all the Protestant sects, permit divorce in varying degrees, and the practice prevails in every country in which any of these Churches exercise a considerable influence. In some of the non-Catholic countries divorce is extremely easy and scandalously frequent. Between 1890 and 1900 the divorces granted in the United States averaged 73 per 100,000 of the population annually. This was more than twice the rate in any other Western nation. ...So far as we are informed by statistics, only one country in the world, namely, Japan, had a worse record than the United States, the rate per 100,000 of the population the Flowery Kingdom being 215. In most of the civilized countries the divorce rate is increasing, slowly in some, very rapidly in others. Relatively to the population, about two and one half times as many divorces are granted now in the United States as were issued forty year ago.

The USA does seem to have been unusual in both the rate and in the sex of the parties seeking divorce; up until the end of the 19th century, it was generally men who divorced their wives as it was very difficult both to get a divorce and for women to prove grounds for divorce if the husband was unwilling (hence in cases of mutual agreement about divorce, the husband would arrange a fake 'adultery' that could be 'proven' in court so as to provide grounds for divorce).

The fact that in the United States more women than men apply for divorces proves nothing as yet against the statements just set down; for we do not know whether these women have generally found it easy to get other husbands, or whether their new condition was better than the old. The frequent appeal to the divorce courts by American women is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and is undoubtedly due more to emotion, imaginary hopes, and a hasty use of newly acquired freedom, than to calm and adequate study of the experiences of other divorced women. If the present facility of divorce should continue fifty years longer, the disproportionate hardship to women from the practice will probably have become so evident the number of them taking advantage of it, or approving it, will be much smaller than today.

The social evils of easy divorce are so obvious that the majority of Americans undoubtedly are in favour of a stricter policy. One of the most far-reaching of these evils is the encouragement of lower conceptions of conjugal fidelity; for when a person regards the taking of a new spouse as entirely lawful for a multitude of more or less slight reasons, his sense of obligation toward his present partner can not be very strong or very deep. Simultaneous cannot seem much worse than successive plurality of sexual relations. The average husband and wife who become divorced for a trivial cause are less faithful to each other during their temporary union than the average couple who do not believe in divorce. Similarly, easy divorce gives an impetus to illicit relations between the unmarried, inasmuch as it tends to destroy the association in the popular consciousness between sexual intercourse and the enduring union of one man with one woman. Another evil is the increase in the number of hasty and unfortunate marriages among persons who look forward to divorce as an easy remedy for present mistakes. Inasmuch as the children of a divorced couple are deprived of their normal heritage, which is education and care by both father and mother in the same household, they almost always suffer grave and varied disadvantages. Finally there is the injury done to the moral character generally. Indissoluble marriage is one of the most effective means of developing self-control and mutual self-sacrifice. Many salutary inconveniences are endured because they cannot be avoided, and many imperfections of temper and character are corrected because the husband and wife realize that thus only is conjugal happiness possible. On the other hand, when divorce is easily obtain there is no sufficient motive for undergoing those inconvenience which are so essential to self-discipline, self-development, and the practice of altruism.

This explains to me the jokes about the frequency and ease of divorces in America in British late 19th/early to mid 20th century detective fiction, and the attitude in American crime fiction of the same period (e.g. one story had a dissolute wastrel husband openly engaging in an affair with a stage starlet, who was impatiently awaiting his divorce so she could marry him, and the attitudes expressed were that the wife was being unreasonable in refusing to get with the plan, there was little or no hint of social sanction about this). Of course, the excuse there was 'she's Catholic so she won't divorce him' and it's surprising how often this becomes a plot point: murder happens because X wants a divorce but Y is Catholic so won't grant it.

Anyway, on to low marriage rates in 1903!

Abstention from marriage With a very few unimportant exceptions all peoples, savage and civilized, that have not accepted the Catholic religion, have looked with some disdain upon celibacy, Savage races marry much earlier, and have a smaller proportion of celibates than civilized nations. During the last century the proportion of unmarried persons has increased in the United States and in Europe. The causes of this change are partly economic, inasmuch as it has become more difficult to support a family in accordance with contemporary standards of living; partly social, inasmuch as the increased social pleasure and opportunities have displaced to some degree domestic desires and interests; and partly moral, inasmuch as laxer notions of chastity have increased the number of those who satisfy their sexual desires out side of marriage.

And if we're getting into sex within marriage, see the thorny questions in the Summa:

Article 5. Whether the marriage act can be excused without the marriage goods?

...Objection 2. Further, he who has intercourse with his wife in order to avoid fornication, does not seemingly intend any of the marriage goods. Yet he does not sin apparently, because marriage was granted to human weakness for the very purpose of avoiding fornication (1 Corinthians 7:2-6). Therefore the marriage act can be excused even without the marriage goods.

Objection 3. Further, he who uses as he will that which is his own does not act against justice, and thus seemingly does not sin. Now marriage makes the wife the husband's own, and "vice versa." Therefore, if they use one another at will through the instigation of lust, it would seem that it is no sin; and thus the same conclusion follows.

... Consequently there are only two ways in which married persons can come together without any sin at all, namely in order to have offspring, and in order to pay the debt, otherwise it is always at least a venial sin.

...Reply to Objection 2. If a man intends by the marriage act to prevent fornication in his wife, it is no sin, because this is a kind of payment of the debt that comes under the good of "faith." But if he intends to avoid fornication in himself, then there is a certain superfluity, and accordingly there is a venial sin, nor was the sacrament instituted for that purpose, except by indulgence, which regards venial sins.

Reply to Objection 3. One due circumstance does not suffice to make a good act, and consequently it does not follow that, no matter how one use one's own property, the use is good, but when one uses it as one ought according to all the circumstances.

So sorry, gentlemen, the fact alone that you're horny and so want to fuck your wife is not good enough, and no, she's not property or at least you are property, too 😁

On the other hand, St Thomas Aquinas is less strict than St Jerome (not a high bar to cross, admittedly):

Article 6. Whether it is a mortal sin for a man to have knowledge of his wife, with the intention not of a marriage good but merely of pleasure?

Objection 1. It would seem that whenever a man has knowledge of his wife, with the intention not of a marriage good but merely of pleasure, he commits a mortal sin. For according to Jerome (Comment. in Ephesians 5:25), as quoted in the text (Sent. iv, D, 31), "the pleasure taken in the embraces of a wanton is damnable in a husband." Now nothing but mortal sin is said to be damnable. Therefore it is always a mortal sin to have knowledge of one's wife for mere pleasure.

Objection 2. Further, consent to pleasure is a mortal sin, as stated in the Second Book (Sent. ii, D, 24). Now whoever knows his wife for the sake of pleasure consents to the pleasure. Therefore he sins mortally.

Objection 3. Further, whoever fails to refer the use of a creature to God enjoys a creature, and this is a mortal sin. But whoever uses his wife for mere pleasure does not refer that use to God. Therefore he sins mortally.

Objection 4. Further, no one should be excommunicated except for a mortal sin. Now according to the text (Sent. ii, D, 24) a man who knows his wife for mere pleasure is debarred from entering the Church, as though he were excommunicate. Therefore every such man sins mortally.

On the contrary, As stated in the text (Sent. ii, D, 24), according to Augustine (Contra Jul. ii, 10; De Decem Chord. xi; Serm. xli, de Sanct.), carnal intercourse of this kind is one of the daily sins, for which we say the "Our Father." Now these are not mortal sins. Therefore, etc.

Further, it is no mortal sin to take food for mere pleasure. Therefore in like manner it is not a mortal sin for a man to use his wife merely to satisfy his desire.

I answer that, Some say that whenever pleasure is the chief motive for the marriage act it is a mortal sin; that when it is an indirect motive it is a venial sin; and that when it spurns the pleasure altogether and is displeasing, it is wholly void of venial sin; so that it would be a mortal sin to seek pleasure in this act, a venial sin to take the pleasure when offered, but that perfection requires one to detest it. But this is impossible, since according to the Philosopher (Ethic. x, 3,4) the same judgment applies to pleasure as to action, because pleasure in a good action is good, and in an evil action, evil; wherefore, as the marriage act is not evil in itself, neither will it be always a mortal sin to seek pleasure therein. Consequently the right answer to this question is that if pleasure be sought in such a way as to exclude the honesty of marriage, so that, to wit, it is not as a wife but as a woman that a man treats his wife, and that he is ready to use her in the same way if she were not his wife, it is a mortal sin; wherefore such a man is said to be too ardent a lover of his wife, because his ardor carries him away from the goods of marriage. If, however, he seek pleasure within the bounds of marriage, so that it would not be sought in another than his wife, it is a venial sin.

Reply to Objection 1. A man seeks wanton pleasure in his wife when he sees no more in her that he would in a wanton.

Reply to Objection 2. Consent to the pleasure of the intercourse that is a mortal sin is itself a mortal sin; but such is not the consent to the marriage act.

Reply to Objection 3. Although he does not actually refer the pleasure to God, he does not place his will's last end therein; otherwise he would seek it anywhere indifferently. Hence it does not follow that he enjoys a creature; but he uses a creature actually for his own sake, and himself habitually, though not actually, for God's sake.

Reply to Objection 4. The reason for this statement is not that man deserves to be excommunicated for this sin, but because he renders himself unfit for spiritual things, since in that act, he becomes flesh and nothing more.

So, see the reply to objection 1. You must respect your wife, so "lie back bitch and open your legs, it's my right as your husband and you have no right whatsoever to refuse" is - surprise, surprise! - a sinful attitude.

It's obviously not one where you and your wife actually love one another.

I am reminded of the classics. The key word is learn to love, and there's no doubt in my mind that this is a learned skill for lots of people, maybe all of them, to some degree. Some more than others, some never do. There's growth potential- I think someone else mentioned "people who think in terms of pathological bargaining in marriage are all insane, those who see it as an investment opportunity prosper", which gets at this- if there was nothing to be learned it wouldn't be growth, would it?

you believe in the Good Old Days she'd just have to spread 'em anyway, no recourse, and if she resists, you could beat her until she stops resisting, and that is the past you want to return to?

As opposed to today, where he'd just have to spread 'em anyway (the folds of the wallet, in this case), no recourse, and if he resists, she can beat him (with another man's fists/State power) until he stops resisting?

Surely there must be some sort of compromise (we did have one in the past, but the problem is that men and women do not, in fact, have equal biological constraints)- a new paradigm is needed to account for a seismic technological shift where women have near-total control over conception and marriage is worth less and less in the face of better alternatives (at least, from a hedonistic perspective).

DreadJimming is just as destructive when women do it.

DreadJimming is just as destructive when women do it.

Yes, but I disagree with his framing (and yours) that women are just tee-hee frivorce-raping hapless men with the power of the state.

It's harder than MRAs would have you believe for a wife to just casually strip-mine an ex, even with no-fault divorce.

If you want to restore a stable equilibrium between the sexes, it's not by listening to people who, frankly, hate the other sex.

I disagree with his framing (and yours) that women are just tee-hee frivorce-raping hapless men with the power of the state.

Starting from egalitarianism, I would expect there's likely the same amount of abuse of both processes by their respective bad actors when each was/is the dominant mode of abuse.

And then there's the illegibility of what that being a possible outcome actually does to the average citizen's behavior under that law; men talk about it all the time, so do women. (So do responsible parents when the topic of CPS comes up- same kind of chilling effect.)

I don't think one or other gender holds a monopoly on that evil (and am not really willing to consider it, because DreadJimming/DreadJilling is inevitably where that ends up). If both are permitted, each can check the other, but more total abuse then occurs at the margins.

it's not by listening to people who, frankly, hate the other sex.

Yeah, but arbitration and spending hours trying to pass the Turing Test for the interested parties is boring, I'd much rather complain about how cokes that have had 40 penises inside them are spiritually degraded or whatever instead.

It does seem to me like there is a whole lot of room between "not when she is injured, or right after a fight, or when you need a bath" and /r/deadbeadrooms. Your examples all seem to assume a pretty high, or at least medium, baseline of sex and then declare that there should be a non-zero number of limits on when a man can assume his marital rights, but what is being discussed is a level which is low to non-existent so your comment seems non-responsive tbh. Real "all debates are bravery debates" energy IMO, where you are saying there must be SOME limits on how often the husband can expect a yes and erwgv3g34 saying there must be SOME limits on how often she can refuse.

There may be room between those positions but there's no stable position between them. The center cannot hold, and has not, and we have reached the stable equilibrium of "she may withhold sex for any reason at any time and his only permissible recourse is a divorce in which he loses most of his assets and future income".

Do you actually know anything about the circumstances under which a man can "lose most of his assets and future income" in a divorce? It is not common. In fact alimony is pretty rare nowadays (and almost never close to "most" of his assets and future income), child support is to support the children, and the number of men paying "unreasonable" child support (however you define that) is exceeded by the number of men not actually paying their child support. The worse case scenario you will usually see is an equal distribution state where a spouse can claim 50% of marital assets, even those he or she didn't bring into the marriage. (This can and sometimes is the man who benefits, though usually it's the woman.) And not all states do a 50/50 split like that.

You guys seriously need to update your notions of how divorce works from the 1960s, or the 19th century.

child support is to support the children

I've had this argument about a hundred times, so I'm going to experiment with a new track:

What about "child support", as currently practiced in the liberal west and particularly the United States, evidences that it is about supporting children—without referencing its name in any way, shape, or form? If I gave you a sheet describing the terms, functions, and conditions of C.S. with the name at the top blacked out, what elements would lead you to suspect ah ha, the primary function of this policy is to support children! What elements would you point to in order to refute the competing hypothesis that the primary function of the policy is actually mother support?

This is an open challenge. Anyone reading should feel free to answer.

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Do you actually know anything about the circumstances under which a man can "lose most of his assets and future income" in a divorce?

Yes, he gets divorced.

In fact alimony is pretty rare nowadays (and almost never close to "most" of his assets and future income), child support is to support the children

Spousal support is rare but not non-existent (my father paid it, and he was divorced far later than the 1960s), but child support is very high and doesn't have to be spent on the children. If his income goes up he has to pay more; if it goes down he still has to pay the same.

and the number of men paying "unreasonable" child support (however you define that) is exceeded by the number of men not actually paying their child support.

Which is irrelevant, as they were still demanded to have been paying it. And if they get caught, they have their wages garnished down to subsistence or less, they lose their driver's licenses, professional licenses, go to jail for contempt for indefinite periods, etc.

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I agree that a dead bedroom is a problem, and no one should be expected to live with that. But the "sex is an obligation and marital rape doesn't exist" guys don't seem to acknowledge a wife's right to say no ever.

If I were to put it from the point of view of someone who does not hate women, it would be: a woman who says no, rather than not right now, is a woman who has no right to her marriage.

It sounds like the rape enthusiasts have something else going on, but I think the above description is a pretty reasonable standard for marriage, leaving out the man’s parallel duties.

Agreed, but I'd also say, unless you are having some other severe marital dysfunction going on, if your wife is saying no all the time, wouldn't you want to... have a conversation about this? Figure out what's going on? As opposed to just "asserting your rights."

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To give without restraint does not warrant taking without restraint; that should be obvious to anyone without terminal legalism of the brain. Retvrnist rightwingers don't get this when they harp on about marital rights this and women are property that. You sound like women who think that just because their husband has pledged his provision and protection, they can drain his savings on stupid shit or pick a fight with 15 thugs on his behalf just so she can feel protected. Now, you haven't said you want to fuck your wife literally whenever, regardless of sickness/pain/sleep/unwashedness of dick, and maybe you don't. The hyperfocus on muh marital rights certainly gives that impression off.

If you want to be Muslims then I don't see any difference between being replaced by Muslims and becoming like them. I prefer us being better or perish trying.

To give without restraint does not warrant taking without restraint

That isn't what @WhiningCoil and @erwgv3g34 are saying, though. They're saying that a contract which allows one side to take without restraint but does not allow the other to do so is a pure means to extort fools rather than something that is mutually beneficial. The specifics are that one can defect on providing sex within a marriage, due to marital rape, but one can't defect on providing resources, because of alimony/child support and because of divorce splitting assets.

is to make it so that you can have as much sex with your wife as you want, consent be damned, legally

Which is why this was the historical norm in the first place.

Divorce meaning the man loses most of their assets is, quite literally, a pension plan for when a sex worker has had enough of the job. That this means they're grossly overpaid and encouraged to retire that way is a problem not unique to sex workers, but it does come from the same philosophical place as other pension systems do.

Let's dig in to the history of divorce to see how we got to where we are today. The alimony and property division subjects seem to be different from state to state, so it's not automatically "she will take half your stuff and your future income". Historically, divorce was obtained solely, largely, and more easily by the wealthy; men were the major earners, work opportunities for women were much more limited; a divorced woman (especially one with children) would often be socially ostracised and would find it difficult to impossible to remarry and marriage was the main form of maintaining/obtaining income and status (widows were also often in reduced circumstances); men might/would remarry more easily and form new families. Therefore there was an expectation (for the better-off) of maintaining a similar standard of living to what they had enjoyed, and the duty to provide for the abandoned wife and children so they would not be destitute. Men of high status might disinherit children of a former marriage when contracting a new (and better, trading up) marriage for reasons of inheritance rights (see Henry VIII legally changing the status of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth to that of bastards so they had no claims on the throne), so this was important to provide for such children.

So the power in divorces swung gradually, over time and with the fights for rights of women, from men (who could more easily divorce their wives and often used the threat of "I'll take custody of the children and you will never see them again", as legal custody used to be automatically granted to the father, to force their wives into either remaining in the legal marriage or to accept worse settlements in the case of divorce) towards women - automatic or nearly so granting of custody to the mother rather than the father, 'palimony' cases and the likes.

Was this abused? Sure. Just as the previous state of affairs had been abused when the power lay with men. 'No fault' divorce came about because the old procedure was long-drawn out and often difficult to prove (hence the fake adultery cases). It was supposed to be quicker, easier and cheaper when the marriage had irretrievably broken down and both parties agreed they wanted to end it. Of course, the social views at the time (divorce will be last resort) then eroded over time as divorce became more and more acceptable and commonplace, to now where one party can get a divorce even if the other party doesn't want to end the marriage.

This is, after all, the point of the slippery slope argument: you can't fossilise attitudes to be the same forever as at the time you make the changes in the name of compassion or inclusivity or whatever. You start off with the hard cases and the view that "of course this will always be last resort, we just want to help those genuinely suffering" and as the 'last resort' moves from "socially unacceptable" to "tolerated" to "accepted" to "the new normal", or course it will no longer be the 'last resort'.

The Society for Promoting the Amendment of the Law in the 1850s published proposals suggesting that divorce should be dealt with in a separate Court and should be a cheaper process. These proposals were accepted and by the Matrimonial Causes Act 1857, the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes came into existence and the Ecclesiastical jurisdiction over divorce was abolished. The 1857 reforms only changed procedure and adultery remained as the only ground available for divorce. If a wife was the party claiming a divorce, she had to prove cruelty or desertion, in addition to the act of adultery by her husband.

Abuse of the new procedure by wealthy Victorian families, combined with clashes between the Government of the time and the Church, meant that further reform was slow in coming. A Royal Commission in 1912 suggested that cruelty or 3 years’ desertion should be introduced as separate grounds for divorce and that the rights between wives and husbands should be equalised. The Church was opposed to anything that widened the possibility of divorce and the recommendations of the Royal Commission were defeated in 1914. A further Royal Commission in 1923 attempted the same reforms but only succeeded in equalising the rights between wives and husbands. As a matter of practice, married couples often contrived to stage an act of adultery by the husband to achieve a divorce ‘by consent’. In 1935 a committee within the Church finally agreed to the proposals originally suggested by the Royal Commission in 1912. Further reform suggestions were delayed until post-Second World War and in 1951 a bill was presented in Parliament to permit divorce by consent after separation for 7 years. A Royal Commission argued against this proposal in 1955, however Lord Walker in the arguments of that 1955 Royal Commission dissented and suggested divorce should be permitted where a marriage had irretrievably broken down. After a further 10 years, this approach was endorsed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and was brought into law by the Divorce Reform Act 1969.

The current position is set out in the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 and the sole ground for divorce is that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. This breakdown can be proved by the fact of adultery by one of the parties, unreasonable (abusive) behaviour, 2 years’ separation if both parties consent, 2 years’ desertion or 5 years’ separation if only one party consents. Originally under the 1973 Act, the parties had to wait until 3 years into the marriage before a divorce could be applied for but this period was reduced to 1 year by the Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act 1984.

And that's in England, the USA has gone its own way and introduced, state by state, its own laws. Take the Nevada divorces, where the state purposely made it as easy as possible for people to come to Nevada, fulfil the six month residency requirement, and get a divorce - all in the name of money-spinning for the local economy. That's got little to nothing to do with the rights of women or helping men get divorce-raped because they believed Women Are Wonderful. In this particular case, if you look at the formal notice issued, you have to admit it's some cheek to claim the wife deserted the husband, as he took up with a married woman and they fecked off to America where he then deliberately contracted a bigamous (under British law) marriage with her so his English wife could divorce him at home:

Russell became infatuated with Marion (known as Mollie) Somerville, who was at that time married to George Somerville, with whom Russell had become friendly during the campaign in Hammersmith. ...She campaigned for Russell; the two became close and were seen together at several events. When she fell ill early in 1899, Russell let her use one of his residences, and the two went away together, travelling via France to America. Russell planned to use laxer American divorce laws to end his marriage to Mabel Russell.

Russell and Mollie Somerville journeyed to Chicago, but learned that local laws had recently been tightened, and required a year's residence, with other restrictive provisions. North Dakota and Arizona Territory were also considered, and in the latter case visited, but also required living there a year. Nevada, with only a six-month requirement, was more practical. They settled in Glenbrook, on Lake Tahoe, for the winter of 1899–1900. On 14 April 1900 both Russell and Somerville were granted divorces. Their marriage ceremony in Reno before Judge Benjamin Franklin Curler took place on 15 April. They honeymooned on the way to America's East Coast, including at Denver's Brown Palace Hotel, where Russell told a reporter that a charge of bigamy would never stick. The couple returned to Britain the following month.

Russell knew such a divorce was invalid under English law, which refused to recognise foreign divorces obtained by British subjects; his intent was to allow Mabel Russell to obtain a divorce on the grounds of bigamy following adultery, which would also free him to marry again: he deposited £5,000 that would go to her upon a divorce to ensure her cooperation.

Beginning when Russell wired news of his Nevada marriage to appear as a notice in The Times, there was considerable press interest on both sides of the Atlantic in what had occurred. Both Mabel Russell and George Somerville filed for divorce, and each gained them uncontested, subject to the usual waiting period before the decrees became absolute. Russell, on his return, took his seat on the LCC as if nothing had occurred. There was, initially, no other official reaction, society accepted them as a married couple, and Mollie appeared on the 1901 census as "Mollie Russell".

Unhappy marriages were (and are) often complex tangles. Men taking advantage of their wives' beauty, social position, and often connection with high status lovers to advance their own careers were not uncommon (take the (in)famous mistresses, later in the century, of the Prince of Wales, later to be Edward VII, whose complaisant husbands were often rewarded for their discretion and tact). Unsuccessful men living off the earnings of their wives (often the women wrote for a living, hence the increase in women novelists so that now novels are nearly primarily a female art form) also happened. Take famous 19th divorce cases such as that of Caroline Norton:

In 1827, she married George Chapple Norton, barrister, Member of Parliament for Guildford, and the younger brother of Lord Grantley. George was a jealous and possessive husband given to violent fits of drunkenness. The union quickly proved unhappy due to his mental and physical abuse. To make matters worse, George was unsuccessful as a barrister, and the couple fought bitterly over money.

During her early married years, Caroline used her beauty, wit and political ties to set herself up as a major society hostess.

...Despite his jealousy and pride, George encouraged his wife to use her ties to advance his career. It was through her influence that in 1831 he was made a Metropolitan Police Magistrate. During these years, Caroline turned to prose and poetry as means of releasing her inner emotions and earning money.

...In 1836, Caroline left her husband. She managed to subsist on her earnings as an author, but George claimed these as his, arguing this successfully in court. Paid nothing by her husband and her earnings confiscated, Norton used the law to her own advantage. Running up bills in her husband's name, she told the creditors when they came to collect, that if they wished to be paid, they could sue her husband.

Not long after their separation, George abducted their sons, hiding them with relatives in Scotland and later in Yorkshire, refusing to tell Caroline their whereabouts. George accused Caroline of involvement in an ongoing affair with a close friend, Lord Melbourne, then Whig Prime Minister. Initially, George demanded £10,000 from Melbourne, but Melbourne refused to be blackmailed and George instead took the Prime Minister to court.

Lord Melbourne wrote to Lord Holland, "The fact is [that George] is a stupid brute, and [Caroline] had not temper nor dissimulation enough to enable her to manage him."

...At the end of a nine-day trial, the jury threw out George's claim, siding with Melbourne, but the publicity almost brought down the government. The scandal eventually died, but not before Caroline's reputation was ruined and her friendship with Melbourne destroyed. George continued to keep Caroline from seeing her three sons and blocked her from receiving a divorce. Under English law in 1836, children were the legal property of their father and there was little Caroline could do to regain custody.

For an Irish example, there's Charles Parnell and Kitty O'Shea, where a prominent Anglo-Irish politician had a long-running affair, her husband was aware but, as long as he gained advantage from it, didn't rock the boat (the O'Sheas were waiting for Kitty's wealthy aunt to die and leave her an inheritance, which would not have happened if she was involved in a public scandal, and there's some evidence that Parnell tried to help advance O'Shea's career in politics). Although the O'Sheas were separated, the husband did not seek a divorce (and the accompanying scandal which blew up and wrecked Parnell's career) until much later:

Parnell's leadership was first put to the test in February 1886, when he forced the candidature of Captain William O'Shea, who had negotiated the Kilmainham Treaty, for a Galway by-election. Parnell rode roughshod over his lieutenants Healy, Dillon and O'Brien who were not in favour of O'Shea. Galway was the harbinger of the fatal crisis to come. O'Shea had separated from his wife Katharine O'Shea, sometime around 1875, but would not divorce her as she was expecting a substantial inheritance. Mrs. O'Shea acted as liaison in 1885 with Gladstone during proposals for the First Home Rule Bill. Parnell later took up residence with her in Eltham, Kent, in the summer of 1886, and was a known overnight visitor at the O'Shea house in Brockley, Kent. When Mrs O'Shea's aunt died in 1889, her money was left in trust.

On 24 December 1889, Captain O'Shea filed for divorce, citing Parnell as co-respondent, although the case did not come to trial until 15 November 1890. The two-day trial revealed that Parnell had been the long-term lover of Mrs. O'Shea and had fathered three of her children. Meanwhile, Parnell assured the Irish Party that there was no need to fear the verdict because he would be exonerated. During January 1890, resolutions of confidence in his leadership were passed throughout the country. Parnell did not contest the divorce action at a hearing on 15 November, to ensure that it would be granted and he could marry Mrs O'Shea, so Captain O'Shea's allegations went unchallenged. A divorce decree was granted on 17 November 1890, but Parnell's two surviving children were placed in O'Shea's custody.

In 1867, Katharine married Captain William O'Shea, a Catholic Nationalist MP for County Clare from whom she separated around 1875. Katharine first met Parnell in 1880 and began an affair with him. Three of Katharine's children were fathered by Parnell; the first, Claude Sophie, died early in 1882. The others were Claire (born 1883) and Katharine (born 1884). Captain O'Shea knew about the relationship. He challenged Parnell to a duel in 1881 and initially forbade his estranged wife to see him, although she said that he encouraged her in the relationship. However, he kept publicly quiet for several years. Although their relationship was a subject of gossip in London political circles from 1881, later public knowledge of the affair in an England governed by "Victorian morality" with a "nonconformist conscience" created a huge scandal, as adultery was prohibited by the Ten Commandments.

Out of her family connection to the Liberal Party, Katharine acted as liaison between Parnell and Gladstone during negotiations prior to the introduction of the First Irish Home Rule Bill in April 1886. Parnell moved to her home in Eltham, close to the London-Kent border, that summer.

Captain O'Shea filed for divorce in 1889; his reasons are a matter for speculation. He may have had political motives. Alternatively, it was claimed that he had been hoping for an inheritance from Katharine's rich aunt whom he had expected to die earlier, but when she died in 1889, aged 97, her money was left in trust to cousins. After the divorce the court awarded custody of Katharine O'Shea and Parnell's two surviving daughters to her ex-husband.

Who's in the right? Who's in the wrong?

Women used to provide much, much more in terms of money, back when spinning was a thing, and “wife-selling” was a well-known Anglo practice of soft divorce for when things really weren’t working out.

Plus, consider that the law back then was basically decided on a village-by-village basis, and you can see that for a woman to straight-up defect would not be to her benefit.

EDIT: reading back, you didn’t mention historical aspects. So take this as color as opposed to rebuttal.

“wife-selling” was a well-known Anglo practice of soft divorce

wat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wife_selling_(English_custom)

It feels very highly British that the article brings up a crime of "criminal conversation" and a "peculiar court".

On Friday a butcher exposed his wife to Sale in Smithfield Market, near the Ram Inn, with a halter about her neck, and one about her waist, which tied her to a railing, when a hog-driver was the happy purchaser, who gave the husband three guineas and a crown for his departed rib. Pity it is, there is no stop put to such depraved conduct in the lower order of people.

The Times (July 1797)

Huh. Never would have guessed that.

I was aware of the more common colonial practice of a man skipping town on his wife and her later getting a legal divorce due to abandonment.

It should be noted that wife sales were often the idea of the wife, and an escape plan that provided her an out she wouldn't otherwise have had.

PDF warning

I will go on record as saying that there should both be a pretty high social expectation on women to keep providing regular sex to her husband... AND that a husband should have a little leeway when it comes to extracting that commitment.

And my point is mostly that the guy has been waiting for sex will get some on his wedding night and honeymoon, and if the woman doesn't give it to him in short order I'd say that's grounds for annulment.

Years down the road, well, that's a different situation. But we don't want men to conclude that the only way they can expect regular sex is to keep leading women along for a few months at a time and swap them whenever they get too attached.

Not really looking to reinstate the rule of thumb but if a guy is otherwise upholding his end, he should indeed have some 'remedies' available if the sex dries up.

I'll be careful how I say this, but I've found that womens' desires are often finicky in the sense that they will be completely uninterested on a basic desire level right up until the act is in motion, then it flips like a switch. So a guy should probably be allowed to toss his wife over his shoulder and carry her to the bedroom and engage in some active foreplay, even if he has to stop before penetration.

Yes, its more complex than that, wife stops taking care of herself, guy gets schlubby, kids come in the mix, so not going to pretend there's a panacea, but yes, there should absolutely be a socially acceptable expectation that a wife is having sex with her husband on some regular interval.

On the more wacky front, I've wondered if we should be dosing married couples with Oxytocin since pretty much all the literature available shows that it makes couples more interested in each other (although I'd not be surprised if this would fail to replicate.)

Couple shows up at the doctor's office saying they've not had sex in months, he hands them a spray bottle: "Take two snorts each and call me in the morning."

On the more wacky front, I've wondered if we should be dosing married couples with Oxytocin since pretty much all the literature available shows that it makes couples more interested in each other (although I'd not be surprised if this would fail to replicate.)

Couple shows up at the doctor's office saying they've not had sex in months, he hands them a spray bottle: "Take two snorts each and call me in the morning."

Inconveniently, babies are one of the big things that leads women to not want sex over long periods of time.

Oxytocin comes up medically in the context of childbirth and lactation, and is heavily involved in breast feeding. So, if you stimulate a breast feeding mother's nipples, her body will produce oxytocin... and milk. She will likely then think of the baby. Doctors give oxytocin during delivery to make contractions stronger (or, if they only need them a bit stronger, can use a breast pump).

That right there is the time I think the Husbands should be willing to sacrifice their libido on the altar of fertility.

If she carries your kid for 9 months and is now willing to commit to raising it with you, then you can either abstain for a few more months, or do self help for a while.

But yeah, the addition of kids leads to a lot of biological, economic, and just pure scheduling issues, and the guy's desires probably don't reduce at all, so somebody is likely going to compromise.

And my point is mostly that the guy has been waiting for sex will get some on his wedding night and honeymoon, and if the woman doesn't give it to him in short order I'd say that's grounds for annulment

‘We never had sex’ is grounds for an annulment in the RCC. Famously came up in king Henry VIII’s case, where it had been used to posthumously annul Catherine of Aragon’s marriage to his older brother, which otherwise would have made the marriage invalid on incest grounds. The original annulment remained valid and thus Henry didn’t get his.

Yes, but Catherine was obviously lying. The kings of England and Aragon had scholars go through her first marriage with a fine-toothed comb looking for a reason to annul it so that Catherine could marry Henry and maintain the alliance. When they came back saying that the only way to annul the marriage was if it hadn’t been consummated, Catherine said that she had never slept with her husband. That’s not terribly plausible under the circumstances, and if it were true all of the canon lawyers would have been unnecessary in the first place.

The pope actually refused to annul her second marriage for political and military reasons.

Yeah the Papacy allowing the annulment of the already married King of France Louis XII to marry the widow Duchess of Brittany of the previous king (the kings were cousins) just a few years before looks nakedly political. If Catherine been any other woman and not been related so closely to the Holy Roman Emperor I suspect the annulment would have granted, and her forced into a convent. The king's great matter had the unfortunate affect of no betrothals turning into marriage for Mary I, if she had married earlier we could have seen Hapsburg England! So only one of Henry VIII's children inclined to procreate never got the opportunity.

Yes, but Catherine was obviously lying

Why do you believe Henry over Catherine? I have a lot more reason to trust her word than his, and that of Anne Boleyn whose own ambition and that of her family had led her to work towards this marriage over a long period.

Arthur, heir to the throne, Henry's elder brother and Catherine's husband, was married at the age of fifteen and died six months later of (presumed to be) the sweating sickness. There are allegations that he had been growing weaker and more sickly since the wedding in the period leading up to his death. Doubts about the consummation of the marriage are therefore not unreasonable. Evidence as to its being consummated relied on third-party hearsay by those highly incentivised to please the king in his trial over "I'm right and this bitch is wrong, force her to do what I say":

Although in the morning following his wedding, Arthur had claimed that he was thirsty "for I have been in the midst of Spain last night" and that "having a wife is a good pastime", these claims are generally dismissed by modern historians as mere boasts of a boy who did not want others to know of his failure to perform. Until the day she died, Catherine maintained that she had married Henry while still a virgin.

So an attempt at consummation, ending in premature ejaculation but no full penetration, on the part of inexperienced and over-excited teenagers is entirely possible.

Remember, they were both only fifteen. Catherine certainly would have been raised strictly and come to the marriage a virgin, and it is unlikely (though not impossible) that Arthur had much if any opportunity for sexual experimentation before his marriage. Henry VII's household seems to have been run strictly and on moral lines, and besides that, the risk of bastards or entanglements with prior claims for marriage by the daughters of noble houses on the grounds of "your son had sex with me" were way too much of a risk for the very shaky House of Tudor whose grasp on the throne had not been well-established and was, even in the times of Henry VIII, vulnerable to rival counter-claims by the likes of the Pole family whose own ancestry was every bit as royal or even better. Henry VIII was, in the wake of his brother's early death, very closely monitored, even smothered, by his father who oversaw his upbringing.

Henry VII did not want to lose the alliance he had worked for so hard, nor the dowry he had been promised (his frugal, not to say penny-pinching, attitude to the royal finances enabled him to leave behind at his death a full treasury, massive public resentment at the tax regime he had inflicted on them, very unpopular scapegoats in the form of his tax collectors who were then promptly executed by his son in order to placate the public, and that same full treasury was then blown through by Henry VIII who lived extravagantly beyond the means of the English economy of the time).

Henry wasn't about to lose that Spanish princess nor pay back what dowry he had received, so he put pressure on to have the marriage annulled in order to enable his second son, and now only male heir, to marry her when he came of age. It was Henry VIII who later had the scruples about "oh I must have inadvertently married my brother's widow, which is incest, and the Old Testament says God punishes that, this is why I have no living male heirs and must annul this illegal marriage so I can marry my current mistress", and put the pressure on the pope of the time to do so.

I agree about the political and military reasons for the pope to reject this (who wants to offend the Holy Roman Emperor?) but it also put him in the difficult position of countermanding the dispensation provided by a previous pope, just on the whims of English kings: "yeah we know we previously asked your predecessor to grant us a dispensation to say this marriage was valid and licit, now we want you to grant a dispensation to say it's invalid and illicit". This wasn't just a matter of a legal quibble or overturning a previous court decision, this touches on the Power of the Keys. If we're talking about "why get canon lawyers involved?", the King's Great Matter involved Henry sending scholars all over Europe to get canon law and theological opinions in his favour, a resounding lack of same, leading to him having to heavily rely on his pet theologians in the universities at home, and even the likes of Luther going "well uh no he's properly married, just copy the Biblical patriarchs and take a second wife you muppet". The failure to push through the divorce caused the downfall of Cardinal Wolsey, up till then the most powerful man in England next to the king, and later on that of St Thomas More for his efforts to avoid being pressured into "hey, everyone in Europe respects Tom and he agrees with me, so this new marriage must be kosher, yeah?"

Catherine was a devout Catholic (not in the modern term of the phrase which seems to just mean "Catholic who agrees with the Democratic party agenda on everything") and would have been very aware of the moral implications of committing perjury. It would have been a lot easier for her to go along with Henry's demands (as Anne of Cleves did in her own situation at a later time) and would have made her daughter, Mary's, position more secure - but she did not.

You can believe she was lying because she was a jealous, spiteful woman - or you can believe she was telling the truth and an impatient king brought pressure to bear in order to get his own way at the behest of an ambitious woman who, ironically, then failed to provide the son she had promised Henry, a promise which had strung him along for years and kept his wandering attention fixed on her, and then boomeranged when this same spiteful man had her trial brought forward for displeasing and embarrassing him. Catherine was left to die of cancer, Anne got a public execution and her replacement installed as wife and queen on the very same day.

I know who I find more credible, and it ain't Henry, the guy who had mistresses throughout his marriages, over his faithful wife.

Arthur, heir to the throne, Henry's elder brother and Catherine's husband, was married at the age of fifteen and died six months later of (presumed to be) the sweating sickness. There are allegations that he had been growing weaker and more sickly since the wedding in the period leading up to his death. Doubts about the consummation of the marriage are therefore not unreasonable.

That is a fair point.

It was Henry VIII who later had the scruples about "oh I must have inadvertently married my brother's widow, which is incest, and the Old Testament says God punishes that, this is why I have no living male heirs and must annul this illegal marriage so I can marry my current mistress", and put the pressure on the pope of the time to do so.

Well, yeah. It was a misreading of Leviticus – if it were correct then levirate marriage, commanded to Jews in the same book, would make no sense. But it was a misreading that underlay canon law. And you can see why the issue would obsess him.

You can believe she was lying because she was a jealous, spiteful woman...

She'd certainly have understandable reasons for jealousy. And if she had originally felt that lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers, it wouldn't be at all shocking if she refused to come clean so that he could look justified in betraying her.

And if she had originally felt that lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers, it wouldn't be at all shocking if she refused to come clean so that he could look justified in betraying her.

Or, on the other hand, if she wasn't lying, neither would it be shocking if she refused to lie just to make it convenient for Henry to dump her for his long-term mistress. Henry (and those he had charged with getting this done) had little scruples about bending the truth; there was a lot of ground to be cleared before the second marriage could take place, and it wasn't all down to an inconvenient wife.

Anne Boleyn had at one time attempted to contract a marriage with Henry Percy, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and they were secretly betrothed. This didn't suit either of their families, or Cardinal Wolsey, so whatever arrangement they had was broken up and Percy was married off to another woman. When the king's marriage with Anne was to go forward, Percy was pressured to claim there had been nothing between them. Then later on, when it was incumbent to get rid of her, he was pressured to admit there had been a pre-contract before them. This was treated as legally akin to marriage, so she was allegedly not free to marry Henry.

Did the men accused of being Anne's lovers lie or tell the truth when they denied this? Was Anne lying in her letter to Henry denying that she had ever committed adultery? We are really in "he said/she said" territory now.

As well as Anne's past romantic/sexual history, there was the problem that Henry had taken Anne's elder sister, Mary, as a mistress before he met Anne. If Catherine was guilty of having consummated a sexual relationship with Henry's brother, thus making their marriage illicit, then the boot was on the other foot here as well: a sexual relationship between Henry and Mary would have created a pseudo-kinship making Anne his sister-in-law, as it were, and thus rendering his marriage with her equally sinful, incestuous, and invalid as Catherine's marriage with Henry was claimed to be.

So in the tangled matter of Henry's marriages, we can't know what was the truth, as apart from "what was the 'truth' the king wanted declared at the time?"

This is why I tend to believe Catherine. She was put under oath, and I don't think she would have been prepared to commit perjury just to get back at Anne. Nowadays we think of perjury as a technical legal offence and indeed trivial (unless you're caught out), but people used to believe that swearing false oaths would indeed damn you to Hell. So there wouldn't have been the attitude that "lying was a minor offense made as much for Henry's sake as for hers". Catherine could have admitted a consummated marriage with Arthur, claimed that she had relied on the papal dispensation and the advice of her elders that the marriage with Henry was permissible, and made things easier for her. Henry had had mistresses during their marriage and she had accepted that, because that was the way of things. (Something Henry later allegedly reproached Anne about, when she was said to have confronted him about taking a replacement mistress, that greater ladies than her - a reference to Queen Catherine - had had to accept this). It would have made things easier and more secure for both her and her daughter, Mary (and Henry was not above being spiteful to his own child, with alleged threats later of executing her if she continued to be obstinate about accepting Anne as queen), as it went for Anne of Cleves who was more complaisant or better able to play the game, agreeing to all Henry's demands and being well treated in return when he wanted to get rid of her.

We'll never know the exact truth, without getting a time machine to go back and see if Catherine remained a virgin after her first marriage. All we can do is judge the characters of those involved as to how they strike us, and Henry strikes me as a liar - or at least someone able to persuade himself that he was acting from the purest motives and not just out of personal whim, and that all those opposed to him were in fact not alone wrong but wicked and evil.

Practically speaking, what I’ve found works is pretty simple: make sure she gets enough rest, provide ordinary and regular affection, and (this is the big one) start warming her up WELL in advance. Get a little more touchy, flirty, make it obvious what you want, and that it’s her, but don’t demand it right then.

Later on, when it’s a better time, she’ll remember.

Agreed, although its frustrating to do all that prep work and then have some random outside circumstances occur that sours her again.

Building anticipation over text all day then letting her know you're 15 minutes from home and she better be ready is a great way to confirm that it is or isn't happening so as to avoid last second dissappointment.

As with many projects, the last mile is usually the hardest one.

That’s hard, man. I’m sorry to hear it.

If I have one real qualm with women these days, it’d be a certain lack of fortitude or resilience. Something goes wrong? Obviously that sucks, but it’s critical to find a way to get yourself back on the right path. Nobody’s emotions are so important that the world is gonna stop for them - and it’s incredibly callous to let them undermine the people you’re close to. Sure, there are genuinely awful things that take precedence, like a death in the family, but most of life’s little insults aren’t a big deal. Some women get it, but a lot don’t.

Same category as bringing your work home. Yelling at the wife or kids because the boss is a dick. Just not right.

Yeah I was going to say, a lot of men don't get this these days either, it just manifests differently. I didn't for a long time. Society really wants people to be narcissists.

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