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Nerdy men were the first to get access to internet pornography, and for a while it was associated with them. Now guys in the slums of Nigeria are watching it on smartphones. Nerds were the first to have access to online conspiracy content. Jet Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams! Muh Magic Bullet! Now the same conspiracy stuff is hitting young women. From an NYT report about a women's conference:
Women are more hostile to COVID vaccination, perhaps reflecting a female urge to make politics revolve around their bodies.
Many people here have been asking about my politics: it's actually remarkably simple: I want the old America back where children were born within marriage, didn't try to change their gender, and got all the vaccines their pediatrician recommended.
To Rightists with daughters reading this: are you concerned that they might encounter "natural family planning" on the internet and really f*** up their life?
It's fascinating to me how this line has been misinterpreted throughout this thread.
Ms. Zito started focusing on finding a husband, and at the same time swtiched to natural family planning. This pretty strongly implies, if not outright states, that Ms. Zito is still at least considering making love to somebody, despite the lack of a Mrs. in front of her name. Otherwise, after all, she wouldn't need any plan at all. If she's currently celibate, she didn't "take up" a natural family planning method! You don't need any birth control when you're celibate until marriage! You just...don't fuck, any time, until you get married!
Isn't this a great example of Jugaad Ethics from the Right? Taking the junker of Abstinence Only sexual ethics, and hitching it to the strong horse of woo-woo affirmation feminism? You don't have to not have sex that would be too difficult, just time your cum properly (in ways your male partner will be completely unable to track!) and you're trad enough!
The entire article feels that way. A pastiche of traditional femininity.
This feels much closer to Female Dating Strategy and online Gold Digging subcultures, than it does to any kind of ordered idea of patriarchy. We're getting this weird amalgamation of right wing and left wing ideas, of patriarchy and mid-century modern freedom of choice.
There's no evidence it's been misinterpreted. She stopped dating casually, and stopped birth control. This means she is open to family formation. Pre-marital sex that leads to a marriage isn't the optimal traditional path -- but it is a realistic one. Where do you think shotgun weddings come from? Plenty of traditional marriages began when a couple got pregnant, and realized "well, guess we best get married now", and then stuck it out.
Yeah...I think planning to fuck without a condom or a ring and baby trap a guy and hope it works out is just about the best example of jugaad ethics imaginable.
I mean, I think it's worth noting that part and parcel of the traditional system is Unsubtle Hints to Put a Ring on it Already from the woman's male relatives before this comes up. Of course people in the past didn't date for years and live together without having sex- because they dated for a couple of months and then got married. Some of them had sex first, of course, but it's a lot easier to wait two months than two years. Shotgun weddings preserved the woman's honor because courtships were just short enough that it came out in the wash anyways.
Sure but that's vastly different.
"We're in a good faith relationship, and a pregnancy results, and we decide to move our timeline forward and get serious."
Has little in common with
"He thinks we're just having fun, I'm hoping to have his baby and force him to get serious."
Don't put your dick in anything you wouldn't be able to deal with getting pregnant.
Great advice for a man, doesn't make "being crazy" a dominant female strategy.
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I'm not sure that you're hearing what I'm saying. In 1890 it would have been normal to say 'so, you've been seeing my daughter for three months already, do you need her ring size?' The shortness of the courtship and the reminders from dad as to the reason for dating in the first place was a big part of how the whole shotgun wedding mentality worked.
No Hydro, I'm hearing you, but it's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Ms. Zito. You can't really choose to live in 1890 in 2025, especially when you're in your mid twenties and your family is liberal and lives in another state. There is no realistic pressure that her family can exert on her erstwhile suitor, nor is she herself obedient to her parents' wishes regarding her dating life to begin with.
In 1890 there was an entire familial, legal, social infrastructure around the shotgun wedding. And all of that is required to produce the shotgun wedding. To start, it requires that your dad and male relatives want that for you and want to threaten force to get it done. It requires that society will look the other way when such violence occurs, and that society will look down on the cad who hits "betray" in such a way that he will have trouble finding life opportunities at all if he doesn't marry her.
Ms. Zito can't just magic all that into existence by wishing it were so. If she gets knocked up her New Jersey parents aren't going to threaten to beat the dude up if he doesn't marry her, and if they did the guy wouldn't take them seriously, and if they tried to beat him up he would call the cops and the cops would take his side, and if everyone at work knew what happened it would impact him minimally in his profession that he "stuck his dick in crazy" and "her parents stalked him" or something like that.
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