The Conservative Legacy...

This article's core purpose was to talk about the differences between moral and biological conservatism. Moral conservatism says that the traditional set of family values is required for continuing life. Biological conservatism says that the traditional social roles are consistent with nature. In describing the beliefs of these conservatisms, there were quite a few ideas/quotes that angered me:

"women must exercise their erotic power over men; that is, they must offer sexual gratification to the male in exchange for his agreement to her demands for monogamy, marriage, and his roles as provider and protector"

“it is men who make the major sexual sacrifice. The man renounces his dream of short-term freedom and self-fulfillment in order to serve a woman and family for a lifetime”

"Moreover, as society gives way to unmarried mothers, lesbians, and female masturbation, men turn away from family and toward cathartic sports, violence, and drugs"



For the first two: I don't know if I'm being idealistic/too influenced by Disney or something, but this makes it sound like there is no such thing as love. What happened to sharing sex with somebody because you loved them? The first quote makes it sound like a business transaction! They both imply that men do not want love or marriage, that they would rather have random sex with multiple women then be married to one woman their entire life. While this is true for some guys, it is definately not true for all of them. This is discounting male emotions and making them all seem like chauvanistic pigs; I don't think this is fair to them.

For the third quote: Sure, sure, blame all the violence in the world on the fact that not all women are marrying men. I'm pretty sure there was violence all during the history of the world, and womens' liberation/feminism movement is recent (relatively speaking). This seems like an unfair blame and just a way to undercut the feminist movement. I also remember the article saying something about how the feminist movement is a genocide--a genocide of family. It also says that when males try to help run the household, everybody is worse off. This is just ridiculous.

Ok, here's my last main annoyance with the article. I hate it when people put in sex education in the category of womens' liberation! Last time I checked it takes two people to have sex, and ofter at least one of those people is a male. Sure sex education teaches ways of protection and alternatives to abstinence only, and some people may think this makes women 'freer' and of course will lead to drug addiction and violence from males, but it also teaches about the dangers of STDs. Both males and females get them, and if this article is anything to go by, males are programmed to have sex with multiple partners, so it is very important that he learn about STDs and how to protect himself. I know that the sources of conservatism that this article used were written in the 70s, before a lot was known about STDs, but it is still around today--how else would you explain Bush only funding abstinence only sex education classes?

Ok, that's about all for now from this article--but it did get a big reaction from me.