Just Too Silly: Feminsting Claims Dennis Prager Supports Marital Rape

Yeah, well, apologies for the second post about Jessica Valenti. But this is seriously dumb.

Prager makes the case which, I'm thinking, most men agree with: Hey, honey? I know you're not in the mood tonight, but then, I wasn't in the mood to spend six hours shopping for tea-cozies and flan-cups at Bed Bath and Beyond, either. Give me a pity hand-jay for crying out loud.

He's more delicate:

The subject is one of the most common problems that besets marriages: the wife who is “not in the mood” and the consequently frustrated and hurt husband.

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It is an axiom of contemporary marital life that if a wife is not in the mood, she need not have sex with her husband. Here are some arguments why a woman who loves her husband might want to rethink this axiom.

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him. This is rarely the case for women. Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.

This is a major reason many husbands clam up. A man whose wife frequently denies him sex will first be hurt, then sad, then angry, then quiet. And most men will never tell their wives why they have become quiet and distant. They are afraid to tell their wives. They are often made to feel ashamed of their male sexual nature, and they are humiliated (indeed emasculated) by feeling that they are reduced to having to beg for sex.

Most women don't seem to agree with this logic (alas), but last time I checked there's no crime committed in asking someone to change their attitude.

Jessica Valenti, author of the upcoming book Did I Mention the Time a Guy Once Used the Word "Finger" In Mixed Company?, calls this an advocacy of marital rape:

It takes a certain je ne sais quoi to unabashedly argue in favor of marital rape. Of course columnist Dennis Prager doesn't call it that. No no, he prefers to use some sort of bizarre high school logic about how ladies who really love their man will "give her body" on demand.

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And here I thought the "if you really loved me" argument was only relegated to after-school specials! How wrong I was.

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Haha, because the ideas of men's bodies as commodities is ridiculous, of course! Outside of the insulting notion that men only recognize love through sex, Prager also seems to think that sex is simply about women "giving" their bodies to men. (In fact, he writes some variation of the phrase "give your body" or "deprive your body" multiple times in the article.) The idea that sex could be a mutually enjoyable and wanted expression of love is lost on the dude. Which is actually pretty sad.

Um, no, it's not lost on him, he's just, you know, accepting the reality that men want sex more often than women, and things like work-stress will put a woman out of the mood for sex while a guy with work-stress, on the other hand, thinks that pretty much sex would be the best thing he could imagine to relax him.

In other words, m'dear, he's living in the real world, and you're living in a fantasy world of no sexual differences whatsoever.

PS, when these chicks aren't railing about how awful it is to be called a "slut" because they have sex with strangers, they're also advocating sexually depriving husbands of sex.

It kinda makes no sense whatsoever -- sleep around with whatever guy chats you up at the bar, but don't put out for the guy who's dumb enough to marry you.

Okay, that's enough with Jessica Valenti, author of her most serious, scholarly book yet, a hard-hitting, paradigm-shifting work about the nuances of female sexuality, tentatively titled Milk, Milk, Lemonade, Fudge, unless she can figure out a way to tastefully work the word "Vulva" in there somewhere.

posted by Ace at 03:24 PM

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