Door Quotes
I started weekly door quotes on my office door. Just gives me a chance to value one quote from my weekly readings and share it with others. So, I thought I would post it here as well ... this is the quote of the week. (Two this week ... they are connected).
"Not only is recreational sex no fun, but consumer sex is profoundly anti-social. The sexual revolution has retarded people's ability to create community life and to relate to one another. Even worse, our modern sexual moral code does not cultivate an attitude of respect for others, in spite of our elaborate schemes of equality and our hypersensitive habits of speech. To the contrary, our modern sexual ways have led us to believe that we are entitled to use people."
Jennifer Roback Morse from "Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World"
We have to ask ourselves where this idea of sexual liberation is really leading us. Its perhaps very clever of us to look down on those poor suppressed souls of days gone by, but again, do we have any real concern for community or are we trapped in individual rights and individual happiness? "If a man wants to sit down while a pregnant woman is standing or walk through a heavy door and let it slam in a woman's face, that is all right. Divorce on an epidemic scale is all right; child abandonment by one parent or another is all right; it is regrettable but still pretty much all right if a divorced parent neglects or refuses to pay child support; promiscuity is all right; adultry is all right. Promiscuity among teenagers is pretty much all right, for "that's the way it is"; abortion as birth control is all right; the prostitution of sex in advertisement and public entertainment is all right. But then, far down this road of freedom, we decide that a few lines ought to be drawn. Child molestation, we wish to say, is not all right, nor is sexual violence, nor is sexual harassment, nor is pregnancy among unmarried teenagers. We are also against venereal diseases, the diseases of promiscuity, though we tend to think that they are the government's responsibility, not ours."
"In this cult of liberated sexuality, "free" of courtesy, ceremony, responsibility, and restraint, dependent on litigation and expert advise, there is much that is human, sad to say, but there is no sense or sanity. Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying--until you hit the ground-- and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground.
Seeking to "free" sexual love from its old communal restraints, we have "freed" it also of its meaning, its responsibility, and its exaltation. And we have made it more dangerous. We are now living in a sexual atmosphere so polluted and embittered that women must look on virtually any man as a potential assailant, and a man must look on virtually any woman as a potential accuser. And in the midst of this acid rainfall of predation and recimination, we presume to teach our young people that sex can be made "safe"--- by the use of purchased drugs and devises. What a lie! Sex was never safe, and it is less safe now than it has ever been.
----- Wendell Berry from "Sex, Economy and Freedom"
"Not only is recreational sex no fun, but consumer sex is profoundly anti-social. The sexual revolution has retarded people's ability to create community life and to relate to one another. Even worse, our modern sexual moral code does not cultivate an attitude of respect for others, in spite of our elaborate schemes of equality and our hypersensitive habits of speech. To the contrary, our modern sexual ways have led us to believe that we are entitled to use people."
Jennifer Roback Morse from "Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long Love in a Hook-Up World"
We have to ask ourselves where this idea of sexual liberation is really leading us. Its perhaps very clever of us to look down on those poor suppressed souls of days gone by, but again, do we have any real concern for community or are we trapped in individual rights and individual happiness? "If a man wants to sit down while a pregnant woman is standing or walk through a heavy door and let it slam in a woman's face, that is all right. Divorce on an epidemic scale is all right; child abandonment by one parent or another is all right; it is regrettable but still pretty much all right if a divorced parent neglects or refuses to pay child support; promiscuity is all right; adultry is all right. Promiscuity among teenagers is pretty much all right, for "that's the way it is"; abortion as birth control is all right; the prostitution of sex in advertisement and public entertainment is all right. But then, far down this road of freedom, we decide that a few lines ought to be drawn. Child molestation, we wish to say, is not all right, nor is sexual violence, nor is sexual harassment, nor is pregnancy among unmarried teenagers. We are also against venereal diseases, the diseases of promiscuity, though we tend to think that they are the government's responsibility, not ours."
"In this cult of liberated sexuality, "free" of courtesy, ceremony, responsibility, and restraint, dependent on litigation and expert advise, there is much that is human, sad to say, but there is no sense or sanity. Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like insisting that falling is flying--until you hit the ground-- and then trying to outlaw hitting the ground.
Seeking to "free" sexual love from its old communal restraints, we have "freed" it also of its meaning, its responsibility, and its exaltation. And we have made it more dangerous. We are now living in a sexual atmosphere so polluted and embittered that women must look on virtually any man as a potential assailant, and a man must look on virtually any woman as a potential accuser. And in the midst of this acid rainfall of predation and recimination, we presume to teach our young people that sex can be made "safe"--- by the use of purchased drugs and devises. What a lie! Sex was never safe, and it is less safe now than it has ever been.
----- Wendell Berry from "Sex, Economy and Freedom"
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