I definitely don’t think marriage is just about sex in general. My view is that marriage should be about love. My concern is that the *additional marriages created* by restrictive sexual norms would be about sex (marriage as a means to sex), which I don’t think is a good foundation for a loving bond. I’m thinking on the margin. People wh…
I definitely don’t think marriage is just about sex in general. My view is that marriage should be about love. My concern is that the *additional marriages created* by restrictive sexual norms would be about sex (marriage as a means to sex), which I don’t think is a good foundation for a loving bond. I’m thinking on the margin. People who love each other can marry under both permissive and restrictive norms. So the marginal marriages created by restrictive norms will be between people who don’t love each other and would be reluctant to marry in the absence of society using norms around sex to nudge them in to it. Even gentler, non-dystopian norms of the sort we see in actually-existing conservative cultures will trend this way. Whereas in a permissive culture in which people have little reason to marry other than love, we will have fewer unloving marriages, which is a thoroughly good thing in my opinion.
I’m not sure I follow your point about how “putting a pressure on sex…helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with”. Under a permissive model that respects consent, people have freedom to be as selective as they want. Why would they need help from social pressure?
On your last paragraph, that’s a simple one. If you are more selective about who you sleep with, the repercussions of having slept with that person are far less severe.
If you have a baby with a woman that you are totally fine with marrying, there’s relatively little to be upset about. If you’re just doing your thing and she gets pregnant but you don’t really even like her, that’s a problem for everyone.
Being more selective at the start is a good way to make potential life changing experiences much, much more palatable.
Consent is not where that conversation stops. Two people often consent on sex and they don’t even want to date, or at least one of them doesn’t. Where does that leave the potential kid? The more permissive model leaves far more cracks for people to fall through.
That’s a fair point, but I think the solution is comprehensive and effective sex education and access to contraception, rather than social pressure to wait until marriage.
Again, I’d emphasize that blue states that take the approach I favor have a better record of reducing teen pregnancy and unwanted births than red states that have more cultural pressure around abstinence. Northern European countries with similarly liberal norms also have good outcomes on this score.
I definitely don’t think marriage is just about sex in general. My view is that marriage should be about love. My concern is that the *additional marriages created* by restrictive sexual norms would be about sex (marriage as a means to sex), which I don’t think is a good foundation for a loving bond. I’m thinking on the margin. People who love each other can marry under both permissive and restrictive norms. So the marginal marriages created by restrictive norms will be between people who don’t love each other and would be reluctant to marry in the absence of society using norms around sex to nudge them in to it. Even gentler, non-dystopian norms of the sort we see in actually-existing conservative cultures will trend this way. Whereas in a permissive culture in which people have little reason to marry other than love, we will have fewer unloving marriages, which is a thoroughly good thing in my opinion.
I’m not sure I follow your point about how “putting a pressure on sex…helps you be more selective of the people you would theoretically sleep with”. Under a permissive model that respects consent, people have freedom to be as selective as they want. Why would they need help from social pressure?
On your last paragraph, that’s a simple one. If you are more selective about who you sleep with, the repercussions of having slept with that person are far less severe.
If you have a baby with a woman that you are totally fine with marrying, there’s relatively little to be upset about. If you’re just doing your thing and she gets pregnant but you don’t really even like her, that’s a problem for everyone.
Being more selective at the start is a good way to make potential life changing experiences much, much more palatable.
Consent is not where that conversation stops. Two people often consent on sex and they don’t even want to date, or at least one of them doesn’t. Where does that leave the potential kid? The more permissive model leaves far more cracks for people to fall through.
That’s a fair point, but I think the solution is comprehensive and effective sex education and access to contraception, rather than social pressure to wait until marriage.
Again, I’d emphasize that blue states that take the approach I favor have a better record of reducing teen pregnancy and unwanted births than red states that have more cultural pressure around abstinence. Northern European countries with similarly liberal norms also have good outcomes on this score.