Sexual and Political Assumptions

Mr Schraub gets it very wrong, and I think on this point, he is not alone in this on the left. He (and others) love to jump on the property/marriage allusion. One wonders if that is a prime example of, to coin a word, a Vizzinism? (From, of course, the Princess Bride where Vizzini keeps coining the Dread Pirates advance as “inconceivable” and Inigo Montoya’s rejoinder is “You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.”)  But enough lexical silliness. To the point, Mr Schraub offers:

Property, in its simplest form, is that to which you have the right to exclusive use (and can correspondingly exclude others from). In a very real sense, that’s precisely what a closed relationship is: a mutual grant of exclusivity, reducing at least one element of another’s personhood to the level of property.

and connects that to notions about:

A lot of bloggers have taken apart the risible Dennis Prager’s sex advice column, in which he advises married women that they should have sex with their husbands even when they don’t want to.

So, what have we here simply put is that Mr Schraub connects the idea that the notion that a spouse might be advised to consent to sex when “they don’t want to” equates that same said spouse with property.

Property? No. No. And No. Let’s examine how this is in error. I should note, that I’m not arguing an anthropological point that no societies have treated their spouse as property. However, Mr Schraub is alluding in part to Jewish and Christian notions as suggested by his allusion to Mr Prager, which indeed I will argue these traditions support such notions as that which Mr Prager suggesting regarding sexual relations disregarding your personal desire at that time without any requirement or delving into notions of spouse as property, which is an assumption it seems that those on the left are amazingly quick to leap.

Property, alas, isn’t what Mr Schraub alludes in his definition. My body is not my “property” is part of me. It is fundamental to my being. Property, unlike my pancreas, stomach, or left arm, is salable. My things (not myself or being) over which I have the right to control in the following ways, i.e., can use, sell, barter, or borrow against. That is property. A spouse and myself are none of these things.

Jewish, and later Christian writings, argue that the spouse is something different. She (for I am male and writing in the generic sense is laborious and the conversion to the other sex is a trivial exercise) to which I am wed is flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. She is not possession, she is self. I am her. Her wants are mine, in fact as St. Paul would exhort, should precede mine.

When we marry the Western rite Christians make certain promises and vows, which implicitly promise such things like:

• When you, dear wife, are ill with Alzheimer’s or other terminal illness, I will abide with you, love you, cherish you, clean you, aid you to shower, and at toilet, feed you, sing to you, and love you.
• When you, dear wife, stumble, I will lift you and encourage you.
• When, beloved, our children call, or cry and you cannot come, I will.
• Mr Schraub, over a year ago, pointed at the Judith Thomson’s Violinist argument regarding abortion, a poor argument at that. However, if the violinist were you, my dearest, my life is yours however long it takes.
• … and so on.

This is more poetically coined in the traditional vows taken at (Western) weddings, i.e., … for richer or poorer, for better or worse, in good times and in bad, … as long as we both shall live and until death do us part.

Why do we do these things? Because, we are one flesh. Not because I am her slave, although the poet has termed it thus at times. Not because I am hers to possess, although again the poet has suggested that. It is more. It is because she is me and I am her.

The task of anticipating and meeting her unspoken desires and needs is a labor of love. One which at which I might note, we (and especially I) constantly fail at doing, but constantly, after falling try and try again. How much easier is it when your beloved asks, you know, with words. The question at hand is, we are considering sexual intercourse, not a particularly onerous undertaking. Your beloved has requests it (verbally) not with unspoken and implied gesture or habit and yet you don’t “want to.” How much worse is that thing to do than those things noted above? It seems to me, unless physically too ill or in too much physical pain, the answer might best be, when your lover asks, “jump” you query, “how high?”

Filed under: Ethics & Morality • Mark O.

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