I disagree with her conclusion that "we should not conclude that they were experiencing some kind of early sexual emancipation". Why shouldn't we? Younger girls were enjoying sex out of wedlock precisely because they could. Why would they have sex and risk raising a child unless it was pleasurable?
Very interesting read and full of details and primary sources.
If you are not used to ancient British, keep a dictionary handy.
Call me naive, but it had not occurred to me before, that marriage ought to be lavish, not because its an important social event but because it ought to be unaffordable expensive for the young and the poor.
Whenever I read a piece that is bullish on contraception and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, I become a little disheartened to think how many people today have such a dim view of sex and their own human nature. Sex is about but pleasure, but also so much more. See John Paul II's Theology of the Body:
This information should be lovingly and shared with young persons, even (and especially) when it challenges us as adults and requires us to grow in maturity and understanding.
Also, there are wonderful modern, "open source" and free alternatives to pharmaceutical contraception, barrier methods and surgical sterilization, not to mention chemical and surgical abortion. I would invite readers here to learn about modern NFP and to help spread the word:
The "rhythm method" is notoriously ineffective, and relying on the word of a celibate man for an understanding of sex is a bit strange. Also, 90% of what he is explaining assumes you believe in the theology of the Catholic church, which a lot of people don't.
Also, I hardly believe that a lot of people have a "dim view of sex," and if they do, it is most likely because they grew up in the Catholic Church. Trust me, I know because I did.
The Billings Method != "rhythm method". And there are other similar methods that belong to the modern NFP family, grounded in well-researched medical science and backed by clinical trials.
I've never understood why the Billings method is OK with the Church but other forms of contraception aren't. Either way you are purposely having sex for the pleasure and attempting as best you can to not get pregnant.
Oh it is "natural", right, because the Catholic Church requires only "natural" remedies for things?
I use quotes since I don't even agree that Billings Method is any more natural than a condom or the pill.
It simply takes more freedom away from the woman to choose when and how she has sex.
There are a variety of resources for learning more about the reasoning behind the Catholic Church's moral teachings. The following might be a helpful starting point regarding NFP:
"NFP is not just a 'method' based on physiology. Rather, NFP is based on virtue. It is based on sexual self-control, which is necessary for a healthy marriage. There are times in any marriage when spouses have to put aside their desire for sex because of sickness, fatigue, travel, or other reasons. In a healthy marriage, love is shown in many ways, and not all these ways of showing love are physical. In fact, to refrain from sex when necessary is itself an act of love. Why? Because in effect the spouses then say to each other, 'I did not marry you just for sexual pleasure. I married you because I love you. You are a person, not an object. When I have sex with you, it is because I freely choose to show you my love, not because I need to satisfy an urge.' Using NFP requires abstinence from intercourse during the fertile days if a pregnancy has to be avoided. This actually can strengthen the couple's sexual life. When the spouses know that they can abstain for good reasons, they also come to trust each other more, and avoid the risk of treating each other primarily as objects of sexual pleasure rather than persons. Artificial birth control, on the other hand, gives free reign to the temptation to make pleasure the dominant element, rather than virtue. It encourages couples to think that sexual self-control is not necessary. It can encourage them to become slaves to pleasure."
Nothing about using alternative methods means you can't still do all the abstinence stuff in addition.
I was raised Catholic. The way sex is viewed, and the idea of Mary being a virgin until death (somehow ignoring Jesus having multiple brothers and sisters...) being added hundreds of years later and requiring celibacy shows a very odd obsession with sex.
Not to mention the known history of purposely inventing rules to benefit the Church. Priests children before they were no longer allowed to marry and have sex became Church property.
Couldn't agree more with Michael. These posts are difficult to read and is the result of a sex crazed society.
Regarding comments, my wife and I practice the 'alternative method' and speaking from EXPERIENCE, IT IS EFFECTIVE. In fact, if you look at the numbers, it's more effective than IVF for achieving and 99% effective in preventing. Like all things, you have to understand what you're doing. Also, it is not from the 'word of a celibate man' but is from years of medical research. Here is one (http://naprotechnology.com/).
The church does not have an obsession with sex. Rather, mankind has the obsession with sex and the church is trying to help us understand it's proper place. Since contraception has been widely adopted in the US, divorce, STDs, rape and illegitimate children has sky rocketted. Very unfortunate, but predicted in the 1960s in Humanae Vitae.
That's funny. Whenever I hear from people that are "bearish" on contraception, the sexual revolution, etc., I become a little disheartened to think how many people even today have such a dim view of sex and their own human nature...
I never worry much about downvotes, neither on HN nor in real life. My personal policy is to write or say whatever I think should be said, whenever I think it should be said, how I think it should be said and to whom I think it should be said. Of course, such a policy can only be successfully exercised when it's simmered in the virtue of prudence (i.e. its ongoing cultivation). I claim no particular success with regard to the latter, but I'll keep trying.
Religion is a virtue, classically speaking, and true religion ought to be spoken of, publicly and privately, in season and out of season.
RELIGION: the moral virtue by which a person is disposed to render to God the worship and service he desrves. It is sometimes identified with the virtue of justice toward God, whose rights are rooted in his complete dominion over all creation. Religion is also a composite of all the virtues that arise from a human being's relationship to God as the author of his or her being, even as love is a cluster of all the virtues arising from human response to God as the destiny of his or her being. Religion thus corresponds to the practice of piety toward God as Creator of the universe. (Etym. probably Latin religare, to tie , fasten, bind, or relegere, to gather up, treat with care.)
– Fr. John Hardon, S.J., Modern Catholic Dictionary
It surprises me how opinion can be written off as fact.
Emma Griffin speculates about how social customs come about and just states them as fact. I was looking for citations to references/studies. There are none. At best there are anecdotes.
I googled up Emma Griffin, and she seems to be a celebrated historian http://emmagriffin.info/ .
I do not know what to make of this otherwise interesting write up. Or is it just science that requires any rigor in what is said?
a) This is an article in a magazine, not a research journal. The standards are inherently different. This is similar to the lower level of 'rigour' demanded out of scientific magazine articles, as opposed to research journals.
b) Huge chunks of history consists of interpreting evidence. In so much as interpreting is a matter of opinion, this is pretty much an opinion piece. Historians really don't have any offer a citation to back up their interpretations. Certainly, it helps, but the point is that they offer up evidence (in the form of selections of contemporary journal entries), and then interpret that evidence, and present it to you. You're suppose to accept or reject (or wherever on the spectrum) this interpretation based on your critical faculties and own background knowledge.
c) Since we actually do lack 'objective' measurements for huge amounts of things that we really are curious about in the past, all we have are anecdotes. We cannot perform experiments on the past. Archeology is limited. Conclusions drawn from normal historical methods are certainly limited, and heavily influenced by biases, but that's pretty much all we have to work with.
She hints at the fact that the info was gleaned from diaries and other writings from the working class. Well...it isn't explicitly stated that she used these so I guess some assumptions need to be made. I would say, for an article like this with a lay audience in mind, maybe it's not so important that everything is cited as it would be in a research paper or an article in a history journal.
"Not only are there the usual problems in uncovering evidence about the lives of the poor and often unlettered men and women who made up the bulk of the population, but sex is also a topic about which all levels of society were generally reticent. Yet, if evidence about the sexual behaviour of ordinary people is hard to find, it certainly exists.
Working-class diaries and autobiographies shed a unique and important light on the lives of the poor. While many autobiographical writers steered well clear of revealing anything about their intimate experiences, others found they were unable to write their life history without touching upon matters of a sexual nature. As a result such sources can help us to understand not only the social customs that controlled sexual activity in the pre-industrial era, but also the weakening of these controls during the turbulent years of the Industrial Revolution."
