Tag Archives: Sex Roles

Commentary

Commenter Rose accepts male leadership in marriage

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Recently, I decided to write again on the question of whether women should be willing to have sex with their husbands when they are not in the mood for sex. Commenter Rose wrote a passionate statement recognizing that men need to be the leaders in the home. I kept reading the comment expecting to find some point where we disagreed, but I could not find one. I was especially pleased to see that she was very careful about qualifying her view so that she was not coming across as a doormat. Men need to be leaders, and it’s the woman’s job to make sure that they can be leaders without opening up the door for men to abuse the power that they are entrusted with.

Anyway, here is the comment by Rose. (I broke it up into paragraphs)

Thank you for posting this blog.

What I have to say is more than likely, not going to be very popular with the other women who have posted, and I want to give a brief bit of background information. I have been married twice. In both marriages, I was the leader. I was the leader spiritually, financially, emotionally, intellectually (and that isn’t saying a lot), and physically. Both of my ex-husbands wanted me to be the one to always initiate the sex and they had this desire for ME to be in charge. I am a very independent woman and in every area, I took the lead, except (as much as either of them would have enjoyed for me to) in the bedroom.

Now that I am not in either marriage and I have had the opportunity to look back, I can safely tell you that being in a leadership position is NOT where I was created to be. I honestly feel that God created woman FOR man. In Genesis 2:20-22 we see these words: “ But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib[l] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” It is very clear in that scripture that WOMAN was created to be MAN’s helper.

Before I go any further, I want to state for the record that I know that above all, our purpose is to glorify God and to build God’s Kingdom, and I do take that very seriously. I do not worship the man in my life, but I feel that my purpose, after the Kingdom work, is to please the man God has blessed in my life.

I am in a new relationship that is above and beyond the answers to all of my prayers. I have taken a vow of abstinence and that vow is not only honored, but expected of me. This man is a wonderful Christian man and has the need to be the leader in the home. For me, having a man who leads is not just a want or desire, but a NEED. We have discussed the very topic of your blog and I strongly feel that there is NO reason that after he is my husband, he should be told no to sex. My greatest pleasure, as a woman, is making him happy, pleasing him, and I feel more alive, more cherished, more protected than I have ever felt in my life. Paul gives us very clear on how we are to treat each other, as a married couple, sexually and why. (1 Corinthians 7:3-5: The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.) This scripture relates in clear understanding that the ONLY reason either husband or wife should “deprive” each other is when it is mutual (meaning both agree) and for devoting yourselves to prayer. This doesn’t say that we deprive our husbands because we aren’t in the mood. Perhaps if a woman isn’t in the mood, then she should explain this to her husband and they could take time to pray that together for understanding and for an agreement.

Sex is an emotional thing for both men and women, but our emotions are different. As maturing Christian adults, we should be able to recognize that about each other and communicate with our spouses what we feel and think. I am so glad that, in our relationship, we are taking the time, before hand, to relay those feelings, those insights about each other. We have found ways, even before we are married to practice and discuss him being the leader. Some of the things we have incorporated (even in our different homes) are:

  • I discuss decisions with him before I make them. He listens to what I have to say, we discuss it, and he gives me his opinion. I have not found a time, yet, that I didn’t see things his way after we discussed them and prayed about them;
  • I know what his tastes are as far as clothing and even though he has not “insisted”, I find myself wearing the things I know he would like or approve of, and it makes me feel wonderful to know I am doing something to please him;
  • We discuss financial matters and have begun to set up our future budget to have the same goal of paying off debts in our sights.
  • We are both teachers of God’s Word, but he still teaches me so much and helps me keep my focus on the woman God has created me to be. Likewise, he expects me to respectfully let him know if he is making decisions or acting in a manner that is not glorifying God.

As I see Eph. 5:22-33, A man may not always “feel like” submitting to God’s will, but it isn’t an option, it isn’t a request, it is a command. Husbands may not always feel like loving their wives, but again, it is a command. Wives may not always “feel like” submitting to their husbands or the Lord, but it doesn’t say “submit when you feel like it.” This again, is not given as an option, it isn’t a request, it is a command, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”

For me, and I know that most women will not agree, I think the idea of being available to my husband whenever he wants me is a very sexy, very exciting, very natural thing. I also believe that if I am available to him anytime he feels the desire for me, then when I have a desire for him, that need will also be fulfilled. According to WintryKnights reply, in today’s society, I am a minority. I go against the grain, and that is where I know I belong. I AM pro-life, pro-family, pro-guns (and I hunt and fish, too), pro-male, accept sex roles, focus on raising children, am chaste, court on substance, (and I must respectfully disagree on the fun statement because we have had a blast getting to really know each other), am very serious about the challenges to marriage posed by socialism and secularism, study apologetics (we actually do this together and discuss it, I am for small government, small business, small education, small taxes, males teaching males and females teaching female, and so on.

In the past, I think I have wanted that Prince Charming or Knight (no offense, Wintry) to come riding in to save the day. The more I have grown and thought about it, I am under the impression that arranged marriages are not such a bad thing. I feel like my Father, the King of all Kings, has arranged a marriage for His princess. He has let me know that I don’t need a prince or a knight, but I need someone with KINGLY characteristics, someone who can lead, someone who can rule, someone who can follow HIS lead and be an example to me and our family.

In submitting, to my “future King”, he has made it very clear that he does not want a doormat. He wants a woman who has an opinion and doesn’t mind sharing it, and he has to know that I can make the right decisions for our family on a whim when he may not be there to help in those decisions. He has to know that he can trust me to be a portrait of what a Christian woman looks like, to his children. His sons need to know what God’s word says about submission and so does his daughter. What better way to teach them than through our example.

I have found so much freedom in submission. I am truly happy in a relationship for the first time in my life and I look very forward to our future together as his wife to bring him all of the desires of his heart, his mind, and his body!!

In Christ,
Rose

Now when I read that comment, I immediately cautioned her to test this new guy severely and to be certain that he could be trusted with this much authority, and that he was capable of doing his job as the husband and father.

I wrote:

Now obviously you are going to have to vet this man like crazy before giving the lead role in the relationship – so please make sure you do that. But I have a feeling that you know this and are willing to take the responsibility for making a good decision. The time to check the man to see if he can handle being the quarterback is before the marriage. Test him every way you can – insist on seeing evidence that he can do the job of protecting, providing and moral/spiritual leading. Don’t marry someone who hasn’t demonstrated that he can fulfill his obligations.

And I hasten to add that I think that submitting to a man should never be done when the man is committing one of the four As: adultery, assault, abandonment or addiction. But honestly, I think she provided enough background there to see that her basic bias is in favor of submitting to male leadership because she understands men. Men like to get involved with women and start homes when they feel like they have a special role as leader of the home.

Having said that, there is nothing in the idea of male leadership that says that a women can’t make the man spend a year of his life completely abstinent in a courtship with her where the focus of the interactions is on the man proving that he can do without sex for two years while he is courting the woman. Courtship is the time to make sure that the man has self-control and will not be a brutish beast. That’s why we have that “no sex before marriage” rule.

Women: Make the man prove himself before you decide whether to give him the leadership of the home. Look at his resume. Look at his portfolio. Interview his former girlfriends. Interview the fathers of his former girlfriends. Be thorough. You are responsible for making a good choice. It’s your JOB to read everything, understand everything, and choose wisely. Making a wise choice is how you serve God. Choose what’s right. Don’t choose what you like. Don’t choose what makes you happy.

News

Young women now being paid more than young men

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From the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

Young women have reversed the gender gap and raced ahead of men in the pay stakes.

Landmark official figures showed yesterday that a woman in her 20s working full-time will typically earn 2.1 per cent more than a man in her age group.

The average annual salary of a person in their 20s is around £20,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.

The turning of the tables comes after a decade in which younger women – increasingly better educated and better motivated than men – have been remorselessly narrowing the historic pay differentials between the sexes.

The achievement appears to be a death blow to the long-standing argument of equality campaigners that women are paid worse than men because they suffer from discrimination and disadvantage on the part of employers.

The new reckoning of the pay gap published by the ONS showed that until the age of 30, women can now expect better pay than men.

The majority of women ease up in their careers and devote more time to their children, a choice that in most cases hits their earnings potential.

[…]A spokesman for the Government Equalities Office said: ‘The narrowing of the gender pay gap is very welcome but it still remains too large, which is why the Government is committed to promoting equal pay and taking measures to end discrimination in the workplace.’

And finally, some sanity:

The insistence that the Government must act to close a pay gap that, for many women, no longer exists brought a scathing response from some critics.

Economist Ruth Lea, of the Arbuthnot Banking Group, said: ‘There is no pay gap for women who do not have children, and for women under the age of 40 the gap is now trivial.

‘We always knew that single women were paid just as well as men. The idea that women are discriminated against was always a fantasy. I think the equality lobby will be running out of things to say.’

But there isn’t any discrimination against boys in school – oh no, not at all. I’m sure boys do just as well as girls when they are taught female-oriented books by female teachers, all the way through school.

As men lose their traditional role of provider, and the authority and respect it brings, fewer men will want to marry, and women will have to settle for taxapery-funded IVF, taxpayer-funded day care and taxpayer-funded single mother welfare. The only upside to this is that it will be mostly women who will be paying those taxes.

Commentary

The dark side of the birth control pill

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This story is from New York Magazine. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

The Pill changed the world. These days, women’s twenties are as free and fabulous as they can be, a time of boundless freedom and experimentation, of easily trying on and discarding identities, careers, partners. The Pill, which is the most popular form of contraception in the U.S., is still the symbol of that freedom. As a young woman, you feel chic throwing that light plastic pack of dainty pills into your handbag, its retro pastel-colored wheel design or neat snap-to-close box sandwiched between lipstick and cell phone, keys and compact. It’s easy to believe the assurances of the guests at the Pierre gala that the Pill holds the answers to empowerment and career success, to say nothing of sexual liberation—the ability to have sex in the same way that guys always have, without guilt, fear, or strings attached. The Pill is part of what makes one a modern woman, conferring adulthood and cool with the swipe of a doctor’s pen.

[…]The fact is that the Pill, while giving women control of their bodies for the first time in history, allowed them to forget about the biological realities of being female until it was, in some cases, too late. It changed the narrative of women’s lives, so that it was much easier to put off having children until all the fun had been had (or financial pressures lessened). Until the past couple of decades, even most die-hard feminists were still married at 25 and pregnant by 28, so they never had to deal with fertility problems, since a tiny percentage of women experience problems conceiving before the age of 28. Now many New York women have shifted their attempts at conception back about ten years. And the experience of trying to get pregnant at that age amounts to a new stage in women’s lives, a kind of second adolescence. For many, this passage into childbearing—a Gail Sheehy–esque one, with its own secrets and rituals—is as fraught a time as the one before was carefree.

Suddenly, one anxiety—Am I pregnant?—is replaced by another: Can I get pregnant? The days of gobbling down the Pill and running out to CVS at 3 a.m. for a pregnancy test recede in the distance, replaced by a new set of obsessions. The Pill didn’t create the field of infertility medicine, but it turned it into an enormous industry. Inadvertently, indirectly, infertility has become the Pill’s primary side effect.

I remember that this topic came up in Miriam Grossman’s first book, where she was explaining how women spend the best years of their lives pursue degrees and money, and they have no idea how their fertility declines with age! It’s really sad. Speaking as a man, I actually looked into how age would affect my ability to have children when I was in my late 20s.  It’s sad that older women in the feminists movement think nothing of foisting all of these lies on younger women – and sadder still that younger women mostly don’t understand how they are affected by these lies.

Articles like this really scratch where I itch as a person. Ever since I was a child, I always wanted to know how to live the next phase of my life – what would happen next, and how could I be ready. This is what’s behind some of the decisions I’ve made that have protected me from danger. I actually spend a lot of time fretting about fretting about inflation and old age and so on, making plans and carrying them out. Part of it is learning about what I should value as a man – what will fulfill me. So often we don’t pay attention to the traits conveyed by our distinct sex and think that we can undo our nature with drugs, and speculative blind-faith believing and so on – wishful thinking and hoping. But that’s just foolishness. The world is the way it is and we are the way we are. God has made us all with certain desires and needs, and some of them are fairly fixed based on our sex.