POLL: Premarital Sex

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So you have never met me, Chandos, Aldeth, and all the other happily married men on SP. Maybe we are actually all imaginary. Oh no, maybe I don't exist!

 

They're happily married right now, but a few years down the line..

Yeah, the world of difference is being severely out of pocket, and having many years of stress I really don't need, and for what? Why do I need to get married and have a child? Why?

 

You have nothing to worry about, Sarevok. With your sour attitude, marriage isn't likely in your future anyway.

 

It can fulfil people emotionally, Sarevok. Rather than material things like being out of pocket. Some people prefer to be around people they love.

But I suppose this is how people are different. Some people just prefer the single life to being tied down. Wouldn't do for us all to be the same.

 

That's right.

 

For Love, of course. But did anyone really have to tell you that?

 

@Drew: How about you read the whole instead of select passages that capture your eye?

Next, it's a bit hard to blame you if you aren't a historian, but the most basic mistake people can make when approaching historical texts is seeing their realia from the modern perspective. Another is forgetting the geographical, ethnological and generally all cultural context. Ancient Jews didn't live in a world full of electronics and science. They didn't obligatorily study everything from historical grammar to genetics in school even if they were going to become janitors. Most of them were simple shepherds, some farmers, some warriors. A couple of sages and priests.

Don't look at that passage as a criminal code chapter about sex offences. And don't require more from it than you would from a modern text (this is also @Susipaisti).

Do you really think someone would be punished for being raped when there was no possibility of resistance? No. The point is that sex outside marriage was an offence. You could be forced into it, so you wouldn't be punished. But if it happened in a place where you couldn't get help (the mention of the fields clearly indicates that there was no objective responsibility and the aim was to punish people who were really guilty of something, not those to whom something happened). If the law in Deuteronomy doesn't require the woman to call for help in circumstances where it's futile, would it require her to call for help in circumstances where it would result in her death?

If you answer yes, you would have to assume that a person should be punished for stealing property or giving away the boss' money at knife point, as well. That's a total absurd.

Besides, do you think she would get away with it if she had been in the fields but some people had been passing by and could have helped her? Don't build impossible constructs on your own interpretation of the letter of it, but try to figure out the concept and the principle behind it. In this case, the principle is that if you don't resist when you can, then you can hardly say you didn't want it (as in you didn't want it per se but got along with it because of a calculation of possible results). Harsh but makes sense. And not even so much as active resistance was required but just calling for help. There was no mention of "if however a sword or knife lieth nearby" yadda yadda. So don't drag it on and on to absurd. You make a logical error by instantly projecting on the principle the most extreme individual case possible. The most likely situation in the realia of ancient Israel would be a kinsman entering the tent where the woman was making food or fixing some clothes and telling her he desired her. Or demanding sex. She could for example agree because of pressure or fear of confrontation or of him spreading rumours or becoming her enemy -- and that would be bad. If so much as being away from other people was taken into consideration, would immediate threat of death not have been? If the woman were to be stoned for not crying for help with a knife on her neck and most likely dying, then she might as well have been punished from not running away from those fields, fighting, or whatever. So to reiterate myself: don't read more than is really written.

In my view, that law prevents something which some modern women do: they go along with all the sex and claim rape afterwards. In ancient Israel, a higher standard was required. No had to be a real no. Not a faint yes, lack of overly active cooperation, whatever. Otherwise, it was more or less consensual premarital sex, even though consent wasn't really ready and overjoyed.

It's easy to understand that if your boss gives you something to take care of, you're expected to guard it and be responsible and you wouldn't be patted on the back for giving it out to someone who simply lays a hand on it and takes it away. So in a culture where sex outside marriage was a crime, why is it so hard to understand that a woman who wouldn't cry for help in a situation where she could receive it, would be blamed?

The whole thing shows that for ancient Jews premarital sex was something so bad that they were supposed not to take it lightly and even resist up to a point in case of assault. Something not really understandable for many in the current age of fastfood kind of relationships and sex.

And yes, I believe that people give in way too easily in situations requiring some spine from them. For example not being promoted otherwise does not make it good to sleep with the boss.

Hope the biblical offshot is dead now and we can return to the mainstream topic.

 

@Chevalier: I have studied the entire bible. It's just that posting all of Leviticus and Deuteronomy would be a waste of SP's resources, and it's unlikely that anyone would read it if I did post the entire book.

I haven't built an impossible construct. A woman being raped in the city was, essentially, dead either way. Let me explain something. Most male rapists don't use weapons. They use their physical power to control their victims. Most victims do not cry out because their rapists have a vested interest in not getting caught and also because they are paralyzed by fear. One in four women becomes a victim of sexual assault. Ask one of these victims about it, if you still don't understand how a man could physically intimidate a woman so much that she would not cry out when being raped. Remember, also, that the rapist will be killed if he is caught. He is very likely to kill his victim if she tries to cry out. So, this women is damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. If she tries to cry out, she could be killed. If she does not, she will be killed when there is no blood on the sheet on her wedding night.

I also noticed you still haven't responded to the fact that a woman who was raped was required to marry the man who raped her.

Our historical mistreatment of women is well documented. Women didn't start having their rights protected until the early 1900's in the United States (and are, in most parts of the world, still subject to mistreatment and unequal rights), so I am honestly shocked that anyone would actually think that our modern western viewpoints on women's rights (which have only been around since @1970) existed 4,000-6,000 years ago on a societal scale. I'm sorry to go so off-topic, but it needs to pointed out that the world has not always been the way it is today. Such an assertion is painfully naive, at best.

The fact that mistreatment of women and treating them like property was considered acceptable doesn't mean that it didn't happen. That marriage and women were both viewed differently 4-6 thousand years ago was my point.

[ March 19, 2006, 21:42: Message edited by: Drew ]

 

@ NOG,

I can respect your concerns; in fact, the reason why I put the "you're not hurting anyone else" part in was much more about emotional harm than anything else. However, people have no right to impose beliefs on someone else when any concept of harm is so thinly stretched. Dislike it, despise it if you wish; like I said, I'd support you 100% in whatever you decided was right for you, unless you tried to force it on others.

I've never struck a case where someone has stayed in a relationship just because they've had sex with their partner (although I know more than a few who've stuck around just to get laid when it's been clear that the relationship is dead). Truthfully, I think that scenario of yours is mainly about the person's self-esteem. I've seen confident, successful people turned into emotional wrecks by psychologically abusive and manipulative partners who have managed to convince them that they're the only ones who could love them that much.

Absolutely, Barmy.

As Woody Allen said, "Love is the answer - but while you're waiting for the answer, sex raises some pretty good questions."

[ March 20, 2006, 02:34: Message edited by: NonSequitur ]

 

Damn. Never thought of that. That would explain a lot though.

I disagree that no one stays happily married, even after a long, long time. Sure, in my case, you can say that my wife and I have only been married for 3 years, so eventually we may stop loving each other. But what about my parents who have now been married for 35 years? Or my grandparents who were married for 46 years prior to my grandfather's death? I'm not saying that this doesn't happen to some people - that's why the divorce rate is almost 40% in the U.S. But to universally apply it and say this happens to EVERYONE is naive.

 

@Drew:
Sorry, but Chev is right. Also remember that it takes time to kill someone with your bare hands. In ancient Jerusalem a woman desperatly crying out for help would be answered in seconds (remember close living quarters, close housing, small streets, there was probably someone just around the corner or in the next room). The best the attacker could do was try to break her neck, which is VERY hard if you don't catch the person by surprise, or crush her tracia, which I don't know if they knew about at the time, and can be fixed if caught in time anyway. She's got pretty good odds of success.
And the issue of raping a virgin has more to do with taking care of her than punnishing him. Very few men at the time would marry a young woman who wasn't a virgin. If the rapist was killed, she would be stuck (probably for life) with no income other than her family. By making the rapist marry her and never divorce her, she is guaranteed a life, and he won't abuse her because she could just go to her family (probably just a street down or so) and they would probably beat him, castrate him, or even kill him and take care of her. Vigilante justice was much more acceptable and common at the time.

@NonSequitur:
I don't plan on forcing my views on anyone, don't worry, just convincing them of them.

I have. It wasn't pretty. It REALLY wasn't pretty. And there are a lot of people out there with poor self esteem, so just because this is the root of the problem doesn't mean we should discount it.

@Whoever put it:

"Am I a man, or a butterfly dreaming I'm a man?"- Confuscious, I think. Maybe Sun Tzu, but I'm not sure. If anyone knows, please tell me.

@Aldeth:
Exactly. I'm not married yet, but my parents have been happily married for over 30 years, and my grandparents were married for ~60+ years before death came in. This my not be forever, but it's close enough for me.

 

Actually, living with your wife and kids is:
a) in some ways financially better because many expenses are shared. It is cheaper for people to live together than by themselves
b) my life would be much more stressful if I didn't have my family. For example, I'd have to cook my own dinner when I got home tired from work, versus having a nice warm meal waiting for me.

 

So it's about money, income, quality of life and so on. This was the case with most marriages for a very long time, rape of no, love or no.

Marrying out of love is a rather new concept, as I'm sure everybody here realises, and so it seems strange to me to talk about this "two people exclaiming their love for each other" part linking it to religion and history.

The old idea of premarital sex being forbidden and non-virgins being damaged goods seems to stem from not wanting to provide for someone else's children. Nowadays, with dna tests and everything, that concern is obsolete.

Maybe the idea was also to keep the woman from knowing whether her husband's good in bed or not, being unable to compare.

 

Actually, the view of marriage as ann issue of money or power is the 'new' part. That was predominent in the middle ages, but, with the exclusion of powerful families, marriage from ancient Israel up to Rome was primarily due to love. The issue of virginity had less to do with damaged goods and more to do with reputation, disease, and other people's kids. Remember, they couldn't test for syphalis back then.

 

"Arranged marriages" ring a bell at all? Those were commonplace long before the Middle Ages. Do correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's common in the Old Testament too that women don't choose who they marry - it's their parents who make those decisions.

Actually that's pretty much what I said.

And now that we *can* test all sorts of things, there's no reason to cling to that particular way of thinking.

 

@NOG and Chev: Clearly, neither of you don't know what it means to be a woman.......and physically weaker than almost any man. Most of the time a woman is raped the man doesn't have a weapon because he doesn't need it. He's usually 50 lbs heavier and a few inches taller......and a lot stronger. Men don't try to rape the woman they just saw benching 225. They pick a target they can easily overpower.

 

Ok, so basically we have all learned that in the past in most clasical European/Middle Eastern/Eastern cultures premarital sex was a big NO NO. But Susipaisti made a good point in pointing out that we can now test for STD's. Furthermore, marriages are, for the most part in the western world, no longer arranged. On top of that, its a lot easier to tell if you are raising/supporting your own kids, not some other guys. And because of the women's rights movement, women are no longer considered less than men, and are definitley not considered property, if they ever were. Thus, the possible practical reasons for waiting until marriage to have sex that were applicable in the past are no longer applicable today. So unless you are religious and take the Bible (or Torah I suppose) to be absolute, ageless truth, then there doesn't seem to be much of a case for premarital sex being detrimental.

 

The reason premarital sex is wrong is because when you sleep with someone, you give that person a part of your heart, and if that relationship does not work out, you then have less commitment to your future spouse. I am probably butchering this, but I read a great quote: "The happiest man does not know there is a world beyond his backyard." If you sleep with enough people, break enough hearts, and have enough deep cracks through your own heart, future relationships will be held the closest then possible: arm's length.

 

Late-Night-Thinker (cool name btw), I think you might be right, in that everyone you sleep with claims a little bit of you. But even so, marrying someone does not guarentee that you will never be with another person again. One can still give a piece of their heart (or even more) to one's significant other, then find the relationship fail and become crushed. In fact, I would argue that there many more ways that one can give a piece of one's heart to someone without having sex. Which, by your logic, would mean that the sensible thing to do would be to never persue an emotionally intimate, loving relationship that is not 100% certain to result in marriage, out of the the fear that the realationship would fail and take part of your heart with it.

 

That is a good point. I think I may have been wrong about the heart permanently losing pieces. In fact, it is those "loving relationships" (although non-sexual in my case) which actually seem to be the very casts which allow regrowth and mending. But---and this is important---intimate, although not necessarily sexual, relationships mold us into who we are within certain social roles. So when someone has intimate sexual relationships with many people, they are molded "generic", rather than molded specifically and perfectly for just one other person. While a person who has been with many may understand how to satisfy the different needs of many, a person whom has only been with one will have only needs that can be satisfied by that one.

I know it is not going to be easy, but I think I will have a much more deeply-committed future marriage if I wait until I am married to have sex again. Though my virginity has certainly been long gone, perhaps if given enough time my heart will someday become an unshaped mass; a mass looking to fill the life of another, rather than a rigidly contoured thing which searches for the impossible to find counterpart to its specifically formed cracks and prominences. I think waiting until I am married will give me a second (or twentieth...) chance. Hopefully so!