Thursday, December 25, 2008

Burning Stupid: Townhall Edition

Via Feministe, I found myself reading Dennis Prager's latest babblings on Townhall.

Ordinarily, I simply dismiss Prager as a basic right-wingnut theocon extremist. But, today, Prager is exceptionally offensive:

First, women need to recognize how a man understands a wife's refusal to have sex with him: A husband knows that his wife loves him first and foremost by her willingness to give her body to him.


Ummm...I don't even know where to begin with this bunch of ludicrous reasoning. Prager has clearly the sex act with love; and then he's gone one step further by construing the act in terms of possession - specifically the woman's body as her husband's possession.

But, it gets better, and even more illogical:

Few women know their husband loves them because he gives her his body (the idea sounds almost funny). This is, therefore, usually a revelation to a woman. Many women think men's natures are similar to theirs, and this is so different from a woman's nature, that few women know this about men unless told about it.


Okay, I don't doubt for a minute that men and women have very different thinking when it comes to sex. One only has to consider the biological price that a woman stands to have to pay afterwards to figure out that just maybe she's going to be somewhat less enthusiastic at times. However, what Prager derives from this is utterly ridiculous.

In Part II, I will explain in detail why mood should play little or no role in a woman's determining whether she has sex with her husband.


Uh? Excuse me? Sorry, Prager, but mood is part of the equation. A man who demands sex of his spouse when she is unwilling is committing something we call rape - even when in the confines of marriage. The idea that a woman should be 'willing' anytime her husband demands sex suggests that the man bears no responsibility for being aware of his spouse's emotional needs. Sex is a mutual experience - if one of the parties doesn't want to be there, it becomes rape.

Everything written here applies under two conditions: 1. The woman is married to a good man. 2. She wants him to be a happy husband.


What? Since when was the husband's happiness the responsibility of his wife? Last I checked, marriages are a partnership - hopefully one where both partners are in tune with each other's needs.

The utter irresponsibility of these comments suggests Prager's idea of marriage is firmly rooted in the stone age somewhere - you know the same era where an infertile couple was always considered to be the woman's fault. Perhaps this explains why Prager's marriages eventually collapsed in divorce?

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