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19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

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Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#91

Post by oldmanjay »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #28
Natsu wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With respect to homosexuality, as far as I'm aware, all of the verses that describe a punishment for it say that the person who partakes of it will end up on a sickbed. Given the times, it probably carried a high risk of STIs. Proverbs has similar warnings with respect to men who lose their vigor to prostitutes, or as a result of fornication.

The practical consequences of homosexuality and prostitution (STIs and reduced vigor) are of much less concern to Jesus and Paul (and other Biblical figures) than the immediate problem of ignoring God's design and intentions for sex. Here's a quick list of passages dealing with sexual immorality: http://www.openbible.info/topics/sexual_immorality Notice the theme where the immoral person does not get to inherit the k…

so given that the biblical command to suppress and channel sexuality is in direct conflict with modern observation that sexual expression is necessary to be spiritually healthy, do you still find the bible compelling?

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#92

Post by cableshaft »

notdonspaulding wrote: post #6

From the article: > Indeed, in many conservative religious denominations, > the same tenets are echoed today. While I'm not going to claim I hold the same tenets as a book I've never read, I guess that I'm in one of the "conservative religious denominations" which the author is indicating here. I can certainly see some resemblance between a few of the examples cited from the book and my current (religiously-inspired)…

I've sat through two weddings where the pastor chose to share that passage.

One time it was without commentary, and the whole ceremony came across poorly to me (he even solicited conversions to his church at the end, as if it were a public Sunday service).

The other was a younger guy who didn't say the whole thing and tried to explain it away the best he could as more or less being about "supporting each other". I liked that wedding a lot better in general, but I still think that's a terrible passage to recite during a wedding.

So if pastors think that is the most important bit to share when performing actual marriages in public, you shouldn't be surprised that this is what people are most familiar with.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#94

Post by mettamage »

pron wrote: post #51

The early Victorian era saw the greatest separation between the roles of the sexes in Western culture (they even had rooms for men and rooms for women), and is the source of modern sexism -- a notion which is often misunderstood by many (and viewed as accusatory, even though it is merely descriptive). At the core of Victorian sexism lies the notion (which had not been so pronounced, or well-formulated before) that wo…

I never viewed sexism this way. But now that I am taking this perspective I can't help but notice how some to many women play a part in this as well. To put it a bit blunt and simplified: a considerable amount of women want to be treated like a princess. I guess those type of fantasies are an exaggeration of how a woman should've been treated in the early Victorian era. Another variant that I have experienced is the (partially) subconscious behaviour that women want to be dependent on males, but they don't want males to depend on them. If these cultural notions of dependence and being treated to the point of being (almost) spoiled don't go away, then a form of modern sexism will always exist.

Note/nuance: I'm just stating the contribution of women here, because I've never thought about it this way. Males contribute to modern sexism as well in obvious ways (to me).

Edit: could down votes be explained? A down vote is not enough feedback for me to adapt my posting behaviour.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#95

Post by grandalf »

An interesting thing about marriage is that no matter who earns wages it is ultimately an economic partnership.

Someone must keep the living space clean, someone must obtain food, etc. If there are children, someone must care for them.

Because of this, when marriage is freely chosen, it typically starts out as equal. Both participants have roughly equal costs and benefits, and are both happy with the exchange of value.

But time changes things. Wages often increase, looks often decline, personalities evolve. Profound setbacks occur as loved ones get sick or die, careers suffer failures and successes, etc.

Most people are morally average, of average attractiveness and average intellect. Most have an average work ethic, average level of discipline, and average level of fortitude.

Life stretches most people beyond their endowment in many areas. We lie or deceive, we get lazy, we get complacent, we give up, we cheat, we fail to observe data without significant and harmful bias, we let life happen, our faces take on a habitual grimace that becomes permanent as our skin's elasticity diminishes.

For a marriage to work long term it must be resilient to this abundant averageness and the inevitable decay that occurs over time... when the weak or neglected parts of the mechanism start to falter.

The question is, should a marriage work long term? Is it a failure when it does not? What if it lasts 10 years, or 20, or even 5? Should it not have occurred?

We marry because we are the primates with dogged optimism about pair bonds. We seek another who will provide us with the validation or the comfort that we seek, and who will dull the harshness of the world in some specific way that we consider most wanting and most sacred.

Even the gay marriage debate, for all the focus on equality, is fundamentally about the symbolism of the pair bond and its primacy in our primate society. We are herd animals, and the minimum viable herd size is two.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#96

Post by VLM »

zensavona wrote: post #77
gd1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The same law which imposes upon the husband the duty of supporting his wife, gives him a general and paramount claim to her obedience.” I bet you don't get this bit in return.

I wouldn't "claim obedience" from anyone, but I definitely think that (masculine) integrity inspires (feminine) loyalty. I'm not just talking about sexual loyalty, but loyalty of support and confidence. I have on multiple occasions thought about this dynamic and find it really interesting (protection/nurturing). I think it has something to do with women's superior empathetic qualities. It seems to me like (often, in…

Primate authority comes from (at least) two methods or paths, dominance and prestige. I guess if you want a bad one line summary, dominance is management or in its more extreme form its like an overseer with a whip vs prestige is leadership or in its more extreme form its like hero worship. Because of long term memory for revenge purposes, and easy to use lethal weapons have been invented, prestige is way more important for humans than most any other animal, although some animals do use prestige signalling, just none quite as much as people. The animal world is mostly dominance ordered.

Anyway, grand op is claiming prestige signaling isn't going to provide results (which is incredibly unlikely in a human pack; maybe a wolf pack, sure, or if the human participants are doin it wrong or are crazy, sure) and you're claiming prestige signalling usually leads to prestige results, so op is wrong and you're right but it doesn't matter because you're talking past each other on separate topics. Ironically it doesn't matter because as you correctly point out, dominance and prestige results are more or less the same most of the time.

The hundred year old manual is talking something totally different from both of you, that there's a moral or ethical need for both results to be exactly identical or else things are going to get unpleasant because prestige means are generally way more pleasant than dominance means. She can either play along with her side of the prestige strategy or unfortunately the dominance strategy will inevitably end up getting played and that's no fun.

Assuming its your responsibility to water the horses, you properly lead a horse to water and it refuses to drink, that's just not going to be fun for anyone involved, it really is the horses job or duty to drink after its been properly led. Note its not just leadership, its leadership with the positive adjectives applied; no fair weaseling out on the obedience obligation due to poor leadership excuses if by the very definition of the claim it only follows from good leadership.

Good luck defining good leadership.

There's also some civilization wide social contract philosophy about good leadership inherently being owed obedience by the nature of the leadership being good, and no other justification is necessary assuming the leadership is good, blah blah blah, all kind of in opposition to the concept of the divine right of kings and hereditary monarchy. To some extent this is the moral justification of democracy, you have to obey the good leader you selected, assuming its not all a sham like modern elections, etc. And this is just applying that large scale societal stuff to a tiny family, for better or worse. This makes it a scaling problem and HN loves scaling problems.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#97

Post by sageikosa »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #59
sageikosa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the concept is most often associated with Rousseau in the 18th century. What the Victorian era had as an advantage was steam powered printing presses to spread uniform cultural concepts (regardless of their veracity or value) over broader areas more quickly. I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that.

And an empire with the world's largest military, ruled by a despotic aristocracy which had made most of its money from slavery, drug running, and land + resource grabs in distant countries. "Moral" is perhaps not quite the most apt word. >I'm glad we're finally living in an era that has gotten past that. We haven't. The product has become American Neoliberal Capitalism instead of British Imperial Capitalism, but it's…

Actually I was referring to the ability for barely researched stereotypes of past or foreign cultures to spread and become a moral cause. That's been going on for centuries all over the globe. It picked up speed with the industrialization of information exchange, and now we can all laugh at how stupid the Victorians, the Communists and the American Revolutionaries were without ever having to consider they were successful for some reason or another.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#98

Post by Zelphyr »

jmaistre wrote: post #84
Zelphyr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Take crying for example. In our society we're seen as weak if we cry. Except crying is a perfectly valid human emotional response. Sure, we naturally don't cry as often as women but I still can't understand how we got to the point where we have to deny ourselves a basic physiological response lest we be shunned by the other monkeys who also need and want to do it!

> In our society we're seen as weak if we cry. Isn't this the case in most societies? My sense from history is that is only acceptable for men to cry at extreme events -- such as death of a wife/child/brother, or the loss of a kingdom. The other common trope for crying is if a peasant or low-level official is begging the forgiveness from a king who is about to terminate him. But in the modern society such tragedies h…

Actually, I my understanding is its perfectly acceptable in many Middle-Eastern countries for men to cry openly. They'll also hold another mans hand while having a conversation with him apparently.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#99

Post by pron »

mettamage wrote: post #94
pron wrote: post #51

The early Victorian era saw the greatest separation between the roles of the sexes in Western culture (they even had rooms for men and rooms for women), and is the source of modern sexism -- a notion which is often misunderstood by many (and viewed as accusatory, even though it is merely descriptive). At the core of Victorian sexism lies the notion (which had not been so pronounced, or well-formulated before) that wo…

I never viewed sexism this way. But now that I am taking this perspective I can't help but notice how some to many women play a part in this as well. To put it a bit blunt and simplified: a considerable amount of women want to be treated like a princess. I guess those type of fantasies are an exaggeration of how a woman should've been treated in the early Victorian era. Another variant that I have experienced is the…

One of the basic things to understand in sociology and social psychology is that what people want is often shaped by what they are encouraged to want (and it's very easy to make people want something, as verified in psychology experiments). This is why modern feminism doesn't concentrate on the "want". Not because it's not important (it's very important!), but because it's hard to separate cause and effect, especially under an unequal distribution of power. We only look at the result: how power is distributed, and assume that people don't "inhernetly" want to have less power than others, as that would mean letting others determine their lives. Of course, this assumption could be wrong, but so far there is no evidence that is the case. Consequently, feminism is not concerned with who "contributes" what to sexism (it is easy to make people want to be subjugated; can they later be said to be contributing to their own subjugation?). Sexism is an objective state of society, not a specific behavior (misogyny is), and when we say that some action is sexist we mean that it contributes to sexism; the action itself can be completely free of any ill intent.

Re: 19th Century Marriage Manuals: Advice for Young Husbands

#100

Post by azernik »

DougN7 wrote: post #3

Call me old fashioned, but as a father and husband I do try to act this way: "He should always be ready to sacrifice his present personal pleasure to the future well-being of those who have the first and best claim to his regard.”

"Some of the information is merely common sense, the sort of generic advice newlyweds might hear from well-meaning relatives today. "
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