Hi Dawn - thanks very much for your speech. You are a gutsy lady.

Rob L.
Rob Lloyd | 05.11.07 - 10:07 am | #

Dawn, you have an incomparable way with ideas and words. I recommended your book yet again to another friend of mine yesterday! :)
Kate P | 05.11.07 - 10:46 am | #

Thanks so much, Rob and Kate. Kate, so happy to hear you're recommending my book!
Dawn Eden | 05.11.07 - 2:32 pm | #

Dawn - thank you so much for your committed stand on this and taking the risk of being so vulnerable! Your book was amazing and just what I needed when I read it about a month ago. I divorced three and half years ago, and my second go-round in the dating world has been very difficult to say the least. I have been shocked by how many people in their late 30's and early 40's (men and women) seem so emotionally crippled. While most like to blame it on their divorce, in many cases the divorce happened years before, and since then they have engaged in an endless cycle of hookups and breakups. I think this is just as much a culprit in the emotional damage. So, thank you for giving me the courage to embrace chastity! I passed the book on to a friend and have a few others I will buy copies for. God bless you!
Janet | 05.11.07 - 3:54 pm | #

Dawn:

Words fail me. I am glad they didn't fail you! Great speech.
Dcn Scott | Homepage | 05.11.07 - 5:05 pm | #

Impressive. You're brave to be so outspoken. I might just have to read that book of yours.

All the Best, -B
B | Homepage | 05.11.07 - 5:40 pm | #

Really great Dawn.

Like to explore one thought after reading Pope BXVI's talk to youth last night http://amywelborn.typepad.com/ op...ope_to_the.html and his reference to the treasure of youth and discovering life as a gift and a task (instead of task, I prefer the word calling - through an intimacy with God).

You wrote: Gradually, I stopped looking at my life through the lenses of entitlement and started to look at it – and especially other people – as a gift. Now, I’ll go to social gatherings and instead of thinking like I had before – “I better have chemistry with some man here, otherwise it’s a waste” – I’m simply determined to enjoy myself.

This concept goes well for young Republicans, but the idea here of "enjoy" feels a lot like culture's myth, to be happy, and again its close proximity to entitlement. Maybe at some point you might write, and what I think you may already be experiencing, "I'm simply determined to walk with God."

Thank you for sharing your walk with God.

Peace be with you,
Aramis
3 Massketeers
Aramis | Homepage | 05.11.07 - 6:09 pm | #

What my pal Aramis did not tell you is that he linked your Speech to New York City Young Republican Club at The Three Massketeers.

The 3Ms request a dainty, m'lady, a mere trifle, as a token of our admiration of your fell Joan-of-Arc spirit and leadership. What ho and anon!

Athos
3 Massketeers
Athos | Homepage | 05.11.07 - 7:30 pm | #

Nobody aside from your mother - not even a doctor - is allowed access to your body the way a lover is. And the caresses of sexual encounters are not that different from those shared by a mother and infant. That's why it's easy to get confused about the meaning of casual sex. It's hard to suppress that instinctive emotional response.

You speak of the irony of how the sex that was supposed to help you feel closer in fact pushed you further away from men. Here's another irony: it's that the "shell" that develops to protect one from emotional injury has the curious effect of making sex itself duller and more lacklustre. Sex with too much emotional Protection dulls sensation, the way men insist that condoms do.

Some essential excitement seeps away when both parties know the encounter is a dead end. There are occasions when this is not true - extramarital affairs in which both parties agree in advance not to disrupt their marriages are an example that comes to mind - but in such cases, the excitement and sense of risk-taking comes from the breaking of a taboo.

Which brings me to a theory I have about the increasing taste for what I think of as "weird sex" in today's society, and by weird sex I mean throwing in pornography, toys, spanking, bondage - the whole repertoire of Stupid Sex Tricks: that they exist to try to re-create, by artifice, the intense, over-the-top excitement that nature allows to two people for whom sex is a rare luxury rather than a frequent indulgence, and in which they are risking not only bodily, but spiritual nakedness. (For such lovers, of course, bodily nakedness alone is a hugely vulnerable state, adding to the intensity of their experience of each other.)
alias clio | Homepage | 05.11.07 - 8:49 pm | #

Thanks very much, all. Athos, I drop my handkerchief to you.

Alias Clio, you write:

Which brings me to a theory I have about the increasing taste for what I think of as "weird sex" in today's society, and by weird sex I mean throwing in pornography, toys, spanking, bondage - the whole repertoire of Stupid Sex Tricks: that they exist to try to re-create, by artifice, the intense, over-the-top excitement that nature allows to two people for whom sex is a rare luxury rather than a frequent indulgence, and in which they are risking not only bodily, but spiritual nakedness

Well said. I talk about that toward the end of the Thrill of the Chaste chapter "The First Cut Is the Deepest."
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 1:13 am | #

Is Dawn Eden your real name? It's a great name for a convert, and it's a far cry better than Shanda Leer!

Funny that you should mention Amanda Marcotte, faux feminist (as opposed to genuine articles like Serrin Foster of Feminists for Life of America), sexual libertine, and webmistress of a vile anti-Catholic blog called Pandagon, her "baby," so to speak. The more she heaps scorn on you for celebrating life and chastity, the better, because it may prompt her jaded and world-weary readers to actually pay your blog a visit, and that, by the grace and mercy of God, may make all the difference.
Lex | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 4:05 pm | #

Alias Clio,
This is fascinating (and don't worry, I know not to be the least bit vulgar in these discussions!).

But, please, what exactly are the particular circumstances of the people "for whom sex is a rare luxury rather than a frequent indulgence" as allowed by nature?

I got a bit lost there!
jody tresidder | 05.12.07 - 4:43 pm | #

My dear Ms T., I'm not certain whether you are sending up my perhaps awkward sentence construction, or whether its the concept of sex as a "rare luxury" that you find incomprehensible.

Could you elucidate, please?

your obedient servant,

clio
alias clio | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 6:38 pm | #

Actually, now that you mention it, Jody, I wouldn't blindly support the "rare luxury" part -- providing we're talking about married folks.
Dawn Eden | 05.12.07 - 6:55 pm | #

Please excuse the interruption, Alias Clio, but I couldn't help but notice that your picture at your blog reminds me of the Statue of Liberty for some reason, sans spiky hat. It must have been a hard hair day...
Lex | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 6:56 pm | #

Ah yes, the perils of the sculpted look. I must consider finding a new stonemason.
alias clio | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 7:07 pm | #

BTW, Catholic couples who do not want to have too many children too close together (for reasons of health, fatigue, money, etc.) may be compelled to make sexual relations a rare luxury.
alias clio | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 7:11 pm | #

For those who are that fertile, perhaps it would be better to call it a special and precious gift of closeness instead of a "rare luxury."

Too much identification of luxury with consumption and success. The word's unfortunately become meaningless.
Therese Z | 05.12.07 - 7:55 pm | #

At the risk of having my single and male head handed to me on a platter, there's this on the rare and luxurious scale to consider, from here.

"During a woman's menstrual cycle, there are only about three days when her egg is available for fertilization. Sperm can survive up to 72 hours (3 days) in the vagina and uterus, so if sexual intercourse occurs up to three days before a woman is fertile, she can still potentially become pregnant. Thus, there are about six days per month (3 days prior to fertility, and 3 days of fertility) that a woman can conceive."
Lex | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 8:22 pm | #

Yes, that's true, Lex. For most women. There's probably a large minority whose cycles are less predictable, though.

For some others, the problem is that ovulation can be triggered out of its usual time by stress and other factors.

Another problem is that for those who are already parents, especially of small children, the opportunity for sexual relations does not always arrive in synch with the non-fertile period of the woman's cycle. The pressures of work, too, can make the opportunity rare.

Those, at least, are the complaints I've heard most often from people who were attempting to practise this form of birth control.
alias clio | Homepage | 05.12.07 - 9:24 pm | #

Forgive me; I know you didn't mean it to be so but some of the descriptions in your talk kinda turned me on.....albeit in a pristinely chaste way, of course.

But seriously (although I'm still not quite sure how facetious I was being), I was rather taken with your comments about joy. As it is for you, joy is the central emotion I most associate with religion although "emotion" isn't quite apt; it's more an abiding foundation for emotion rather than emotion itself. It's a constant glow rather than an on/off switch.

What I've found is that joy (rather than the transitory phantasm of pleasure) can only occur if we have a sense of a living, breathing quality to everything where the world seems to be charged with Life. In this state of mind, everything, even the seemingly inanimate, seems to be permeated by Spirit.

And this seems to me to be the foundation of joy. Once you have it, all your little joys and happinesses seem to flow from it and become more and more plentiful. You start to relish and savour all sorts of things you wouldn't have noticed without it. Your happiness stops being dependent on fulfilling your dreams and attaining your goals but seems to be a perennial state rather than a fitful thing.

And without it......well, try to explain it to somebody who doesn't have that zest for ordinary things.

Sermon over...sorry; I couldn't help myself. Sometimes the sententious descends on me......
Lloyd | 05.13.07 - 3:57 am | #

Alias Clio,

My problem is that you're building a theory on a false -if fascinating -assumption that equates the quality of sex ("the intense, over-the-top excitement") with quantity "a rare luxury".

And that's something I've never quite read before about why sex between married Catholics is meant to be better than that between less discerning folk.

The less sex you have doesn't mean the better sex you have when you do.

It was the use of "rare luxury" that stuck out. (As Therese Z. said -"luxury" has meaningless shop worn connotations. )

I suspect the worst connotation of your use of "luxury" here is "not essential". Sex is definitely not inessential to relationships - even if you'd rather NOT have another child.

On a practical level, if couples are told that Natural Family Planning is great for their sex life because you can't have lots of sex (safely), well -no wonder contraception has caught on. And I'm not being facetious here.

I think somehow you came up with the "rare luxury" bit by working doggedly backwards from your distaste for decadent "weird sex" ("and by weird sex I mean throwing in pornography, toys, spanking, bondage - the whole repertoire of Stupid Sex Tricks.").

So you've removed everything that identifies "weird sex" - baby, bathtub and all and including, implicitly, frequency...

And you end up capturing "rare luxury" as a prescriptive selling point in and of itself.

(I'm sure some of the Church Fathers would approve - including St. Paul - I think? - but it seems a step too far for many!)
jody tresidder | 05.13.07 - 7:58 am | #

Ms Tresidder, if you check out my initial post you'll see that it never mentions marriage or cohabitation.

I was primarily addressing the situation of single people who have many opportunities for casual sex, agreeing with Dawn that it is possible to become jaded by too-frequent, dead-end encounters.
alias clio | Homepage | 05.13.07 - 8:41 am | #

Lloyd, I think you would like my book. I talk about the same thing throughout, especially in Chapter 19.

Jody, I had the exact same interpretation of Alias Clio as you did -- great encapsulation of the backwards logic (which is what it seemed -- though Alias now says she was speaking of the unmarried). But I don't think the Church Fathers would have approved of rare sex for the married, except during occasional times when they were "giving themselves over to prayer," as Paul says.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 05.13.07 - 9:18 am | #

Well, I don't know about the Fathers. Peter Brown's The Body and Society, which talks about the Fathers prior to St Augustine, suggests that many early Christian communities, and their bishops, were quite doubtful about frequent sex for married couples. (So, incidentally, were pagan moralists, says Brown: "Frequent sexual activity was frowned upon. It decreased the fertility of male seed and hence the father's chance of children." So we get no relief *there*.)

Many early Fathers believed that people who had recently engaged in sexual relations should not receive the Eucharist, nor, if they were male and married priests, serve at the altar.

It was partly this doubt about married men celebrating Mass that led the early Church to conclude that though there was no sound theoretical reason to exclude married men from the priesthood, there were good practical reasons for doing so.

Augustine's more positive views of marital sexual activity had a great influence on the Church, but earlier Fathers, according to Brown, including men of high influence like Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, and Jerome, would have found his Commentary on Genesis, for example, "highly idiosyncratic. All three had shared an instinctive, largely unanalyzed, assumption about the origins of marriage and of sexuality. Marriage, intercourse and Paradise were as incompatible, in their minds, as were Paradise and death. Of that, at least, they felt they could be certain."
alias clio | Homepage | 05.13.07 - 10:17 am | #

Alias Clio,

With the greatest respect, it wasn't at all clear of whom you were orginally thinking!

(Just seen Dawn's comment - which has given me enormous relief!).

It was your further comment: "BTW, Catholic couples who do not want to have too many children too close together (for reasons of health, fatigue, money, etc.) may be compelled to make sexual relations a rare luxury "...that further underscored - if one had already gotten off on the wrong foot - the married couple misunderstanding.

There was that "rare luxury" phrase again!

BTW, I don't automatically take an adversarial position to your comments! Perhaps ironically, it's because I believe a great deal of warm understanding and joy and poetry - even humor -has been lavished by Catholic writers on sexual union within marriage that I jumped too quickly on the "rare luxury" bit!
jody tresidder | 05.13.07 - 10:35 am | #

...hang on a moment, Alias Clio!!

Just checked your blog profile.

You like Night of the Hunter!!!!

(The original, I assume.)

Just brilliant.
jody tresidder | 05.13.07 - 11:01 am | #

i am a young man and while i could go my whole life with a new woman every night i would not be happy. my youth will will soon end and i fear being alone in my rocking chair or worse being with someone i can not talk to and do not love. if i could take back every ecounter i have had with a woman i would. the hours of fun will never make up for years of being alone. i am a good boy now. i am getting married and while we are having sex and it was sex that bonded me to this girl i know that i am one of the lucky few. someone up above has shown me mercy and saved me others will not know what they have done until it is too late.
luke | 05.14.07 - 2:53 pm | #

Dawn,

What an amazing speech. I wish I had read your work (or that it was even around!) when I was younger. After spending many years thinking that I must be crazy - or that the whole world was crazy to ignore the emotional repercussions of sex - and getting dumped far too many times for not putting out, it is incredible to read the work of someone who can articulate the chastity position so well.

Amanda Marcotte has attacked me on several occasions. She pays lip service to various ideas, but, when pushed, will reveal how truly extreme she really is. Her blog isn't just anti-Catholic: it's anti-life (she once sniped me out for my pro-adoption position, saying that it is not "self-determinative"), anti-abstinence (because only repressed people don't put out), anti-family, and anti-religion (because religion is a tool of the patriarchy). Her concept of feminism has no room for women as spiritual or emotional creatures.

So if she is trashing you, then good on you, lassie!

Many thanks for having the courage to speak about your conversion - not just religious, but emotionally and sexually as well. There are many people like me, I'm sure, who are comforted by the fact that we are not repressed, stunted creatures for not sleeping around.
theobromophile | Homepage | 05.16.07 - 6:23 pm | #