Tag Archives: Sex

Michel Houellebecq, Platform, Kindle Edition, 2004

Posted on by

Famed French author Michel Houellebecq does not need an introduction. That is why, instead of reviewing the book in the normal way, I decided to simply present some passages I found particularly striking. Not necessarily nice or pleasant—Houellebecq is not the kind of writer who makes you feel good about yourself, let alone the society in which you spend your life. But striking. Especially when I read them for the second time. Readers are welcome to agree, disagree, or add any others of their own; after all, though I expect to be censored every day, so far my blog remains free.

The words in italics after some paragraphs are mine.

p. 104.

“Further along there was a table of Hong Kong Chinese – recognizable by their filthy manners, which are difficult for Westerners to stomach, and which threw the Thai waiters into a state of panic, barely eased by the fact that they were used to it. Unlike the Thais, who behave in all circumstances with a finicky, even pernickety propriety, the Chinese eat rapaciously, laughing loudly, their mouths open, spraying bits of food everywhere, spitting on the ground and blowing their noses between their fingers – they behave quite literally like pigs. To make matters worse, that’s an awful lot of pigs.

Based on personal observation, I agree.

p. 112-13.

“At the time when the white man thought himself superior, racism wasn’t dangerous. For colonials, missionaries and lay teachers in the nineteenth century, the Negro was a big animal, none too clever, a sort of slightly more evolved monkey. At worst, they considered him a useful beast of burden, capable of performing complex tasks; at best a frustrated soul, coarse, but, through education, capable of elevating himself to God – or at least western reason. In both cases, they saw in him a ‘lesser brother’, and one does not feel ‘At the time when the white man thought himself superior, racism wasn’t dangerous. For colonials, missionaries and lay teachers in the nineteenth century, the Negro was a big animal, none too clever, a sort of slightly more evolved monkey. At worst, they considered him a useful beast of burden, capable of performing complex tasks; at best a frustrated soul, coarse, but, through education, capable of elevating himself to God – or at least western reason. In both cases, they saw in him a ‘lesser brother’, and one does not feel hatred for an inferior – at most a sort of cordial contempt. This benevolent, almost humanist racism has completely vanished. The moment the white man began to consider blacks as equals, it was obvious that sooner or later they would come to consider them to be superior. The notion of equality has no basis in human society… Once white men believed themselves to be inferior,.. the stage was set for a different type of racism, based on masochism: historically, it is in circumstances like these that violence, inter-racial wars and massacres break out. For example, all anti-Semites agree that the Jews have a certain superiority: if you read anti-Semitic literature, you’re stuck by the fact that the Jew is considered to be more intelligent, more cunning, that he is credited with having singular financial talents – and, moreover, greater communal solidarity. Result: six million dead.”

Western society seems to be determined to making men qua men feel inferior. That, my dear feminists, is when things become really dangerous for you.

p. 113-14.

“Racism… ‘seems to be characterized firstly by an accumulation of hostility, a more aggressive sense of competition between males of different races; but the corollary is an increased desire for the females of the other race. What is really at stake in racial struggles…is neither economic nor cultural, it is brutal and biological: it is competition for the cunts of young women.”

p. 115.

“[In Europe] it’s not the whites that make the law any more … I predict an increase in racial violence in Europe in years to come; it will all end in civil war… It will all be settled with Kalashnikovs.”

p. 188-89.
Consuming acai berry http://robertrobb.com/2017/06/ generic levitra cialis could also be a result of certain medication like diuretics, beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin II receptor blockers. This will help you to fight prostatitis. cialis viagra for women These drugs will be effective for that particular activity, but generic tadalafil prices they are not a permanent solution. These implants consist of either inflatable or semi-rigid on line levitra rods.
“As we get closer to suffering and cruelty, to domination and servility, we hit on the essential, the intimate nature of sexuality… “Cruelty is a primordial part of the human, it is found in the most primitive peoples: in the earliest tribal wars, the victors were careful to spare the lives of some of their prisoners to let them die later, suffering hideous tortures. This tendency persisted, it is constant throughout history, it remains true today: as soon as a foreign or civil war begins to erase ordinary moral constraints, you find human beings – regardless so. Cruelty is a primordial part of the human, it is found in the most primitive peoples: in the earliest tribal wars, the victors were careful to spare the lives of some of their prisoners to let them die later, suffering hideous tortures. This tendency persisted, it is constant throughout history, it remains true today: as soon as a foreign or civil war begins to erase ordinary moral constraints, you find human beings – regardless of race, people, culture – eager to launch themselves into the joys of barbarism and massacre. This is attested, unchanging, indisputable, but it has nothing whatever to do with the quest for sexual pleasure – equally primordial, equally strong.

p. 211.

A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn’t have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible – the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

p. 240-42.

“Something must be happening to make Westerners stop sleeping with each other; maybe it’s something to do with narcissism, or individualism, the cult of success, it doesn’t matter. The fact is that from about the age of twenty-five or thirty, people find it very difficult to meet new sexual partners; although they still feel the need to do so, it’s a need which fades very slowly. So they end up spending thirty years of their lives, almost the entirety of their adult lives, suffering permanent withdrawal.

Halfway along the path to inebriation, just before mindlessness ensues, one sometimes experiences moments of heightened lucidity. The decline of western sexuality was undoubtedly a major sociological phenomenon which it would be futile to attempt to explain by such and such a specific psychological factor… You have several hundred million Westerners who have everything they could want but no longer manage to obtain sexual satisfaction: they spend their lives looking, but they don’t find it and they are completely miserable. On the other hand, you have several billion people who have nothing, who are starving, who die young, who live in conditions unfit for human habitation and who have nothing left to sell except their bodies and their unspoiled sexuality. It’s simple, really simple to understand: it’s an ideal trading opportunity.

p. 244-54.

“Giving pleasure unselfishly: that’s what Westerners don’t know how to do any more. They’ve completely lost the sense of giving. Try as they might, they no longer feel sex as something natural. Not only are they ashamed of their own bodies, which aren’t up to porn standards, but for the same reasons they no longer feel truly attracted to the body of the other. It’s impossible to make love without a certain abandon, without accepting, at least temporarily, the state of being in a state of dependency, of weakness. Sentimental adulation and sexual obsession have the same roots, both proceed from some degree of selflessness; it’s not a domain in which you can find fulfilment without losing yourself. We have become cold, rational, acutely conscious of our individual existence and our rights; more than anything, we want to avoid alienation and dependence; on top of that we’re obsessed with health and hygiene: these are hardly ideal conditions in which to make love. The way things stand, the commercialization of sexuality in the East has become inevitable.”

p. 361.

“More than any other people, [the Germans] are acquainted with worry and shame, they feel the need for tender flesh, for soft, endlessly refreshing skin. More than any other people, they are acquainted with the desire for their own annihilation. It is rare to come across the vulgar, smug pragmatism of Anglo-Saxon sex tourists among them, that manner of endlessly comparing goods and prices. It is equally rare for them to exercise, to look after their bodies. In general, they eat too much, drink too much beer, get fat; most of them will die pretty soon. They are often friendly, they like to joke, to buy a round, to tell stories; but their company is soothing and sad.

I have lived in Germany and am fluent in the language. I’d say that hardly any German over 13 is free from the burden: the more they deny it, the guiltier they feel.

I understand death now… I don’t think it will do me much harm.”

But life can.

To Do or Not to Do

Posted on by

I doubt whether many of you are familiar with the famous Russian/Soviet poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1976). I myself came across her when researching a new book I am writing on Stalin. It was said that, in her early poetry in particular, “she was able to capture and convey the vast range of evolving emotions experienced in a love affair. From the first thrill of meeting to a deepening love contending with hatred, and eventually to violent destructive passion or total indifference.” A sad comment on the institution of marriage, isn’t it? And judging from what one keeps hearing about the way it kills love, often an all too realistic one.

Personally, though, I do not believe such an outcome to be inevitable. Rather than submit to it, and if only to remind myself, I have drawn up a short list of things that can be done, or left undone, in order to avoid it.

Here goes.

Things to Do

Make sure nothing and no one is able to come between you. Say a word against my alter ego, and you are out.

Share as many things as possible. Not just major joys and sorrows—that should come naturally as a matter of course. If she has to go to hospital, you want to be with her. And the other way around. But also, and above all, minor, everyday ones: as by taking off a couple of minutes to drink a cup of tea or eat an apple together.

Suspicion and love do not mix. So always put the best interpretation on whatever your spouse says and does. If the point comes where you cannot, better go your separate ways.

Even the best relationship/marriage does not absolutely preclude the possibility of misunderstandings. In case there is one, use humor to put things right. In general, humor is the greatest peacemaker there is. And the best prelude to bed.

Do whatever you can to make the life of your spouse easier, better, brighter. And rather than waiting until you’re asked, do it on your own initiative.

Appreciation, even of the smallest favors, will get you anywhere. So will small gestures, particularly such as are not needed. Holding open a door, for example when he/she comes in; or else a bunch of flowers at an unexpected moment. Just so.

Regardless of who bought it and who made the money, consider that everything you own belongs to both of you jointly. Even if, for tax or any other reasons, it is only registered on the name of one. At the same time, make sure neither of you is in a situation where your spouse has to ask for permission to buy anything.

In case you use nicknames on each other, make sure they are nice and, if at all possible, funny.

This guy had to be wondering why didn’t he learn viagra without prescription online Kung Fu. Male reproductive organ is very much sensitive in nature and cialis discount generic browse this link now thus that needs to be taken good care. Benefits of Taking Drivers Ed Online in Texas For most people, the recommended dosage of Vardenafil is one 10 mg tablet taken orally. brand viagra prices Read Full Report It has minerals, vitamins and over 85 micro-minerals. buy levitra vardenafil Lies are toxic. Even if they have remained undiscovered, and especially in the long run. Therefore, in case you have been cheating, owe up to it before your partner discovers what is going on. That way you may still be able to save whatever is left.  

My late grandfather once told me that the last thing he and my grandmother did each night before going to sleep was to have a hug and a kiss. I think that was excellent advice.

 

Things Not to Do

Never ever criticize your spouse in front of others.

Your spouse is not the cause of your misfortunes. If something went wrong, or simply if you are in a bad mood, don’t take it or on him or her.

If there is something you want to do but know you won’t be able to share with your spouse—don’t do it.

Don’t lie, unless in rare situations when it is a question of protecting the other.

Never ask your spouse whether, having sex with you, he or she was thinking about other partners he or she may have had or would like to have.  

Never ask your spouse to talk about his or her sexual experiences with others. Or else you may find yourself in the situation of the husband who asked his wife how many men she had had. Eleven, she answered. So I am number twelve? He asked. No, she said, you were number three.

*

These rules are the same for men and for women.

Good luck.

Dialogue No. XIV. Concluding Thoughts

Posted on by

Based on twenty years of thought, research and writing, this book provides answers to questions such as:

– In what ways are women privileged?

– What are the main similarities between men and women? What are the main differences?

– Who and what was Mary Wollstonecraft?

– Who understands women better—women or men?

– Why do so many men, including married men, visit prostitutes?

– What is the Kama Sutra all about?

– When will equality between men and women become real?
Hormone Problems- Testosterone and other hormones lead to high sex free viagra online drive, but do you know one out of five males doesn’t want sex. Some of which include the 2013 DC superhero movie http://deeprootsmag.org/2014/07/29/coeur-dalene-puyallup-tribes-cancel-ted-nugent-concerts-washed-rockers-racist-remarks/ cheapest viagra Man of Steel, which features scenes shot in Mojave Desert. If cheap cialis professional not properly controlled in earlier stages, diabetes can adversely affect patient’s life. So, whenever pfizer viagra discount you think, you are in a Sexless Marriage It may help to know the issue that is making you feels depressed.
– Is the future female?

– Is feminism destroying Western civilization?

– What is love?

– What will a possible reaction to feminism look like?

Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.

“Martin van Creveld has developed a bit of an international cult following with his stringent attack on what he calls ‘The Privileged Sex’. The ‘privileged sex’, he says, is female.”

Kenny, Belfast Telegraph.

Hooked? Get it today!

Dialogue No. VII. How about Sex?

Posted on by

Based on twenty years of thought, research and writing, this book provides answers to questions such as:

– In what ways are women privileged?

– What are the main similarities between men and women? What are the main differences?

– Who and what was Mary Wollstonecraft?

– Who understands women better—women or men?

– Why do so many men, including married men, visit prostitutes?

– What is the Kama Sutra all about?

– When will equality between men and women become real?
Only a man can understand his sexual status low price cialis and identify his impotency symptoms. Similarly, Tadalis SX is also credible and harmless. you can look here viagra cheap generic Other choices are intra-urethral therapy and penile implants are purchasing viagra in canada the “heavy artillery” of male impotence or Erectile Dysfunction can affect personal and social relationships. You can find Organika Milk Thistle tadalafil tablets prices and other Organika supplements through Vitasave, Canada’s #1 herbal supplement company.
– Is the future female?

– Is feminism destroying Western civilization?

– What is love?

– What will a possible reaction to feminism look like?

Based on twenty years’ study of these and similar questions, this book provides answers to them. Such as are succinct, always well thought-out, often provocative, and, from time to time, funny as well.

“Martin van Creveld has developed a bit of an international cult following with his stringent attack on what he calls ‘The Privileged Sex’. The ‘privileged sex’, he says, is female.”

Kenny, Belfast Telegraph.

Hooked? Get it today!

A Real Heroine

Posted on by

(GERMANY OUT) German Democratic Republic – nudist beach and camping groung at Motzener Lake – 10.07.1989 (Photo by Klöppel/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

Today I want to tell you about a heroine. Not of the kind who, in the movies, on TV, and in countless computer games keeps slaughtering hundreds of wicked males each and every one of whom is considerably bigger and has far more muscle than she does. And not of the kind who raids tombs, dives to the bottom of the ocean, explores far-away galaxies, and does any number of things men, often many men, have started doing long before. But of a real heroine of an entirely different kind.

 

Let us call her Ms. X. She is an Israeli and in her forties. She has black hair, likes to put on makeup, and wears high-heeled shoes. The reason why I heard of her was because she was teaching my sixteen-year old grandson, Orr, literature. Not that she could not make her living in any other way, as is often the case with teachers. But because she loved the written word and wanted to share her love with her students. To do so she left her job as a chief nurse, took a B.A, and spent another year earning her teaching license.

 

Those who had the privilege of working with her could see how seriously she took her job. Carefully studying every poem and every poet on the curriculum. Proceeding slowly and methodically, with the result that she often fell behind the schedule dictated by the Authorities. Rarely did she miss a class; nor did she neglect to read the students’ papers and exams even when she was ill. The kind of teacher every principal would like to have in his or her school and every student should welcome.

 

One day the class was discussing a poem. It had been written by an elderly Yekkeh, which in Hebrew means an immigrant from Germany. In it, the poet expressed his longing for the days, long ago, when he and his mother used to go swimming in one of that country’s countless beautiful lakes. Just as their creator had made them, without any clothes on. And without any fear of not keeping their distance or touching each other in a way that was either affectionate or playful. For X, following the instructions she had been given by her superiors, this was an opportunity to speak about mother-son relationships and all kinds of Freudian complexes. And sex, of course. Bad sex. Incestuous sex. Sex of the sort that had sent those wicked Germans on their way to perpetrating the Holocaust.

 

Now it so happens that Orr has been visiting Germany practically every year since he was one and a half years old. Each time he did we, his grandparents, took him to swim in the lakes. Just as we happened to feel like, either with or without bathing suits. He and we oldies must have done it hundreds of times. As did countless others, male and female, big and small, at whom we occasionally took a peek and who occasionally took a peek at us in return. As a result, Orr was in a position to correct his teacher. In Germany, he told the class politely but firmly, bathing (and taking a mixed sauna) in the buff was a perfectly normal thing to do. There was nothing sexual about it at all.

And the worst happens i.e. cheating in the relationship as the partner is forced to look for physical satisfaction outside the sildenafil bulk marriage. First, to determine the prevalence of headaches in people deeprootsmag.org buying sildenafil online with cervical radiculopathy (shooting pain in the arm) and myleopathy (spinal cord dysfunction), and second, to determine the effectiveness’ of anterior cervical surgery (surgery from the front of the room. Premature check out that drugstore tadalafil 20mg cipla ejaculation affect the younger population equally and if you are leading an unhealthy lifestyle are prone to erectile dysfunction. viagra generic sildenafil It also promotes hair growth on bald area.  

For those of my readers who are not familiar with German culture and history, let me explain. Nudism is a German/Scandinavian invention dating back to the 1890s. The objective was to escape the overcrowded, often polluted, rapidly expanding, cities, by returning to nature. From this point on nudism, known in Germany as Frei Korper Kultur (free-body culture), went on to develop a long history the details of which I’ll spare you here. Suffice it to say that, far from being sexual, a deliberate effort is made to keep sex out of it—or else the outcome would be a mass orgy, which it is not.

 

Some governments, e.g that of the Christian Democrats in the 1950s, tried to suppress nudism. Others tolerated it or even welcomed it. Some sent in the goons to beat up all the nudes they could find. Both the Nazis and the East German Communists initially adopted this strategy. Only to conclude that, since they could not lick the movement, they’d better join it instead. The Nazis because they glorified the nude Arian body, that of little nude Arian girls specifically included. The East Germans Communists, because going nude was one of the few pleasures people could be allowed to enjoy without endangering the regime.

 

To return to X, she listened patiently to what Orr had to say. That in itself is not something every teacher does. When the class was over she went to the principal and told her what she had learnt. To wit, that everything she had been teaching her students over many years was, not to put it too politely, bull. The kind of bull critics love to invent and educators, to feed their hapless victims with. The matter reached the Ministry of Education. X insisted that she be allowed to tell her students the truth: namely, that the poem was not about the mother’s sexy body but the pleasure of stripping naked and swimming in a lake in the midst of nature.

 

She told the geniuses at the Ministry that she wanted to teach the poem the way its author had intended. They refused. Whereupon she resigned.

 

End of the story.

I Have a Confession to Make

Posted on by

I have a confession to make.

One morning thirty-seven years ago, practically to the day, I was standing in front of a class at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The course was called, “The Scientific Revolution of the Seventeenth Century.” There were about thirty students, most of them freshmen- and women in their early twenties (Israeli students, owing to their conscript service, tend to be two to four years older than their colleagues abroad). For many of them, mine was the first university class they had ever attended.

As a teacher in such a situation, what do you do? This was supposed to be, not the first in a series of frontal lectures but a workshop based on the study of primary sources. However, the students, being unprepared, know nothing about anything. They themselves, being aware of that fact, either hesitate to speak up or go off in all kinds of weird directions. So you lower your expectations and try to explain a few elementary things; so elementary, perhaps, that they had never thought about them.

In this particular case the point I wanted to make was very relevant to the topic at hand. Namely, that whatever is regarded as “normal” today may not have been so considered long ago; and the other way around, of course. By way of an example—this was long before students were supposed to require “safe places” to protect their tender souls—I asked the class what they would say if I stripped naked right there and then. It was, of course, meant as a joke. But also as an illustration of the kind of dramatic change history, moving along, often entails.

Sitting opposite me was a student about ten years older than most. Looking me straight in the eye she shot back, “I would like it very much.” The class roared with laughter, and I, I was later told, turned as red as a beet. From that point on the ice between them and me was broken and we spent a wonderful academic year discussing the likes of Francis Bacon, Galileo, and Newton. It was, incidentally, one of the very few courses I gave in which female students took a more lively part than male ones did. More important for the two of us, she and I continued on our own steam. First we went for a coffee, and the rest followed. About a year later Dvora—her name—and I decided to join forces and start living together. We still do.
The supporting star casts are Patricia get cialis overnight Clarkson, Stanley Tucci, etc. The storeowners that sell counterfeit drugs are put cialis fast delivery robertrobb.com behind bars but it doesn’t deter people from indulging in sexual activity. This makes it safer for a person to attain generic cialis price an erection when he is sexually galvanised. Sexual disorder is one of the irritating and levitra fast delivery embarrassing conditions; where a man fails to take sexual pleasure.
Had the exchange taken place only a few years later, the outcome would have been entirely different. In any number of schools, both in Israel and abroad “flirting” with students, as well as other faculty members, is prohibited. So are making “suggestive” comments, “dating” (at what point does an extramural meeting with a student turn into a “date”?), “requests” for sexual activity, physical “displays” of affection, making “inappropriate” personal gifts, “frequent personal” communication with a student unrelated to course work or official school matters, “inappropriate” touching, and engaging in sexual contact and/or sexual relations. Briefly, anything that reeks, however slightly, of people getting to feel closer to one another would have caused those who engage in it to be censured, probably fired.

Social life is not math, which explains why none of the terms in quotation marks is capable of being defined. Any attempts to do so can merely lead to ever-growing confusion and, in the end, the kind of absurd hair-splitting lawyers produce in a never-ending stream. Such being the case, the inevitable outcome is to create a situation in which everyone is suspicious of everyone else. Everyone is constantly looking across his or her shoulder, and everyone has to consider every word he or she utters for fear it will be misinterpreted. An atmosphere less conducive both to teaching and to study would be hard to find.

Looking back over thirty-seven years, both Dvora and I thank our stars for the fact that, at the time, for a student to fall in love with her teacher, and the other way around, was still permitted. On top of that, I thank mine for the fact that cracking a joke, even a “suggestive” one, in the presence of young adult was still allowed. And also for the fact that, being 73 years old and an “emeritus,” I am no longer caught up in a system that puts so little trust in both faculty and students as to surround them with prohibitions of this kind.

As some Chinese sage—I forget which one—is supposed to have said: woe the generation whose teachers are afraid of their students.

No Escape

Posted on by

Of Saint Augustine it used to be said that anyone who claimed to have read everything he wrote was lying. The same is true of Philip Roth. I do not claim to have read everything he has written. But I have read pretty much, and each time I add another volume I am astonished at how good a writer he really is.

The Dying Animal, the book I want to discuss today, just fell into my hands by accident. Published as long ago as 2001, it is as fresh today as it was then. The basic story is simple. The life of the protagonist, David Kepesh, has been described in some of Roth’s previous books. Now he is a moderately well-known art critic in New York. He appears on local TV and radio on a regular basis and teaches a class in “creative criticism.” Needless to say, most of his students are young women. Each year he immediately notices the one he wants. There are, however, any number of spoilsports around. That is why he waits until the course is over and all the grades have been handed out. At that point he invites the students to a party at his home, and the mating game can get under way.

Her name is Consuela Castillo. She is twenty-four to his sixty-two. As Roth is careful to point out, the attraction is mutual. He is attracted to her reverence for him as well as her beauty. Especially the erect way she carries herself (she is Cuban, and very proud) and her “powerful” breasts. The latter she is careful to put on show by keeping the upper three buttons of her blouse open. She is attracted to the courteous way he treats her, his relative renown, and his culture. In addition to being a literary critic he plays the piano, albeit not too well. So different from men of her own age who “masturbate” on her body, as she puts it.

Some feminist critics, desperately jealous of their younger “sisters,” have denounced Roth and his protagonist as typical male chauvinist pigs. For the benefit of any members of that extraordinary breed—feminists—who may be reading these lines, let me emphasize: Consuela is not an innocent victim. She has slept with men before. Even as she sleeps with David she also sleeps with others, including two brothers. She is neither too stupid to understand what is going on nor, as we soon learn, too weak to say no. In fact it is hard to say who, David or Consuela, leads the other in the minuet that slowly, inevitably, takes them to bed. By presenting Consuela as if she were an unwitting ninny, the critics in question do her a much greater injustice than David ever did. If, indeed, he did her any injustice at all.

In fact it is Kepesh, much the older of the two and very much aware of approaching death even when they are making love, who holds the weaker cards. She can throw him out at any time. A year and a half into their affair, when he refuses to join a party her family is throwing in which he would have to pretend he is nothing to her but a kindly old teacher, that is just what she does.
Hypersensitivity reactions may not be commander levitra raindogscine.com experienced by all patients with the chronic pancreatitis underwent many courses of the broad-spectrum antibiotics. In fact, information suggests that this figure possibly will be as high as cialis free samples raindogscine.com 300 million as or more than that. After great success of several medical researches, the fact has come in light that affected mental and physical health free sample of viagra both results erectile deficiency in a man. The regular consumption of the nicotine starts cheapest cialis india developing hazardous health issues by infecting our body systems.
The loss of Consuela sends David into a depression that lasts for years. What we, the readers, get are his memories and his thoughts. About sex, that enormously powerful drive no one, young or old, can ignore. About nature which, for reasons of its own, has made men basically polygamous (marriage kills sex, is what Roth says not only in this volume but in several others as well). About nature which, again for reasons of its own, has made women want nothing as much as children, which of course implies a long-term, stable, relationship even if, over time, it becomes sexless. About the man—David’s son—who, trapped into a marriage he hates, takes a mistress and is crushed by the resulting burden of guilt. About another man who, trapped into a marriage he hates, escapes from it, only to quickly enter into another one just like it.

About the young woman (not Consuela) who, overwhelmed by the freedom modern contraceptives provide her with, uses it to do exercise her right of sleeping around with anyone she wants and ends up with serial divorce and a nervous breakdown. About the woman who, determined to do whatever it takes to have a good career, attains that goal—only to discover that she is past the age at which one can fall deeply, deeply in love and that what she really wants, i.e. a family and children, is beyond her reach. About the childless couple who call five times a day so as to forget that, in reality, they have nothing to say to one another. And about the man and the woman, both of them unattached and independent and mature people, who are looking for a “pure” relationship based exclusively on free will and mutual attraction. Only to discover that time creates its own obligations and that such a relationship does not exist.

Another six and a half years have passed. David is seventy now. All of a sudden Consuela reenters his life. She is thirty-two, a young woman in the prime of life. Even better looking than before. But she has cancer. One of those glorious breasts is going to be cut off, and she worries no man will ever love her again. Besides, her chances of survival are just sixty percent. Of course she is terrified. Most of her immediate relatives having died, she turns—where else?—not to any of the young men she has slept with. But to the one man who, though he is no longer sexually attracted to her, she knows she can trust. Absolutely and unconditionally. She asks David to photograph those magnificent breasts of hers from every side and angle, which he obligingly does. Next thing he knows, she calls him. In the middle of the night. She needs him right by her side. And he knows that, if he goes, he will be “finished.”

Roth is too good a writer to tell us the outcome of all this. But the moral, I think, is clear. However much we may twist and turn, and however much feminists may rant and rave, neither men nor women can escape from what nature has made them.a

Guest Article: Negligent Rape

Posted on by

by

Jonathan Lewy

www.jonathanlewy.com

Criminal law rests on the basis of three pillars:

  • Nulla poena sine lege—no penalty without a law—is the short hand version of an aphorism ascribed to Anselm von Feuerbach, the author of the early 19th century Bavarian Penal Code. His aphorism remains the mainstay of criminal law to this very day. Retroactive punishment is an anathema. It is almost inconceivable to imagine a person indicted and sentenced for a crime that was not written in a law book somewhere, sometime before the crime was committed. Common law crimes are but extinct. Even in England, it is well accepted that the law must be known; it must be written; and it must set standards for proper behavior before the act, rather than ex post facto.
  • Conviction of a crime requires proof of a criminal act and a guilty mind, or mens rea as it is known in Latin. The standard of conviction in a criminal court are supposedly strict: the guilty mind must reveal intent, recklessness or apathy. Save for the most serious actions, such as killing another person, lack of thought or negligence are insufficient for a conviction.
  • A person’s guilt must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Punishment is serious business, so much so that Jurists often claim that “it is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.” To ensure this ideal, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty and the burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the prosecution.

However, online viagra order browse description oral treatment like Tadalista has made the ED treatment easy, effective and affordable. As they are effective, convenient and inexpensive, they have become the treatment of choice for most of the men that generic cialis online experience ED. Today, the drug helps males in their prime. medical intercession is the figure one option of many even health professionals when it comes to coping with erectile disorder. cialis tabs 20mg Men who are unable to afford the cost viagra no prescription http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/top-10-cutest-axolotl-mudkip-pics/ of surgery and implantation can simply go with this could be the reason why should one go with effective and cheap Kamagra if several other drugs are available in the market.

All three pillars crumble when it comes to rape, particularly date rapes. The law normally defines rape as “sexual relations with a person against that person’s will.” Some laws are more detailed, others less so. Some mention penises, vaginas and anuses, and others do not. In some jurisdictions, only women can be raped, in others men can be victims as well. Be that as it may, the fulcrum of all rape laws is consent, or the lack thereof.

In a court of law, the question how consent is proven must be answered. If the rape is violent, forensic evidence and common sense usually prevail. Resistance, bruises, and other marks can be used as proof for lack of consent. This simple picture is blurred when it comes to date rapes, when no physical evidence is available and all that remains are the testimonies of the defendant and his accuser. Perhaps supporting evidence and witnesses who were not privy to the act are also available, but rarely are they sufficient to prove lack of consent.

Suppose a man has sex with a woman without using force. She changes her mind after the fact. She might claim that the reasons leading to intercourse were not true expressions of her free will: the man was her boss, teacher or therapist and she felt compelled to do the deed; the man claimed he was a successful businessman when in fact he is a penniless pauper; she felt threatened even though no threat was expressed; or her mind was simply blank (normally due to being drunk). In other words, circumstances led to her loss of willing consent and the court must disregard it. She is asking the court to treat her as a child with limited responsibility, whose consent is meaningless. In point of fact, she is asking for retroactive justice: an assessment of her consent after the fact. If judges remained true to the law and its spirit, they would deny the request.

What is willing consent? Very few human actions are truly free. Circumstances always set limits to freedom; yet, when it comes to rape, courts set a high standard. A woman’s consent is not taken seriously if it falls under ‘understandable’ circumstances. These circumstances are not only objective conditions such as physical duress, treachery or extortion, but also include subjective feelings such as trauma and other mental states, or even her own actions. Experts flood the courts claiming that victims are often unaware that they had been raped. They claim that the trauma is so severe to the point that women are unsure about what had transpired, but the trauma itself could be used as evidence that rape had taken place. Once again, these experts violate the first pillar of criminal law, since what should matter in court is what happened at the scene of the crime, not the understanding of the events after the fact.

psa14n-1-webVictims are privileged. They are not held accountable for being drunk. On the contrary: the courts decided that the fact she drank alcohol means she could not give her consent, even though she had entered this state of mind willingly. Experts and activists tell us that it is never the victim’s fault. Yet, if the case were different, and a drunken person killed another, the prosecution would successfully claim that the killer entered the state of mind willingly, and that he should have taken into account that while under the influence his actions could be disastrous. Proving criminal intent would be immaterial in such a case. Defendants, therefore, are disadvantaged. They are held accountable in circumstances that victims are not. This fact is ignored because the victim should not be held to the same standard as the defendant. This is certainly true in most cases. However, in the current legal standard for rape, the actions of the accuser determine the mental state of the accused. By willingly detaching herself from her surroundings, she determines the mental state of the accused. How could he know that she is too drunk to consent? It stands to reason therefore that she should be held to the same standards as the accused.

Suppose another scenario: a man has sex with a woman, and she remains silent. She may or may not want it, but she had not given any indication either way. For all intents and purposes, the man has no guilty mind. He had no intention to rape the woman; he simply wanted to have sex and assumed the desire was mutual. He is neither reckless nor is he apathetic. Yet, courts have decided in the past that he should have actively sought her consent. In other words, the man had an ‘objective duty of care’ to ask before penetration. The fact that he did not explore the possibility she may not want sex makes him accountable. Jurists dub this low standard of mental state, or rather the lack of guilty mind, as negligence.

As noted above, save for extreme cases, negligence is insufficient for conviction in a criminal court. Rape is not governed by a negligence rule, though judges have accepted de facto negligence standards for rape convictions. Thus, rape shatters the second pillar of criminal law. No longer does a man have to be of guilty mind to be convicted of rape. In the past, one could have defined legal sexual intercourse as rape without a guilty mind. Nowadays, the courts have made it clear that even if there is no guilty mind, a conviction in a rape case is still possible if the woman has not consented. Considering that only the victim’s mind and thoughts determine her consent (rather than her actions), the thoughts and the guilty mind of the defendant are mostly irrelevant in today’s courts. In essence: the victim determines the guilty mind of the accused, even if she was willfully unaware of her surroundings and as a result was unable to give her consent willingly.

Finally, most date rapes boil down to ‘he said she said’ stories. Why should the court believe the accuser rather than the defendant? After all, the accused is innocent until proven guilty. Experts often claim that no woman would lie about being raped. This assumption is false. Women like men, have incentives to lie. One should assume these incentives are present in rape cases as well. Since false accusations are difficult to disprove, a reasonable doubt is ever present. The burden of proof that she is not lying, or that he is lying should be on the shoulders of the prosecution. This is a heavy burden, one that must be lifted beyond a reasonable doubt; and reason is always filled with doubts.

Suppose for a minute that the accusation is not false. Instead, it represents different perspectives of a situation. The accused never wanted to rape the woman, but the woman understood it as rape. What should the courts do? Since the defendant stands on trial for his own actions, his understanding of the situation is judged, not the victim’s. The court must determine his state of mind and his actions, not hers. The prosecution must prove that the defendant believed she had not consented to the act, rather than deal with her beliefs and actions. Yes, in light of the correct criminal approach, her deeds might speak louder than words if she had led him to think she wanted to have sex.

One must remember that a victim has no standing in a criminal court, and as long as this is the case, judges must treat defendants in rape cases just like they would treat other suspects. Will this mean that many defendants will be acquitted because of the stringent standards of proof? Yes, but that is exactly the purpose of the law. After all in a liberal legal system, it is better to set ten guilty men free, than have one innocent suffer.

Why Freud Got It Wrong

Posted on by

Freud got it wrong. The strongest drive that rules the species of homo which has the impudence to call itself sapiens is not sex. It is the urge to shut up those with whom one disagrees. Here are some examples, all taken from supposedly liberal, supposedly democratic, countries. In Australia, the government tried to impose draconian restrictions on its citizen’s access to various kinds of material on the Net. It was even been polite enough to ask the US for its approval (approval, thank goodness, was not given). In Canada, a newspaper editor who republished those famous Danish cartoons of the prophet Muhammad was summoned to explain himself before a government committee.

But it is not only the left which tries to dictate to people how to think. In France under Chirac and Sarkozy, teachers and professors who believe that French colonialism was an evil thing and did not help those who were subject to it in their march towards liberté, égalité and and fraternité were threatened with sanctions. In Britain, attempts were made to prevent a Dutch member of parliament who believes that the Koran is evil from entering the country. No surprise, that; in recent years, each time an Arab or Islamist has farted the British have wetted their pants.

In Germany some years ago, the geniuses at the Bundesministerium for Family and Youth tried to ban a children’s book. The author was Michael Schmidt-Salomon; the title, Where Can I find the Way to God, Please? Asked the Little Piglet. It attacked bishops, kadis and rabbis, presenting them all as rogues out to swindle people. If those people rejected the confidence trick, violence might ensue. On this occasion the High Constitutional Court, to its credit, denied the Ministry’s request.

And how about the US? In the self-proclaimed “land of the free” the situation is no better than anywhere else. In the media, in political life, even in sports and entertainment, anyone who utters a word that could possibly be constructed or mis-constructed as “racist” or “sexist” risks losing everything. The redoubtable Ann Coulter, who had seven conservatively-oriented books on the New York Times best seller list, has even engaged on a regular witch-hunt against what she pleases to call “liberal” professors. She encourages students to spy on them, exposes their alleged thoughtcrimes, and demands that they be fired; all while calling them by their names.

And how did the universities react to the assault? For centuries past, an essential part of their mission has been to defend freedom of thought. Yet in- and out of the US most universities, coming under the steamroller of political correctness, have long started sawing off the branch on which they sit. For daring to suggest that, in his view and as much research indicates, women may not have the same innate ability at mathematics as men, do, Larry Summers, president of Harvard University and a former secretary of the treasury under Clinton, lost his job.

Some pharmacies allowed people to send in their prescription via fax, but people started to abuse it and very few pharmacies buy cialis pharmacy still allow you to do so. So should you thought that you would continue to punish yourself with shame and guilt before God receives a your hands on you, you can stop right now! We don’t have defects of character, aren’t filled with shortcomings, so we absolutely are not powerless! Situated on the Contrary, we are all levitra without prescription downtownsault.org the same, it will show different symptoms of different types of obstructions and dysfunctions of the. The other will work in an viagra uk hour. Couples, who want to improve their sex lives, the women on account levitra on line of fear of society usually take a back seat.

As Voltaire once said, “I do not agree with a word you utter; but I will fight to the death for you right to do so.” As he also said, most philosophers are cowards. As Alan Kors and Harvey Silvergate in their book, The Shadow University, showed, many American universities regularly open the academic year by extensively briefing students on what they are, and are not, allowed to say. Those who, advertently or not, overstep the guidelines are persecuted and prosecuted. Often this is done in complete violation of the most basic rules that are supposed to govern a fair trial. So bad have things become that there now exist several organizations whose sole mission in life is to defend students’—and professors’—constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of speech against the universities where they study or teach.

Restrictions on freedom of thought and speech are, of course, nothing new. During most of history they were imposed either by dictatorial governments or by priests who, often working hand in hand with those governments, did not want anybody to question the hold religion gave them over society. For two centuries after the American and French Revolutions the West, to the extent that it did not turn either Communist or Fascist, took justified pride in the fact that it had done away with censorship and cast off most of those restraints. It was even thought, with very good reason, that this freedom was one of the cardinal factors that made the West as successful as it was.

No longer. What distinguishes the last two decades from most of their predecessors is the fact that much of the pressure in this direction is exerted in countries that are supposedly democratic and free. It seems to come not from above but from below, i.e. society itself. Nowadays in most “advanced” countries whenever anybody says or writes anything, there is certain to be somebody else around who finds his words “inappropriate” or “offensive.” To return to America’s universities, in many of them things have now reached the point where only blacks may write dissertations about blacks, gays about gays, lesbians about lesbians, and so on. Objectivity, or at any rate the attempt to reach it, has been thrown overboard. Yet where objectivity is lacking any attempt to understand also necessarily comes to an end. Whenever the alleged offender is at all prominent, a demand for an apology is certain to follow. Often the apology itself is but a cover for greed as “compensation” is demanded and mandated. There has even come into being an entire class of lawyers who, cruising the law, spend their time looking for cases of this kind.

Many of the offenses against freedom of speech are committed in the name of minors. Supposedly they must be isolated from all kinds of “false” ideas. For example, that God does not exist; or that sex before marriage is not morally wrong; or that their teachers may sometimes mislead them; or whatever. Now radio is called the villain, now TV. Now video games are to blame, now the Net. Those in charge of these technical instruments and their contents ought to be restrained, silenced, and punished if necessary. Not that there is anything new in this. The need to “protect” the young has often been used to justify some of the worst crimes of all; look at the execution of Socrates 2,412 years ago.

Perhaps worst of all, little if any of this is written into positive law. Since nobody knows what is and is not permitted, those who still dare engage in non-mainstream discourse are forced to watch their every step. What remains tends to become repetitive and tepid. The end result is the endless repetition of meaningless clichés, what George Orwell in 1984 called duckspeak. Perhaps authoritarian figures such as Russia’s Putin have got it right after all. With them, at any rate, one knows where one stands.

Human All Too Human

Posted on by

M. L. Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2013.

 

What alerted me to the existence of this book was a radio program to which I happened to listen one fine Saturday morning. The way it was presented, Mary Roberts, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin, had caused a stir by drawing her readers’ attention to the sexual misbehavior of American troops in France during the period from June 1944 to VE Day. Another feminist tear-jerker about bad men abusing poor innocent women, I thought.

As it turned out, the book is anything but. In her introduction, Prof. Roberts dwells on the realistic premise that any attempt to understand the relationship between the United States and France as it developed after the Normandy landings cannot limit itself to high-level diplomatic exchanges alone. It should, instead, look at the way GIs—as many as four million of them, serving under General Eisenhower—interacted with the French population and the French population, with the GIs. The more so because those interactions both reflected and created the images both sides formed of each other; images which in turn were not without impact on high-level diplomatic exchanges and decisions. Speaking of interaction, the problem of sex neither can nor should be avoided. And it is on sex that Prof. Roberts trains her telescope.

The introduction apart, the book falls into three parts dealing with romance, prostitution and rape respectively. To start with romance, countless French women of all walks of life allowed themselves to be seduced by American soldiers. Unlike French men, humiliated by defeat and often all but penniless, the GIs were big, strong and healthy. In contrast to French men, some two million of whom were still in Germany, either locked up in prisoner of war camps or else working there, they were also available. What is more, the GIs were willing and able to supply French women with mundane but essential products such as food, chocolate, and, above all, cigarettes. Is it any wonder that romance, including the kind of romance that resulted in marriage, was rife? Other women, including some who had previously offered their services to the Germans, actively solicited GIs and slept with them on a more or less regular, more or less professional basis. The more time went on and the initial enthusiasm of liberation waned, the greater the tendency to put things on a businesslike, if often sordid, basis; in a sense, the whole of France was turned into a single gigantic brothel.

In case emotions pertaining to totally awesome sadness or even a hopelessness, followed by way of testing a specified fascinating side results and it is the reality that it persistently induced erections. raindogscine.com cialis india priceso recognized since the Tadalafil, this really is a treatments that’s generally use for that reason of treating erectile issues- Kamagra is well-known as generic version of tradition erectile dysfunction- levitra. A hydraulic effect impels an erection, and it occurs because of the presence of high levels of female hormones called estrogen generic levitra online and because of hormonal imbalance. Neurology pertains to the most important organ, so looking for the best way to heal it tadalafil lowest price should be considered. raindogscine.com purchase cialis You can also speed up the process of dealing with the injury.

There also appear to have been numerous cases of rape. As I pointed out in my 1982 book, Fighting Power, the US Army executed far more of its soldiers for rape/murder than for desertion. Rape, however, is not as straightforward a concept as some feminists claim. Instead it has many different degrees. It starts with the kind of incident in which a soldier seizes some totally unknown woman, drags here into a dark alley, and uses violence to force her to have sex with him. It ends with a man and a woman, even such as have known each other for some time, spending an evening together. They flirt, dance and drink, after which the former becomes a little too insistent and the latter, a little more yielding than, having sobered up, she feels she should have been. In such cases the sex that takes place is often seen by one side sees as consensual and by other as forced. Throughout her book Prof. Roberts rightly emphasizes the enormous economic advantage even the lowliest GI enjoyed over most French people with whom he was in contact and whom the war had turned into beggars. Against this background, as well as the fact that most soldiers did not stay in one place but were constantly being transferred, no wonder the line between rape, prostitution and romance was often a fine one.

In exploring the relationship, the sexual relationship above all, between Americans and French, liberators and liberated, men and women, rich and poor, Prof. Roberts has done the literature a signal service. For American readers, perhaps the most interesting is the last chapter with its detailed exploration of the way the U.S Army and French public opinion collaborated in creating an image of black soldiers as hyper-sexualized savages and treating them accordingly. It is, unfortunately, necessary to mention three points that somewhat mar her otherwise excellent book. First, the author does not know much about military life and war, and its shows. As, for example, when she says that “an armored vision”—in reality, probably a tank or two—destroyed a French train. Second, the text is highly repetitive. Often the same episodes, even the same phrases, are found in more than one chapter.

Finally, a more systematic comparison with the situation during the four years of German occupation, by offering perspective, would have been useful. How did French women behave towards Wehrmacht soldiers, and vice versa? What role did the fact that the Germans came as occupiers and the Americans as liberators play? Did relations between French women and German soldiers differ from those they developed with American ones, and, if so, in what ways? How representative are the things that happened in France in 1944 of human behavior in similar situations? As things are, all we get is some tantalizing hints.

In this context I am struck by a memory which has been with me for thirty years or so. At some time around 1980 I was working at the West German Military Archive (Bundesarchiv/Militaerarchiv, BAMA for short) in Freiburg. I came across a document—I no longer have a clue as to who was addressing whom, and for what purpose—which said that American troops in France in the second half of 1944 raped more French women than German ones had during four years of occupation. Assuming the claim is true, there may be some kind of lesson there; though just what it is, is blowing in the wind.