This is going to be a sticky wicket.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/katie-couric-woody-allen-jeffrey-epsteins-society-friends-close-ranks?ref=home

This is going to be a sticky wicket.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/katie-couric-woody-allen-jeffrey-epsteins-society-friends-close-ranks?ref=home

Dammit. I swearsies that I didn't intentionally break the blog.

Kamala Harris is unfit for any office.

https://truthout.org/articles/kamala-harris-has-a-distinguished-career-of-serving-injustice/

Cy Vance, Jr isn't far behind.

https://dailycaller.com/2019/07/08/manhattan-da-cy-vance-epstein-case/

When your kitty finds the right spin cycle:

https://twitter.com/DoingJobs/status/1148525577088802816

So global climate change induces water pipes to accumulate lead?

https://twitter.com/Public_Citizen/status/1148599261975797760

More Epstein. Was he running honey traps?

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/335503/

From Canada:

https://www.thestar.com/life/opinion/2019/04/29/baby-boomers-angst-over-childless-millennials-but-whose-biological-clock-is-really-ticking.html

I found it in the usual place.

Anyway, this comment caught my eye (it's not at the article itself):

Cambion:

"Of course the boomers want their kids to breed - they want all the good parts of child rearing without a vast majority of the shit work. They get to play house with the kids for a few hours or days and then hand them back over.

"Yeah, my generation isn't having nearly as many kids for a lot of reasons. Aside from figuring out breeding blows without having to go through it first, a decent chunk of people my age can't afford shit because of the debt we incurred to attend the college the boomers told us we had to attend. Yeah you tell me how a thirty-something with $65,000 in student debt working at KMart can afford to breed..."

(snip)

Which reminds me of something I've wanted to say to a certain therapist ever since he said this, regarding a 14-year-old girl who was planning to have sex and who very likely didn't HAVE a father in her life. He DID say that the mother should tell the girl that sex with underage girls is illegal and that the mother wouldn't hesitate to send the boy to jail. Well and good, but then he said...

"(He) needs to sit down with his daughter and tell her how much he loves her and how important it will be to him that he walk a virgin to the altar, not to mention how important it will be to her husband."

I think most girls would see right through that bluff. Namely, it's safe to say that most parents born after 1970 are not going to be deeply hurt if a daughter chooses not to marry AND has premarital sex before her parents are dead - just so long as she Leaves Home before turning 25! More in a sec...

Cocaine Mitch strikes again.

“You know, I find myself in the same position as president Obama. We both oppose reparations and we both are the descendants of slave owners.”

https://twitter.com/AsheSchow/status/1148657935838584833

So, why do I suspect most parents in their 40s feel that way, leaving aside the super-religious ones?

For roughly the same reason I sense that parents no longer believe what many of them DID believe (and taught their daughters) before WWII and maybe even later - that only disreputable (or working-class) women moved out of their parents' homes before getting married. (Keep in mind it was also somewhat common, back then, for well-off parents to send sons to college but not daughters.) I've also heard, from a reliable source, that for those reasons, it was common for many women of that era to marry just so they could leave home, since it wasn't just a lack of their own money that was holding them back.

Thankfully, no doubt partly because so many divorced mothers have had to raise daughters, most parents have come to realize that it's MOST important to do everything possible to push a daughter to be financially independent before she marries, not just because even a perfect husband can get hit by a car and never work again, but so the daughter can support her PARENTS, should they need that much help! (After all, a good son can get hit by a car, too.)

So (here's what the Cambion comment reminded me of), since one can't blame most young women for being afraid to face life without a college degree, even if most men might refuse to marry any woman who is still deep in debt, why would most parents care that much about her private life, just so long as she leaves home and pays her own bills as soon as possible, AND never asks for money again? I'd guess many parents would kill for that arrangement! (Same goes for the sons, of course.) Besides, a daughter who marries and has children may well not have the time or money to help her own parents, when they need it!

Back to the quotation. On top of all that, he didn't say anything about the teen's future HUSBAND's being a virgin - and I can only hope he wasn't suggesting that the parents teach the daughter to settle for a husband with double standards. (MY non-religious father never would have taught me that! He's in his 70s now, btw.) Leaving aside the fact that double standards never protected women from getting incurable diseases on their wedding nights (Miss Manners pointed this out), the other problem with the hypothetical father's bluff is that it's been well-known since the 1970s that young men are very scared of divorce court - AND scared of the idea of trying to have a good sex life with any woman over 25 who has never had sex. If women suspect virginal men of being gay, asexual, or simply very unpopular, and therefore are wary of marrying them, why would a man risk divorce court by marrying someone who's too young, too much in debt, or "too old to be a virgin"?

If women suspect virginal men of being gay, asexual, or simply very unpopular, and therefore are wary of marrying them, why would a man risk divorce court by marrying someone who's too young, too much in debt, or "too old to be a virgin"?

(No, lenona, that's NOT directed at you, but at the dismaying reality of what you said.)

The perils of Big Government:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

The fight against child abuse soldiers on.

Big Tech might have thrown another election, this time involving a referendum:

Undercover video proves Google interfered in Irish abortion referendum

How to piss an entire city of 49,000 off:

A Hedge of Allegiance

More tech tyranny.

What could POSSIBLY go WRONG???

The Empire State's New Clothes

mpetrie, it's not that dismaying. (Btw, I should have said "virginal men over 25." But then, most people don't really expect men to be able to AFFORD to marry before that age anyway.)

We've simply come to realize that being sexual is part of the healthy adult condition and not something to be ashamed of, and that premarital sex is not the same as irresponsible casual sex. (Also, that being asexual doesn't automatically mean that so-and-so used to be "normal" but was traumatized as a kid; it's OK to be asexual so long as one gives people fair warning about it.) Therefore, it only makes sense to think twice before assuming that a lack of sexual experience makes anyone a good marriage candidate, just as church-goers are not necessarily more honest or noble than atheists. E.g.: Everyone should know by now that getting married in your teens is a terrible idea, especially if you're not "allowed" to divorce!

(Btw, even gay people don't want to marry people who are in the closet, so even THEY have reason to be wary of virgins. Or maybe I should say "especially" gay people, since diseases don't really scare people the way they used to.)

P.S. When I said this -

"why would most parents care that much about her private life, just so long as she leaves home and pays her own bills as soon as possible, AND never asks for money again?"

- I forgot to add "compared to the scenario of a daughter who marries when she's barely finished school because she's sick of waiting for sex (this is common in many religious communities), only to divorce in a few years and go on welfare to support her two babies - unless she returns to her parents and begs them to support her family?"

Bottom line: If modern parents really felt so strongly about preserving their daughters' ignorance, more of them would be doing what those pre-WWII parents did. (Of course, you can't stop adult children from moving out, but you can threaten never to speak to them again - and/or disinherit them.)

And if young men (those who WANT to marry) felt the same way about their future brides, they'd either be working much harder to get married in their early 20s and/or they'd be insisting on marrying only very young women. (But what 20-year-old woman wants to marry a 30-year-old man, as a rule?)

"But what 20-year-old woman wants to marry a 30-year-old man, as a rule?"

Is he rich?

You know I often take issue with the things you say Lenona. But you are absolutely right that almost no one cares about virginity anymore. You have those purity club types in Colorado but you also have the Amish and the LDS nutters in rural Texas. Fringe cases don't prove the point and the vast majority don't care about virginity.

Please read that again. I said "as a rule."

Not to mention that, as a rule, most 30-year-old men are not rich - as in: "I have more money than I know what to do with."

Besides, just because rich men are typically surrounded by golddiggers hardly means that those are typical women - or even that golddiggers want to MARRY those men, per se. After all, women like that think nothing of moving on to other rich men when they get tired of the ones they're with, and that's easier to do when they're not married to them. Besides, even the Mayflower Madam (OK, so she wasn't an escort herself) said in chapter 10:

"One financial option I did not consider was to marry a rich man or look for a sugar daddy who would instantly solve all my financial worries. I don't have anything against rich men - far from it - but I could never feel secure knowing that someone else had that kind of control over me."

Not to mention that after a while, a woman with few skills married to a rich man might feel like a useless nobody, especially as she enters middle age.

P.S. Thanks for the confirmation you gave.

I don't have anything against rich men - far from it - but I could never feel secure knowing that someone else had that kind of control over me." ~ lenona at July 11, 2019 6:52 AM

When Pygmalion became a hit, it didn't have a pat ending. People asked George Bernard Shaw to write an ending for Liza and Henry.

The public wanted a "lived happily ever after" ending. But Shaw, being Shaw, refused to write one.

When he finally capitulated and wrote an ending for the play, it had Liza marrying Freddie. He explained to his audience that, having created the cultured and erudite Liza, Henry would wield too much power over her in a marriage. Liza was aware of that, so she smartly decided to marry Freddy, with whom she would be on an equal footing, and remain friends with Henry and Colonel Pickering.

Methinks, the well-educated Barrows read the original Shaw.

As a rule yes most 30 year old men are not rich. Most men of any age are not rich. But as a rule yes most 20 year old women will happily marry a 30 year old man who is rich. Is this a conscious decision, probably not. I wouldn't call them gold diggers for this. It is just how women work.

You can ask Amy for various data on this Lenona. By and large women are the gender concerned with money. They aren't that concerned with making the money but they very much are interested in mates who do have money or at least the ability to generate it. Men's concern with work and generating wealth is a secondary sexual characteristic. I.e. they make money because women are interested in it and men are interested in sex with women. This is most proved by how men act when they give up on sex. There are two typical situations where physically healthy men no longer attempt to attract the opposite sex.
1. Religion - monks and such
2. Despair - the so called MIGTOs. Where men no longer believe they have a chance at attracting a mate and so stop trying to attract one.
In both cases men act the same way. They minimize work ambitions. They stop bathing regularly. They start brewing beer and other alcohols. From this it is clear that men's interest in work and wealth creation is almost solely due to their sex drive.

As for the term 'gold digger' you do have bitter men who complain that all women are gold diggers. But most guys don't take things that way. Yes women are the sex that is interested in wealth. But there are reasonable and unreasonable interests in things. Most people have a sex drive and that is fine. A nymphomaniac has an excessive sex drive. Often to the level it damages their lives. So too a gold digger has an excessive wealth drive to the level it damages their lives and relationships.

And yes while this is the trend for the very vast majority of men and women there are exceptions. Those exceptions do not disprove the typical situation. Just like how the fact there are gay people in no way disproves that the very vast majority of people are heterosexual.

I should have mentioned that most women that young don't feel ready to get married anyway. Just as most teenagers don't. So a man who's desperate to marry someone very young may be fighting a lost cause. (That goes for gay men too, I would think.)

I'm afraid you are wrong here Lenona. It really isn't that hard for a wealthy guy in his 30s to find a girl in her 20s and get married. The opposite is more of the issue. For one there just aren't that many wealthy guys to go around. For the other that wealthy guy can just date and fulfill all his needs without marrying.

But I get that you aren't going to change your opinion and neither am I.

I said 20, not "in her 20s." Jeez.

Bottom line: Once you remove the (relatively few) rich men from the picture, no, women barely out of their teens are not eager to marry men ten years older - assuming we're not talking about individuals. (You didn't contradict THAT idea.)

Right now, according to the 2014 Current Population Survey (CPS), the average age difference between heterosexuals is 2.3 years, with the man's being older.

Quote:

"In 64 percent of heterosexual couples, the man is older. In 23 percent, the woman is older, and in the remaining 13 percent, the partners are less than 12 months apart in age."

(Granted, they would have factored in those cases where the woman is older. The survey includes unmarried couples who live together.)

So that says SOMETHING...

Oh, and here's something interesting, though I'd never thought about it:

"...According to a 2014 study from Emory University, couples with a one-year age difference have a mere three percent chance of getting divorced. When you bump the age gap up to five years, the chance of divorce goes up to 18 percent. A 10-year difference is 39 percent, and a 20-year age gap has a jaw-dropping 95 percent chance of ending in divorce. Researchers analyzed over 3,000 couples for the study, and found that the larger the age gap between a couple, the more likely they are to get divorced.

"So it seems that a one-year age gap is the ideal difference in a romantic relationship. Of course, couples with a one-year age difference can and do still go through breakups and divorces..."

Once you remove the rich guys you also remove my original comment Lenona. To refresh it was "Is he rich?"

Yes your study says something. But noting pertinent to my rebuttal. It says nothing about relative wealth. If anything it supports my contention that women are more willing to marry older men than men are to marry older women. After all at 64-23 split is far from 50-50.