{"id":7893,"date":"2014-06-18T12:58:09","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T12:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/18\/the-shrinking-of-the-friend-zone-in-a-sex-saturated-society\/"},"modified":"2014-06-18T12:58:09","modified_gmt":"2014-06-18T12:58:09","slug":"the-shrinking-of-the-friend-zone-in-a-sex-saturated-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/18\/the-shrinking-of-the-friend-zone-in-a-sex-saturated-society\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Editorial commentary at the Gray Lady nowadays resembles micturition more than intelligent cogitation, but there are a couple of notable counter-instances, one being the writings of Ross Douthat.&#0160; Herewith, three quotations from his recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/01\/opinion\/sunday\/douthat-prisoners-of-sex.html?_r=1\" target=\"_self\">Prisoners of Sex<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"322\" data-total-count=\"2660\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">The culture\u2019s attitude is Hefnerism, basically, if less baldly chauvinistic than the original Playboy philosophy. Sexual fulfillment is treated as the source and summit of a life well lived, the thing without which nobody (from a carefree college student to a Cialis-taking senior) can be truly happy, enviable or free.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"322\" data-total-count=\"2660\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">In his second sentence above, Douthat puts his finger on another indicator of our junk culture&#39;s having gone off the rails. Must I explain why?<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"441\" data-total-count=\"3101\" id=\"story-continues-5\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Meanwhile, social alternatives to sexual partnerships are disfavored or in decline: Virginity is for weirdos and losers, celibate life is either a form of unhealthy repression or a smoke screen for deviancy, the kind of intense friendships celebrated by past civilizations are associated with closeted homosexuality, and the steady shrinking of extended families has reduced many people\u2019s access to the familial forms of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theamericanconservative.com\/our-starved-for-touch-culture\/\" title=\"The American Conservative\">platonic intimacy<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text story-content\" data-para-count=\"441\" data-total-count=\"3101\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"font-family: georgia,palatino;\">Contemporary feminism is very good \u2014 better than my fellow conservatives often acknowledge \u2014 at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/double_x\/doublex\/2014\/05\/_yesallwomen_in_the_wake_of_elliot_rodger_why_it_s_so_hard_for_men_to_recognize.html\" title=\"Slate\">critiquing these pathologies<\/a>. But feminism, too, is often a prisoner of Hefnerism, in the sense that it tends to prescribe more and more \u201csex positivity,\u201d insisting that the only problem with contemporary sexual culture is that it\u2019s imperfectly egalitarian, insufficiently celebratory of female agency and desire.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Editorial commentary at the Gray Lady nowadays resembles micturition more than intelligent cogitation, but there are a couple of notable counter-instances, one being the writings of Ross Douthat.&#0160; Herewith, three quotations from his recent Prisoners of Sex: The culture\u2019s attitude is Hefnerism, basically, if less baldly chauvinistic than the original Playboy philosophy. Sexual fulfillment is &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/06\/18\/the-shrinking-of-the-friend-zone-in-a-sex-saturated-society\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sex-love-lust"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}