tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post2667189000501580651..comments2024-03-18T08:02:51.154-07:00Comments on Had Enough Therapy?: What Is the Male Equivalent of "Mistress"?Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-59551103883959546352012-11-17T08:54:26.318-08:002012-11-17T08:54:26.318-08:00Actually, we agree, DL. I didn't go through th...Actually, we agree, DL. I didn't go through the history because I have said a few things about it elsewhere and for this post I just wanted to look at the usage.<br /><br />The key historical fact is that cultures that practiced arranged marriage often accepted extramarital relationships as semi-official-- like Venetian courtesan's the French King's favorites.<br /><br />Once women gained a free choice, adultery became stigmatized and the relationship lost its semi-official status.<br /><br />The only practice where married women had affairs with younger men was courtly love, beginning in southern europe in the early middle ages. These young men did not have any official status, and did not have any designation. They were called troubadours, if they were called anything.<br /><br />Of course, the premise of the courtly love affair was that the couple never consummated it. So, officially, the man was an emotional lover but not a real one.Stuart Schneidermanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-56367058031703989602012-11-16T15:45:07.546-08:002012-11-16T15:45:07.546-08:00Stuart, I fear this post of yours is unusually ahi...Stuart, I fear this post of yours is unusually ahistorical. Until the advent of surefire contraception, or shortly before, (i.e., the 20th century), young, unmarried women of good family did not, as a rule, become sexually involved with older men, or anyone else. Virginity was the key to marriage, for reasons of status, sexual jealousy, and the paternity issue you raise. Did sex before marriage for women happen occasionally? Of course. But rarely. Too many people, including the young woman and her father, had too much at stake. We are speaking here of the upper classes, and the bourgeois. <br /><br />So extramarital sex was the province of the married. French novels were particularly known for their depictions of these relationships. In traditional, religious societies, as a rule, married men cheated with married women. The word 'lover' sufficed perfectly well for the man's place in the relationship. <br />Of course married men also screwed the chambermaids, barmaids, local peasants or slaves, etc. Call it what you will == droit du seigneur, rape, whatever. No term needed for the male status. And the woman in such cases was neither a mistress nor a lover. She was a roll in hay, among the nicer epithets.<br /><br />For the record, a "mistress" traditionally was an unmarried woman who was supported, set up in a home, etc by a marrried man. It was a relatively permanent relationship. While married women could cheat, they rarely had the control of money needed to set up their lovers. <br />In other matters, Belkin has clearly been promoted beyond her level of competence. <br /> Dragon Ladynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-20333156417159723392012-11-16T12:53:01.560-08:002012-11-16T12:53:01.560-08:00Catherine the Great, as I understand it, had many ...Catherine the Great, as I understand it, had many lovers. She could and did have her pick, and could easily dispose of them when she was tired of them.<br /><br />Check out the movie, "Female".<br />If a woman has a man on the side--how does that work? Could be rich by inheritance, or have become CEO of a large company, and be in a "marriage of convenience".Sam L.https://www.blogger.com/profile/00996809377798862214noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-34892712659216509862012-11-16T07:29:38.993-08:002012-11-16T07:29:38.993-08:00My first question is, "Why should I care?&quo...My first question is, "Why should I care?" It does not add anything of real value to my life. The best I can see is that this adds little of value for women's lives and does nothing to improve life for the culture as a whole. It is meaningless twaddle.<br /><br />Kath,<br /><br />It is the fact that today's feminists are the handmaidens of the state. They desire to control others lives will doing what they desire and having everyone else pay for it. Little do they extrapolate where all this power gathered by the state eventually leads. It makes slaves of them and the rest of us. As a great man once said, "A government big enough to give you everything is big enough to take it away." Power always wants more power and the control that comes with it. How cheaply they sell themselves and us by extension.<br />By the way, Darwin is alive and well. We are all experiments who have the choice of not accomplishing the basics of what it is to be human. The fittest will survive because they breed where others do not.Dennishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14962996070458991675noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-42016766944774731652012-11-16T06:54:07.269-08:002012-11-16T06:54:07.269-08:00Here I go again. This article just shows how idiot...Here I go again. This article just shows how idiotic feminist thinkers are. Is this stuff really bothering them so much? They act like Victorian women, fainting dead away at some imagined impropriety. They cannot live life without trying to clean out every impure thought that does not conform with their ideology. "Oh my, there is a difference between the sexes? How crude! Lets change the language and make it go away!"<br />I am rough on them after being overexposed to feminists when I was a teen, trying to navigate the post hippie era of the 70's. <br />I would like to think they don't matter but their influence is felt because of their insistence that the 'State" control people's thought and speech.Kathnoreply@blogger.com