Submit, but don't enjoy it

Bradamante

What's the message when some religious conservatives expect wives to submit to their husbands, but then turn around and condemn consensual BDSM submission? That women should submit, so long as they don't enjoy it, but if they start to enjoy it, it's wrong? Well, that seems like a pretty grim message to me. Do they want people to be miserable?

TheConductor

Yes.

captainbrass

The sort of people you're talking about tend to be pretty anti-anything enjoyable. That's puritanism for you.

Incidentally, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I know for sure that there's at least one porn film out there on the Net somewhere whose plot line is basically "woman in conservative religious marriage submits to her husband's, erm, physical punishments for religious reasons and enjoys them for sexual ones."

This thought amuses me.

glennmagusharvey

Let me quote Jim Davis's take on Puritan thinking, which this closely resembles:

"[T]heir idea of a good time was to sit around not having one, while making sure no one else was having one either."

(The Garfield How to Party Book, Chapter One: "Partying through the Ages")

There's a certain amount of curious dislike or disdain for pleasure in general (and sexual pleasure especially) that religious conservatives display.

Bee

Actually, at the time Puritans were known for having unusual gender equality compared to the other colonies.  They also stressed romantic compatibility over political/economic convenience of the marriage, which was pretty radical for the time.

Sure there was a lot of stuff they fucked up, but this was something they were pretty progressive on.

Also, you're conflating two very different kinds of submission.  The kind religious ultra-conservatives are talking about is one of household authority and responsibility -- which, to be fair, comes from a Bible passage modern scholars are pretty sure was written under false authorship by the forming clergy (of Roman men, who wanted as little competition as possible).  The kind you're talking about is a raunchy sexual act with what they see as unfortunate implications as to possible psychological connections to violence, as well as sex-for-the-sake-of-sex which they tend to frown on too.

Bee

And obligatory:

Legionnaire

Oh you COCK. I wanted to post that!