Conjugal Rights Back On Agenda: Guest Essayist
KJ had always dreamed that this site would be a forum for ideas and vigorous debate, reflecting the ethos of its host, ABC Radio National.
It is with pride, then, that I introduce you to The Prof, from the Institute Of Advanced Studies. The Prof had been denied the right to present these views in what he hoped would have been a two-hemisphere speaking tour (with signer).
In Praise of Conjugal Rights, or Why a Little More Kant could Save Your Marriage.
Marriage is a contract between two people for the mutual use of the sex organs declared the German philosopher Immanuel Kant more than 200 years ago.
Kant himself was a confirmed bachelor, and we know little of what use he made of his sex organs, let alone anyone else’s.
His definition of marriage has been ridiculed ever since. But here at the Institute for Advanced Studies, we think it has a lot to recommend it.
The Institute conducts regular in-depth focus groups on pressing social issues employing a world’s-best-practice research methodology, viz: get a bunch of punters together, fill them up with the electric soup and set them loose on a subject.
It will come as no surprise that if the punters are around the fifty mark, sex is a top of mind issue – or bottom of drawer, depending on gender.
Take any group of chaps with those greying temples which, according to Raymond Chandler, women find irresistible. Engage them in conversation around the BBQ while you scorch a sausage or two.
You will soon discover a distressing truth: they are not getting the sort of access to their beloveds’ organs which they would wish.
Raymond Chandler was a fine writer, but he knew more of scotch-and-rye and speak-easies than he did of love. Greying temples are no guarantee of action in the conjugal cot.
Let us leave the chaps to their beer for a moment, and move inside. Their female partners – how we at the Institute hate that word – are deep in conversation over beakers of booze. Amidst the discussion of hot flushes, cold feet and whether or not Thailand or Laos is better for Botox, certain common themes emerge:
At my age you just become invisible to men : when I walk down the street the heads don’t turn anymore: this is the age when men all have affairs with someone from Marketing.
The Institute has only one thing to say.
Girls, get over it!
You are not invisible to the moderately grizzled man who shares your bed.
Nor has familiarity inured him to your charms.
A glimpse of your naked form as you emerge from the shower, like Botticelli’s Venus from the waves, is enough to get him all in a lather.
The man in your life does not find suddenly find himself in the stationery cupboard clambering hotly over Emily from Marketing because he no longer finds you attractive.
It is because he is not getting to clamber hotly over you.
In other words, there has been a breach of contract. Use of the organs is being denied.
The Institute has given long consideration to this issue. It has reviewed a number of solutions drafted by our consultants, as follows:
1: THE OWNER OPERATOR
The advantages of this solution are that it is free, quick, and involves no other parties. Only one’s own organs, or organ, is required.
Knocking one up under the shower is second nature to most men, and generally has a calming effect for a few hours at least.
But in these days of water shortages we would not like to think that the temporary relief afforded to men in Sydney and Brisbane came at the cost of abandoned farms and ruined livelihoods in the Murray-Darling basin.
Moreover, Kant himself did not approve of this harmless activity, on the grounds that it involved treating oneself as a means rather than an end. We will leave you to figure that one out.
2: THE OUTSOURCING SOLUTION
Again this has much to recommend it, not least that it has been endorsed by the Honourable Member for Goulburn and former Head of the Office for the Status of Women, Pru Goward, who once declared that she would rather her husband visit a sex worker than have an affair.
We at the Institute can only agree. This, is however, a more costly solution than the owner-operator, and since many councils discriminate against sex workers in residential areas, may involve travel, with the associated environmental impacts.
3: THE RETURN OF CONJUCAL RIGHTS
The clear advantages of this solution make it the Institute’s preferred option. Again, it is free, carbon-neutral, and precludes the need for cupboards, recriminations, and/or divorce.
Moreover, it can be implemented at home, and should only take about 15 minutes – or less, in some cases. And afterwards he will be more than happy to a) take the kids to the park b) do the shopping c) mend the back gate.
Who knows, you might even enjoy it.
Women of Australia, in the words of those well-known philosophers from across the Tasman, the Conchords: It’s business time.
Over to you……..
Comment of the Week
September 12th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Another Anglo- Northern European perspective, I’m afraid.
Here in the Greek community it’s not the men that are missing out on their conjugal rights but the women. It doesn’t take me that long to fill up my hot water bottle, snap an eye mask into place, roll up and insert my earplugs and pop in an orthodontic resin mouth piece. I have it down to about three minutes but right after that I am open for business and what happens? I lie there waiting for him to whisper my name. Perhaps it’s just that I can’t hear him. But I don’t think so. I think Greek men have a problem with their self image and I’ll tell you why.
A family myth told each year following Christmas lunch.
Whilst the women and children wash baking pans and self medicate in the kitchen, the men sit burping at the dining table arguing about ancient Greek politics and slagging off the Turks.
Handing out cigars Uncle T gets to tell the tale: You know why the women in our family are so ugly? he begins affectionately because when the Turks raided Kytheria over the centuries they took all the good looking ones.
You must understand that this is not a sexist tale although when I was 21 and in the feminist collective at University I did not quite understand the subtle cry of self anguish embedded in the story. It’s true that there is quite a bit of superfluous facial hair in female members of our family, but then you should see the men. Luckily, waxing for males has really taken off in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney and so things are vastly on the improve for all of us. How this will affect the future of conjugal rights for Greeks I don’t know. But, next time – all you who live in suburbs with trees – bemoaning the lack of action in your marital bed, have a thought for our poor men’s Achilles heels -toes sporting hair clips do not make for comfortable bed fellows.
September 13th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Show me the money… honey…
I got howled down at dinner last night when I said “feminism is dead”… oddly enough it was mainly the male contingent who were assuring me that women have never had it so good. The most positive female comment was that young women are so much more confident these days.
I agree… but there’s confidence and there’s the real world. Bear with me for a paragraph cause I’ll come back to sex. Power, security and wealth are still largely male domains. Yes, there are more women bank managers… but I think being a bank manager has become a downgraded job. There are still very few female CEOs, board leaders, Exec Directors, Ministers etc.
Let’s talk about sex, baby. What gets on my (Greek loving) goat is that girls are confident enough to demand the right to take all their clothes off and have casual sex. YYAAYY! Been there and still have the button (although it’s hard to find in bed with my eyemask and earplugs on).
But whose best interest is being served? Forget legitimizing sex work. Women don’t make much money out of sex work and yet who’s doing the work! We’ve have an industry promoting the sexualisation of women but who benefits?
Why Kant men and women be friends?
September 14th, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Words fail me! I stumbled unwittingly upon this tedious tosspot of trivial drivel while searching for interesting articles about neurology, intelligence and design.
Kant would be turning in his grave! A person who gives in to another’s sexual desire makes a tool of himself or herself.
“For the natural use that one sex makes of the other’s sexual organs is enjoyment, for which one gives oneself up to the other. In this act a human being makes himself into a thing, which conflicts with the right of humanity in his own person” (Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p. 62)
September 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
As a bachelor did Kant really know about marriage? Anyway, over 200 years down the track Kant certainly cannot now be correct. The distressing truth is that the marriage contract rarely guarantees a lasting mutual use of the sex organs. The “boys” are pretty sexy till they turn grey and begin to need their viagra. Even if they are not colouring their fading hair, their “gals” are much keener for some marital sex once they know they can’t get pregnant again as the pill can sometimes let them down! So, as they begin to age, the blokes are more likely to be going up to the pub with their mates to watch the cricket or football, coming home very late. The ladies have waited so long for their husbands they have fallen asleep, something which suits the blokes. Mind you, there’s a chance HE could meet a “gal” at work or in the pub who could get him sexually active again…and SHE too could find a “chap”, often a good deal younger than her, who could help relieve her after the disappointment of the marriage “vows”….Of course, if the married couples are still together, despite their “naughty” extra-maritals, the catastrophe of pain as they move into old age can bring them back closer together as help is now needed not sex! If Kant is up there in heaven he would now be aware of all this!