ASHER writes, in regard to the recent entry on the culture war:

After becoming disillusioned with the feeling that the three of us, me, you and Alan Roebuck, were talking past each other I decided to take a step back and personalize this conversation. The reason this is necessary is that the traditionalists, such as you, are presenting nothing to men like myself that addresses our own personal circumstances. In personalizing this conversation I would submit my formative political experience, which occurred over a period of two to three years around the age of twenty.

As I’ve intimated before I grew up in very conservative Christian environs, and was fully invested in that life until my mid-twenties. Over the course of time I saw church-going girls from solid, middle-class familes having children by young males from outside that environment. Of course these men, to stretch the term, were entirely unsuitable for either fatherhood or husbandry, so the girls ended up raising their children in their parents’ homes, often with no child support. I realized, as would any man with an IQ above room temperature, that each instance of this occurrance meant that one man out there in society would not get married, unless he consented to raise a stranger’s child.

Men clearly have an aversion to this.

When I have addressed this problem to older conservative Christians I have meet met with complete indifference, if not ridicule. Basically, “buck up, soldier, now fight the culture war”.

At some point I realized that I was not objectively, the only thing that counts, invested in the culture war and quit fighting it. Frankly, I have to admit that, through my lifestyle, I am on the other side of the culture war versus you and Alan.

So, everyday you are losing men like myself to the other side because you are not reaching us in our personal lives and experiences. Nothing you say or advocate has any relevance for our daily lives. Actually, that’s not true. You are asking us to thanklessly and anonymously sacrifice whatever joys and comforts we’ve managed to carve out in this jungle for some distant future generation that has no relation to us. And if a highly theoretical mind, like mine, does not take up your challenge how can you possibly expect the pedestrian male mind to sign up for this battle.

If you want soldiers in this culture war you are going to have to advocate things that positively impact on people’s immediate personal experiences. Such an example would be male singleness.

I am single.

Why? Men like myself are statistically single because tens of millions of women are off the marriage market by being single mothers, many by choice. It is the mere existence of those children that makes millions of men single and uninvested in society and in your culture war. Everytime I see a single mother I think “if that child had been aborted I might have a family.” As brutal as you might consider that sentiment it directly addresses the issue of illegitimacy and stable family formation. So, contrary to Alan’s assertion that I have given up, I have presented one very straightforward way to address the problem of family structure, which is probably the single most important part of the culture war.

Alan has rejected my proposal and has nothing more in his quiver than nagging preachiness. He has not one readily implementable proposal that addresses family structure and formation.

So, I am lost to him. Like me, millions of men are lost to him. So, his position is ineffectual and impotent.

So, he will lose the culture war.

Asher adds, in response to a question about his personal life:

I date casually and have sex outside of a lifetime commitment. I go out and drink and party. I listen to socially destructive music. I use porn.

Laura writes:

I would like to sum up Asher’s main points, which together constitute one of the more novel arguments for why an entire culture should kiss its history, traditions and social stability goodbye:

1. I cannot find a woman who does not have a child by another man to be my wife.

2. I prefer women who have had abortions to women who have decided to raise their children out of wedlock.

3. I cannot change this preference. It is inborn.

4. No one conservative sympathizes with me. That shows conservatives know nothing about real life.

5. Therefore, I have decided to embrace hedonism myself. This includes casual sex that may result in abortion or a woman raising a child out of wedlock.

6. The culture war is lost because there are plenty of men like me and you have nothing to offer us.

Asher also says that Alan Roebuck offers not one implementable proposal that addresses family structure. In other words, Alan, who was making a general call for the formation of new conservative cultural institutions, does not address his personal situation. Family formation was not the specific topic of Alan’s piece, but he faces the charge of having neglected it.

By the way, I question Asher’s claim that he grew up in a conservative Christian community. If parents are allowing their unmarried daughters to be alone with men and have the opportunity to have intercourse with them, they are not conservative Christians. Parenthood entails supervision for daughters and there is no society that has maintained strong sexual ethics without it. So obviously Asher grew up in an environment where aspects of Christianity are embraced but where liberalism has made substantial headway.

I am the last person to dismiss the crisis of out-of-wedlock births, but I cannot at all sympathize with Asher’s view of the young single mothers in his community. While I do not believe these are the only women to meet, I accept that there are so many of them that they reduce the number of childless women to marry significantly. (By the way, it’s worth noting that the reason so many young women are getting pregnant and raising children alone is connected to the high incidence of abortion. Abortion has made pregnancy and childbirth something the woman alone faces, a matter of personal choice. More abortion means more single motherhood.)

The biggest bit of nonsense in Asher’s argument is his haughty disregard for these women who are living the consequences of a life which Asher himself lives. This is a life of mating chaos, without any authority other than the imperative of pleasure. No adult authority has prevented these girls from having casual sex and getting pregnant or compelled men to marry the women they impregnate.  In Asher’s view, these women are not worth considering. Their children are of no concern to him. Why should they be? They are not his. They are prevented  abortions, better swept away in some eugenics movement so that men like Asher can have wives who have no children. Then we could really get this traditionalism thing going.

This is what is strange. Asher whines that no one sympathizes with him. He sees a shortfall in sensitivity from others, and at the same time has so little sensitivity himself. Children will grow up without fathers, children will be aborted, but that is not as bad as Asher without a wife who does not meet his standards. He has a natural aversion, sort of like an allergy to children born out of wedlock. Truthfully, I cannot imagine the average man of sixty years ago talking in such an unabashedly narcissistic way or asserting, without shame, that family life is a thing pursued out of self-interest not responsibility. Asher’s words show the myths and faulty assumptions of the men’s rights movement, of those who believe that all women should suffer the consequences of the acts of some women; that men’s natural inclinations are unchangeable and essentially good; that children’s interests can be pushed aside; and that men can take hold of the reins of society without accepting unpleasant responsibilities.

I have no interest in raising another man’s child and that’s a natural aversion I cannot change, Asher contends. Again, the self-absorption of this outlook is glaring. Asher can change his inborn aversion to innocent children who want a father more readily than children can change their inborn need for love.

I assume Asher is not a Christian in any sense and does not believe in eternal rewards for goodness or that sexuality matters to God. He might review the basic arguments for the existence of a personal and judging God. Leaving those arguments aside, there are very few men who have ever said, “I wish I never had my son,” or “I wish I had never been loved my stepdaughter.” I do not feel sorry for men like Asher. There are plenty of women they could marry. They have to step into the real world first and work hard at it. Memories of porn and partying wane in value as a person ages. I find it laughable when I read pseudo-scientific predictions that all men will soon prefer Robogirls to real women. If the satisfactions of bringing new life into this world or of taking care of the young are not persuasion enough, then there is not much for me to say to persuade men like Asher to keep looking for a wife, even one who already has a child.

Alan Roebuck writes:

Asher, let’s examine your words. You begin by saying “traditionalists, such as you, are presenting nothing to men like myself that addresses our own personal circumstances.” 

And what are those circumstances? The only example you give, and therefore the one that is presumably most important to you, is your singleness. You said: 

If you want soldiers in this culture war you are going to have to advocate things that positively impact on people’s immediate personal experiences. Such an example would be male singleness. 

I am single. 

Why? Men like myself are statistically single because tens of millions of women are off the marriage market by being single mothers, many by choice. 

Every time I see a single mother I think “if that child had been aborted I might have a family.” 

In other words, you observe that many women make themselves unmarriageable by giving birth to illegitimate children rather than having abortions and thereby remaining candidates for marriage. And although I was not aware of it when I first read it, one of your earlier communications offered abortion as a solution to this problem: Presumably you meant that if the wayward women would abort the children of the men they refuse to marry, they will remain potential mates, and improve the marital chances of men like you. Since I refuse to approve of abortion, and since I have not made any specific plans for getting you married, you accuse me of having nothing to offer men like you. 

I confess that I don’t have a simple solution to the problem of discord between the sexes, one manifestation of which is the failure of many people to marry. The fundamental causes of this are the liberal propaganda that most women swallow, and the inhuman rules and culture that liberal thinking produces. That’s the ultimate reason so many good men can’t get married. 

Here’s the best marital advice: If you want to get married, Asher, you need to spend more time among the kind of women who want to get married, and who have the necessary character to remain married. To do this, you need to stop spending time with liberal women, and start attending a traditionally conservative church. But beware: most churches that are popularly regarded as conservative will not do the job; they just put a thin coat of conservative-looking paint on parishioners who remain liberal. You need a traditionalist conservative church. Proper women are very rare anywhere else. 

Of course, this strategy won’t work unless you yourself become a traditionalist conservative. If you participate willingly, or even eagerly, in an evil system (liberalism), you have to expect that bad things will happen to you. And “participate in” means, most basically, participating inwardly, in your mind. In order to have better chances of good happening to you, you need to stop wallowing in liberalism and its vices and start participating in a good system. 

In summary, you said, 

The bottom line is that if you want culture warriors you need to sell it with a “if you join us good things will happen to you, personally.” Otherwise, people, even those who acknowledge the seriousness of the situation, will simply accept what they view as inevitable decline, having fun while the party lasts. That’s what I’m doing, and will continue to do so, unless I’m given an opportunity to measurably improve my personal circumstances through joining this culture war. 

In another email, you made it clear exactly what is the fun that you want to continue to do. Your position, therefore, is simply this: “Unless I can continue getting (nonmaritally) laid and stoned, and doing all the other things I like, I won’t support traditionalist conservatism.” 

This reminds me of the following excerpt from my unpublished essay, “The Proposed Manifesto of the American Traditionalist Society:” 

Responding to calls for [traditionalist] renewal…, skeptics generally reply by saying, in effect, “The status quo is too strong. It is in people’s selfish interest to continue things the way they are now.” Liberalism, the cynic says, allows people to be free, so they will want to continue in their liberalism. 

But the desire for order and meaning is at least as fundamental as the desire to be free, and liberalism destroys order and meaning. Traditionalist conservatism supplies man’s deepest need: the need for order, especially the order of being in proper communion with God through faith in Jesus Christ. 

If the rights to get laid and stoned are most important to you, Asher, then I don’t have anything to say to you. But if you hate the nihilism of liberalism, you will look for a better way.

Laura writes:

I would also not dismiss the possibility of a conservative man changing a liberal woman, before they are married.

                                                               — Comments —

Michael S. writes:

Asher writes:

Everytime I see a single mother I think “if that child had been aborted I might have a family.” As brutal as you might consider that sentiment it directly addresses the issue of illegitimacy and stable family formation.

Well, I suppose it is “brutal,” but “brutal” wasn’t the first word that came to mind when I read this. “Stupid” is more like it. He doesn’t sound like someone who’s even close yet to being fit for fatherhood. So why is he even concerned about the fitness of women his age? Why does he even think he cares about getting married?

Asher is not disillusioned at all. He just doesn’t recognize the illusions under which he’s trapped.

Reader N. writes:

At the risk of being terse, Asher wants something for nothing, and he’s chosen a side in the cultural conflict whether he wants to admit it or not. I will explain in two paragraphs.

He wants an older culture back, but is not willing to do anything in his personal life that would contribute to making that happen. That’s not how the world works. He wants something
for nothing.

His own actions are in harmony with the dominant, liberal/leftist nihilistic culture. He’s chosen a side, perhaps by inertia rather than active choice, but he’s still on that side rather
than on the side of Christian-based Western civilization.

(I have known people, both men and women, who claim to be mere spectators in the cultural conflict. This is a false claim in both the worldly sense and the theological sense.)

George writes:

I could be wrong, but I think there is a big disconnect between what is being said and what Asher is hearing. I think that to Asher it sounds like you are telling him to cut his own throat.

Laura said: “Family formation was not the specific topic of Alan’s piece, but he faces the charge of having neglected it.”

As part of any conservative revival, it certainly needs to be. Men work within the confines of civilization in order to lock down reproductive resources. When those resources are unavailable, we are effectively disenfranchised from civilization. Of course liberals will read those last two sentences and say “so what?” and they will say this because they are so inhumanly disconnected from their own nature. But to see conservatives say the same thing is very disheartening. If so-called conservatives cannot understand the importance or the centrality of mating & sex in the battle against then left then this tells you that the right really has lost the culture wars, because they have accepted the central ideas of the left.

There is one simple value system that conservatives can promote as a way to win over a lot of apathetic men: patriarchy.

Laura writes:

As part of any conservative revival, it certainly needs to be. 

Have you read my website before?

George replies:

You said that family formation was not part of Alan’s piece. I was making reference to that (“Alan’s piece”), not to your website in general.

Also I wanted to, but forgot to, respond to this from Alan:

“Here’s the best marital advice: If you want to get married, Asher, you need to spend more time among the kind of women who want to get married, and who have the necessary character to remain married. To do this, you need to stop spending time with liberal women, and start attending a traditionally conservative church. But beware: most churches that are popularly regarded as conservative will not do the job; they just put a thin coat of conservative-looking paint on parishioners who remain liberal. You need a traditionalist conservative church. Proper women are very rare anywhere else. “

This proposition is difficult at best. I don’t think it’s too radical of me to say that people tend to cluster by lifestyle and ideology over large geographic regions. If a man who is living in a blue state on the East Coast is looking for a mate like Alan describes here, it may be literally (or almost literally) impossible for him to do so. I’ve lived in several different regions of the US, blue state and red state, and things are very different between them.

The blogger Roissy paints a sexpocalypse-now view of the D.C. area, and my experience of that area is pretty similar in regards to people’s behavior. Unlike Asher and Roissy I don’t participate in the hedonistic culture. It’s not because I’m a saint, instead, for some reason it feels rather unnatural to me. But when you are swamped by that culture, when it is everywhere you go, you can understand why men like Asher give up — even if you don’t agree with it.

Laura writes:

I assume a restoration of patriarchy was one of the conservative objectives Alan was referring to in his original piece. But that is irrelevant. Asher said he does not care what the long term goals of any conservative cultural renewal are because he cannot find a suitable wife now. As he said, “You are asking us to thanklessly and anonymously sacrifice whatever joys and comforts we’ve managed to carve out in this jungle for some distant future generation that has no relation to us.”

Also, Asher did not say he cannot find any marriageable women. He just cannot find a woman without children.

No, I don’t understand why he would give up given those choices. I know of decent young women from middle class families who have made mistakes and have a young child. Obviously the long term goal is to reverse this burgeoning illegitimacy. But in the meantime, men and women need to make the best out of the chaos that exists.

Charles writes:

Asher wrote in response to Mr. Roebuck’s article: 

“You are asking us to thanklessly and anonymously sacrifice whatever joys and comforts we’ve managed to carve out in this jungle for some distant future generation that has no relation to us.” 

This is what men who have families do. They sacrifice not just for the moment, but for the future generations who they are, in fact, very much related to. I have to believe the reason Asher wrote the above is because he does not want to give up his lifestyle that he writes about in this quote: 

“I date casually and have sex outside of a lifetime commitment. I go out and drink and party. I listen to socially destructive music. I use porn.”

 I cannot imagine finding lasting happiness in this type of a life.

Kristor writes:

Charles has pretty much nailed it. Whining and complaining is what little boys do. Self-sacrifice is for men. Asher should ask himself a simple question: what would he lay down his life to preserve? Is there any such thing? If not, he is not yet a man. 

We should not blame Asher for this. He has lots of company. The culture that has raised him up doesn’t believe there is anything worth dying for, either. This makes it hard to grow up. I discussed this in an essay over at VFR. 

What can Asher do? Find something in the world more important to him than himself, and better than himself, and devote his life thereto. All the other things he wants from life will then fall into place, ordered properly in relation to his mission (perhaps a good woman will be included in the mix, perhaps not; but anything more important to Asher than his life is more important to him than a good woman, ipso facto). Until he does this, all his pleasures will end as dust and ashes in the grey of the morning, no matter how brilliantly they glowed at their midnight holocaust. Until he does this, no political program, no matter how detailed, can ever motivate him to the sacrifices he must make if his life is to have any meaning. Politics is posterior to value. 

Asher will die. To solve his problem, he must turn and face his death, and reckon it; and then he must decide what it shall be for. He must decide what finally counts for him, and then lay his wager on the table. And he must make good on his bet. 

Perhaps the simplest way Asher could do this is to find a boy whom he may befriend and protect. That boy may even come along with a single mother who regrets the errors of her youth, and is working hard to provide a decent, upstanding home for her son, and to teach him in the way that he should go.

George continues:

“Also, Asher did not say he cannot find any marriageable women. He just cannot find a woman without children.”

Women with children are not marriageable by any sane definition of the word.

“No, I don’t understand why he would give up given those choices. I know of decent young women from middle class families who have made mistakes and have a young child.”

Of course you don’t understand.  As a woman you always know the baby is yours and if some sucker man comes along and is willing to raise another man’s child then what do you care so long as women are being taken care of.  Single mommies and bastard children undermine and destroy patriarchy.  So long as you tolerate them, then social change won’t happen, and the West will continue on the downward spiral.

“Obviously the long term goal is to reverse this burgeoning illegitimacy. But in the meantime, men and women need to make the best out of the chaos that exists.”

Making the best of the current situation will only drag the current chaos out even longer.  The existing system needs to be pushed to collapse.  Your compassion for the weak is going to kill the West.

In the meantime, I’ll remain celibate.

Laura writes:

I do not condone illegitimacy, and I have the public record to prove it. I have worn the letters from my keyboard writing about illegitimacy and its destructive consequences here. No one here is tolerating “single mommies and bastards.” That’s a stupid thing to say. I entirely agree that it would be better to marry a childless woman. I have responded to Asher’s comment that it is either this or nothing.

As a woman, you always know the baby is yours and if some sucker man comes along and is willing to raise another man’s child then what do you care so long as women are being taken care of.

That’s right. My words are motivated purely by self-interest. My recognition of real children with real needs is simply coincidental. The obvious fact that women always know the baby is theirs is not relevant in this case. Asher is referring to women who have clearly had a child by another man.

By the way, the idea that women only care about security and nothing else is an oft-repeated myth of the men’s movement. I hate to break it to you, but in the modern world women can provide security for themselves. Yes, they care about the financial security men provide, but to reduce all of their interests to that is the sort of exaggeration that has led to a small-scale epidemic of men feeling sorry for themselves. There is a reason for their pain, our culture is a mess, but someone who has a life-threatening illness cannot waste time feeling sorry for himself and has to get on with a cure. Likewise, someone living in a sick society has to confront unpleasant limitations. We all have to.

I would also like to know how this idea that women only care about security and are incapable of viewing men through anything but the lens of self-interest is essentially different from the contempt expressed for men by feminists?

Women with children are not marriageable by any sane definition of the word.

Sane men have married them, raised their children and their own children, and found contentment. I do not deny that it is difficult.

In the meantime, I’ll remain celibate.

 Remaining celibate is certainly an option if one is willing to forego casual sex and porn, which only degrade a man; if one does not care about perpetuating family and traditions or about the demographic decline of the West; if one does not hear the voice of God calling one to love and to create;  if one can find some replacement for the transcendent mission of bringing new life into the world and raising the young; and if one doesn’t mind being alone and relatively unloved in old age.

There is honorable celibacy, but it is always dedicated to some higher good, not motivated by bitterness and rejection of the world.

Your compassion for the weak is going to kill the West.

Your indifference to the weak will destroy men.  

Jesse Powell writes:

I’d like to add in another point here, on this issue of not wanting to marry a woman who already has children. Now, from the point of view of evolutionary psychology, yes, men prefer to invest their resources into the raising of their own biological children instead of “some other man’s child” that does not possess their genes. This is why children tend to look like their fathers, to reassure the man that the child is truly “his”. However, from the point of view of whether to marry a woman who is childless or a woman who already has a child of her own, statistically speaking a woman who already has a child will bear more additional children in her lifetime than the additional children a woman without a child will bear. In other words, a man who marries a woman who already has a child by another man will on average produce more biological children of his own than the man who marries a childless woman. This is because the woman who already has a child has shown her willingness and ability to have children while the childless woman’s fertility is yet to be proven.

So, even from the point of view of evolutionary psychology, independent of the ethical considerations involved, refusing to marry a woman who already has a child makes no sense.

Sebastien writes:

I totally agree with Asher’s unwillingness to even consider marrying a single mother. This mother would of course prioritise the child in her affections and every day the step father (who will be called by his first name) would see the evidence of his wife’s previous failed relationship. At some point the step father and child will argue and the child will simply turn around and say ‘Well anyway you are not my father’. If the child still has contact with their father then every month the child will return from a weekend with him loaded with presents therefore nullifying the step-father’s efforts in maintaining discipline. 

And when the stepfather finally becomes a father of his own child the problems would only exacerbate. 

What you will learn from Roissy in DC and other seduction forums is that women want to be led. They often don’t know what they want and naturally wish to be with man who has does. They are fed up with feminised men who can’t make up their minds about anything. My advice to Asher is to find a good natured and kind younger woman who isn’t too spoiled by unfettered sex and then make her yours. You will have to be relentless in your efforts in guiding and and helping her, but with the right person I promise you that it works. And when you finally have the joy of your own children, you will find that your cavalier attitude to abortion will change. 

I got married at 38 to a woman 10 years younger. When I first met her, my thoughts on women were quite close to yours, so I hope that this helps.

Laura writes:

To repeat, it would obviously be better if Asher married a childless woman. The purpose of this entry was to respond to his claim that there are not any childless women for him to marry.

Sebastien writes about the problems stepfathers face. Well, biological fathers often face serious disappointments too: children who are evil, sick, dumb, or ungrateful. Parethood is not like shopping for a new car.

Jan Gommers writes:

What a sad state of affairs young men (and women) are in today! Anyway, since I sympathize with Asher, who was after all quite innocent to the ghastly culture he was born into, I want to give him some practical advise. I have seen in my direct environment young men wrestle with this problem. They said to me that they could find women for casual sex  but not  for a committed relationship.
Now I am 55 years old, and when I first heard this I could not believe this. In my youth things were just the other way around. But after looking into this I am convinced that there is truth to this. The babyboomers have produced a sexually completely warped culture, wherein the good and decent young men and women suffer and the bad and wicked prosper. Here is my suggestion: I have seen at least FOUR young men in my direct environment solve this problem succesfully by looking for a wife outside the West.  In Africa, Asia and Latin America. All found a suitable, tradionally thinking  young woman. All have married, all seem to live a stable traditional marriage. They seem very happy and I am happy for them. When you cannot find a suitable woman in the US perhaps this a way to go. It is  not the best solution, but it is certainly better than going down on the road of decadence which will end in despair and losing the most beautiful part of your being.
Perhaps this might help. Anyway I deeply sympathize with good, young men suffering this way, and I hate the villains in Hollywood and the media who make money on their misery.

Laura writes:

I too empathize with anyone looking for a spouse in a land of chaos. But I don’t sympathize with anyone who contends that this chaos justifies cynicism or a life of aimless pleasure.

I’d also like to repeat that I was responding to Asher’s specific scenario, in which he faces women from decent middle class families who have had a child or he faces no marriage at all. That is what he presented as his choices.

Interracial marriage presents its own difficulties. It is not necessarily easier than raising the child of another man along with one’s own children. Besides, we have a duty to preserve our culture and race.

Ilion writes:

Laura writes, He has a natural aversion, sort of like an allergy to children born out of wedlock. Truthfully, I cannot imagine the average man of sixty years ago talking in such an unabashedly narcissistic way or asserting, without shame, that family life is a thing pursued out of self-interest not responsibility.” 

Both of my grandmothers were married multiple times, and at the times of their subsequent marriages, were “single mothers” (they were both widows with children at the times of their second marriages). And, my maternal grandfather (who was a life-long skirt-chaser) married a second “single mother” (likewise a widow) after he and my grandmother divorced, and raised a large family with that woman. 

For example: my paternal grandmother married her first husband and they had two children, a girl and a boy; and her husband died. She married again and they had a son — then she found out that that her “husband” was actually married to someone else; so she divorced him for the legalities of it. Then he died, and she married my grandfather; they had two sons, the older died as an infant, the younger being my father. They divorced when my father was about four. Later, they were going to remarry (he had the marriage license, but my father believed that his sister meddled in some way, restoking the anger of his mother [who was not an easy woman to live with] against his father); for whatever reason, they didn’t remarry and then my grandfather died when my father was ten. And my grandmother married a fourth man and lived with him until his death. 

Further, consider fairytales — the “evil stepmother” is a stock character, but there is no “evil stepfather” stock character. I think the reason for that is that men are self-sacrificing, and that they tend to love their stepchildren as fully as they love the children of their body. That is, when a man chooses to love and marry a woman, when he chooses to live the life of giving his life for that woman — in contrast to choosing to use women as masturbation machines, as ‘Asher’ clearly has chosen to do — then he also chooses to love and give his life for her children. 

Now, I will admit that, all things being equal, I’d prefer to marry a woman without children than one with. But, how often are all things equal?

John E. writes:

I want to commend you for your clear reponse to Asher as of late, and hope that it helps to broaden his thinking, as it appears he is currently set in sort of prudery of the hedonist, where the idea of living temperately and chaste is taboo. 

I understand, as has been shown recently, that my commendation above proves my mettle so as to be included among the ranks of the White Knights-errant, who journey forth in life seeking their only means of sustenance, which is feminine approval. Willst thou, O Fair Thinking Housewife, so dub me? I would wear the title with pride, there is no shame in it, as I understand that those who would use it to refer to me could never be guilty of shaming language.

Laura writes:

Ha! This female supremacist dubs you White Knight. I’m afraid the title comes with very few perks.

[COMMENTS CONTINUE HERE.]