[Vision2020] submission response

[Michael]

ACS,

 

Hey, we agree!  I think anyway.  I don't disagree with anything you said in
response to this.  I would just say that the pursuer/pursued construct has
always been there, side by side with all of this other interesting stuff;
and I do not want to say that it does not look very different at different
times and places. For example, during the time there where temple
prostitutes, there would have been far more typical virgins getting pursued
by men for the purpose of a romantic relationship or marriage.  Whether it
was the Helen of Troy, Joseph's Mary, a medieval virgin, Romeo's Juliet, or
Jane Austin's Lizzy, the common pattern is one dominated by male initiative
and wooing, and a woman's strength in rejecting-at least to some extent. And
I'd like to think we could easily find some biological reasons for this, as
perhaps Chas would point out.  Does this make sense?  

 

Michael

 

 

> I think this is an example of what I take to be the more radical 

> nature of the social views you are espousing in this area.  My 

> argument is not that dating "must have" a "pursuer/pursued" construct; 

> I wanted to rather note that it has had this construct for the last 

> 3000 years, clear into the 21-st century in liberal America.

 

I have all sorts of disagreements, down the line, with virtually everything
you've said. But I'd like to take particular issue with this. The past three
thousand years haven't been particularly similar in terms of human courtship
behavior. The "past three thousand years"

in Western society have included: polygyny, polyandry, concubinage, "courtly
love," wives-as-chattel, temple prostitution, dating, pre-marriage
cohabitation, monogamy, dating, post-dating, Christian courtship, et cetera.
Residence patterns have changed from patrilocal to neolocal -- an enormous
shift.

 

The past two hundred years have been extremely turbulent, by historical
standards, and the past three thousand have been a mess of contradictory
standards and principles that, were they contemporaneous rather than
sequential, would never be called the same thing.

 

-- ACS

 

 

 

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