In recent years I have been experiencing something I had often heard about from others but somehow never expected might happen to me: I have found myself getting old. So far it does not seem quite as bad as I have heard it described, but at sixty-one years of age I am, so to speak, still a youngster at being old. We’ll just have to see.
I am still somewhat partial to young people, however, possibly because I was one myself for a time. I have plenty of young friends trying to make their way in a challenging and confusing world, and find myself wanting to help them out in any way I can. But they often appear less anxious to hear my hard-bought wisdom than I think they ought to be. I keep feeling reminded of an old definition of “expert”—someone who has already made every mistake it is possible to make within some limited domain. To myself I seem a highly qualified expert in any number of domains by this standard, and I would be more than happy to share the story of my mistakes with the younger people I observe repeating them. Perhaps it is my unprepossessing exterior, or perhaps it just isn’t the fashion today for the young to seek out advice from their elders.
An exception occurred recently, however, and that is why I am setting pen to paper. A young man of my acquaintance approached me with the most intractable and confounded difficulties of which I have ever heard. He is really a good kid, about nineteen or twenty I would reckon, well brought-up and now gainfully employed. But he finds himself in a perplexing situation. It turns out that if a dilemma appears sufficiently difficult to resolve, a few young people are still willing to learn from their elders. This gives me hope for the future.
His difficulty concerns a young lady of his acquaintance. I don’t know her well, but have every reason to believe she is a respectable girl of good family and sound principles. He has known her for some time: in fact, he occasionally crossed paths with her when they were children, what with their both living in the same town and all. For this reason, he was taken by surprise recently at what happened when he ran into her again after about a year and a half. I will try to recount his story the way he told it to me, but must ask the reader’s indulgence due to the extraordinary nature of my young friend’s experience. It was not always easy for him to find the words to put it across to me.
Viewed from the outside, not all that much happened. He went to one of those small-town family-type get togethers. Folks were barbecuing and talking, kids running around playing ball, men were arguing over politics while women compared notes on family matters—you get the picture. Well, there stood this young lady, and she must not have been too upset to see my friend again, because when he appeared, she smiled. And although it probably wasn’t the first time he had seen her smile, something different happened on this occasion: as near as he could describe it to me, his whole being suddenly seemed flooded with a sensation of extreme happiness. He wondered what was going on, because he could see neither why such a thing should happen at all, nor why it should have happened today, nor why with this particular girl. He has been puzzling over these mysteries ever since.
Despite the unexpectedness and intensity of his feelings, his interaction with the young lady was rather limited. They exchanged some conventional greetings and conversed briefly about a few matters of hardly any importance at all. Then she had to leave to look after her little brother. She’s very good with children, you see, and hopes to have her own someday.
One reason my friend did not speak longer with her, he tells me, is that he seemed to be overcome by shyness. He hadn’t expected that either: they were, as I mentioned, acquainted from childhood, and he is not usually a shy young man. But he suddenly found himself fumbling to produce even the most commonplaces remarks in the lady’s presence. He has only seen her a few times since that day, but each time he finds the same thing happening.
So he came to me for advice. Perhaps he was relying on my reputation as the author of Sexual Utopia in Power. I actually do know quite a lot about sexual matters, as it happens. I am familiar with the gay liberation movement, have followed the recent kerfuffles over transsexualism and men competing in women’s sports, and once even reviewed Jim Goad’s account of the artificial vaginas transsexuals can now pay to have drilled into their bodies, along with the debate over how their odor compares to that of the natural prototype. But I’m not sure whether even a complete study of Kraft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis would suffice to equip me to deal with my young friend’s situation, and I am ashamed to admit that I did not know quite what to tell him.
There are other matters to be considered. Although young, my friend is already aware that this world can be a dangerous place. It has seen wars and revolutions, fires, floods, and famines; criminals lurk in dark corners. This gives him cause for concern, because the young lady of whom he is so fond scarcely weighs a hundred thirty pounds and is not nearly as robust as he is. For the moment, he admits, no one appears to be coming after her with gun or knife. But he still finds himself worried about her well-being. He can’t even quite explain the nature of his concern, but it just plain seems to him that there ought to be someone capable of coming to this young woman’s assistance should such need arise.
My friend really does have a good heart, and I found his solicitude admirable, but when it came to practical advice, I did not find the case an easy one. I do, however, know someone who works in security, so I took the problem to that fellow. He has provided armed guards for businesses, banks, and meetings of right-wing extremists, but says he has never heard of a security detail being assigned to a young lady. Well, maybe the President’s daughter—but certainly not an ordinary girl in a small town like the one where these two live. Perhaps the market just is not there.
And now my young friend is facing even greater difficulties. I asked him how he imagines the future of himself and this girl he cares so much about, and he isn’t too sure of the matter. Being so young, I suppose he just is not used to thinking seriously about the future. All he could tell me is that every time he thinks about her—and he thinks about her quite a bit—it seems to him that the supreme happiness of which a human might be capable would somehow involves clasping this girl in one’s arms.
The reader will surely understand my alarm. I asked my friend if he did not realize that this was precisely where the very greatest danger of all for young ladies was to be found. To my relief, he assured me that he did. He is a serious young man who does a bit of reading, and the family leans Republican. Well, according to what is said in many highly-respected conservative publications, horrifying things can happen to innocent young women on American college campuses these days. The young men are quite simply predators, without honor or conscience. My friend is beside himself with anxiety because he understands the girl’s parents are seriously contemplating letting her matriculate at the local university. He is going to ask her father to reconsider the whole thing. If anything should happen to this young lady, he does not know what he would do.
I asked him to describe to me the dangers that face young women on college campuses. He reports that they are rarely described in detail because conservative authors are rather decorous and old-fashioned in their use of language and dislike being overly explicit. But according to what he can understand—and this is precisely the most confusing and disturbing aspect of the entire situation—the campus predators clasp girls in their
arms.
In other words, it appears from what these writers are saying that my young friend may himself be a predator. I’m sure the reader will appreciate his agony at the thought that his cherished dream of happiness might turn out to be a source of the greatest possible danger to the girl he loves: the very thought is almost too much for the poor fellow to bear.
I am not the first person he went to for advice about his situation, as it happens. Despite his generally conservative leanings, my friend has gotten wind of possible objections to his association with this young woman from a different quarter. How many obstacles there are to happiness on this earth! It turns out that young women have a right to bodily autonomy. Their bodies belong to them, obviously, so who should have any rights over them if not the women themselves? In fact, my friend enthusiastically agrees with this point of view.
Now, it appears that women are sometimes subjected against their will to inappropriate touching, but this young man is vehemently opposed to any such thing. In fact, he says that if anyone should come along and touch this particular young lady inappropriately, he would scarcely be able to contain his rage. He might not even be able to answer for his behavior! I was amazed to hear him speak like this because it was so out of character. He was never a violent kid.
Well, braving all the predators, he went down to our local university to seek the advice of Dr. Naomi Rosenberg, Chair of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies. Dr. Rosenberg is the author of the well-received monograph Transgressive Biker Sluts Going for Broke, and is married to Alejandra García-Martínez, a Guatemalan labor activist and woman of color. A ten-year resident of our local community, Dr. Rosenberg is also an internationally renowned authority on the theory of inappropriate touching.
The young man explained his concerns. One point on which he was particularly keen to be instructed was that the very term would seem to imply the existence—at least as a logical possibility—of another kind of touching that was appropriate. But academic specialization has now gone so far that even Dr. Rosenberg’s extensive expertise on inappropriate touching did not translate into any ability to provide a young man with guidance as to the appropriate variety. Dr. Rosenberg did, however, express the hope that the young lady might enroll in one of her classes. No aspect of her work gives her greater satisfaction, she says, than the extremely personal interest it allows her to take in the development of young women.
The girl herself appears to like this young man, and she shares his perplexity. They hope they might eventually discover some sort of reliable, mutually beneficial arrangement to solve their difficulties. If such a thing were to emerge, my friend says he would not hesitate to “proposition” the young lady with it, if the reader will pardon the expression.
In my younger days I earned a PhD in philosophy and devoted many hours to some fairly abstruse issues: free will vs. determinism, idealism vs. materialism, realism vs. nominalism, you name it. But the novelty of my young friend’s situation is such that I can find no solution at all. So I have decided to resort to what is nowadays called “crowdsourcing.” Counter-Currents has some very intelligent readers, and I am hoping one of them may be able to suggest a way forward for this deserving young man and his lady friend. Commentators are urged not to shy away from even the most far-fetched suggestions, for nothing is so exotic that it might not provide a clue to the solution of a difficulty that has so far eluded the young man, myself, and even the learned Dr. Rosenberg.
From comments
Laughing my [censored for the prudes] head off. OK Roger let’s just admit what you’re doing. Some of us can tell, especially if we’ve read your previous work.
By the way, you were wrong in your prior article about what “the immaculate conception” is. It’s not Mary conceiving Jesus without sex, it’s Mary herself having been conceived (born) without sin. An all-too-common mistake made by people without a Catholic background.
Sounds like an immaculate misconception then.
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