Ship of Fools: Whatever happened to tenderness?

Thread: Whatever happened to tenderness? Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=020393

Posted by Eirenist (# 13343) on :

When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

Posted by Pangolin Guerre (# 18686) on :

I'm quite prepared to be corrected on this, but I'm under the impression that "making love" didn't apply strictly to coitus, but much more broadly to include even just a good snog. "Having sex" is much more clinical, escaping any necessary emotional implication and seeming narrower in scope. I'm told that in a much younger cohort (North American teenagers) oral sex is not considered really having sex.

All that said, the shift occurred in popular speech probably beginning in the late 1960s, though I would guess that it probably dates to Havelock Ellis or one of his contemporaries when sex was beginning to be investigated in a more clinical context.

[ 09. December 2017, 16:28: Message edited by: Pangolin Guerre ]

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

I don't know. But it certainly didn't have the "having sex" connotation in a 1930s detective novel I've just been reading.

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

When replying, check your privilege. Reveal your age. [Two face]

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

If sex can be a glass of lovely clear water on a hot day, making love is the river from which we drink but we also swim in, float a while, dry ourselves on the rocks, only to swim again.

Posted by Doublethink. (# 1984) on :

In Jane Austen when a suitor made vigorous love to the heroine in a carriage - it didn't mean having sex.

Posted by Gramps49 (# 16378) on :

Wow!

The discussion is way different than what I expected from the title.

When I think of tenderness, I think of
the guy who rescued a rabbit from an oncoming fire.

I was prepared to repeat the old Coca-Cola line: "Let there be [tenderness] on earth and let it begin with me."

Buf if we are talking about making love vs having sex. I found this interesting article about the difference between the two..

I am not proud I will show my age. Make Love Not War!

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Eirenist

quote:
When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

"When?"

I don’t know about the claims of Jane Austen or the 1960s, but Shakespeare is pretty explicit on the subject in Hamlet Act III Scene 4.

HAMLET
Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamèd bed,
Stewed in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty—

"And Why?"

This is Hamlet speaking to his mother, Gertrude, recently married to his uncle Claudius, who had murdered his father and taken the crown. The boy is naturally upset.

I'm sure someone will find and earlier link of making love with having sex. Chaucer, perhaps? Or the ancients?

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

The earliest example of making love to mean sex in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1927 in the U.S. It has a couple of examples of making love meaning courting from later than that.
Faire l'amour in French has apparently been in use to mean sex since the seventeenth century.

Posted by no prophet's flag is set so... (# 15560) on :

The Song of Solomon perhaps?

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Dafyd

quote:
The earliest example of making love to mean sex in the Oxford English Dictionary is 1927 in the U.S.

Interesting date as it preceded by one year Cole Porter's "Let's Do It: Let's Fall in Love" (1928), whose meaning is clear except to the most literal amongst us. Coward produced a more explicit and hilarious version around 1960, mentioning various famous persons by name.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

Combining the title of thread and the contents of the OP, it doesn't seem likely that discussing word play is the intended goal.
Rather: When did the "romance" leave and sex for the sake of sex take its place?
The answer is similar to the wordplay; it has always been thus. The difference being the youngs being more honest about it than the olds.

Posted by rolyn (# 16840) on :

In olden times making love sometimes appeared more akin to what these days would be regarded as heavy flirting or the early stages of courtship. The actual deed itself didn’t always have words or phrases to describe it.

As has been said above it seems the 60s, with it’s let it all hang out, free love etc. hatched the handy term 'having sex'. Some effort has been made recently to introduce the term 'intimacy' as meaning the same.
This is though all terminology and says nothing of people’s experience. What one feels to be tenderness lies in the heart of the individual beholder, it cannot be bound by words, indeed it might not be anything to do with actual sex.

Is there any more, or less tenderness around these days, how do you begin to quantify it?

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kwesi:
I don’t know about the claims of Jane Austen ..

In the interests of completeness, there's sexual harassment in Emma:

she found ... her attention demanded, and Mr. Elton actually making violent love to her.

And him a clergyman!

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

This well-known quote from C.S. Lewis is a reminder that the absence of love does not make sex wrong, and its presence does not make it right (sorry if it's a bit long, Hosts):-

"I am not at all subscribing to the popular idea that it is the absence or presence of Eros which makes the sexual act "impure" or
"pure," degraded or fine, unlawful or lawful. If all who lay together without being
in the state of Eros were abominable, we all come of tainted stock. The times and places
in which marriage depends on Eros are in a small minority. Most of our ancestors
were married off in early youth to partners chosen by their parents on grounds that had nothing to do with Eros. They went to the act with no other "fuel," so to speak, than plain animal desire. And they did right; honest Christian husbands and wives, obeying
their fathers and mothers, discharging to one another their "marriage debt," and bringing up
families in the fear of the Lord. Conversely,
this act, done under the influence of a soaring and iridescent Eros which reduces the role of the senses to a minor consideration, may yet be plain adultery, may involve breaking a
wife's heart, deceiving a husband, betraying a friend, polluting hospitality and deserting your children. It has not pleased God that the distinction between a sin and a duty should turn on fine feelings. This act, like any other, is justified (or not) by far more prosaic and definable criteria; by the keeping
or breaking of promises, by justice or injustice, by charity or selfishness, by obedience or disobedience".

Posted by que sais-je (# 17185) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eirenist:
When did 'making love' become 'having sex'? and why?

Returning to what (I think) is the sense of the OPs question, we (my wife and I) would say the 1970s.

"Sex began in 1963, between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP", said Larkin but my recollection of the 60s is "making love" being more common then, partly because of the generally 'loviness' of the times.

We suspect the increasing maturity of feminism in the 1970s (and more freely available contraception) meant some women wanted to emphasise sex as separate from love (e.g Erica Jong's "zipless fuck" for example) but neither necessary nor sufficient.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

Well. I think I might be younger than anyone else replying here, which is becoming a less and less common phenomenon in my life.

Despite that, I've been married for eighteen years, and you can add another four of 'together' on before that - though we didn't have actual sex until after we were married... [waves to Pangolin Guerre]...

Honestly, I don't feel as though tenderness, or compassion, has been lacking in this relationship, either in bed or out of it, but I've no memory of either of us ever using the phrase 'making love'. I don't think what you label it necessarily determines or prescribes what goes on, and I guess for me, I associate using the use of such phraseology with people who say 'smalls' instead of 'underwear', or even, god help us, 'undies'. Hey - we know what you're talking about, anyway...

Maybe it's an antipodean thing. Just call a bloody spade a spade, cobber, and be done with it?

Anyway, I don't exactly love it when my husband says to me, 'Fancy a shag?' - but I don't turn him down, I don't require him to make fine speeches, to read me poetry, or even to have a shower, before I condescend to get into bed with him.* And if we're still at one another after all these years, well, frankly, you can raise a glass and be happy for us, regardless of what we're calling it.

*Oh, look, here's me employing a euphemism, of sorts. But seriously, we are in the age of children in the house, so bed it is.

Posted by simontoad (# 18096) on :

I think Bill Clinton thought he had a handle on the difference between having sex and making love. [Big Grin]

In my opinion, Barry White makes love, Johnny Rotten fucks and Mick Jagger has sex.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

One of the great pleasures of being in an ongoing relationship is the development and discarding of euphemisms, catchwords, and innuendo. Many, many common terms can be happily repurposed in this way to the great aggravation of the children and annoyance of bystanders. Our current favorite is 'aspirate.' "Do you have aspirations tonight?" "You think the kid will notice if we aspirate while he's watching the game?"

Posted by Moo (# 107) on :

My husband and I used the phrase 'fun in bed'. I was interested to learn from a biography of Queen Victoria that she and Albert used the same phrase.

Moo

Posted by Kwesi (# 10274) on :

Simontoad [QUOTEI think Bill Clinton thought he had a handle on the difference between having sex and making love.] [/QUOTE]

I think it was the difference between having sex and fellatio.
"I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky," said he, I think.

Posted by LutheranChik (# 9826) on :

Just read a history of everyday life in the Roman Empire..." tenderness" was not valued in that department, at least by the men.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Brenda Clough:
Our current favorite is 'aspirate.' "Do you have aspirations tonight?" "You think the kid will notice if we aspirate while he's watching the game?"

Ours has always been "fellowship", so when our kids were small it was, "We could enjoy some fellowship while they are away playing at their cousins'".

I believe that "koinonia" carried the same double meaning.

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

We just call it a 'lie-in' - or, in the afternoon, a 'nap'. [Biased]

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
This well-known quote from C.S. Lewis is a reminder that the absence of love does not make sex wrong, and its presence does not make it right (sorry if it's a bit long, Hosts):-

"I am not at all subscribing to the popular idea that it is the absence or presence of Eros which makes the sexual act "impure" or
"pure," degraded or fine, unlawful or lawful. If all who lay together without being
in the state of Eros were abominable, we all come of tainted stock. The times and places
in which marriage depends on Eros are in a small minority. Most of our ancestors
were married off in early youth to partners chosen by their parents on grounds that had nothing to do with Eros. They went to the act with no other "fuel," so to speak, than plain animal desire. And they did right; honest Christian husbands and wives, obeying
their fathers and mothers, discharging to one another their "marriage debt," and bringing up
families in the fear of the Lord. Conversely,
this act, done under the influence of a soaring and iridescent Eros which reduces the role of the senses to a minor consideration, may yet be plain adultery, may involve breaking a
wife's heart, deceiving a husband, betraying a friend, polluting hospitality and deserting your children. It has not pleased God that the distinction between a sin and a duty should turn on fine feelings. This act, like any other, is justified (or not) by far more prosaic and definable criteria; by the keeping
or breaking of promises, by justice or injustice, by charity or selfishness, by obedience or disobedience".

Just wanted to say that this reads to me (like, well, all C S Lewis), as male perspective, and also possibly a privileged one as well. After all, the only 'plain animal desire' required to accomplish the act is that of the man - and, in a society that adjudges women's value by the intactness of their hymens, it only needs doing once to be sure of keeping her, regardless of her feelings on the matter, because no-one else will have her, afterwards.

In addition (and I feel NEQ could have something to say to this, if she happened by), I suspect those of us who are descended from solidly peasant stock don't, by and large, have many ancestors who were shoved off at the cusp of adolescence into arranged marriages, or indeed, any marriages. My understanding is that the 'common folk' mostly sort of formed attachments in some sort of vague nebulous way, and once they produced children they were regarded as effectively married. Which at least has a faint flavour of consent about it.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
Just wanted to say that this reads to me (like, well, all C S Lewis), as male perspective, and also possibly a privileged one as well. After all, the only 'plain animal desire' required to accomplish the act is that of the man

Just wanted to say that this reads to me like retro, anachronistic Victorian gender stereotyping, in which only men, and no women (apart from the occasional abnormal sex maniac) experience "plain animal desire".

quote:
In addition (and I feel NEQ could have something to say to this, if she happened by), I suspect those of us who are descended from solidly peasant stock don't, by and large, have many ancestors who were shoved off at the cusp of adolescence into arranged marriages, or indeed, any marriages.

This is rather parochially Western.

Even in the West there were arranged marriages, and in much of the rest of the world (India, for example) they were the rule, and are still very common..

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

NEQ happens by.

I don't know how my ancestors described their sex life, but I know how the church described it. My family tree is littered with instances of assorted forebears being hauled before the Kirk Session and fined for "ante-nuptial fornication and acts of great uncleanness."

The Kirk's account keeping was often more meticulous than its record of marriages and baptisms. Quite a few of my family tree notes include e.g. "married approx 1818; no record of marr but fine for ANF 22 March 1818"

By and large, those being fined and wed were well into their twenties, and would have left home to work as farm servants some years earlier. So anoesis is right - the C.S. Lewis does sound as though it comes from a privileged perspective.

Posted by Brenda Clough (# 18061) on :

"Ante-nuptial fornication," oh I love it. The form of the words, I mean, no TMI here.

[ 12. December 2017, 13:46: Message edited by: Brenda Clough ]

Posted by anoesis (# 14189) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
Just wanted to say that this reads to me (like, well, all C S Lewis), as male perspective, and also possibly a privileged one as well. After all, the only 'plain animal desire' required to accomplish the act is that of the man
Just wanted to say that this reads to me like retro, anachronistic Victorian gender stereotyping, in which only men, and no women (apart from the occasional abnormal sex maniac) experience "plain animal desire".

OK. Fair enough. In that case, I've explained it poorly. Perhaps I came across as a bit sneery. I nonetheless think its defensible to respond to that quote by effectively saying, let's remember Lewis brings a particular perspective to this subject, informed by his experience and the space he occupied, culturally and historically - as indeed we all do.

Perhaps it would be useful here for me to discuss the experiences/emotions/background that have contributed toward my own particular perspective, which I'm quite sure isn't universal, or even universal among women, or even universal among Western women, but which I feel is more likely to be shared among [at least some of] these groups than the perspective of an Oxbridge don who remained a bachelor for most of his life. Only problem is, there's probably no avoiding straying into TMI territory.

With that caveat, here goes: I am a female. I absolutely acknowledge the existence of 'plain animal desire' in myself and amongst my cohorts, I'm entirely able to distinguish it from love, from affection, from duty and faithfulness. I further acknowledge that desire provides sustenance and glue in a long-term relationship, and wouldn't scoff at the idea that love and affection and lifelong faithfulness could grow out of 'plain animal desire'. But, for myself at least, I have to ask, how in God's name are you supposed to feel desire when faced with the prospect of becoming very intimate with someone who's not your choice but your family's, who you may know very little of, who are unlikely to have established effective lines of communication with, who you may never before have even had an unchaperoned moment with? In such a situation, I would be plain scared. In such a situation, I would have no desire to carry the act through whatsoever. In such a situation, I would cut my losses, try to keep my dignity as best I could by hiding my fear, not making a fuss, and fall back on that other factor Lewis identifies, duty. And if I was lucky I'd find myself with an understanding husband, and if we were both lucky, we'd establish good lines of communication, and I can certainly see that over time, the uckiness of having sex with a person you don't know could fade right away, as he became a person you did know. But plain animal desire? In my experience, it's either there or it's not. Expecting it to grow from a seed of a different species is looking for something from nothing. It may, of course, be different for males. I couldn't say.

There is another thing, again born of my own experiences, that bothers me about the practice, as identified by Lewis, of families pairing progeny off in early youth (and this really is TMI) - I both grew breasts and began to menstruate at twelve, and there is thus at least some chance that I could have become pregnant at thirteen, and a very good chance that I was fully fertile by fourteen. Yet, while I was fascinated by boys in some vague nonspecific way, from, I guess about this age, I was going on eighteen before I felt any proper lust for anyone. I remember it clearly still - it was like being hit by truck - and I had the sense at the time that the world would never look quite the same again. Which has certainly proved to be the case. But I suspect that if I had been asked to be someone's regular sexual partner before this point (and why not, if you're arranging marriages and the girl is clearly of reproductive age), then that last piece of the puzzle just might never have arrived. Which would have been a pity, for me, but which would have made not a scrap of difference to my ability to bear children or keep house. This is why I was banging on about plain animal desire being only necessary on one side of the equation, in my initial post on the topic.

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:

quote:
In addition (and I feel NEQ could have something to say to this, if she happened by), I suspect those of us who are descended from solidly peasant stock don't, by and large, have many ancestors who were shoved off at the cusp of adolescence into arranged marriages, or indeed, any marriages.
This is rather parochially Western.

It is, yes. This has something to do the fact that both my own forebears, (and NEQ's) and Lewis' 'ancestors', who he describes as 'honest, Christian husbands and wives' can safely be assumed to be 'Western'. I wasn't attempting to include the whole world, any more than Lewis was.

[ 12. December 2017, 21:00: Message edited by: anoesis ]

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anoesis:
But, for myself at least, I have to ask, how in God's name are you supposed to feel desire when faced with the prospect of becoming very intimate with someone who's not your choice but your family's, who you may know very little of, who are unlikely to have established effective lines of communication with, who you may never before have even had an unchaperoned moment with?

That's the default reaction of you, me, and probably everyone else on the Ship.

To us, it is "normal" to get to know someone before embarking on a marriage and the sexual relationship which that involves.

But whether we like it or not, that is not "normal" for many people today, and it wasn't "normal" for many people in the past - including in the West.

When I was teaching in India, one of my students, an Indian girl in her late teens, from a rich, well-travelled, Westernised family, exclaimed contemptuously during a class discussion: "Love marriage, lust marriage!"

Here in Australia, we are good friends with an Indian couple our age who only met once or twice before their wedding, but who have been lovingly married for decades.

In India our friends used to tell us, "You Westerners fall in love and get married, but we get married and then work at creating a loving relationship".

FWIW, I would not have liked my marriage to be arranged, but I hope I'm a little beyond the stage of thinking, "Countless people did this in the past and do it today, but I don't like it, I find it yucky, it's not part of my experience, I don't understand it, therefore it must be wrong".

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

The thread title immediately reminds me of a line in Sylvia Plath's poem, "Mystic": "Is there no great love, only tenderness?"

Ever since I first read that, I always think that in my experience it should be inverted - there may be "great love," the kind of love God has for us or parents have for you or you have for people you don't necessarily like; but where's the tenderness?

I'm not sure if one is more of a consolation than the other. I suppose if you experienced just tenderness all the time with no sense of real love behind it, it would start to feel superficial and trite. But you kinda expect that the two should go together.

More to the point of the OP, there was a deacon I once knew (may he rest in peace) who always gave the same sermon every time he preached at a wedding. It was about "making love" - the fact that the couple is a sign of God's making more love in the world, and how we should all make more love in the world. The first time I heard it, I thought it was nice, but it did get old by about the 20th retelling.

Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on :

I wonder if Plath's sentiment is similar to that in Studdert Kennedy's poem Indifference where in the middle verse we read:

quote:

For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain.

and in the last verse

quote:
The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary

When tenderness is the choice not to actively give pain but not to engage with the pain either. If that is how it is understood then I think I am not for it but if understood as bring a cup of tea to your wife of fifty years, the kissing better of a bumped knee, the holding of a hand then it is underestimated in the present world.

Jengie

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Kaplan Corday:
Just wanted to say that this reads to me like retro, anachronistic Victorian gender stereotyping, in which only men, and no women (apart from the occasional abnormal sex maniac) experience "plain animal desire".

No, it is the reality of how women were regarded.

quote:

This is rather parochially Western.

And quoting CS Lewis isn't?
Holy Blinders, Batman!

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

quote:
And quoting CS Lewis isn't?

Not when he is drawing attention to misconceptions or historical ignorance in the West, no.

[ 18. December 2017, 18:53: Message edited by: Kaplan Corday ]

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

For what it's worth, poorer people in societies with arranged marriages were mostly likely acquainted with their potential spouses beforehand. There wouldn't have been enough money/influence/whatever to make them attractive as potential spouses outside their local village/farming area/community (nobody's going to go to the trouble of arranging a cross country marriage when both parties are as poor as church mice). For those in cultures where cousin marriage was de rigeur, there was also a fair chance they'd met at family events.

This means that the desires and antipathies of the young people were probably well known to their parents, and possibly taken into account.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0