Upton Sinclair once said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” Something similar can be said about people who discover that absolutely no one would ever sleep with them on the first date. They are easy to convince that they’ll be better off in the long-run, and that you’d be better off, too, if no one was attracted to you. So, David Brooks can dress up his call for chastity all he wants, but he’s really just wistfully wishing he could impose a nerdish Categorical Imperative on the world so he could feel like less of a loser.
As practical advice, he’s probably right that you shouldn’t hop in bed with someone you’re interested in long-term. But that’s not what he’s talking about when he says this:
Impulsive people might sleep with each other faster and also behave in other ways that damage relationships. On the other hand, if you took impulsive people and surrounded them in a culture that strongly discouraged bedding down on the first date, would this by itself improve relationship quality?
My guess is it would, at least a little, since strict social mores can reduce the effects of impulsive temperaments. The manners maketh the man—or the woman.
What he’s talking about is slut-shaming. And he’s motivated by the realization that even though there are plenty of sluts in the world, none of them are lining up to pleasure him. So, no one else should have a casual sexual encounter without suffering the effects of a strict and shaming culture coming down on them with a “tsk, tsk” or worse (a good stoning, perhaps?).
And this guy is everywhere in the media. What a mind! What a star!
