Again, I can find no fault with your argument. Like I said, it boils down to different basic assumptions about the nature of sex. However, I want to briefly examine your cooking analogy. I have also cooked with a girlfriend and found it fun, if not quite as emotional as you make it out to be (though much like sex, there was a lot of arguing about what goes where!) But anyway, would your wife mind if you cooked a meal with someone else, like a friend? It seems kind of ridiculous. So if we were to adopt the attitude towards sex that you are suggesting, monogamy (at least in terms of sex) would become equally ridiculous. Are we really ready to accept a world where everyone obtains their 'mechanical sex' through a professional class of prostitutes and has 'emotional sex' when they and their spouse aren't too busy? We already hear about a huge drop-off in the frequency of intimacy among married couples - seems to me this would only exacerbate the trend.

You might say that people would be free to NOT partake in the new sexual economy, but that's not how cultural norms work. If sex becomes completely destigmatized and decoupled from its emotional component, any man who insists on a monogamous relationship would be viewed as a Patriarchal dinosaur, as he would be restricting the woman's economic options of profiting off her body.

If they are actually committing to raising a child together, isn't that an even bigger commitment than marriage? Is there any advantage they're gaining by not getting married? Or is it simply that the planning and wedding process wasn't something they wanted to devote time to right now? In any case, the difference seems to be more ceremonial than anything. It's not like they're planning to split up after raising the kid, right?

I have two friends who are in a similar situation - the pregnancy was unplanned, but they were already living together. She didn't want to rush the wedding and deal with the preparation while pregnant, so they just set the date for a few months after the baby comes. Their parents were a little disappointed, but not too much.

I may be hit with a barrage for not joining in the predictable chorus of outrage, but things like this always make me think of the fundamental issues at hand. The argument that you are in a public place and no actual assault or physical contact is taking place is, in my opinion, not one that can be so easily dismissed. The question that no one thinks to ask is: why exactly is it that half the population (and, in fact, only that specific half) is vulnerable to an invasion of privacy even when in a public place and without even being touched? And the answer is something so self-evident that no one ever thinks to consider it - that it is the norm for women to wear clothes that partially reveal the sexual areas of their bodies.

No one is saying that women who put on a blouse or a skirt consciously intend to be gawked at. On the contrary, it is not a matter of individual choice precisely because these clothes are the norm. But isn't their revealing nature part of their very design? Isn't the whole intent behind low-cut tops and miniskirts not only to reveal as much as possible, but also in that process to make a suggestion of and arouse the desire for those very parts that it conceals? Imagine the metaphorical Martian observing this debate - the first question would be "if they don't want their genitals seen, why do they wear clothes that seems specifically designed for this purpose?"

I'm just throwing this out there for consideration. Clearly the underlying issue is the same one we've rehashed over and over within this comments section, which is the imbalance of power and desire between the sexes, and we can't expect that nothing be done in concrete cases until this paradox is resolved. Laws specifically prohibiting photographing a person's genitals seem fairly reasonable and hard to object to. But if we take it further, could not an argument be made to criminalize simple gawking or leering, as I imagine these have a similar disconcerting effect upon women? You would be hard pressed to find a man who has never tried to see up a girl's skirt or down her blouse. If it is simply the act of making a permanent and distributable record of this view that makes it into a criminal act, then we need to be clear about that. Is the crime in the photography or the distribution?

Making fun of Michael Savage is like shooting fish in a barrel. But what about the article? Do we still think it's great and empowering for college girls to moonlight as prostitutes (sorry, "escorts")?

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12042008/news/regionalnews/lawyers_deadly_secret_142622.htm?page=0

Check out the article. It's precisely not about the girl being led to fetish work for "the wrong reasons". By all accounts, here's an intelligent, attractive post-grad who decided there was nothing wrong with making money off her body, most likely after having absorbed contemporary feminist rhetoric about sexual empowerment and condescension towards "prudishness". Unfortunately, what she didn't account for was that the sorts of people sex work brings you into regular contact with are not exactly the most enlightened, and could not care less about your empowerment. So she got kidnapped and her boyfriend got killed.