I'd Feel Better If Our Culture Was Dictated By 35-Year-Old Women

... it would probably make more sense than the college sophomore rubbish we have right now.

I was hanging out at a pub with a pack of Papists on Friday night and sitting near me were a pair of late-20s, early-30s young ladies. Both were single and attractive. They're high school teachers and we were talking about their students' reactions to 50 Shades of Gray. The kids didn't see what the big deal was with the movie. The two young women were trying to figure out how to express how awful it is for women to be turned into submissive objects for a man's sadism.

Ruminate on that last sentence for a second, pondering what it says about our culture.

During the discussion, the two sadly agreed that all the boys in their classes consume porn. It was dreadful, but just a fact of life for their generation. Here these two were lovely, engaging and fun and they could almost guarantee that the potential husbands around them watched porn. Their primary power over men was significantly weakened.

I wondered if that, coupled with the fact that most of their competition was putting out without much fuss, made most women just throw in the towel and surrender to the modern hook-up culture. It would either be that or spend a lot of date nights alone.

Back to the title of the post: 35-year-old women, if single and childless, are concerned with the quality of potential husbands. If married, they're concerned with the culture where their children will grow up. Almost none of them are concerned with trigger warnings, government-sponsored birth control or whether or not the LGBT community is fully realizing their Vaseline-slathered fantasies.

You'd have to think they'd do a better job than the college students and ivory tower academics who seem to dominate our cultural discussions.

Caligula. Not husband material.