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TimS comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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I think the reasoning under "disrespect woman" is as follows:
1) Increased availability of birth control leads to an increased frequency of non-marital sex.
2) Increased non-marital sex must be caused by social pressure on women to have non-marital sex.
3) Social pressure on women to have non-marital sex at a higher frequency than the women "naturally" desire is not respectful to women.
From most feminist perspectives, (1) and (3) seem like reasonable predictions / moral assertions. Step 2 is filled with some noteworthy implicit assertions about how sexual relations are and should be negotiated - for one thing, there's not much female agency in that story.
I'm not sure how much, if at all, that my interpretation differs from yours, except that it doesn't directly require different understandings of words (i.e. "disrespect") than a feminist might use.
I'd add that the "patriarchal" thinking can get perverse enough that 2) might be replaced with "the disappearance of the risk of pregnancy removes the barrier to women's naturally wanton and irresponsible sexuality", so that 3) becomes "if men see the woman's true, uncontrolled sexual nature, they'll disrespect her much as if they saw her uncovered, naked body; both states are savage and animal."
But your interpretation might work too - it's just that mine seems crazy and perverse enough to be the product of cultural adaptation/rationalization while yours is more logical. And damn, I swear I could see my version implied/assumed in the wording of some angry MRA/PUA rants I've read.
(Dear downvoters, what exactly are you opposing here?)
In other words, "I prefer mine because it makes a better strawman".
BTW, see here for a good description of the actual catholic position.
Strawman or not, TimS' version is still very problematic to a modern view of gender, as he says.
And more importantly, why do you believe that most people - especially in a traditional society - even care to apply logic and reflection when thinking about sex? So many other popular beliefs (on drugs, religion, etc) both then and now are full of cached thoughts, inherited memes etc. and lack rigorous reflection!
What does this have to do with it being or not being true?
You seam to be conflating the progressive/traditional distinction intellectual/popular distinction. There were a lot of smart people in the past (who would today be considered traditional) who thought about these things.
This is equally true in non-traditional societies.
It's a response to the charge of me intentionally picking the more strawman-like answer.
Sure, but in traditional societies reflection on sacred matters is officially discouraged, whereas in modern ones there's just the silent pressure to come to the approved conclusion - but many still decide not to! There are more patriarchally oriented people now in the 1st world than there were liberal people in the past.
If neither position is obviously insane and they just stem from different moral instincts, then there must be slightly more freedom of thought today along these axes.
That some didn't stop Christian theologians from doing an awful lot of reflection on sacred matters.
The sacred is a territory that a caste claims for themselves. The edict is about preventing outsiders from impinging on their turf, not one of preventing all from doing the reflection.
Modern scientists tend to take a similar attitude to outsiders who impinge on their turf.
Exactly what I was thinking of as I wrote the comment. Scientists and Doctors are certainly priestly castes.
But here the Pope is predicting how the "people" would react, presumably applying his cynicism and savvy.
My point is that over time the Church has acquired a decent working model of how humans behave in large groups.