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[Abstinence] Sex and the Lack There Of
Posts
To say that moral positions seem to imply denial like it's a bad thing is to say that we have a right to what we want whenever we want it. The issue most people take (without realizing it, it seems) is that someone else takes their denial further.
I don't want to have sex with any woman whose first name I don't know.
I don't want to have sex with any woman I haven't known for at least three months.
I don't want to have sex with any woman I don't share a deep emotional connection with.
I don't want to have sex with any woman I haven't committed to in a monogamous relationship.
I don't want to have sex with any woman until I marry her.
All of those are a form of self-denial, but I don't think anyone here would call all of them bad decisions.
Me: My Father was 82nd Airborne. He'd throw my ass out a window. Also, I'm older than you.
yeah that was more directed at daedelus
I also didn't receive any relevant sex ed in school, and it never will be taught in schools because 'teachin our kids to be gayz' etc.
luckily i got a comprehensive sex ed book from my parents which gave, in addition to standard sex ed, a couple of chapters on 'gay people are normal. don't worry about it.'
I think that is a terrible decision. I'm glad it worked out for you but it's just a bad idea.
If you did everything but penetration and were open about your sexuality, including likes and dislikes and fantasies and shit, I think you could have a fair idea of whether or not you were sexually compatible.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Yeah. It is kinda annoying to try and learn how to be a "good gay" on your own, with pretty much no role models to model yourself after.
=/
doesn't that defeat the purpose of no sex before marriage?
I thought the purpose of not having sex before marriage was just to say, "We didn't have sex until marriage."
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
Wait so I thought we were talking about all types of sex.
I'm confused.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
HOLY SHIT
If this really works, welcome to the future.
Morality really only comes up when deciding whether or not to do something, and yes, any time that you don't do something you're denying yourself whatever it was. But morality isn't necessarily arbitrary.
I eventually stop drinking because:
1) Alcohol is inherently bad because it's a poison. Too much of it will kill me.
2) Being intoxicated is a physiological state with a number of detrimental side-effects. Sometimes the pleasant side-effects are, up to a point, enjoyable and outweigh the detrimental ones. In any situation where this isn't true (eg: I have things to get done, I want to be able to pay attention to something, I have to operate heavy or dangerous equipment, etc.) I don't drink.
I suppose you could call that a moral decision, but I didn't imply that alcohol, drinking, or drunkenness were evil anywhere in there. It's a purely rational decision.
A moral decision would be about theft:
There's something I want and, depending on circumstances, I can either buy it, take it without paying, or not have it.
Logically, taking it without paying is the best situation. I get what I want and lose nothing.
Morally this is, generally, unacceptable. By stealing whatever it is I'm denying the current owner of their possessions and/or the income they would derive from selling the thing. Because I wouldn't want someone to do that to me and because I can empathize with that loss, this is not an acceptable course of action to me. So my moral decision is that theft is, generally, wrong. It's not a purely intellectual decision since it involves empathy, but it is a logical decision and does not invoke any presumptions of right and wrong derived from some external dogma.
Your examples regarding sex all involve some level of arbitrary decision. Why their first name? Why not their last name? Why three months rather than two or one or ten? If it's just based on what you 'feel' to be right then that's fine. My problem only comes in when someone attempts to foist off a moral decision based on such feelings as inherently correct.
Probably not ... but since most "no sex until marriage" is based on religious beliefs ... you're fucked all the same. No pun intended
Meaning, it wouldn't technically be considered sex, but you've probably sinned all the same.
You'd be surprised. Not to overthink fucking, but there's a surprising number of quirks someone can have that will just piss you off that you won't encounter except when you're encountering them, ifyouknowwhatimean
EDIT also how the fuck do you know what your kinks really are if you aren't sexually active? Porn is a really really bad way to learn about sex, and most people would be surprised what they do and don't like.
Depends on your definition of 'is'?
What I'm saying is that by holding these positions to be axiomatic, you haven't fully scrutinized your own moral/cultural framework.
There are plenty of positive actions that are morally compelling. It is morally superior for a parent to spend a little bit of time with his or her children every day, for instance, than it would be to deny that child human contact. Ideally, a parent should enjoy spending time with their kids, so a blind ascetic reading of moral value here, leading either parent or child to self-denial, would lead to the morally inferior option.
So to say that morality implies denial is prima facie untrue. Morality may require us to deny ourselves pleasures, or it may compel us to take positive actions - even some of which might be pleasurable.
In regards to your second sentence, the only sensible starting point at all is to say that all actions are permissible and no actions are compelled unless logic and evidence suggest otherwise. While you can glibly phrase this like "we have a right to what we want whenever we want it," the simple fact is that we do have the moral right to do whatever we want whenever we want to, in the absence of an interesting reason to consider the alternative.
Bringing this discussion back to sex, if we accept (1) that most people will want to forge at least one deep romantic relationship in their lives, (2) that sex is important for building intimacy in that relationship, (3) through masturbation we can learn about our own sexual desires and needs, and (4) this self-knowledge would improve the sex that we would have in the aforementioned hypothetical romantic relationship; then the logical conclusion would be that masturbation can in fact be a moral positive.
I'm not sure how well I can phrase this, but I'll try:
Our belief (which is still his, by the way, and he's still one of them atheistical folks) was that all people deserved respect, including ourselves. To that end we attempted what seemed like pretty strict mental discipline, which included being mindful of what we were thinking. I know that that might sound a little crazy, but it was actually supremely helpful; our grades improved and we got better at listening and speaking to other people, which was an area we all needed to improve on.
Sex came up fairly often in these discussions- we were dudes, and it was high school- and since the actual practice wasn't really on the table for us right then, one of our biggest discussions was a morally acceptable way to deal with the lack of it. Masturbation was discussed, and my friend had an issue the two of us didn't in that he was unable to, erm... perform? without a direct fantasy. He wasn't very imaginative and found himself fantasizing about girls he knew.
However, when he applied that to the respect rule he found himself feeling that in his mind he'd turned these women into something other than what they were, while still using what he knew of their real selves for his own pleasure. He had similar objections to pornography (I avoided it out of social guilt; our agnostic friend seized upon it with enough enthusiasm to make up for thirty monks), and so he gave up the practice altogether. It was difficult and of course he broke his own rule from time to time, but I just can't help respecting him for the consistency of his beliefs and his willingness to act in accordance with them.
I don't know if that was helpful at all. Understand that I'm not trying to convince anyone that this position is correct- I don't subscribe to the same belief system I did when this was solidified, and didn't see it as a prohibition of masturbation when I did. I'm just trying to lay out a secular belief system that I know existed and still exists for at least one person that ruled out masturbation, primarily as an acknowledgment of and safeguard against one's own weakness in following his beliefs.
Me: My Father was 82nd Airborne. He'd throw my ass out a window. Also, I'm older than you.
Or simply that masturbation can relive the tension of sexual desire which would otherwise cloud attempts to forge relationships. If you can't stop thinking about having sex with your date then you're going to be more likely to overlook or dismiss factors which would otherwise dissuade you from a relationship with them. In that light it seems like not whipping up your own batch of soft-bake cookies is a disservice to both yourself and your romantic partners. Nobody wants to find themselves in a committed relationship with someone whom they don't realize that they can't stand until after they've relieved the sexual tension.
Fucking Science, it's the best
Though, I wonder if it's really disrespectful to fantasize about someone? If it is, how exactly?
I could see how you could view your own fantasies as a problem if, as a result of those fantasies, you found yourself changing the manner in which you interacted with someone. If you have periodic fantasies about sexually humiliating someone and then find yourself treating them with less respect during personal interactions then it probably would be a good idea to police your own fantasy life, or else police your interactions with the people about whom you fantasize.
I'm not sure that it's a moral argument against masturbation, though. It seems like looking at porn or purposefully fantasizing about other people would be equally valid avenues to just not flogging the lobster.
I suppose one could argue that it could be or lead to objectifying a person... CptHamilton also has some good points as well.
You can do without pretty much any pleasure. It's not that nobody can live without sex -- people do. But I see no special virtue in the renunciation. It's tricky to get right, sure, but it's possible to have premarital sex, casual sex, polyamorous sex, without harming or degrading anyone. The key is concern for others, not the legalistic details of when you do it. Feral's right -- some things that feel good are moral positives.
For some people, sex just ain't recreational activity; it's about love and affection, and it'll feel sad and shitty without love. I'm certainly wired that way. I don't think that's a moral perspective, though; you can still treat someone with human dignity even if you're having sex with them and you're not in love/committed/married.
http://numberblog.wordpress.com/
I considered the first of those, aged 23 and socially isolated. ^_^
Kinda glad I didn't.
I don't think I ever answered your questions about my religious background. I was raised in an irreligious home- not outwardly atheist, just... indifferent. I wasn't at all satisfied with that, and after spending most of high school studying other religions I had a series of experiences and thoughts that aren't relevant to this thread, abracadabra, boom, nominally Christian at 18, "active" Christian at 21. Any questions further about the story or my definitions of nominal and active, please restrict them to PM.
Anyway, to your points on alcohol: You're right that your decisions based on alcohol are logical, but when one follows the consequences of any decision of self-denial, in the end they come to something arbitrary (quick reminder that I'm discussing things outside my own belief system). Why is operating heavy machinery while four sheets to the wind bad? Because it might hurt someone? Why is that bad?
The same applies to the sexual decisions. To be honest I culled most of those statements from people I know (except the first name one), but not necessarily people whose decisions in that regard I respect as logical or morally right. In the end, excluding the religious, most moral decisions (or decisions of denial that have a moral component) come down to some arbitrary belief. Why is hurting the feelings of a one-night stand bad? Why is giving an STD you have to someone else bad? Why is picking one up bad, for that matter- why is our own health and comfort an assumed "good"?
(I know that some of you think of religious belief as arbitrary as well, but cut me some slack- I'm already debating something that's removed from my own belief system and trying to fairly represent it.)
Me: My Father was 82nd Airborne. He'd throw my ass out a window. Also, I'm older than you.
I can't tell if he's joking or not. But I don't like it. I just turned 25 while at Field Training, and I had that-one-roomate who was 20 years old, talking about all the fuckin' he was going to do when it was over.
I'm raised by a single mom, and her rule was as follows: If you have sex, I'm tossing your ass out. I think I'm okay, except I refuse to start dating or marry. That pissed her off. But in two more years I'll commission and be an officer and be away from her and perhaps find therapy.
I suppose. Dan Savage, the guru of sex, points out that hookers are used to showing a frustrated adult the ropes. It breaks the whole OMG I GOTTA GET LAID thing and will help you more then a bored drunk chick you picked up at the bar.
Your mom is a fucking idiot, is a hateful, hurtful bitch who is taking out her 'mistake' on you. But I'm sure you already know that.
I never said we weren't weird. I wish this guy were into these forums; he's a fucking genius. At the same time he's an excellent debater on the subject of atheism, and you guys have enough of those already. And... I don't know, I just have a hard time looking down on him for his decision, I really do. Maybe you'd have to know him, but he was so damned sincere about it. I didn't see anyone struggle with a moral decision like that again until long after I converted, so maybe that's why it sticks in my mind the way it does.
Oh, and I don't know if I said this well, but he had similar respect issues with porn, but in reverse- he didn't know these women and so he didn't feel it was right to use them for autoerotic purposes because he was literally in a position where he felt incapable of giving them the respect people inherently deserved. And like I said, he wasn't overly imaginative, and he found that he wasn't able to maintain mental discipline while in the act to not fantasize about women he actually knew and interacted with.
And once more I'd like to say that it was a moral decision based on his beliefs and in recognition of his own perceived weaknesses.
Me: My Father was 82nd Airborne. He'd throw my ass out a window. Also, I'm older than you.
Oh, I hear ya.
I'm still technically alive.
Driving (or whatever) drunk is bad because being intoxicated makes it difficult to do those things effectively. Not only might I hurt someone (which would be bad because that someone is either me (which is bad on the basis that self-destruction is counter-productive to my life goals) or someone else (which is bad because my ability to empathize with them and those connected to them make it on-par with self-destruction)) but I am unlikely to get the job done. If I'm operating a saw, rather than a car, I'm not likely to cut straight lines even if I manage not to saw my thumb off.
I think that the fundamental difference between secular and religious moral codes is that one makes its arbitrary decisions at the level of "this would hurt me" (for some definition of hurt, possibly including feelings of remorse derived from empathy) and the other stops at, "this would make God angry". I'm biased, but I tend to find religious morality to be kind of shallow in that it requires no introspection. Follow the rules because they're the rules, not because they're good rules. Not to say that no religious people perform introspective surveys of their own morality, but religious morality does not, by nature, require it. And that lack of requirement leads to the common anti-atheist viewpoint that an atheist cannot have morals (or 'real' morals) because they have no code of moral laws to which to refer.
Well, dreams are somewhat involuntary, whereas fantasies aren't... So... I wouldn't say they were on par... That being said, I'd be a little... offput by someone letting me know they were fantasizing about me in a sexual way.
They're going to be really exhaustively tested before they go live, what with the whole HIV thing and all.
Well, that's disappointing... we just met.
I guess there is the voluntary/involuntary difference... but it's still pretty innocuous in either case. Yeah, if you don't feel the same way, it's kind of weird, but it's not actually happening to you.
And I suppose if someone was fantasizing about me and I wasn't down with it, I'd like to know who to avoid.
Stepping into my own beliefs for a minute, I don't think that self-denial is inherently good, and I definitely don't think that pleasure is inherently bad. The Bible has a whole book on how awesome sex is. The issue is just context, and the Christian context issue is just more sharply defined than other worldviews. God has no objection to sex in the proper context, and I find it pretty interesting that there's no real concrete Biblical backing for any restrictions to sex between a husband and wife after marriage. As long as it's just the two of us, my wife and I are free to do whatever we're comfortable with. I just have a hard time finding that overly restrictive- we take basically no risks as far as STDs, there can't be a pregnancy without a support system to deal with it even if it's accidental, and we get to enjoy each other as much as we have the stamina for. What... What's bad about that?
Me: My Father was 82nd Airborne. He'd throw my ass out a window. Also, I'm older than you.
Depends on what you mean by 'wrong'. I have no problem with the no-churnin'-his-own-butter guy because he concluded that he was uncomfortable with his own fantasy life and acted on it. I personally don't feel like I'm responsible for policing my own potential thoughtcrimes, and I'd take offense to anyone suggesting that I was, but if you want to feel like something is wrong and keep it to yourself that's your own business.
The idea that fantasizing about someone is 'using' them and, therefore, objectification is kind of bizarre to me, though.
I have no doubt, but even 10,000 tests in a clinical trial isn't as reliable as a billion or so in the first two or three years. Every new technology takes a few years to get the kinks worked out when it's released. That's all well and good on an iPhone or something but not on taking a chance being a baby daddy. I can wait.
EDIT: According to the article clinical trials aren't even supposed to begin for 3-5 years, so oh well.
That's kind of more what I meant.
Condoms have an 80% reliability figure associated with them in terms of real-world use.