Funny Stuff! :D
- Thread starter Vanialo28
- Start date
KurtG85
Well-known member
Well, the context of the exact level of promiscuity is important to know as it holds a lot of grounds in terms of whether it really is being harmful to her or putting her in excessive danger. Her guilt really could be way overblown depending on how ridiculous and self harming her behavior has been.
I can relate very personally to this sort of rhetoric as it is very commonly ingrained in members of the catholic religion (of course it depends on your individual congregations teachings), which I was raised in but I now reject for the most part (of course you see in it in the larger society as well). I was told to feel like a horrible, disgusting awful person if I slept with anyone I wasn't married to.
IMO this is just a medieval means of maintaining supposed moral power and control over the people by telling them how they are supposed to feel regarding such intensely personal acts like sex (between two consenting individuals) which has no impact on anyone else's lives and does nothing but bring pleasure to the 2 (or more, hehe) individuals. There is nothing wrong with sleeping around with plenty of people as long as you are aware of the risks (take precautions against them; std's, undesired pregnancy) and don't put yourself in silly amounts of physical danger like jumping into a random chat room and saying: "hey, who wants to come over?".
America's widely held views and fears of sex are especially pathetic, moronic and hypocritical. We are terrified of boobies and sex on our televisions but its perfectly fine to have disgusting gratuitous amounts of violence saturating TV as if that is a more healthy form of entertainment??
Having social anxiety and growing up with a father who I knew was cheating on my mother (from the time I was the age of 6 or so) and who was always eyeing and flirting with other women right if front of my whole family, I especially latched on to this demonization of sex taught by catholicism. It really made things horrible for my development as a healthy individual. I still struggle to overcome its negative impact on my interaction with females. Also over the shame it led me to feel over entirely natural and normal sexual occurences in my life. I totally agree that it is preposterous to degrade oneself over the natural desires and activities of sex and that the teachings that one should do so out of moral righteousness accounts for a huge number of depressed individuals.
Again, there is a big difference between being irresponsibly and dangerously promiscuous and having sex a lot with a lot of people responsibly and safely. I personally can't see how there is anything wrong with sex when you aren't hurting anyone, using contraception etc. You are simply enjoying a beautiful gift and pleasure of life which there is nothing demonic about unless you listen to stories (IMO culturally significant fairy tales) that try and make you believe how horribly evil sex is. There are of course immoral ways to use sex just as with any other form of social interaction (i.e. to hurt someone else, re: the golden rule- treat others as you would want to be treated yourself).
One of my thoughts on the origin of this demonization of sex was that it may have been originally based off a desire for power and self importance (ego) men have. These men created dramatic stories and doctrines demonizing sex in order to posses control over the people and their actions. These stories and doctrines also served to give the people their own strong sense of cultural unity and a sense of moral righteousness/importance which served to strengthen the stability of society (these stories were of course modeled after past zoroastrianistic stories which had been proven to serve the same purposes well). This irrational demonization also served other purposes such as birth control (population control) and the prevention of the wide spreading of venereal diseases when there were no forms of protection against them.
I can relate very personally to this sort of rhetoric as it is very commonly ingrained in members of the catholic religion (of course it depends on your individual congregations teachings), which I was raised in but I now reject for the most part (of course you see in it in the larger society as well). I was told to feel like a horrible, disgusting awful person if I slept with anyone I wasn't married to.
IMO this is just a medieval means of maintaining supposed moral power and control over the people by telling them how they are supposed to feel regarding such intensely personal acts like sex (between two consenting individuals) which has no impact on anyone else's lives and does nothing but bring pleasure to the 2 (or more, hehe) individuals. There is nothing wrong with sleeping around with plenty of people as long as you are aware of the risks (take precautions against them; std's, undesired pregnancy) and don't put yourself in silly amounts of physical danger like jumping into a random chat room and saying: "hey, who wants to come over?".
America's widely held views and fears of sex are especially pathetic, moronic and hypocritical. We are terrified of boobies and sex on our televisions but its perfectly fine to have disgusting gratuitous amounts of violence saturating TV as if that is a more healthy form of entertainment??
Having social anxiety and growing up with a father who I knew was cheating on my mother (from the time I was the age of 6 or so) and who was always eyeing and flirting with other women right if front of my whole family, I especially latched on to this demonization of sex taught by catholicism. It really made things horrible for my development as a healthy individual. I still struggle to overcome its negative impact on my interaction with females. Also over the shame it led me to feel over entirely natural and normal sexual occurences in my life. I totally agree that it is preposterous to degrade oneself over the natural desires and activities of sex and that the teachings that one should do so out of moral righteousness accounts for a huge number of depressed individuals.
Again, there is a big difference between being irresponsibly and dangerously promiscuous and having sex a lot with a lot of people responsibly and safely. I personally can't see how there is anything wrong with sex when you aren't hurting anyone, using contraception etc. You are simply enjoying a beautiful gift and pleasure of life which there is nothing demonic about unless you listen to stories (IMO culturally significant fairy tales) that try and make you believe how horribly evil sex is. There are of course immoral ways to use sex just as with any other form of social interaction (i.e. to hurt someone else, re: the golden rule- treat others as you would want to be treated yourself).
One of my thoughts on the origin of this demonization of sex was that it may have been originally based off a desire for power and self importance (ego) men have. These men created dramatic stories and doctrines demonizing sex in order to posses control over the people and their actions. These stories and doctrines also served to give the people their own strong sense of cultural unity and a sense of moral righteousness/importance which served to strengthen the stability of society (these stories were of course modeled after past zoroastrianistic stories which had been proven to serve the same purposes well). This irrational demonization also served other purposes such as birth control (population control) and the prevention of the wide spreading of venereal diseases when there were no forms of protection against them.
KurtG85
Well-known member
Vanialo28 said:
All of those statements are true as long as one holds the preconceived view that sex before marriage or with numerous different partners is a humiliating, degrading activity. If you are degraded, or humiliated by sex then yes, it probably would be quite desirable to not have sex. That this mindset is a self destructive, irrational and neurotic attitude is exactly my point.
In reality (before you are exposed to religion and other BS societal stuff) safe, responsible sex between two fully consenting people is not at all degrading or humiliating in any way whatsoever. Mental conditioning is what causes us to associate horrible feelings with sex whether it be sex before marriage, having sex too often, having sex with too many people, or just having sex at all. You can make any young child horribly ashamed and fearful of absolutely anything through simple psychological conditioning.
It is laughably easy to see this phenomenon of the demonization of sex and glorification of violence in our society. You can witness a dudes head exploding on network TV just about any time of the day but the mild sex scenes in the same movie which tastefully shows a booby for a split second will NEVER see air time. Unless of course the network wants insane numbers of lawsuits filed against them by parents accusing the TV of corrupting their childrens minds by showing them a boob. I am not saying young kids need to be seeing violence OR boobs but the point is the clearly ridiculous over demonization of sex and complete lack of intelligent perspective our society has surrounding sex.
Common sense needs to be applied when we discuss other scenarios where sex may be genuinely harmful to one or the other individual. It clearly goes against common sense for anyone to think they are obligated to 'give' their body to someone when they have no interest in sex; not sure if that is what you were talking about.
Once again, we only need to refer to the golden rule: (which exists in societies with no religion whatsoever) treat others as you would want to be treated. There are not many if any better examples than the act of sex where two people can treat each other to such a mutually positive ecstacy inducing experience (assuming you both know what you are doing of course).
Dave_McFadden
Well-known member
Vanialo28 said:So, what this guy is actually saying is that there’s really nothing wrong with promiscuity. The problem isn’t the action itself, it only becomes a problem when you begin to feel guilty and depressed over it (feelings that are appropriate because sleeping around IS wrong). So instead of encouraging this young woman to change her behavior in a more productive way, he’s basically convincing her to eliminate the feelings of guilt and shame associated with being a slut. They’re the enemy! LOL!
Well, it didn't sound like the "guilt and shame" approach was working anyway; so he probably decided to give her a secular treatment and help her get over those feelings. Although I thought her promiscuity came from a lack of confidence in the first place and it didn't seem like he addressed that. In any case, convincing her that promiscuity is shameful is probably a matter for a religious or spiritual authority anyway, like a minister or priest.
Vanialo28 said:
It sounds like if you did that, you'd probably end up buying more books like that anyway, but he'd help you to not feel stupid about it anymore. lol.
