luvluv

Shea I've known quite a few exotic dancers. It was the profession of choice of a lot of the girls in my college (I went to an arts school and many of the women there were classically trained dancers who, I guess, transitioned easily into exotic dancing).

Obviously not all of them did it for sexual attention, they mostly did it for money. I probably over-generalized. I am not at all limiting my opinion of women who seek sexual attention like that to women in the adult industry. I'm just speaking generally. I find that many women who constantly and overtly flaunt their sexuality are insecure. That's obviously not a massive pathology or anything. I realize that I have a tendency to overemphasize my intelligence (such as it is) in much the same way: to try to impress people because I feel myself lacking in some way. Everybody does that to a certain extent, it's just a matter of degree.

But again, I draw the line of pathology around actual sex with multiple partners.

Think about it: if you knew a girl who was sleeping with a different man every night, sometimes two at a time, wouldn't your first instinct be that there was something emotionally wrong with the girl?

luvluv

San Diego, with respect, I just can't disagree more.

Even if we think of the issue in strictly biolgogical terms, males and females simply have different agendas when it comes to sexuality. Females are more selective and want to choose the best possible mate that can provide for them and their children. Males want to spread their genes as much as they can in order to ensure the survival of his lineage. From the outset, before ANY socialization has taken place, the male and female organism have different and, frankly, opposing goals when approaching sexuality. The main thrust of popular opinion in the last quarter-century has been to claim that women, if they are to be free, must behave like men. But women are not men, and this is true with or without socialization. We may be able to understand our biology, but it is naive to think that by understanding it we can escape it. Yes, birth control greatly removes one of the dangers of casual sex (though it is worth mentioning that there are more unwanted pregnancies NOW then there were when birth control was not widely availaible) but that does not remove the emotional and psychological imperatives in the male and female gender. Women connect sexuality more with love than men do. That's always been the case and that's always going to be the case and this is as concerned with physiology as it is with sociology. You can't socialize away biological imperatives and their emotional consequences. Again, I think this is a widely disseminated myth. Yes, sexual mores differ, but the legitimate differences between the genders do not. Even in our day and age, women are more interested in love and commitment than are men on average, and men are more interested in casual sexual relationships than women on average. The exceptions just prove the rule.

And speaking from my limited experience, religious families have no monoploy on producing women who can't seperate love from sex. I don't actually think anyone can completely for very long, as you tend to develop feelings towards anyone you continually engage in relations with (I sound like Grandma Clump right there). In fact I read recently that a woman's brain even releases a hormone during sexual activity which causes her to develop feelings for the man she is engaged in intercourse with. (In fact I am sure it was in the latest Essence magazine in a very frank discussion about the price of promiscuity.) This just goes to show that there are physiological, psychological, and biological elements in the female imperative. It is not JUST a social construct.

SanDiegoAtheist

How do you explain Europe then, which has both much looser sexual mores than here in the States, AND less problems that can be traced to sexuality (STD's, unwanted pregnancies, etc)?

Is there a physical component? Quite possibly - indeed, it appears to me that it's very likely given evolutionary tenets. Is it more important than socialization? I really haven't seen that to be the case.

And of course, we are not talking about ALL women here. You are asserting that porn is ALWAYS bad, and that regardless, it will attract an unhealthy element. I don't believe that to be the case - there are plenty of women, even if not all, or even most, who most certainly CAN seperate sex and love - and these seem to do just fine in the pornography field (excellent example would be Nina Hartley who I mentioned above).

Remove the stigma from the field, and it would most likely attract a somewhat different element. Think about moonshiners in the 20's vs. microbreweries today as an example.

Gotta head out for the evening,

The San Diego Atheist

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: SanDiegoAtheist ]</p>

luvluv

I don't know what Europe you are talking about, but I know that Sweeden, for example, has the highest rate of illegitimacy in the industrialized world. Upwards of 80% of Sweedish children are born out of wedlock according to Francis Fukiyama's book The Great Disruption.

luvluv

Also, how do you "remove the stigma" from something? The culture around alchohol changed because we removed it's illegality and as such it became dominated by companies with enough money to make it respectable.

Porn already is legal. It is widely disseminated. It's a billion-dollar industry.

And at any rate, I think only a certain kind of person is even willing to be engaged in porn, no matter how well you dress it up.

Viti

I am sure the people in Sweden (80% sounds high but I'll take your word for it) CHOOSE to have children without marriage...what is so inherently wrong with that? My SIL wanted a child, but could not meet any men secure enough to live with such a strong willed woman who was more succesful than they were. So she picked a good looking, smart man and got pregnant then made him sign away parental rights.

I have had threesomes and group sex, I have slept with a woman to try something different. My goal is to live life to the fullest and try as many new experiences (within my own boundries and ethical system) as possible...my stint as an exotic dancer was one of my "I want to try this, could be fun" experiences. I feel no guilt for this, I do not have emotional problems, I have been married for 11 years and we are happier every day. I am a successful executive with a growing high tech company, I have many friends and a good relationship with my family as well as my husbands.

I am just really curious and a bit miffed that you seem to sit in your cacoon, denying yourself life, then make these sweeping judgements based on some studies you have read or a movie you watched or something you heard about but have never experienced.

bonduca

I am not getting into the porn discussion, but I would like to address this. I have never experienced anything of the kind. In fact, if a man is very annoying, after sex, when the mind takes over, he will immediately lose his appeal and the poor thing will be ejected from the premises with bewildering speed.

This sounds like a variation on the "men want sex/women want love" or "men are visual, women care about the inner person" homilies that provide secret amusement for women the world over.

When I sound the gong, you may reenter the ring.

luvluv

Apparently, you think you are talking to a saint. Let me just say that it could easily be regarded as one of the great historical ironies that I am giving people lectures on the evils of porn. I am a Christian now but I have not always been and I have not lived as much as some, but I am not living in a cocoon. I don't want three-somes at this point in my life (though I obvioulsy would not have objected to it in my pre-Christian days), I am frankly looking for someone to be serious about. I don't think the fact that I value love more highly than I do sex and that I consider the two inseperable to mean I am avoiding life. I think it means the opposite. I think the greatest joys of life and sexuality are between committed partners who are in love with each other, and I don't want to waste my time with anything less. Often I think it is people who invest their best years, all of their 20's and 30's in a string of sexual relationships with no futures, to be the ones who are hiding from life.

But suffice it to say, you are not talking to someone who was born a Christian or even into a particularly relgious family. I have had access to pornography since I was about 9 or 10 years old, and started watching it daily around the time I was 12 or 13. As concerns the ladies, I am not a monk, and it took about a year after my conversion for me to fully change the way I dealt with women. It has been a slow evolving process with me. I'm the last person to judge anybody. I am just saying that a lot of what is sold to us about sexuality is a bright, shining lie.

bonduca

Please see above post.

[ June 07, 2002: Message edited by: bonduca ]</p>

The Other Michael

My anthropology classes were a long time ago, but didn't Margaret Mead's studies of the South Seas Islander cultures show that adolescents were expected by their culture to, and did, have fun non-marital sex in the bushes as a normal part of their cultural maturation process?

It was normal, it was expected, and it didn't hurt them.

Enculturation is something that seems to be overlooked (by some) in this discussion. In some cultures being a porn star would probably mean universal disdain and shunning (like the Jehovah's Witnesses at a guess) and in others it could be, if accepted by the culture, an accepted and honored career choice.

But of course that gets into cultural/moral relativity/subjectivity, which probably doesn't play well with those who advocate an objective source of morals in the universe.

cheers,
Michael