David's World

January 8, 2005

Sex and Prude Americans - an Answerology Survey

Answerology is a web site where girls can ask guys the kind of questions that they would never ever ask personally. And they do so happily, in sections such as "At Work", "Family Dynamics" or "Intimacy". Unfortunately, the site doesn't allow people to continue a conversation or get in touch with each other privately, unless they pay some ridiculous amounts of money for a membership subscription. But asking and answering questions is fun anyways.

One thing I find amazing is the retrovert moralistic attitude you can find. "I'm 17 and there are two guys at school that I'm interested in - does that make me a slut?". Or: "I've been with my boyfriend for two years and he mentioned he would like to sleep with me. I love him very much, but I'd like to wait at least another year! What do I tell him?" Stuff like that.

I decided to ask a somewhat provocative question. Why exactly do people generally consider it bad to sleep with someone early in a relationship? Why is 'waiting' always considered good, especially among women? Why is a mother so concerned about her teenage daughter not having (safe) sex? Why do men consider women sluts if they sleep with them on first date?

And I received a lot of encouraging replies. Surprisingly, I didn't really get feedback from those that I actually wanted to annoy. Maybe conservative kids just aren't good at rationally justifying their strange rules about love and marriage. I suspect it's just like with their rules about the war on terror, or killing Iraqis versus taking a fetus out of an expecting mother's womb. Moral rules seem hard to justify.

Read on for a lot of relatively intellectual replies (un-censored) from my anonymous readers.

I am an American male in my twenties who has little tolerance for "traditional" values, who is constantly railing on friends who adhere to double standards regarding women, and who only dates "sluts." An American slut is a girl with the mindset of an American guy.... responsible, enjoys sex, wants sex, gets sex. Extremes not included.

Heh. Cute.

I'm glad to read all the responses to that question.

I joined Answerology; received threats from stalkers; very unsafe site; owner is an ex-con. When I called to complain, he, Matt Milner laughed: "Get used to it, there are some bad people in the world." I started getting threatening emails and my personal info entered at the site was compromised. Got Answerology has been my living hel*

Thank God (for lack of a better expression haha) that there is some intelligence out there. If it comforts anyone, there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not disappointed in those around me and the small minds that are everywhere. They're nice people, but so young..so so young in terms of experience, and in that respect in terms of maturity. I am a Greek American girl, 21 yrs old, and I have lived in both the US and Greece. There is no black and white. People are simply personalites that stretch across nations. One can find small minds anywhere. But I will say... I am sickened by all the talk about 'sluts.' I cringe even writing the word. Thank you for your definition earlier.. much appreciated. I must say I do think like a guy. And what the hell is wrong with it? I enjoy things. Whole-heartedly. Food, sex, drinking, travel, language. All animals except for man know that the point of life is to enjoy it. The real battle we are fighting is that of the balance between self-satisfaction and conformity. We must live amongst one another, and we must function in society. And those of you who understand me also understand that one cannot run around all day every day doing as he pleases. Then we cross the line into varios philosophies which I won't even begin to touch on here. Thers's one solution; start a society of those of us who are open-minded, educated... Sounds crazy right? Man it would be a welcomed breath of fresh air though.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I mean seriously, that was flamebait if ever there was some.

But, as a conservative prude (actually, I'm a strong centrist, sitting within 2% of center morally), I feel compelled to answer.

Of course, what answer would be complete without analogies you could point to and claim "that's completely off topic!" so:
I won't handle poisonous reptiles, even with precautions, because it's too fucking dangerous. OK, maybe with some precautions - conceivably I would control a robot handling a terciopelo. In my mind, that's not me handling it, but hey, who knows how fucked up your logic is.

Well, prior to the invention of latex, sex was pretty fucking dangerous. Still can be with some diseases. So you're in a bad fucking mood because we North American's aren't changing our playbook as fast as you? Get a fucking clue, different cultures evolve at different rates.

And what is a slut but someone who has sex with a large number of objects - be it man, woman, or a sheep. Well, presumably if I have sex on the first date... most people go on dates with a lot of people before going steady, so that's a whole fucking lot of fucking. Having sex on the first date does not make one a slut, it makes it pretty fucking likely they are one though. As a counter, in SOME *cough*Hindi*cough* cultures, your mate is chosen by the parents. You have sex on the first date with a chosen mate, hey, guess what? That's still one person, so you are not a slut!!!! Gee, imagine that.

Why is waiting good? Why control your instincts? Why train a child to use the toilet when instinct is to crap wherever whenever? God, man, if you feel people have gone too far in controlling their instincts, ask that, not some flamebait question. But as mentioned, up until the development of latex there were huge problems not controlling sexual urges. And that meant waiting.

Given the above, you should be able to figure out why mothers are so concerned - they are from a different FUCKING GENERATION!!! With different FUCKING VALUES!!!

The war on terror - look, it got fucked up, and if we just say to pull the plug, it will get more fucked up. The only thing holding these countries together right now, by what few strands they are being held together, is that they fucking hate us more than they hate each other. Thats the one fucking pro in this whole motherfucking shithole of a war. Pulling out will just hurt the innocents more, so we stay; like a barbed dick, the insertion is a lot simpler than the retraction. Complain all you want about going in the first place, what's done is done, and seemed to be correct at the time. Look *back* and learn.

Abortion, as everyone knows, is a debate over the concept of at what stage of a humans birth process is the undelivered child considered a human. The courts said that as long as the child is in the womb, it is dependant on the mother and therefore the mothers choice how to treat it. Some people disagree, some violently.
I wonder whether a mongoloid child who needs it's parents to care for it could be shot by the parents, since it would die shortly after being abandoned. Future medical developments, such as the ability to switch mothers partway through the birthing process may make that comparison poignant. [That is, if a foster mother could birth it, how is the child dependant on the biological mother? How can the biological mother get an abortion when a foster mother could birth it?] That's where comparisons to murder come from. I may be missing the point on your question, as you compare killing Iraqis with abortion, implying that both are murder, so that's why this is not written in a condescending manner and lacks the word fucking.

As for Moral Rules being hard to justify, that's quite accurate. I suppose you'd like to try justifying all your ideals - starting from one of the base liberal ideology (to which I subscribe) of individual morality. Even that one is pretty fucking difficult to justify [using a third party viewing an argument between two parties equally convinced of their morality won't work - this is one of about three different solutions derivable, this being the only one from which we can start working on Nietzsche's ideas; that's why we use it].

But let's try. Assuming Individual Morality, my Moral Rules are a Moral Viewpoint that I have decided is worthwhile applying to my life. This means I have examined this Moral Viewpoint, and decided that the advantages of this Viewpoint are in most cases correct. I therefore decide to assume this Moral Viewpoint, and as agreeing with a Viewpoint but not following it makes me a Pharisee, and prone to loose any debate, I make it a personal Moral Rule. Creating exceptions to a rule being the work of a bureaucracy, something that Humans do not perform easily, I make this an Absolute Moral Rule. As my Moral Rules are my own, I am under no obligation to justify my Moral Rules to YOU as they are my own. I will explain my Moral Viewpoints and Moral Theories to you, but it is up to you to act on them.
And why should the Moral Rules of the majority apply to the minority (parents to children, etc)? Simply because we still haven't figured out how to let each person choose their own without anarchy. Respect the stricter of two Moral Rules when in the domain of another [note the owner of the domain need to respect the stricter] - we are social creatures after all.

Now, I'm not a philosopher, or any crap like that. I'm a loner who never gets any action, because I'm not out looking, and I'm the exception in my social group. Like you, I play with electronics for fun. My formal education is an undergrad in math. So, anyone with formal training in this field will doubtlessly easily defeat all my arguments, but I don't care. You asked a question about points of view, and I gave you an answer.

Those two other questions you mentioned are simply related to the underappreciation of women. That's a society problem. It manifests itself as a lack of ego, which I will demonstrate as follows:
Girl A, being of strong ego, cares not whether she is considerred a slut or not, and does what she wants.
Girl B, being of strong ego, tells her boyfriend what she thinks, and cares not whether he stays with her or is upset.

P.S. Please add this functionality (pseudocode a cross of SH, AWK, and ML):

if [ POST ~ /(<p>|<br>|<br />)/ ]; then
  submit
else
  POST = replace POST "\n" "<br>"
  submit
fi

because it's a pain in the ass to have to enter paragraph and bracket return tags everywhere.

P.P.S. Commenter M.J. is partially right about balance. But what about those who give up the self-satisfaction that so you can decide your balance points? Are they not greater individuals than you, who try to balance it? Any individual who makes a sacrifice is greater than those who don't, but in addition, and individual who makes a sacrifice to which there is no point is a fool. Starting a new society won't work - there is always the disconformist who will woo others to their viewpoint. Anyone who uses the term slut in reference to women who enjoy sex are just self-righteous assholes, usually trolls who won't change their view, and almost always have an inferiority complex.

I know, double post. I forgot to mention [amazingly] that until recently the law was that an obscene activity was one complained about. Thus, the most prudish person controlled the definition of obscene. That changed - now it's what the AVERAGE person would consider obscene.

Ergo, society evolved slower.