Posted on 12/13/2008 4:13:29 AM PST by reaganaut1
The point you keep missing is that hooking up is part of the bad situation and can make it less likely to find someone to marry. I don't think that anyone here is suggesting that everyone take a vow of celibacy for life, but casual meaningless sex is not a substitute for marriage and intimate sex and it's actually detrimental toward that goal.
So maybe the goal shouldn't be no sex or shallow sex but intimate sex with a person you love and will be with for a long timeAlas, finding someone to love is much harder than finding canned goods at supermarkets.
There is a large subset of the broader science fiction, fantasy, anime, role-playing, SCA, etc. subculture that's having plenty of cheap meaningless sex and you can find plenty of message boards in that same group of people where they talk about what a wreck their social lives are and how much heartache they've suffered. And that's a subculture where being willing to have sex with anyone can give even an unattractive woman an amazing amount of social power over a lot of guys. No thanks. What I've seen isn't better than being mocked for being a virgin at 40.
And finding caned goods at the supermarket is "settling", yet earlier in the thread you seemed to have trouble imaging why people are calling casual sex settling for a "lower standard". Now imagine if (A) the canned goods were much more likely to create medical issues for you than good food and (B) the more canned goods that you ate, the harder it would be for you to find and eat good food and you start to get closer to an analogy here.
Good information here.
"The social hygiene movement of the early twentieth century combined moral indignation and public health methods in an attempt to combat prostitution and venereal disease. Especially during the two world wars, civilian and military authorities produced many posters to educate armed forces personnel on how to remain disease-free and “fit to fight.” The U.S. Public Health Service and the American Social Hygiene Association prepared elaborate poster displays during the 1920s as part of a campaign to eradicate what we now call sexually transmitted diseases. “Keeping Fit” was a 48-poster series produced by the U.S. Public Health Service. It was designed to educate teenage boys and young men about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urged them to embrace moral and physical fitness. “Youth and Life” was a parallel presentation for girls and young women. Scanned from original posters that are a part of the American Social Health Association records in the Social Welfare History Archives at the University of Minnesota."
I have it bookmarked.
Let me try to explain.
It's because parents have abdicated the long childhoods, and the serious protections, that human children need. They are working instead of supervising and morally protecting their kids.
If parents were constantly protecting their daughters, they would be training them and teaching them the difference between attracting any boy with a penis and getting him to want you (something 99% of girls can achieve) and becoming a deep, productive, delightful person who would make a fantastic helpmate and mom, as well as any other kind of profession. The latter holds herself and her body to higher standards. It might be harder, but a few decades ago, being "easy" was actually bad for a woman.
Parents who are ubiquitously around these smart, half-grown teen children would be molding their sons' understandings of the sex drive and responsibilities, too. Boys should fear sex as much as they want it, because even a 16-year-old can be stuck paying 20 years of child support, and be doomed to being a terrible absentee father and ruining his children's lives, all for ONE fumbling hookup that he doesn't even remember.
Your daughters will learn how they should behave from pop and hip hop singers, and their classmates, if you are not around. It's pretty empty to be just a man's fantasy. Most Dads don't wish that for their daughters.
If parents were constantly protecting their daughters, they would be training them and teaching them the difference between attracting any boy with a penis and getting him to want you (something 99% of girls can achieve) and becoming a deep, productive, delightful person who would make a fantastic helpmate and mom, as well as any other kind of profession. The latter holds herself and her body to higher standards. It might be harder, but a few decades ago, being "easy" was actually bad for a woman. Parents who are ubiquitously around these smart, half-grown teen children would be molding their sons' understandings of the sex drive and responsibilities, too. Boys should fear sex as much as they want it, because even a 16-year-old can be stuck paying 20 years of child support, and be doomed to being a terrible absentee father and ruining his children's lives, all for ONE fumbling hookup that he doesn't even remember.I am all for teenagers getting married and forming lifelong commitments.
Dating itself is a demise of courtship.
Conservatives and Christians don't expect people to be morally perfect. In fact, they expect people to be imperfect. But it's about setting goals and bars and realizing that no matter where you set the bar, people will fall short of it. So if you set your bar high, people will fall short but plenty of people will hit that standard or at least get close to it. If you set your bar low, then that's what people will do and plenty will fall short of even that. So if you have low standards, you'll have a bad society and if you have high standards, you'll have a better society.
That's where hiding flaws comes in. By hiding the flaws of parents and heroes behind a wall of secrecy, you don't undermine high standards. By giving the impression that everyone is crooked or promiscuous or messed up, then it undermines any standards to be better than that, regardless of the fact that, sure, you'll never prevent people entirely from being promiscuous or cooked or messed up. And that's the problem with liberals. They believe that people can be perfect if they simply have all the fact. Thus they really think that if you give kids birth control and tell them not to feel bad about having sex that they'll all do the responsible thing and there will be no regrets and no unwanted pregnancies. It just doesn't work that way.
It goes along with the idea that people old enough to have children aren't old enough to hold full time jobs, live alone, take responsibility for their own actions, and should have another decade or two of adolescence ahead of them where they do nothing but go to school full time, hang out with their friends, and live with (and on the income of) their parents. Most societies with a rite of passage perform it sometime between 13 and 18 (be it a Bar Mitzvah, Quinceañera, or even graduating high school) but we've decided that kids need another decade of adolescence with no responsibility after that because in the 1950s and 1960s, irresponsible youth became the ideal and you started getting songs like "Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today and don't worry 'bout tomorrow, hey, hey, hey", "Imagine all the people living for today", and "Forever young, I want to be forever young".
You’re making the assumption that sexual gratification is the prime necessity of human life (after eating, I guess).
Sex without commitment to marriage is nothing more, and actually much less than, animal life, since they are only following their instincts for procreation. Human life means keeping sex within the bonds of marriage and family life.
And there are people who have remained chaste their entire lives such as monks and nuns of various religious and spiritual traditions. And if they are sincerely practicing their vows, they don’t feel that they missed out on life.
Life is much, much more than gratifying the passions of the body. The pleasure derived from sex organs interacting with each other is actually quite minimal compared to so much else that life has to offer. And I am speaking from experience, and the eternal truths in the scriptures of the world.
You are reducing the human being to animal level. You can stay there, if you want, but don’t include others in the life of the field.
That's where hiding flaws comes in. By hiding the flaws of parents and heroes behind a wall of secrecy, you don't undermine high standards
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I agree. Parents must be role models for their children. Much harm has been done by those who would be their children's friends, rather than their parents. Children usually reject attempts by their parents to offer life's mistakes as a way of teaching lessons. It generally encourages a lack of respect, which is quite the opposite of what a thoughtful parent intends.
Too many parents indulge themselves by offering too much information about their own lives to their impressionable children. It is no wonder that so many young ones have grown so cynical of late.
Where the idea that people old enough to have kids are not old enough to be married is beyond me
It has to do with economic viability. Teens don’t have the skill sets to land jobs that can support a family in any reasonable fashion.
Life is much, much more than gratifying the passions of the body.It is more about measuring up to those around you, to those important to you, caring about what they think and how they feel.
I stopped dating completely during the ‘disco’ era just because I hated disco. I hated the clothes, the stupid music, the clubs, the lights, that mirrored ball hanging from the ceiling of every bar, the wierd way the guys dressed,danced and the pick up lines....EVERYTHING...LOL! (Showing my age here..lol)
Not me. I just didn’t go to disco places.
REALLY funny. I had a roomate that seemed determined to relive John Travolta’s movies. I was a rock’n’roller while he went disco, then went “country”......
hh
Yes. India is still such a society. If I had "propositioned" my wife (who grew up in India and was living in India at the time) before marriage she would have been shocked, and the marriage would have been scuttled. It would be thought of as a gross insult. I had my wife read the article of this thread, and upon finishing, she said "American women are stupid!". That's a correct description of young women who engage in multiple "hookups" and wonder why they don't lead to love and marriage.
You wrote:
“Why should they regret measuring up to other people?”
What “up”? How is low standards an “up”? Also, what makes you think that any person needs to “measure up” to someone else by doing something that is not moral and fraught with difficulties such as unwanted pregnancy, STDs, emotional attachments to losers, etc.?
“So now having sex is a lower standard?”
Realistically, if sex has a greater purpose than just your pleasure (and it must have that because sexuality is a universal) than how can a woman “hooking up” casually be anything but lowering standards? How is cheapening yourself NOT lowering standards? Please explain to me - yes I am laughing as I write this - how “hooking up” is NOT lowering standards. Can you do that for me, please?
“So having sex is inconsistent with self-respect?”
Your friends’ behavior and attitude is inconsistent with self-respect and your grasping at straws to explain away that poor self-respect is just proving my case.
“What kind of sexually disoriented thinking is that?”
Sexually disoriented thinking? Now, that’s a fascinating string of inconsistencies right there. Do you really believe that something can be disoriented and thinking? Kind of like doing calculus after a head wound?
“Have you ever, ever considered that there might be a downside to being a virgin? Believe it or not, there is data available on this.”
No, there isn’t any evidence to suggest a college age woman is suffering a “downside” by being a virgin. What does she suffer? Nothing. Disease? None. Unwanted pregnancies? None. Bad emotional attachments through sex? None. Loss of reputation? None. Loss of moral pleasures open to her as an unmarried college age woman? None. She can still eat, sleep, work, play, talk all night, study, graduate, make money, shop, hang out with friends, date, travel, and so on, and so on, and so on. What has she really lost? Nothing.
“Obviously, I am not advocating that twelve-year-old have sex. But there comes an age where it is better to have sex than to not have sex.”
You’re not making sense. Tell me EXACTLY what age you are talking about. 15? 18? 20? 30? What age? Who decides? Is it universal or is it just in the USA? What about for a very mature 15 year old? Is it okay if she gets it on with her 15 year old boyfriend? Gee, how about her 27 year old teacher? How about her 19 year old neighbor? What if that 19 year old neighbor is a woman? What if that 15 year old chooses to have sex with someone knowing he has AIDS or some other STD? Do we have the right to stop her?
Your morality is self-serving at best. You have apparently no standards (except some undefined idea about “age”). That’s it? Thousands of years of moral development and you have...”I am not advocating that twelve-year-old have sex.” Wow, how impressive!
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