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Japan's lost libido and America's asexual future
Asia Times ^ | March 13, 2012 | Spengler

Posted on 03/12/2012 9:22:02 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o

[According to] a Japanese government study: Almost a third of Japanese boys aged 16-20 and three-fifths of girls say that they have no interest in sex.

The hormones of late adolescence evidently rage in vain against some cultural barrier that makes young Japanese "despise" sexual relations, according to the Japan Family Planning Association's report [1].

It turns out that the ultimate victim of sexual revolution is sex itself.

What makes the Japanese hate sex? The same things that make a growing proportion of Americans hate sex. Joan Sewell's 2007 book I'd Rather Eat Chocolate became the manifesto of American women who don't like sex, hailed at the as "the next wild turn in the female sexual revolution" by Sandra Tsing Loh in The Atlantic Monthly [2].

Pharmaceutical companies are racing to market a pill to revive fading female libido, to no avail: women do not want to be sex objects, and a culture that objectifies women will make them hate sex, as I wrote in this space five years ago [3]. But the problem has gotten worse than I imagined it would.

[snip]

After half a century of sexual revolution - otherwise known as objectification - women suffer en masse from the sexual equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome, identification with their tormentors, as a number of popular commentators observe.

[snip]

For adolescent girls, the replacement of courtship by "hooking up" with "friends with benefits" is a cruel prospect.

Even though only three out of ten American teenagers aged 13 to 16 are sexually active [7], the options available to adolescent girls are narrowly defined. Adolescent boys are monsters, as anyone who has been one, or known one, can attest...

[snip]

Freud's question, "What do women want?," ...

(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Japan; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: culturalsuicide; makes; moralabsolutes; sin; stupid; you
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To: omega4179

Worth more since it covers it pretty well ;)

Fishing kills animals, carpentry requires cut trees and any demonstration of masculinity is frowned on. Is it any wonder boys seek out the only ways remaining to express their ‘maleness”? IE manly type games ...war/fighting etc.

The hardcore anti vid game types (not saying you are) should think about that for a bit.


101 posted on 03/12/2012 2:46:41 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: savagesusie

“Television (in the home) was the beginning of an artificial reality...”

No, it was those darn printed books that people started using to escape reality. Dang you Gutenberg, dang you straight to heck!


102 posted on 03/12/2012 2:50:57 PM PDT by Boogieman
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To: Boogieman

The Gutenburg night shift guy probably breated the first printed porn on the side. THAT is where the problem started

The painting/cave art was too time consuming, so Early Playboy was born! ;)


103 posted on 03/12/2012 2:58:50 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: Boogieman
That was actually an argument used against books. Common people didn't need to read because it only fills their heads with non orthodox ideas.
104 posted on 03/12/2012 3:10:14 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

Cultural suicide.


105 posted on 03/12/2012 3:15:41 PM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

It’s my understanding that pornography is very popular in Japan.


106 posted on 03/12/2012 3:18:54 PM PDT by trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.)
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To: StAnDeliver; Norm Lenhart

It is interesting you bring up the Chinese. They will have major demographic problems becoming apparent any minute now due to their male-female imbalance. They have a huge, 8 figure cohort of males that will not have an opportunity for marriage. I figure there is a huge burgeoning market for a) prostitutes and b) robotic consorts of some sort.

Over the longer haul, they will have difficulty maintaining population levels as their society grows older.


107 posted on 03/12/2012 3:30:01 PM PDT by FreedomPoster (Islam delenda est)
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To: GOPsterinMA

Are wooks anything like books?


108 posted on 03/12/2012 3:33:52 PM PDT by Twinkie (John 3:16)
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To: Twinkie

Yes, it’s a book with a typo.


109 posted on 03/12/2012 3:36:02 PM PDT by GOPsterinMA (The Establishment is the establishment.)
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To: FreedomPoster

In gaming, the Chineese are well known for “farming” which is playing to obtain online “gold” in bames then sold in the real world to gamers who then take and use it back in their games for buying online ingame items. It’s huge business.

So the Chinese are well versed in the ‘recreational’ side of the ‘cyberworld’ already. With their manufacturing capacity, when the tech gets there for robotics, they will indeed ‘solve’ their sex imbalance with hardware. If that tech gets to the prior VR discussion level, their govt WILL institute a plan to migrate people into the virtual world and have an industrial accident with a few hundred million.


110 posted on 03/12/2012 3:43:07 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: Boogieman

Ideas transmitted by books actually increases intellectual growth depending on the type of ideas you are consuming.

TV watching—especially by young children is detrimental to intellectual development and makes the brain lazy. The ability for children to understand complex ideas in books took maturity and concentration and memory work and real life experience —before they could decode and digest the book.

It is an exercise of the brain. TV shuts the brain down to a large extent and does all the work for the child, where books allow imagination and uniqueness.


111 posted on 03/12/2012 3:54:35 PM PDT by savagesusie (Right Reason According to Nature = Just Law)
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To: Tax-chick; Norm Lenhart
Heroin doesn't make long term economic sense. You kill off your customers. But it still is rather popular in some circles. Same with all sorts of things. People will expend all kinds of energy to get the next fix.

And that is what this would be (and to an extent, is). You get a “high” that is somewhat controllable and very repeatable. Unlike heroin, porn is hard wired in to the code (that is why people keep making babies after all, we are wired by God to want to do the act that makes babies).

Until 1930 or so, most Christians recognized that. That is why contraception was viewed as a sin. It turned an act of love to bring a new life into a recreational drug. Look at the after effects.

Now think about what will happen, and is happening, when young men and women stop seeking to interact with each other and start... Well I won't spell that out. On line sites or romance novels hit the same market. As technology improves, it will be easier and easier to full fill those artificial expectations.

112 posted on 03/12/2012 4:37:59 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: savagesusie
But realize books are a recent thing. Mass reading was NOT viewed as a positive thing at first. Gutenberg's press was blamed for all sorts of wars, including the various Communist uprisings.

The view was that there are some ideas you don't want the population to grasp. Until the early 1900’s, literacy was not viewed as a good thing in much of Europe. Look at Spain for example (pre revolutionary Spain). Now, I love books. My children will inherit that. But they are a shrinking medium, and the things you are saying were said against books not that long ago. Imagination was frowned on, which is why some of the Oz books were banned.

113 posted on 03/12/2012 4:41:29 PM PDT by redgolum ("God is dead" -- Nietzsche. "Nietzsche is dead" -- God.)
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To: Tax-chick; Norm Lenhart; redgolum
"I still don’t see it, economically. If our government tried to order a giant power-plant building program, the people either wouldn’t do it because they’re not going to be slaves, or they wouldn’t do it because they’re idle drones already. (See the outcome of all attempts to put underclass-persons to work, other than enforcing the alternative of starving to death.) You don’t get anything built if the workers are shot and/or starved ..."

Please allow me to add a bit of perspective here. As an erstwhile futurist, I occasionally give thought to these matters.

First of all, there isn't a problem. All of the people who choose, for whatever reason, to not procreate, to not have children, will disappear from existence in relatively short order, and the world will be inherited by those who do choose or are required to have children.

The question then becomes who are these people? In every dystopia, there is always a group outside of the "utopia", which does not follow the utopian rules. Whatever the fate of the larger society, the smaller society which reproduces itself will remain. (And in the southern U.S. that will be the Tax-chick family.)

Secondly, when the technology arrives to put dreams into your mind to entertain you, the technology will have arrived to send signals into your muscles to make them move. In a story I have still "under development" called "Night Work", my characters surrender their bodies to a computer interface which lets their brain sleep, while it exercises their bodies. They get their needed rest, but they also get toned and fit bodies out of the deal. What could go wrong?

All of those robots that are going to be tending to the sleepers? Just some of the sleepers under computer control, as I described above.

You wanted to know how those without skills could pay for their connection addiction? That's how.

It takes care of keeping the indolent ambulatory, and supplies the robot hands that will be required.

A note to those who see no negative in this scenario, I would advise you to not be one of the sleepers who has no friends or relatives to inquire after you, after you have surrendered your body to the tender keeping of the computer sleep center. You may be one of the individuals selected for those hazardous tasks from which some do not return.

Finally, though much of this development seems rather dark and without hope, it is also precisely the necessary condition for interstellar space travel. We will need to sleep away our lives for the most part as we travel, even if some of that is in suspended animation. Perhaps it will be both. We may be frozen, and still dreaming.

Lots of story ideas here. Think about it.

114 posted on 03/12/2012 4:54:07 PM PDT by NicknamedBob (If "everybody's different" then two of them have to be the same. It's the only way to be different.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o

You are so right. Society was smarter when it made sex something of a taboo-it made the “dance” of courtship so much more alluring. Now that “sex” is everywhere and as obligatory as paying taxes, it’s little wonder that so many are turned off.


115 posted on 03/12/2012 5:03:08 PM PDT by Amberdawn
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To: NicknamedBob

Bob, you have indeed thought this through very well. PM me when that story is ready as I’d love to read it.


116 posted on 03/12/2012 5:03:12 PM PDT by Norm Lenhart
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To: rbg81
there are reports that western men are less fertile, produce less sperm and have lower testosterone....

you see, a guy sitting in front of his computer and inbibing porn from females that have siliconed up and then pleasuring themselves is just so damn easy, no fuss, no money, no having to be nice and interesting and charming...no having to comb your hair or brush your teeth...

you don't even have to make yourself into something great....the plain old you who flips hamburgers can just continue.

I feel sorry for girls....they'll dress up in their short dresses, with the high heels, just to go to the local casino bar, with their girlfriends, and I wonder, who the hell are they going to attract?.....its not a pretty sight, such behavior...

117 posted on 03/12/2012 5:06:59 PM PDT by cherry
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To: Mrs. Don-o; lilycicero; MaryLou1; glock rocks; JPG; Monkey Face; RIghtwardHo; pieces of time; ...
+

Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:

Add me / Remove me

Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.


118 posted on 03/12/2012 5:40:23 PM PDT by narses
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To: redgolum

It is not so much “books”—it is ideas.....since Socrates was killed—and Jesus—an numerous other “radicals” who never even wrote a book.

There has always been people who wanted to ban books-—because of the power of ideas and knowledge. It is why Blacks were not allowed to learn to read.

So, yes, it was the Gutenberg press which sparked the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason and, of course, the Protestant Revolution which gave all people access to the Bible.

The Founding Fathers and the colonists were the most literate population at that time. People in England stated that the most books sold were to the colonies—not only that—Madison kept writing to Jefferson who was in Europe telling him to send him any new published books on politics or law.

Books were always used by radicals—esp. Machiavelli’s, which even the Founders read. Books led to the Founding of the US—Books led to the most profound political document ever written—The Constitution of the US.

It is why the schools are intentionally dumbing down the populace since Dewey and less and less kids are reading books starting with the schools intentional destruction of the phonics system in the 30’s. Outraged parents made them put it back in the schools when they found out their little Johnny was not reading even in 3rd grade-—a first-—so, the clever “teachers” and Billy Ayers types instigated implicit phonics which still makes reading frustrating for most kids, since they destroy their decoding ability and obscure logic and reason.

Explicit phonics has always been the most efficient and effective system that had created the most literate country-—so it is strange (ha ha) that there are schools today still teaching “implicit” phonics and parents assume it is the efficient method and then just think their children are slow or have ADD so they can drug little Johnny.

Cynical about education? Yes, absolutely—Read BK Eakman and John Gatto and numerous other experts on curricula.


119 posted on 03/12/2012 5:41:11 PM PDT by savagesusie (Right Reason According to Nature = Just Law)
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To: NicknamedBob; Norm Lenhart; redgolum

Very interesting discussion from everyone. It sounds as if you all have thought through the economics more than I have.

I expect Mr. Spengler could do some interesting speculation, too, if he were of a mind to!


120 posted on 03/12/2012 5:48:40 PM PDT by Tax-chick (Oh, good Lord. Pat.)
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