Posted on 06/17/2002 8:25:38 PM PDT by JMJ333
If you had read the thread you would have known that it was posted purely to sway people in the arena of ideas. It is you porn champions who are so void of any meaningful debate that you rip into others when someone merely posts a thread for debate purposes. I made no excuses for being against the subject matter, but I never "deigned" to tell anyone what to do. I simply tried to persuade by logic. Sorry you couldn't handle it.
Sorry, but your argument doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Why wouldn't women tend to mate with every strong, virile candidate who came along to increase the odds of having a strong, healthy child? Men make millions of sperm because the odds are so high against a sperm making it through the female reproductive system to the egg. They aren't necessarily better off sprinkling their sperm hither and thither. In fact, monogamy would seem to work best for a man with weaker sperm. Otherwise, his sperm may always be beaten out by another man's sperm.
As an aside, if you look at some of the women who are having the most children today (the stereotypical drug addict or welfare mom), they are anything but selective. That hardwiring theory seems pretty shaky to me.
Jacques Barzun said it better in From Dawn to Decadence, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life
The sexual reality was often halfhearted and disappointing, much obsession but little passion-- what D. H. Lawrence had called "sex in the head." Men and women did not benefit from the boasted "revolution" as they had expected; it did give some people the free play they wanted, but it pushed many more into courses unsuited to their nature and capacities.It did not install the Mohammedan paradise on earth, although everything in sight suggested that it had. Pornography is a form of utopian literature and, like the advertising of Desire, it set a standard that brought on paralysis. When an erectifying drug was put on the market, the millions who rushed to obtain it numbered the healthy young as well as the ailing old, and women at once demanded its feminine equivalent. It was apparently not known that desire must be dammed up to be self-renewing.
I find it amusing that some who I recognize to be libertarian evolutionists here at FR are the most pro-porno on this thread. I'd love to hear them explain the evolutionary utility of porno, and its place in man's development on the African savannah 3.5 million years ago!
Amusing, but not at all surprising.
EODGUY
She doesn't want to 'make a statement', Lori.
She wants her hubby back.
Hold it, hold it! I didn't say women are responsible for men's behavior. I was saying the women's behavior, on average, used to make men more responsible. They are not at all the same thing!
I agree with the first assertion completely. However, I would point out that parents are responsible in part for the moral decisions of their children. As for individual free will being our only claim to humanness, I would point out that other things make us human as well: our ability to love, our ability to know right from wrong, our ability to imagine, etc. etc.
They seem to reflect quite accurately the values of many of the American women I see today. (As an example, in our high school, in a wealthy section of the NJ suburbs, we have lots of 9th grade girls looking for senior guys (any senior guys) to lose their virginity for them (which will give them bragging rights). Sex in the City is probably too tame, actually.
Alternate advice to women in her situation and/or all married women with trust issues in their marriage. Take off one weekend a month and go away. Leave the kids with somoene responsible. Don't say where you are going and don't say anything about what you did when you get back. Do this every month forever.
Trust is a two way street.
I don't think porn is predominantly about the communication of ideas and concepts. It's about sexually arousing the viewer (and not much more than that).
I agree that both genders do have the God-given ability to rise above animalistic sexual behavior. But I do believe that it's much harder for men. Every high school boy I've ever known (including myself at that age) is thinking about sex almost all the time, and looking for ways to 'relieve' himself of that drive. Women are certainly sexual and have sexual needs, but the drive, in my observation (and that of everyone I know) is considerably less.
I would not have wanted to marry a woman who had "made the rounds" for years. Most men I've known haven't wanted that. My son and my son's friend want women for their wives who are virgins or who have shown considerable restraint in the sexual area. I watch MTV from time to time, and I see young women (on a regular basis) there trying to decide if going to bed with a guy on the first date is too slutty. Usually they agree that it's OK on the second date! (But based on what? - The desire to feel virtuous?) The vast majority of men I know, from many walks of life, would never marry a woman like that. Of course there are men who don't care how many men their wives have received, so I guess such women aren't devalued for those men. But there are many, many men for whom such women are considerably devalued.
It's the ability to resist serious temptation, and to forego intense pleasure. It's much more difficult for men than most women understand, I think.
It IS the same thing. You're saying that men can't be be responsible on their own. They must use women's "policing" as a crutch because they are weak willed. It implies grown men need a "mother" or someone to keep them in moral check. The very next step is to "blame" women for not being there to do the mothering/policing work.
Men have just as much free will as women. Individual responsibility.
Watch it. Larry Flynt is worshipped as an intellectual heavyweight--a veritable philosopher king--by many of these pro-porn loons. To them, Viagra is a mind-enghancing drug.
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