keyholez criticizes Heather Love for not being happy about gay marriage. (Just read it. I'm not going to explain my references.) I think he’s wrong. I’m not an academic, and I’m not "short gays" in any way that I’m aware of, but Heather Love’s message resonates for me.
It’s not obvious to me that the opportunity to engage in state-sanctioned monogamy is a universal advantage for the group to which that opportunity is offered. In fact, it’s pretty clear that, in and of itself, it’s a disadvantage to those members who don’t want to take advantage of it – for the same reason that the availability of widely-used recreational drugs is a disadvantage to young people who prefer not to use them. We don’t live in a world where individual choice can be made without any social consequences. If gays are allowed to marry, being gay will no longer be considered a good excuse for being single.
Of course the availability of widely-used recreational drugs may be an even bigger disadvantage to those who do choose to use them. (That’s presumably why most of them are illegal.) Arguably that’s also true about marriage.
More generally, the de-marginalization of certain groups (monogamous gays) increases the stigma associated with being part of a still-marginalized group...
...and so on, I don’t have time to finish this right now...and by the time I do, I will probably have lost interest...
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Isobel Wren
Just testing to see if the hotlink works.
But, yeah, isn't she like the hottest girl ever?
UPDATE 5/23/2009: Vote for her (end of 3rd row).
But, yeah, isn't she like the hottest girl ever?
UPDATE 5/23/2009: Vote for her (end of 3rd row).
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Constitutional Right to Commit Fraud?
Ordinarily, if you use false information to obtain something of value, that is fraud. When that false information is the transmission information for an email transmission, and the thing of value is the attention of email recipients, then, according to the Virginia Supreme Court, it is free speech protected by the First Amendment.
The argument, as I understand it, goes something like this. Freedom of speech requires the right to speak anonymously; otherwise the speech isn’t really free, because it may be inhibited by fear of retaliation. The only way to speak anonymously on the Internet is to use false transmission information. Otherwise, the bad guys will be able to track you down and retaliate.
The Court drew a distinction between “false” and “fraudulent” information. Presumably, if the spammer uses someone else’s IP address or domain name, that would be fraudulent. But in this case, I gather, the spammer just used made up IP addresses and domain names. Since it is theoretically possible to verify that those names and addresses are not actually in use, there is nothing fraudulent about using them.
In principle, I suppose, this would allow servers to block spam by refusing to accept email unless they can verify that the name and address are actually in use. Such verification would be costly, in terms of delivery time, and, if I understand the technical issues correctly, it would usually be unreliable. Or, to be more precise, it would be very costly to do reliably. In many cases, the cost of reliable verification would be considered too high, and servers would end up blocking legitimate emails from servers that couldn’t be verified by a less costly method.
So essentially, the ruling not only says that I have the right to speak anonymously; it also says that I have the right to charge you (though not to keep the proceeds) for the privilege of not listening to me. Next time you attend a séance, ask Thomas Jefferson about that one. I don’t think he’ll like it.
Moreover, it seems to me that the ruling does in fact allow the use of truly fraudulent information, even though it claims not to. Does the right to speak anonymously include the right for one individual to take on an unlimited number of anonymous identities? Since there are a huge number of IP addresses, and a virtually infinite number of potential domain names, that are not currently in use, a spammer can change his anonymous identity at will. It seems to me that such changes of identity constitute fraud. The spammer sends one bulk email, and then sends another with the implicit statement, “I am not the same person who sent you the previous email.” – a false statement used to obtain something of value.
Since the court used the example of the Federalist Papers, which were signed by an anonymous “Publius,” let’s pursue that example. The court maintains, rightly, that the authors had the right to use the anonymous pseudonym “Publius.” And if I read one of the papers by Publius and decide he is not worth reading, I can then refuse to read any of his others. But imagine if the authors had written each of the papers using a different name, using a different typeface, on a different kind of paper, etc.. It seems a little ridiculous to me to argue that freedom of speech allows them to do this. By claiming to be a different author, when he is in fact the same author, James Madison is making a substantive false pretense to get me to read another of his papers. That’s not freedom of speech; it’s fraud.
The argument, as I understand it, goes something like this. Freedom of speech requires the right to speak anonymously; otherwise the speech isn’t really free, because it may be inhibited by fear of retaliation. The only way to speak anonymously on the Internet is to use false transmission information. Otherwise, the bad guys will be able to track you down and retaliate.
The Court drew a distinction between “false” and “fraudulent” information. Presumably, if the spammer uses someone else’s IP address or domain name, that would be fraudulent. But in this case, I gather, the spammer just used made up IP addresses and domain names. Since it is theoretically possible to verify that those names and addresses are not actually in use, there is nothing fraudulent about using them.
In principle, I suppose, this would allow servers to block spam by refusing to accept email unless they can verify that the name and address are actually in use. Such verification would be costly, in terms of delivery time, and, if I understand the technical issues correctly, it would usually be unreliable. Or, to be more precise, it would be very costly to do reliably. In many cases, the cost of reliable verification would be considered too high, and servers would end up blocking legitimate emails from servers that couldn’t be verified by a less costly method.
So essentially, the ruling not only says that I have the right to speak anonymously; it also says that I have the right to charge you (though not to keep the proceeds) for the privilege of not listening to me. Next time you attend a séance, ask Thomas Jefferson about that one. I don’t think he’ll like it.
Moreover, it seems to me that the ruling does in fact allow the use of truly fraudulent information, even though it claims not to. Does the right to speak anonymously include the right for one individual to take on an unlimited number of anonymous identities? Since there are a huge number of IP addresses, and a virtually infinite number of potential domain names, that are not currently in use, a spammer can change his anonymous identity at will. It seems to me that such changes of identity constitute fraud. The spammer sends one bulk email, and then sends another with the implicit statement, “I am not the same person who sent you the previous email.” – a false statement used to obtain something of value.
Since the court used the example of the Federalist Papers, which were signed by an anonymous “Publius,” let’s pursue that example. The court maintains, rightly, that the authors had the right to use the anonymous pseudonym “Publius.” And if I read one of the papers by Publius and decide he is not worth reading, I can then refuse to read any of his others. But imagine if the authors had written each of the papers using a different name, using a different typeface, on a different kind of paper, etc.. It seems a little ridiculous to me to argue that freedom of speech allows them to do this. By claiming to be a different author, when he is in fact the same author, James Madison is making a substantive false pretense to get me to read another of his papers. That’s not freedom of speech; it’s fraud.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
The Right Way to do Abstinence-Only Sex-Ed
On an unconscious level, the human mind has difficulty processing negatives. If you tell someone not to think of an elephant, that will have exactly the wrong effect and cause them to think of an elephant. If you don’t want them to think of an elephant, tell them to think of a peacock, or Abraham Lincoln, or an airplane.
It’s the same way with sex. If you tell people not to have sex, you may (or may not) get them to understand consciously why it’s a bad idea, but on an unconscious level, their brain hears the “have sex” part and can’t process the word “not.” The way to get people not to have sex is to put into their minds the sexual equivalent of a peacock, Abraham Lincoln, or an airplane.
Unfortunately, while many images can substitute for that of an elephant, there aren’t many things that can substitute for sex. Maybe religious ecstasy, but that’s quite difficult for most people to achieve, and there are “church and state” problems if it were made part of a public curriculum. Maybe certain drugs – opiates and SSRIs come to mind – but obviously we don’t want to encourage young people to use opiates, and it seems a bit drastic, and probably not very effective, to prescribe antidepressants for teenagers generally in order to calm their sexual urges. No, the only convenient substitute for sex is masturbation.
And that’s exactly what abstinence-only sex-ed should be teaching. I mean, OK, it’s probably a good idea to warn kids about STIs and pregnancy risks and the possible emotional complications of having sex. But mostly what sex-ed courses should be teaching is masturbation techniques. And about how much fun it can be. And about all the wonderful advantages of doing the sex thing by yourself (which I’ll get to later).
And outside of the curriculum itself, we should do things to encourage and enhance masturbation for teenagers. Hand out free sex toys in school. Change the law to let teenagers view pornography. (Some people might think the latter would encourage them to have sex, but I doubt it. A guy isn’t likely to be watching porn when his girlfriend is around. And when he does watch it – especially if he has been taught how great masturbation is – he won’t want to wait until he’s with her to have sex.)
What needs to be changed is the belief – particularly among boys – that masturbation is a pathetic substitute for sex. This is a wrong and destructive belief. I would argue, in fact, that social pressure, self-image issues, and the generally stupid values that pervade the teenage world (and the adult world) compel teenagers (and adults) to accept sex as a pathetic substitute for masturbation.
You might argue that masturbation must be a substitute for sex, and not the other way around, because sex is “natural” whereas masturbation is the sexual equivalent of AstroTurf. Clearly nature intended people to have sex, rather than masturbate, because sex is what enables people to reproduce, whereas masturbation has no obvious evolutionary advantage. Well, if you insist on personifying Nature, consider this: Nature clearly didn’t intend all women to have orgasms. Some women can’t come from intercourse, and some can’t even come from direct clitoral stimulation unless they use a vibrator. I submit that, for such women, a penis is a substitute – and a very poor one, at that – for a vibrator. I mean, they might be willing to accept that substitute because it comes with a man attached, and in any case the two aren’t mutually exclusive. But it’s silly to think that the “artificial” thing must be a substitute for the “natural” thing.
The issue is not whether masturbation is more natural than sex, but whether it is better. And, I contend, it is better. Here we encounter once again the original problem: the brain has trouble with negatives. The most important reasons that masturbation is better are negative ones: it doesn’t spread diseases and infections; it doesn’t cause pregnancy; it doesn’t have major potential emotional complications; it doesn’t involve the difficult and dangerous question of consent. Another reason that masturbation is better is that it is easier: it’s much easier to satisfy one person without hurting them than it is to satisfy two people without hurting either one of them – especially if you have access to all of the one person’s sense data. And let’s face it, when you have sex, it has to be with a real person, and real people aren’t nearly as hot as the ones you can fantasize about.
It will be argued that sex feels better than masturbation – at least for boys, and for many girls too. This is, first of all, a fairly minor advantage compared to some of the disadvantages already cited. After all, orgasms feel pretty damn good no matter what causes them. But I would argue that this supposed advantage isn’t even really there. The problem is that “masturbation” is interpreted to mean “manual masturbation,” which, for most boys and many girls, does indeed not feel as good as sex (at least if you ignore the uncomfortable parts of sex, particularly among the inexperienced). But in this day and age, masturbating manually is like riding a horse to work. They have automobiles now. I can’t honestly say I've done the reasearch myself, but I have the impression that, with the right sex toys, masturbation can feel even better than sex (particularly if you do take into account the uncomfortable parts of sex). For girls, this point is almost trivial, but I understand it’s also true for boys, given recent advances in masturbation technology.
The other big reason that people will say sex is better than masturbation is because of the intimacy. But intimacy doesn’t require sex. Arguably, when two people use masturbation to satisfy their sexual impulses, so those impulses don’t get in the way of their emotional connection, they have the opportunity to experience an even deeper level of intimacy than those who try to get intimate by fucking.
You may say that sex is more an expression of intimacy rather than a form of intimacy. OK, you’ve got me there. If two people have become very intimate and want to express that intimacy by getting as physically close as it’s possible for two people to get, then yes, sex does have an advantage over masturbation. Yes, in one particular case – one which, I imagine, is in fact rare among teenagers, though, given their limited experience, they may imagine themselves to be more intimate than they really are – in one particular, fairly rare case, yes, sex does have an advantage. One advantage. Sex has gotten one base hit off masturbation. But, Dude, I still want masturbation pitching for my team.
The real reason, I suspect, that sex is “better” (for boys) is that you get to say – or even if you act the gentleman and don’t tell anybody, you get to know that it would be true if you did say – that you had sex with So-and-so. That is really bad. We should punish boys (and men) for thinking that. Heck, we should even punish me for thinking that (although, since So-and-so wouldn’t even go out with me, the question of punishment is academic in my case). Really. I mean, personally, I don’t give a damn if they have sex, as long as they use a condom and all that. But to use someone else’s body as a reason to feel good about yourself – that’s really gross. Even if it’s subtle – as it almost always is – it’s gross. Even if the girl wanted it more than you did, even if you were in love, even if whatever – tell me honestly, after you’ve considered all the advantages of masturbation and the disadvantages of sex, that ego wasn’t the deciding factor.
I don’t know what to do about that, but it’s pretty fucked up. And it doesn’t mostly explain why girls have sex – since girls don’t get much credit for saying they had sex with So-and-so, unless So-and-so is the school’s star quarterback. I can recall hearing about some research as to why girls have sex. The first time the reason is usually curiosity. After that it’s kind of, “What the hell, I’m not a virgin any more, so what does it matter.” And there’s probably a boy that wants to have sex with her, and maybe she enjoys having sex, so what the hell. Plus she doesn’t want to be thought of as a tease, or as straight-laced and old-fashioned. And all the other girls are doing it. Blah, blah, blah. In any case, if we can convince the boys that masturbation is better than sex, the girl problem will take care of itself.
Then also, a lot of youngsters of both sexes have sex because they’re intoxicated. Yeah, I don’t know what to do about that either. Maybe the “abstinence only” thing was a bad idea in the first place. (Do you think?) If teenagers are going to get drunk and have sex, it’s a lot better if, before they left for the party, they thought of brining a condom just in case.
It’s the same way with sex. If you tell people not to have sex, you may (or may not) get them to understand consciously why it’s a bad idea, but on an unconscious level, their brain hears the “have sex” part and can’t process the word “not.” The way to get people not to have sex is to put into their minds the sexual equivalent of a peacock, Abraham Lincoln, or an airplane.
Unfortunately, while many images can substitute for that of an elephant, there aren’t many things that can substitute for sex. Maybe religious ecstasy, but that’s quite difficult for most people to achieve, and there are “church and state” problems if it were made part of a public curriculum. Maybe certain drugs – opiates and SSRIs come to mind – but obviously we don’t want to encourage young people to use opiates, and it seems a bit drastic, and probably not very effective, to prescribe antidepressants for teenagers generally in order to calm their sexual urges. No, the only convenient substitute for sex is masturbation.
And that’s exactly what abstinence-only sex-ed should be teaching. I mean, OK, it’s probably a good idea to warn kids about STIs and pregnancy risks and the possible emotional complications of having sex. But mostly what sex-ed courses should be teaching is masturbation techniques. And about how much fun it can be. And about all the wonderful advantages of doing the sex thing by yourself (which I’ll get to later).
And outside of the curriculum itself, we should do things to encourage and enhance masturbation for teenagers. Hand out free sex toys in school. Change the law to let teenagers view pornography. (Some people might think the latter would encourage them to have sex, but I doubt it. A guy isn’t likely to be watching porn when his girlfriend is around. And when he does watch it – especially if he has been taught how great masturbation is – he won’t want to wait until he’s with her to have sex.)
What needs to be changed is the belief – particularly among boys – that masturbation is a pathetic substitute for sex. This is a wrong and destructive belief. I would argue, in fact, that social pressure, self-image issues, and the generally stupid values that pervade the teenage world (and the adult world) compel teenagers (and adults) to accept sex as a pathetic substitute for masturbation.
You might argue that masturbation must be a substitute for sex, and not the other way around, because sex is “natural” whereas masturbation is the sexual equivalent of AstroTurf. Clearly nature intended people to have sex, rather than masturbate, because sex is what enables people to reproduce, whereas masturbation has no obvious evolutionary advantage. Well, if you insist on personifying Nature, consider this: Nature clearly didn’t intend all women to have orgasms. Some women can’t come from intercourse, and some can’t even come from direct clitoral stimulation unless they use a vibrator. I submit that, for such women, a penis is a substitute – and a very poor one, at that – for a vibrator. I mean, they might be willing to accept that substitute because it comes with a man attached, and in any case the two aren’t mutually exclusive. But it’s silly to think that the “artificial” thing must be a substitute for the “natural” thing.
The issue is not whether masturbation is more natural than sex, but whether it is better. And, I contend, it is better. Here we encounter once again the original problem: the brain has trouble with negatives. The most important reasons that masturbation is better are negative ones: it doesn’t spread diseases and infections; it doesn’t cause pregnancy; it doesn’t have major potential emotional complications; it doesn’t involve the difficult and dangerous question of consent. Another reason that masturbation is better is that it is easier: it’s much easier to satisfy one person without hurting them than it is to satisfy two people without hurting either one of them – especially if you have access to all of the one person’s sense data. And let’s face it, when you have sex, it has to be with a real person, and real people aren’t nearly as hot as the ones you can fantasize about.
It will be argued that sex feels better than masturbation – at least for boys, and for many girls too. This is, first of all, a fairly minor advantage compared to some of the disadvantages already cited. After all, orgasms feel pretty damn good no matter what causes them. But I would argue that this supposed advantage isn’t even really there. The problem is that “masturbation” is interpreted to mean “manual masturbation,” which, for most boys and many girls, does indeed not feel as good as sex (at least if you ignore the uncomfortable parts of sex, particularly among the inexperienced). But in this day and age, masturbating manually is like riding a horse to work. They have automobiles now. I can’t honestly say I've done the reasearch myself, but I have the impression that, with the right sex toys, masturbation can feel even better than sex (particularly if you do take into account the uncomfortable parts of sex). For girls, this point is almost trivial, but I understand it’s also true for boys, given recent advances in masturbation technology.
The other big reason that people will say sex is better than masturbation is because of the intimacy. But intimacy doesn’t require sex. Arguably, when two people use masturbation to satisfy their sexual impulses, so those impulses don’t get in the way of their emotional connection, they have the opportunity to experience an even deeper level of intimacy than those who try to get intimate by fucking.
You may say that sex is more an expression of intimacy rather than a form of intimacy. OK, you’ve got me there. If two people have become very intimate and want to express that intimacy by getting as physically close as it’s possible for two people to get, then yes, sex does have an advantage over masturbation. Yes, in one particular case – one which, I imagine, is in fact rare among teenagers, though, given their limited experience, they may imagine themselves to be more intimate than they really are – in one particular, fairly rare case, yes, sex does have an advantage. One advantage. Sex has gotten one base hit off masturbation. But, Dude, I still want masturbation pitching for my team.
The real reason, I suspect, that sex is “better” (for boys) is that you get to say – or even if you act the gentleman and don’t tell anybody, you get to know that it would be true if you did say – that you had sex with So-and-so. That is really bad. We should punish boys (and men) for thinking that. Heck, we should even punish me for thinking that (although, since So-and-so wouldn’t even go out with me, the question of punishment is academic in my case). Really. I mean, personally, I don’t give a damn if they have sex, as long as they use a condom and all that. But to use someone else’s body as a reason to feel good about yourself – that’s really gross. Even if it’s subtle – as it almost always is – it’s gross. Even if the girl wanted it more than you did, even if you were in love, even if whatever – tell me honestly, after you’ve considered all the advantages of masturbation and the disadvantages of sex, that ego wasn’t the deciding factor.
I don’t know what to do about that, but it’s pretty fucked up. And it doesn’t mostly explain why girls have sex – since girls don’t get much credit for saying they had sex with So-and-so, unless So-and-so is the school’s star quarterback. I can recall hearing about some research as to why girls have sex. The first time the reason is usually curiosity. After that it’s kind of, “What the hell, I’m not a virgin any more, so what does it matter.” And there’s probably a boy that wants to have sex with her, and maybe she enjoys having sex, so what the hell. Plus she doesn’t want to be thought of as a tease, or as straight-laced and old-fashioned. And all the other girls are doing it. Blah, blah, blah. In any case, if we can convince the boys that masturbation is better than sex, the girl problem will take care of itself.
Then also, a lot of youngsters of both sexes have sex because they’re intoxicated. Yeah, I don’t know what to do about that either. Maybe the “abstinence only” thing was a bad idea in the first place. (Do you think?) If teenagers are going to get drunk and have sex, it’s a lot better if, before they left for the party, they thought of brining a condom just in case.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Twitter BJ's
The following updates came one after the other on my Twitter:
So what do you think? Do you like BJ's? Is it going to get hard for BJ’s? In the coming quarters, I mean. What about the demographics? As Americans get older, will they continue to give BJ’s...their business. And what about the politics? President Clinton really liked BJ’s. He even received them in the Oval Office. But lately Democrats have been coming out against big boxes. If an Obama administration gives some head...of a department the authority, could they make things hard for BJ’s? Considering that most of the major retailers went down on Friday, how much would you pay for BJ’s? Or do you think it’s just wrong?
EDIT: Added most of the last paragpaph. (How long can I keep this up?)
- tastytrixie What sucks about fertility probs: not being able to have makeup sex/give proper BJ because partner needs to save cum for sperm bank. 9 minutes ago from web
- businessTF Summary: BJ's second-quarter earnings - The Associated Press http://tinyurl.com/5ggmrw 17 minutes ago from twitterfeed
So what do you think? Do you like BJ's? Is it going to get hard for BJ’s? In the coming quarters, I mean. What about the demographics? As Americans get older, will they continue to give BJ’s...their business. And what about the politics? President Clinton really liked BJ’s. He even received them in the Oval Office. But lately Democrats have been coming out against big boxes. If an Obama administration gives some head...of a department the authority, could they make things hard for BJ’s? Considering that most of the major retailers went down on Friday, how much would you pay for BJ’s? Or do you think it’s just wrong?
EDIT: Added most of the last paragpaph. (How long can I keep this up?)
Promiscuity
This is a comment on some things in a post by the Wandering Webwhore, which post you should probably read first in order to get the context for what I’m talking about. (Note that there is a lot more in the post between the quotations below. I just selected passages that I wanted to comment on.)
With respect to meat, there are moral and environmental issues, but there are also health issues that might outweigh those, since some people develop iron deficiencies when they don’t eat meat.
As for corn syrup, I don’t see much of a moral issue. There’s a health issue, but it may be outweighed by other considerations, such as the relative difficulty and expense of obtaining foods that don’t contain corn syrup, and a preference for the taste of corn syrup.
With respect to promiscuity OTOH, there are clearly moral issues, in that promiscuity promotes the spread of STIs and risks unwanted pregnancy. The moral issues are, if anything, more acute for men than for women (about which see my discussion below concerning the double standard), but they certainly apply to women too.
I’m not saying that I personally think promiscuity is worse than the sort of gluttony cited in the quotation. (I'm not much inclined to condemn either one, really.) But I would say that a sincere and thoughtful person might, without being a hypocrite, come to the conclusion that scarfing down “corn syrup, meat, chemical-laden and genetically modified food” is acceptable behavior whereas putting the wrong things in your vagina is not.
[EDIT: The implicit comparison when someone uses the word “promiscuous” is with the average (or typical) person. Even though Rhode Island is big enough to fit millions of people and Texas covers only a small fraction of the earth’s surface, we still say that Rhode Island is small and Texas is big, because that’s how they compare to the average US state.]
Anyone who scarfs down corn syrup, meat, chemical-laden and genetically modified food is in NO position to judge a woman for what she puts in her vagina.First of all, I don’t see any inherent problem with chemical-laden and genetically modified food. Sometimes such foods don’t taste as good, but sometimes they taste better. I don’t think there is any evidence that chemicals or GMOs per se are unhealthy or immoral. (Obviously some chemicals are unhealthy, but that’s why we have the FDA.)
With respect to meat, there are moral and environmental issues, but there are also health issues that might outweigh those, since some people develop iron deficiencies when they don’t eat meat.
As for corn syrup, I don’t see much of a moral issue. There’s a health issue, but it may be outweighed by other considerations, such as the relative difficulty and expense of obtaining foods that don’t contain corn syrup, and a preference for the taste of corn syrup.
With respect to promiscuity OTOH, there are clearly moral issues, in that promiscuity promotes the spread of STIs and risks unwanted pregnancy. The moral issues are, if anything, more acute for men than for women (about which see my discussion below concerning the double standard), but they certainly apply to women too.
I’m not saying that I personally think promiscuity is worse than the sort of gluttony cited in the quotation. (I'm not much inclined to condemn either one, really.) But I would say that a sincere and thoughtful person might, without being a hypocrite, come to the conclusion that scarfing down “corn syrup, meat, chemical-laden and genetically modified food” is acceptable behavior whereas putting the wrong things in your vagina is not.
What does promiscuous mean, anyway? To me, it just means having many partners in a short time span and that's a meaningless definition since “many partners” and “short time span” are so subjective.Sounds like a reasonable definition, but I don’t think it’s meaningless. It just says that promiscuity is a relative term. The cutoff between “promiscuous” and “not promiscuous” is arbitrary, just as the cutoff between “cold” and “warm” is arbitrary. But someone can still meaningfully assert that “it’s bad to be promiscuous,” meaning that more promiscuity is worse than less promiscuity.
[EDIT: The implicit comparison when someone uses the word “promiscuous” is with the average (or typical) person. Even though Rhode Island is big enough to fit millions of people and Texas covers only a small fraction of the earth’s surface, we still say that Rhode Island is small and Texas is big, because that’s how they compare to the average US state.]
The UNhealthy/wrong thing to do is get into or stay in a relationship just so you can have access to socially acceptable sex.I disagree with that. The bad thing about promiscuity is that it promotes the spread of STIs. If people want to have sex, the healthy way to do it is in long-term monogamous relationships, even if those relationships are only for the purpose of having sex. (I will agree that it’s unhealthy when one party to the relationship doesn’t realize that that’s the only purpose.)
As to the double standard, I’m going to be a devil’s advocate here and argue that there is no double standard. People that really care about morality are just as quick to condemn men as women for being promiscuous. (Did you ever hear a preacher say it was okay for guys to be promiscuous?) But for most people, morality is not the only virtue. I would venture to say that, for a great many people, it is not even a very important virtue. While moral considerations might lead one to choose to have fewer sexual partners, there are other virtues that enable one to have more sexual partners. In the case of women, though, those virtues aren’t really very impressive: since men are typically eager to have more sexual partners, it’s typically easy for a woman to find more men to have sex with. But since women are typically not so eager to have more sexual partners, it is more difficult for a man to find more women to have sex with, and it is therefore more impressive – and indicative of some sort of non-moral virtue – when he succeeds. That's not a double standard; it's just a recognition of the fact that men and women face different opportunities and have to be judged in the context of those different opportunities.
The devil’s advocate will have to grant, though, that this difference in male and female opportunities could be a self-fulfilling prophecy, or, as we say in economics, a system with multiple stable equilibria. If it’s considered impressive for a man to have more sexual partners, then men will be eager to have more partners so they can impress people, whereas if it is not considered impressive for a woman to have more sexual partners, then women will be less eager to have more partners. And therefore, it really will be impressive for a man to have more partners, because he has to seduce all these less-eager women, and it really won’t be impressive for a woman to have more partners, since she can easily find men who want to demonstrate how impressive they are by adding her to their list of partners. So in a sense, it’s a double standard but not an irrational one from the point of view of the people who are living it. As long as the double standard exists, it will be self-perpetuating even if people are rational.
I’ve simplified the argument here by assuming that everyone is heterosexual. But I think it actually strengthens the argument when I allow homosexuality. My impression is that people are more eager to condemn promiscuity in male homosexuals than in female homosexuals. (Some people think lesbianism is wrong, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard any straight person suggest that promiscuous lesbianism is worse than monogamous lesbianism. Whereas the “gay men are too promiscuous” idea is something you hear every day.) That makes sense according to my theory, because male homosexuals have the easy task finding men to have sex with, while female homosexuals have the relatively more difficult task of finding women to have sex with. So promiscuous lesbians are demonstrating a non-moral virtue that promiscuous gay men are not.
(Why does Microsoft Word think that the plural of “equilibrium” is “equilibriums”? I’ve never heard or read the word “equilibriums” except in MS Word’s spell-checker. Oh, well. Stay tuned for my next post on why conservatives should advocate giving teenagers pornography and sex toys.)
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
VloggerHeads
Now that I've actually joined VloggerHeads, I'm a bit more optimistic about it. Tom Guarriello ("tlg847" to YouTube users) has a video explaining why they banned NewWarriorMan (sorry, I can't remember his real name). I don't expect we'll see a video every time someone gets banned from VloggerHeads, but I'm glad they are setting a precedent for better communication with users. Hopefully as VloggerHeads grows we can look forward to getting at least some explanation when admins take an action -- something a little more informative than YouTube's "inappropriate content" when a video gets taken down, and some kind of notice and explanation when a user gets banned.
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