Hot middle-school babes

Also, lanugo:

less neurotic does not = more "natural"

You're reading things into what I said that don't belong there. It's partly cultural encoding that keeps lower classes closer to the "body"; the fact that lower classes are less neurotic and closer to the body is not some pristine "state of nature", it's just as much a product of the same cultural and economic stratification that middle class neurosis is.

lanugo said:

What you're saying is that people from the lower classes tend to have more offspring simply because their sex is better; hereby you imply that overpopulation in countries of the third world is caused by the population's overenthusiastic enjoyment of sex. This disgusting cynicism really gives you and your true beliefs away.

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Nope! That's what you're saying. I said nothing of the sort. I simply stated that the lower classes have better sex AND they're more reproductively successful.

I didn't imply causation--hell, I didn't even imply correlation!

I was just pointing out that this is a double-win. A win-win situation for them.

Mr. Tea said:

Not in this thread, but you've definitely said stuff like this before. It was ages ago, I can't be bothered to look for it now.



No, I know you're not a Marxist, you've made that clear plenty of times. I'm talking about things like the gleeful tone of statements such as "well 'the family' in America is all but dead and buried now" (or words to that effect), and it makes me think, well that's easy for you to say, you're not being brought up by some poor single mother on welfare in the middle of some Harlem shithole. I dunno, of course it's not as if any family with a Mummy and a Daddy and their biological offspring is guaranteed to be a happy functional family, but just to cheerlead the widespread collapse of this idea when it's clearly linked to a massive demographic of people with all kinds of dysfunctions seems highly perverse. You see what I'm saying? It's like "Ha, that THAT, Oedipal patriarchy!" when you've got this whole generation of young men who've grown up without an adequate father figure in their lives and have all the propensity towards dysfunction and crime that goes with that.

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T minus 6 sec...

"It's the lack of Daddy at home that causes crime, not economic inequity and stratification that causes crime and lack of Daddy in the home!"

Bzzzzt. Wrong answer. You've got it backwards.

I can't wait to see Stepfather, by the way, speaking of Oedipal middle class neurosis. And horror films.

"Do you know who your parents are?" is the tagline. Brilliant. [Tho, I'd probably have gone with "Do you know who your Daddy is?" for perversity points...] And it's got that guy from Nip/Tuck in it playing the serial killer/step-dad, the really straightlaced looking, uptight one. Perfect.

Mr. Tea said:

Well it's all related, effects feeding back into and amplifying each other. The difference in the psychological effects on a child of the experience of being brought up by one parent or two parents can't be trivial.

Interestingly though, I read recently that some psychologist has said that when children seem to grow up with problems following a parental divorce it's not necessairly that way round causally, but that sometimes it's nightmare kids that put such a strain on their parents' relationship that it leads to a break-up...

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Yes, well, there's also new data that demonstrates that some kids who are sexually abused grow up with no mental health issues or psychiatric problems whatsoever, while others have really severe ones. The latter group, most scientists think, tend to be those who were genetically predisposed to the psychiatric illnesses, so the experiences of childhood trauma acted as catalysts and sped up the reactions (in this analogy, the reaction would be the expression of a phenotype, i.e. the psychiatric illness...)

I don't doubt it's very helpful to have a two or multiple parent situation--all the help you can get, from extended kin groups, and community, and affinal kin, etc. would be great-- but I don't think gender matters so much as the help and support itself matters.

Can I just say, if it spurs the debate on a tad, nomad is quite fit. I don't really know how I know this, yet I know.

craner said:

Can I just say, if it spurs the debate on a tad, nomad is quite fit. I don't really know how I know this, yet I know.

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lol

Mr. Tea said:

Grow a pair and cheat on your girlfriend. That would be radical as fuck!

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it's more just a calculation of the actual ordeal of everything that an extra-relationship affair would entail, which is more than i am willingly deal with. i mean i'm very happy with my girl and just want to concentrate on work so i don't really wanna fuck with a good thing.

craner said:

Can I just say, if it spurs the debate on a tad, nomad is quite fit. I don't really know how I know this, yet I know.

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zhao said:

it's more just a calculation of the actual ordeal of everything that an extra-relationship affair would entail, which is more than i am willingly deal with. i mean i'm very happy with my girl and just want to concentrate on work so i don't really wanna fuck with a good thing.

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Let's just hope she doesn't read Dissensus.

Used the email function on this site to send the sendspace links to you finally (your inbox here was full).

Yeah, I mean, I always find it funny when you finally hear the rationale (from a guy, more than from a girl--those are funny in different way) about why they've chosen monogamy.

It's usually because they're doing their girlfriend a huuuuge favor and declining all of the millions of offers they're getting for hot flings (millions of em, always)-- even though, of course, they're tempted-- because it's just not worth it, after all. Don't mess with a good thing. Even if you really want to fuck other people. Your girlfriend probably couldn't handle it, so if you want to hold on to the sure thing you've got a home, don't go messing with the fleeting opportunities elsewhere.

There's a logic there, of course. But if my boyfriend said that, I'd be way more apt to roll my eyes and chuckle to myself than if he said "hey, while you were gone for six months, what can I say... I had sex with someone else. Ok a few other people." Or, if he didn't tell me, and one time had sex with someone he really thought was hot and got it out of system. A good way to avoid "messing" with a good thing is to just not talk about it. If the sex outside the relationship isn't reflecting on the sex inside the relationship, then who cares? That's really worked for me for years now.

But again I guess I'm not representative of the majority in these matters.

People who are jealous like monogamy. Period. Because it's the only way to keep up the illusion that the other person is "yours" and won't leave you. And it's really just an illusion, since the person could leave anytime.

Jealousy is one of those emotions that tends to die down after the first flush of infatuation is gone. It's really not something to base a relationship on. It's a really terrible thing to base your sex life on. Really, really terrible. Because you will get bored very quickly that way.

It's funny, I've known people in these really intense monogamous relationships that fizz very quickly. And they just can't understand my way of thinking about things. Yet I've maintained the same relationship for 8 years and most of them are on their 3rd or 4th relationship in the same amount of time...

Depends how much one doesn't want to hurt the other person, really, and how important one's own (as you say, fleeting) desires are in comparison to that.

"one time had sex with someone he really thought was hot and got it out of his system." I don't think one fuck will get the desire for sleeping with other women/men out of anyone's system. dangerous slope.

nomadthethird said:

Jealousy is one of those emotions that tends to die down after the first flush of infatuation is gone. It's really not something to base a relationship on. It's a really terrible thing to base your sex life on. Really, really terrible. Because you will get bored very quickly that way.

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I go with that. But jealousy re-surfaces at the most inopportune times, just when you think you're past it. Depends how vulnerable you're feeling - don't buy any polarity of the 'some people are jealous, some aren't' sort (not that i think you were saying this, btw)

nomadthethird said:

People who are jealous like monogamy. Period. Because it's the only way to keep up the illusion that the other person is "yours" and won't leave you. And it's really just an illusion, since the person could leave anytime.

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So, so true, this. But you'd go mad if you thought about it too much.

Yet once the illusion has been exposed once, it leaves lasting damage, i think.

baboon2004 said:

Depends how much one doesn't want to hurt the other person, really, and how important one's own (as you say, fleeting) desires are in comparison to that.

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Well, not everyone is so intensely hurt by this, in theory or in practice... I mean, there was a time when I probably would have been jealous if my bf slept with someone else, and vice versa. But things change. You get to know someone better, all sorts of things change, it's hard to explain.

"one time had sex with someone he really thought was hot and got it out of his system." I don't think one fuck will get the desire for sleeping with other women/men out of anyone's system. dangerous slope.

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But here's the thing: if you're secure in your relationship, there's nothing to worry about. Even if you sleep with the other person more than once. There's a chance you might end up wanting them more than your partner, right? But there's always that chance anyway, even without the sex, in everyday life, that you'll meet someone else and want them more.

I've often found that having sex with someone once is all it takes. But then I've found that having sex with someone once made me realize I probably shouldn't do it again, because things could get out of hand. If you love your partner, you'll make those critical distinctions. If you don't you won't. I think it's really that simple, whether you're monogamous or not.

People have "emotional" affairs all the time, too, where there's no sex, but there's everything else, all the same sorts of intensity that would be there anyway...but somehow these are considered less "real" in terms of cheating, or less threatening.

baboon2004 said:

I go with that. But jealousy re-surfaces at the most inopportune times, just when you think you're past it. Depends how vulnerable you're feeling - don't buy any polarity of the 'some people are jealous, some aren't' sort (not that i think you were saying this, btw)

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It does-- but it's almost always irrational, isn't it? I wonder about that, if it's just that some people are more jealous than others, or if there's something else going on...

Sometimes I think the difference is in how people think about sex itself. Some people think sex itself defines a relationship, so that you're "breaking" the bonds of the relationship by going elsewhere for sex. (Research shows that men are more likely to think this way, I'm pretty sure, and to equate love with sex. Women tend to measure the worth of a relationship by non-sexual markers.)

I think there are all sorts of ways to measure and define relationships. Because I love my boyfriend, I don't want to limit him sexually for the rest of his life. That just seems ridiculous to me. And I think it would be ridiculous of him to limit me. I like the idea of my boyfriend having a life (psychologically, sexually, and in lots of other ways) that doesn't include me, but that he can share with me. I like having a separate life of my own and then sharing that with him.

Maybe that's weird, I don't know. It took a while to get to that point, I suppose, but it works for me...