nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
...+2hr03mins...
Oh this is too good. Jungian synchronicity or just the Tao of Dissensus?
Hey it's a fact, look it up.
Hey it's a fact, look it up.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Zomg, I feel so inadequate now I might have to go and write some poetry about my feelings.
WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO ME??????
Edit: you might be right about being able to write a script that would write these kinds of threads for us. And the 'old married couple' feel to a lot of the chat.
God, I created this thread as a cheap joke and now look at it. Everything gets serious so quickly. Craner wants to talk about space and dinosaurs in the Nature thread...
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maureen dowd on david letterman
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07dowd.html?hpw
Working for a boss as anti-social and self-critical as Letterman, whose world is circumscribed by his show, would not be easy. (The man is obviously not joking when he goes off on his self-loathing shticks; otherwise, he would have dated some of those gorgeous actresses flirting with him on air over the decades.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/07/opinion/07dowd.html?hpw
Working for a boss as anti-social and self-critical as Letterman, whose world is circumscribed by his show, would not be easy. (The man is obviously not joking when he goes off on his self-loathing shticks; otherwise, he would have dated some of those gorgeous actresses flirting with him on air over the decades.)
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Among some classes and cultures, there are fewer prohibitions against sexual expression and what we call "promiscuity"...Marriage and the family are institutions that primarily benefit those who are on the highest rung of the social ladder, and who make the most money, i.e. the upper middle classes. In these circles, women are held to extremely high standards of physical beauty, and valued as "reproductive" beings, while men are valued for their ability to provide income and status and viewed as sexual beings. Hence, the "trophy wife" phenomenon.
Sex for the upper middle class ends up being a function of a bunch of highly
programmatic, very rigidly defined and prescribed gender role playing, of course; but it's seen as a means of ensuring social mobility first and foremost. People of this class become more and more removed from their own bodies/embodiment and the more immediate sense of sex as a mode of physical contact-response. This removal or withdrawal from the body is all encoded in the language of 'morality', of course, so people believe that they're actually foregoing the low, base, animal instincts for a higher calling in life (the family, etc.) when they follow the beaten social path.
For many of the lower and working classes, there is far less body shame, there is far less focus on unattainably perfect ideal body types, and there is far less emphasis on mateship and marriage as a form of social capital, etc. This makes people far less hung up and more likely to have sex more often (and yes, often with more partners). From an evolutionary/biological standpoint, there's a huge advantage to both sexes to sleep with as many partners as possible. It's culture that restricts sexual behavior, and it places tighter restrictions on female sexual behavior than it does on male sexual behavior. In my experience, people who are less privileged are markedly less neurotic or hung up about sex, and much better off for it in bed. Unsurprisingly, they also seem to be quite successful reproductively (quantity does seem to count, of course)
FYI, Latinos actually report the highest satisfaction with their sex lives. Another fact to look up. Which makes instant intuitive sense if you know anything about Latino culture or if you've known any latinos.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Most everyone is. Primates are NOT monogamous.
But this discussion is complicated by a lot of things. The difference between actual, ideal, and perceived behaviors, for one.
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
It's a research method thing...I have a bio exam tomorrow so I really have to stop procrastinating now and go start drawing fructose-6-phosphate molecules.
But I will explain afterward. Remind me if I forget.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Well I live in 2009, not 1959, and if you think there's still some massive taboo against promiscuity I suggest you visit a student union or provincial nightclub on a Saturday night. If people are getting loads of sex then great, I mean sex is a Good Thing, but if you're getting hammered and just going home with anyone for the sake of going for home with someone, is that really preferable to going home by yourself? It just seems a bit tragic. Not that I'm holding myself up as some kind of paragon, I mean I'm human too, but for some people this pretty much constitutes their sex life.
OK great, that all sounds fine or at least plausible, but I'm interested in your opinions, not something I could get from a sociology textbook.
Again, I question how up-to-date your ideas are here - or maybe it's just a transatlantic difference. I refer you to head teachers sending 15-y-o girls home to scrub off their bright orange fake tan, or girls of the same age or even younger who diet obsessively or save up for plastic surgery. Seriously, this is overwhelmingly a lower/working-class thing. Hell, I refer you to Katie Price...
(FWIW, I'm generally with you on the fact that crash dieting/anorexia gets a disproportionally large amount of media attention compared to childhood/teen obesity - all the same, there's a hell of a lot of perfectly normal-looking girls who are convinced they'll never get a man unless they look like Victoria Beckham or something.)
Well I dunno, again this sounds reasonable but fairly standard. OTOH, it's a "well known fact" over here that "posh birds are filthy". To be honest I've screwed about as many loaded heiresses as I have Puerto Ricans.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
It helps to be blonde, 6 foot, drinking some kind of Martini and speaking in an almost convincing Russian accent.
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lanugo
von Verfall erzittern
Most ridiculous discussion I've read on Dissensus thus far. nomadthethird, you have really piled up a staggering amount of bullshit in your posts. What are you trying to prove, anyway? That the sexual behaviour of males from certain ethnic groups or classes is a representation of some kind of primal naturalness while the typical white male (except for your "bf", of course) is inevitably perverted by societal norms? If this is the point you're trying to make, I can only advise you to start deconstructing your own preconceptions before attempting to demonstrate to us how warped our perception of reality is.
The very basis of your entire argumentation is the notion of the "noble savage" which you, for whatever reason, believe to be embodied by poor hispanic and black men. That's outrageous and, yes, secretly racist. On top of that, you try to substantiate your claim with useless survey data ("Latinos actually report the highest satisfaction with their sex lives") which, in fact, proves nothing at all - or would you say that if among married people a higher percentage of people report to be happy than among singles this would make marriage the preferable way of life? But that's just flawed reasoning, what I find really upsetting and offensive is this statement of yours:
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.
The very basis of your entire argumentation is the notion of the "noble savage" which you, for whatever reason, believe to be embodied by poor hispanic and black men. That's outrageous and, yes, secretly racist. On top of that, you try to substantiate your claim with useless survey data ("Latinos actually report the highest satisfaction with their sex lives") which, in fact, proves nothing at all - or would you say that if among married people a higher percentage of people report to be happy than among singles this would make marriage the preferable way of life? But that's just flawed reasoning, what I find really upsetting and offensive is this statement of yours:
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.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Eh, get used to it. I've never seen anyone set quite so much store by their self-image as just utterly, terrifically radical as nomad does. It's like a real cornerstone of how she sees herself. No offence here nomad, I mean you do all this Lacanian analysis stuff or whatever it is to the rest of us all the time like Dissensus is your personal patient's couch, it can't hurt to turn the tables a little bit. Everyone, whether here or anywhere else, is conservative or reactionary compared to nomad, much like the fact that every other point on the earth's surface is south of the north pole. Thus we have things like the way getting aggressively hit on by black or Latino men is "refreshingly direct" or "honest" or whatever, but mention the same thing in the conext of white/unspecified men and you get a lecture on rape statistics. And the nomadish bored-humour memes:
Whites? Snicker.
Straights? Chuckle!
Men? Don't make me laugh.
Educated middle-class people? Oh stop it, I can't breathe!
Like, cool, I'm the most hilarious person on the planet before I've even said anything! And while we're at it, you're not exactly black, uneducated or living in a polyamorous lesbian commune yourself, the last I heard.
[A biting retort likening someone to Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or some other old Yank fart I'm dimly aware of usually happens about now.]
It's funny, I was going to let this all go until lanugo just posted above, because I've been here so long I guess I've kind of learnt to filter out the constant preaching. Which I do because most of the rest of the stuff you write, nomad, is actually pretty interesting and worth reading and engaging with. And I think lanugo nails some of your own prejudices and hang-ups pretty well. Seems almost cowardly, I suppose, to be saying this now that someone else has spoken first, but as I say it's got more to do with momentarily turning off the filter that I normally have in place.
lulz.
yawn.
bored.
Whites? Snicker.
Straights? Chuckle!
Men? Don't make me laugh.
Educated middle-class people? Oh stop it, I can't breathe!
Like, cool, I'm the most hilarious person on the planet before I've even said anything! And while we're at it, you're not exactly black, uneducated or living in a polyamorous lesbian commune yourself, the last I heard.
[A biting retort likening someone to Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or some other old Yank fart I'm dimly aware of usually happens about now.]
It's funny, I was going to let this all go until lanugo just posted above, because I've been here so long I guess I've kind of learnt to filter out the constant preaching. Which I do because most of the rest of the stuff you write, nomad, is actually pretty interesting and worth reading and engaging with. And I think lanugo nails some of your own prejudices and hang-ups pretty well. Seems almost cowardly, I suppose, to be saying this now that someone else has spoken first, but as I say it's got more to do with momentarily turning off the filter that I normally have in place.
lulz.
yawn.
bored.
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this year i have sometimes found myself turning girls down or losing their numbers, girls i would like to sleep with, because i'm in a relationship. i think i'm getting stuck in the bourgeois morality trap. help!
edit: i do see what nomad is saying. and of course there is some truth to it.
edit: i do see what nomad is saying. and of course there is some truth to it.
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Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Grow a pair and cheat on your girlfriend. That would be radical as fuck!
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Wow. Just...wow...
As I should've thought I already made perfectly clear, I was talking about the way CLASS, not RACE, affects sexual mores up there. I already explicitly explained what I meant, which was that people who are from the lower classes tend to be less neurotic about sex for a number of reasons (which I cited). None of them have ANYTHING to do with "race" per se, although, as Mr. Tea pointed out (humorously, of course), these things are ultimately encoded racially in our society as a series of stereotypes.
Everything you're saying here-- I don't even know what you're responding to, really. It just seems defensive and angry. About what? I don't know. Nobody has said anything about "noble savages", for fuck's sake, this is like a freshman seminar in here...
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
First, I don't remember saying anything about "getting hit on", here. So where that figures in here is beyond me.
Second, I don't like most people, but if I hate anyone, it's myself. Of course, I am not "middle class", nor have I ever even sort of passed. I am "white", and luckily very light skinned, so that helps me in life, quite a bit. But anybody who knows me from my community knows that I'm from the margins of what "white" means, being that Anglo-Saxon "whiteness" is the standard against which you measure your white privilege in the U.S. I'm from a long line of very not-Anglo sociopaths and not-nice people on both sides. That shit tends to follow you around, you know, it's not the easiest thing to live down. Usually that's the way I frame my "identity"-- of course, I don't expect anyone here to understand, because, how could you?
Anyway, I don't think I'm especially "not reactionary", or "radical" in any sense. In fact, I loathe the word "reactionary" more than you could possibly realize. Please don't mistake me for some kind of I'm-so-Marxist, everything I do is a "revolution" douchebag.
I care about changing some things in our society, and I'm not going to pretend not to because it offends some straight people on a message board. I think sexuality isn't a *given*-- like, it could easily be completely different than it is, culturally. Biologically, maybe not. But these things feedback into each other, or there's a dynamic system that they both feed into. So we should get rid of the hang ups and things would get better, including racism, homophobia, bigotry, etc. The world would be a better place for all of us, whites included.
[I never said a survey "proved" anything, either-- for fuck's sake. But think about it... it's interesting that some people say they enjoy sex more than others, isn't it?]
nomadthethird
more issues than Time mag
Why are people getting so hung up on the question of whether you should choose to cheat or not? I don't get it.
They also don't seem to understand that some people have open relationships so "cheating" is not an issue. Sex outside of the relationship is negotiable. Or expected. Or whatever. Not a problem.
If you want to work out a relationship that's monogamous, I don't give a damn. But it doesn't make you a "better" person, and it doesn't make you more interesting, and it doesn't make you anything really. It just makes you monogamous.
They also don't seem to understand that some people have open relationships so "cheating" is not an issue. Sex outside of the relationship is negotiable. Or expected. Or whatever. Not a problem.
If you want to work out a relationship that's monogamous, I don't give a damn. But it doesn't make you a "better" person, and it doesn't make you more interesting, and it doesn't make you anything really. It just makes you monogamous.