Am I a Carrot?

Post Reply New Topic

Perpetuation for the sake of perpetuation is meaningless and approaching sexuality and life like this can lead to a rather joyless existence and atrocities such as... well, cutting off a little girl's clitoris because it isn't "needed" to reproduce and men decided it's more important to maintain this level of control over women than to care about their pleasure.

Yes, that's horrible, and I agree with you that it's horrible. But that's CULTURE not NATURE.

It doesn't make what I said any less true however. There is no "Meaning of life" except perpetuation.

Culturally humans have built "Meaning", perpetuation of a family, or clan, or country, or "race".

You as an individual can find 'Meaning' for yourself in your life. Perhaps Art, or music, or you're work, or physics, or orgasms... but it doesn't mean that you were "put here" to do those things or find meaning in them.

As a wise man once said "You weren't put here to 'get it', Mr. Burton"

I don't think I'm in disagreement with this. Humans search, invent and imbue meaning to everything we do in life. That said, doesn't that mean it's only natural for us to enjoy and imbue meaning to sex beyond mere reproduction?

Bear in mind that a lot of issues with discrimination are related to perception. Everyone has different experiences in life and those experiences shape people's reality of discrimination. But everyone's reality is different.

Right, but ultimately those are on a personal basis.

I view Sex as being a loaded gun because anytime I have sex I'm risking having to financially support a child for 18 years. As a guy, I have no say in anything to do with the child until it's 18, not whether it's carried to term, how it's raised, what school it goes to, nothing. All I have is an obligation to financially support it. I cannot do that right now. Therefore, I don't risk having sex with people "Just for fun". It's simply not enough "Fun" to warrant the potential risk. As a woman, if you're comfortable with Abortion, well, You've basically had all the responsibility removed from the equation. If you don't want the kid, you get an abortion; if you want the kid but not the father, you keep the kid and ostensibly the father is made by law to pay for it.

I mean, I've turned women, women that I found attractive, down, when they wanted to have sex "No strings attached" because there are ALWAYS strings attached.

The fact that my track record also indicates to me that if I have Sex with a person one time, I'll probably fall completely in love with that person and then be crushed by them, doesn't help.

But these are all *MY* justifications.

Ultimately, neither of our attempts to assign meaning to sex matter, since nature isn't sapiant and therefore cannot even contemplate the s**ts it doesn't give. And I think it is this realization that we really have no "meaning" that is the root cause of a lot of depressions. I know it's the root cause of mine.

For both men and women, there are a variety of sexual activities available which don't come with any risk of pregnancy. Also, the pregnancy risk is VERY small with proper birth control usage and tends to be exaggerated to the point of dishonesty by abstinence "educators." However...



This is a very sound reason for you to be cautious and refrain, and I suspect it is the root reason. One can't object to that.

just because a society is patriarchal, doesn't mean that women were not paid for working outside the home. you're mixing a whole lot of different concepts together here, and you don't have a well-developed idea of how people lived prior to recent times. even in the victorian age, most women had actual real jobs outside the home - it was only rich or upper class women who worked only inside the home (and they maintained large staffs and households). oftentimes they did not have the rights to their own wages (or they were working for family business), but that didn't make their work any less relevant. also, it didn't make the men's work worth any more.

women can and did work out in the fields doing farm work. i am rather shocked that you don't recall any family stories about ancestors like great-grandmothers who did so. even today they will commonly work out in the fields on subsistence farms. this isn't news.

[img][720:480]http://landssake.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/farmers-field.jpg[/img]



of course, bringing it back to the original point you made, there is no evidence that marriage evolved because of men's hard work and women's sexual value.

the rest of what you were discussing was getting a little weird, so i'll leave that.

What I said was in response to something hyperlexian wrote, and I don't think it would make much sense out of context. She said that according to the source she cited, relationships were most stable when the work contributed by men and by women were of equal value, which would mean that it wouldn't make sense to trade a man's labor for women's sex. I said that because men have historically been paid for their work more, that it seems like men's labor was valued more. Also I said that part of this was probably due to a man's superior physical strength. The latter part of that paragraph was saying that even if the labor were valued equally, supposing that it were impossible to raise a child off the labor of only one partner, then a sex-labor trade could still take place, because neither commodity would be worth very much separate (because the baby would not get taken care of, and that is a failure from an evolutionary standpoint).

I would consider it a good thing that women are now able to do most of the professions that men are, and that they get paid well for them.

Hyperlexian, I don't really see how what I said is that much different than what you said. What I said before was that women typically were exempted from work that was considered a man's, unless she lived in a poor family, which seems almost exactly what you said. I thought I clarified that I didn't mean that women did not do work. Even today, women typically are employed more often in the service sector, whereas men still more often do things like carpentry, engineering, plumbing, etc, than women. I am fairly certain that women were not allowed to own property until fairly recently, so I can't imagine how they could been expected to do most of the skilled labor.

And being a patriarchy is not that much different from keeping women from doing as much productive work as men. In the Bible it is pretty clear that women were considered property, and were always referred to in relation to a man (husband or father), whereas men were referred to in relation to their occupation. Also it is pretty clear that the writers of the old testament thought of woman's womb like a field that a man could plant his seed in (it wasn't clear if they realized that half the child's characteristics came from the mother). It seems totally natural when reading the old testament to think of marriage as a sex-labor trade. Anyway, there was never any mention of any woman having an INDEPENDENT occupation (as in, not directly tied to helping the husband) in the old testament that I can think of (apart from nurse or prostitute), and I can hardly imagine that there was very much of that going on when they were treated this way.

And I'm not religious, nor am I trying to say that any of the stuff I just described is a good thing. I was just saying that is how I understand the world to have worked in the past. And I know the Bible shouldn't be used as an authority on any of the things that the authors were trying to be authorities on, but I always assumed that how they described the day-to-day life of the ancient Hebrew was accurate.

I googled, "life of women in 1800" and "life of women in middle ages" just to check to make sure that I wasn't crazy about my ideas about how things were, and I didn't see anything that was really surprising.

And I don't know what you mean about some of the stuff I said being weird.

Gotta say I am whondering myself. So I am more open to my physical needs. I have no problem with it, that sex is a part of a very close relationship. I also dont have a problem with it, that sometimes my body simple has some physical needs. But I dont play games. So I dont tell someone about relationships, when I only want sex and so on.

The thing I am whondering: You are telling others to worship your body. And continue with something that seems me to not worship bodies properly. So your body is worht more then a date? In this I completely agree with you. I was only whondering, because in my opinion, there seems to be a number of dates for you, and when reaching this number the worht of your body is reached? I gotta say, my body is worth more then one date, two dates, 1000 dates.... You could date me a thousend time, but if I dont feel an inner wish to be sexual with you, it will never happen. The rest I agree: If a guy thought to have any right on my body because any various number of dates, I would be definitely pissed off.

But I gotta say, this is was pisses me off, when people are talking about prostitutes or sluts. A prostitute is simply a woman who has sex with someone for material gifts. Directly in form of money or indirectly in form of presents. As I said, if I want to have sex with someone is not depending on a number of dates or anything else, so definitely no prostitute.

So when its comes to the term "slut". A slut is something negative, so I must be doing something negative, hurting another person to be rightfully called to be a negative person. So I wasnt hurt, my One night stand partners, never mentioned to be hurt... ^^ So nobody involved was hurted in any way, everyone was a grown up, and in the opposite: Everyone involved was happy. So if I did not hurt someone, if I did not treat someone negative: Who should be the ones asking themself if they should be ashamed? Me, not hurting anyone? Or the people, telling lies about other people doing negative things, when no such things happened?

There is absolutely nothing bad, about wantint to do it elseway. There is nothing bad about a person, that wants to share sex only in partnership because of his/her own deeds. Because noone gets hurted by that. As there is nothing wrong about a person, that simply has a deed for sex, and seeks a partner to do so, as long as he/she is not lying about that. Because noone gets hurt by that as long as both involved talk openly about their deeds and both agree.

And this is was is responsible if something we do is wrong or right. If people involved get hurted by our doings or not. I dont like vanilla pudding. But people who eat it, dont hurt other people. So no need to have discussions about, if people that are eating vanilla pudding are selling themself under worth. ^^

most people were poor. the middle class didn't exist until very recently, so there was a sharp division between the wealthy and the poor. the wealthy were few, and tended to be landowners and royalty (and some merchants). most of the people were poor tradespeople and farmers (who often didn't own their own land), and often the entire family would be engaged in the same work together. that included the women.

you're looking back with modern eyes and mixing together a whole bunch of concept again. families worked together (usually just adults, but often children over a certain age as well, and older relatives who were still in good health). if they lived on a farm, they all farmed. if the family business was cobbling, they all made shoes. if they owned an inn, they were all innkeepers together. if they owned a bakery, they all made bread. you are imagining the past like people would have independent vocations and follow their own dreams, but they didn't.

the money was usually controlled by the head of the household, but that does not mean that the woman was not busting her ass making a living for the family alongside the man. the fact that she did not control the purse strings does not mean that her work was not as lucrative in the household.


http://www.moneymuseum.com/moneymuseum/ ... id=61444#0
there is just no evidence whatsoever that marriage evolved as a way to trade men's money for women's sex.

okay, I concede.