[Thanks to Carter] "Abolish Teenage Sexual Abstinence", article.
"Many people insist that we should only have sex within a marital relationship. They make no allowance for the fact that young people must learn how to have a relationship. They do not teach people the social skills that are necessary within a sexual relationship. It takes practice. Advice and training would certainly be helpful."
Jed McKenna said that sanity is a numbers game, if enough people do or say something, it is no longer insane. So if a huge minority (or worse, a majority) of a country's population insists that young people suppress their biological imperative for years, that's seen as a normal opinion, not a dysfunctional one.
14 comments:
That's why I'm not a friend of public voting on certain issues, just voting "yes" or "no", as was the case with the Irish "voting" on the acceptance of the European treaty. Had every voter read the treaty before they voted? Did they know what it was all about?
Ridiculous.
Nay sayer hah! Grmpf stupid.
What a majority thinks about an issue absolutely doesn't mean that they're right.
They teach young girls to torture young men with sexual frustration and rejection. It is natural that young men develop so much anger, resentment and hostility towards women.
Wow! Honestly... I find that affirmation is so wrong on so many levels that I wouldn't know where to start. I'm not pro "teenage sexual abstinence" but I find that the article is extreme and insulting.
This is what I have been saying for a long time, and being accused of being a "child molester" because of it. We are artificially infantizing our young people and damaging them.
Waiting until I was married to lose my virginity was the absolute worst decision I ever made and has caused massive problems in my life. I would never, ever, recommend that anyone do what I did.
1. Concerning Majority: I'm reminded on the poet Schiller, what he has expressed in the fragment "Demokrit" - I try to translate:
"What is majority? Majority is nonsense ..."
(If anybody wants, I could quote it fully in German, too.)
2. Concerning the article: I don't think in any way, that it is extreme or insulting (whom?).
Suppressing sexuality is one kind of the old and "successful" power game "divide and impera" = split and rule. By this strategy people become very weak, and therefore you can rule them easily.
And the result is disastrous, for any individual as well as consequently for the state of the world we are living in.
The work of Wilhelm Reich shows it very clearly. Or you may have a look into the book of Osho "From Sex To Superconsciousness", showing how to deal with your body and with your sex as a stepping stone to develop into love and further into prayer ... he provoked a lot of hostility from any kind of religious and political leaders (because if they can't split, they can't rule anymore), but its simply true.
"To touch somebody else means to move on holy ground." (Rilke)
But you have to develop into it.
Mary: yes, probably that article is a bit over the edge.
Though sometimes one can't blame people for feeling like fighting fire with fire.
Well, the quoted bit in this blog entry is not even addressing what the boys are being teached, nor what the girls are feeling. It looks in one direction only. (So men grow hostility towards women. What do women grow, then?). I find this vision a bit weird. Like I said, I am not pro abstinence, but I don't think this article is helping the cause much. My opinion, that is.
"People who practice celibacy have failed at love." Oh, thank you.
"People who practice celibacy experience the delusion of superiority and egomania." Oh, thank you very much.
Not to mention the generalizations made about Catholic priests.
I find this kind of things a bit insulting.
(And I'm off to follow the last set of a tennis match going on for almost 5 hours now).
"They teach young girls to torture young men with sexual frustration and rejection. It is natural that young men develop so much anger, resentment and hostility towards women." I agree with this quote, as taken out of context. I don't necessarily agree that WOMEN ARE PROBLEMATIC, but I do agree that YOUNG MEN ARE FORCED TO VIEW WOMEN AS PROBLEMATIC.
There's a distinction. Who's doing the forcing?
And anyone going against it these days is labeled a pervert or worse.!
If the biology of the human body was begun at an early age, and kids began to appreciate what a complex person/organ they are from the start, they might just understand why alcohol, drugs and smoking are so wasteful to their systems
Knowing how to make babies and what it entails, along with the reasons for caution again might help to stem the tide of society's problems..right now it's up to the playground gurus to do the teaching...and a right mess they make of it!
According to the Farty Preacher, abstinence and the Bible teach all there is to know about living harmoniously as a couple.
:-P
Beep,
Are you suggesting that when the majority of the "civilized world" expected Chris Columbus to fall of the edge of the world, they were actually wrong? Butt, that's unpossible!
A majority of people in the Arab world think that Bin Laden is a courageous and cool guy for smiting that despicable America in 2001. The minority like myself are still wondering whether the pain ever caused President Bush and his team to lose a single minute of sleep.
Kent,
I guess this makes you a spouse molester now. Saint Robertson congratulates you on the improvement. (He added that he wishes he had your willpower.)
Neeraj,
Please do, I collect clever quotes in their original version for a hobby. Really.
The rule of the majority has a name: populism. It is what caused the impressively precocious Athenian experience (they invented Democracy) to swiftly swan-dive into a military dictatorship. All that was required was to con a sufficiently large number of people into giving up enough of their liberties...
I disagree with you about Wilhelm Reich. Religious people are seldom smart enough to think with such complexity. They just believe they have a God-given blank warrant to control the sexuality of the whole planet. The "missionary" position got its name from such holy pervs declaring that "doggy style" was a beastly position, and therefore anti-christian.
Don't tell me these fools aren't sick in the head.
How dumb must one be to grant expertise about sexuality to people who are forced by oath to complete chastity? That's like relying on a communist to interpret the Gospel for the Church!
THIS, Mary, is what I find the most insulting. Blatantly promoting one's HATEFUL ignorance using intimidation and downright fear. Listen to them: no love in their speeches, just fear, hate, and "get high by repeating God's sublimey name".
"What do women grow, then?"
Well, naturally, the belief that their very physical nature is born wicked and disgusting, since they are the receptacle of Satan's tool, the Temptation of Sex!
[If I were in a mischievous mood, I would instead have answered : "In Lebanon, a mustache!"]
Read [Leviticus 12: 1-5]: a woman is considered impure twice as long if the child she has delivered is a GIRL!
"People who practice celibacy have failed at love."
Given what I've found out about the women who hoped to marry me so far (including one that my Mom once really liked), I'm better off single than stuck in an unhappy marriage.
Still looking for Miss Right when I can. It's not that I don't believe in marriage. It's more, you might say, that "I don't believe in divorce". Namely, I don't believe it should be part of one's life plans, "if it doesn't work out we can split up". I have a much higher opinion of love and commitment. And I bruise easily.
"Not to mention the generalizations made about Catholic priests."
Well, if you consider it as a call for paranoid caution, alas I have to concur. When you see how they handle black sheep, it seems as if all the way to the top nobody really seems to worry about such actions, only about their being publicly known.
I'm a believer in (most of) the message of Jesus. But here I only see it abominably betrayed. The only thing HE ever said about sex was that adultery was bad, that judgementally condemning adultery was without excuse, and that divorce was a necessary but sad thing.
Anon,
I think this quote only says that women are being TAUGHT to become problematic. By some very twisted people, themselves appallingly frustrated sexually.
Robin,
That's called ideological terrorism. But, like with all terrorism, "it's not my fault, I'm just following God/Allah/Zeus/Sheeva's orders".
):-P
I've said it here before, and apparently I'll never say it enough: my excellent parents told me all about sex and reproduction when I was 5 (that was waaaay back in 1976!), and it seems this immensely set me apart from the typical Lebanese by making me uncomparably more mature and balanced when puberty came. Viewing porn never made ME burst into stupid guffaws. Unlike one of my 6th year Med School classmates...
I love sex, but I'm not ready to turn into a despicable beast to satisfy it. I believe it is in great part thanks to my receiving the same knowledge that the "civilised" West seems so afraid of today.
The world is genuinely turning into a hysterical cult...
Pascal, That was a few spouses, and a lot of girlfriends, ago. I currently have no spouse, and doubt I ever will again. I am in a miserable, mostly sexless, relationship now, but that's another story.
I am soured on the idea of marriage now. Not against women, just against marriage.
Too many men see marriage as buying a personal prostitute, and too many women see marriage as winning the lottery.
"A majority of people in the Arab world think that Bin Laden is a courageous and cool guy..."
A majority? Really? You can be sure?
@Pascal:
1. Friedrich Schiller, "Demokrit" (its an uncompleted fragment):
Was ist die Mehrheit? Mehrheit ist der Unsinn:
Verstand ist stets bei wen'gen nur gewesen,
man soll die Stimmen wägen, nicht sie zählen ...
(I'm not sure about the punctuation marks.)
Translating poetry is difficult, but I try:
What is majority? Majority is nonsense:
sense has always been with few ones only,
you shall weigh the votes, not count them ...
2. I disagree with you about Wilhelm Reich. Religious people are seldom smart enough to think with such complexity.
Maybe I have formulated misunderstable: W.Reich has researched the disastrous consequences, if you try to control or to suppress the basic life energy ("Orgon"), but of course I agree, that followers of a strong belief are seldom thinking with such complexity - they can't, because belief means restriction of free thinking. But they behave in a way resulting in this. To describe all the details and their interrelations will fill at least a book. And there are already many insightful books about this.
"Divide et impera" = "split and rule" sounds more like a conspiracy theory, and I have chosen it for simplicity, but in fact its more like a summarized network of many stupidities showing this result. (See my posting about conspiracy theories.)
3. it's not my fault, I'm just following God/Allah/Zeus/Sheeva's orders => giving away their human dignity, reducing themselves to a robot, a stimulus-reaction machine, as any hijacker does. But they don't realize it. :-(
4. Concerning celibacy: I think, choosing it for yourself out of your own is o.k., e.g. as an experiment in order to learn about yourself, but being forced into it or forcing others into it is really ugly ... therefore I would like to tell a joke:
A new young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript.
So, the new monk goes to the abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies. The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son".
So, he goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscript is held in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years.
Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot. So, the young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall. His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.
The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"
With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word is celebrate, not celibate ..."
A quote from "Stranger In A Strange Land" (Robert A. Heinlein) - I recommend this book, it is very suspenseful and very thought provoking about human stupidities e.g. in sex and religion (try to get the original uncut version: ISBN 0-441-78838-6):
I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much ... because its the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.
Good night, everybody. :-)
Kent,
Your conclusion sounds rather pessimistic. It also sounds rather correct. :-( Especially in Lebanon, or more generally in the arab world.
Where the fuck has the Love gone, people?
The only true sin is absence of love. Selfishness. Yes, my brothers, the world IS becoming a place of ever increasing sin. But bigotry/fanatism is NOT the answer. GENEROSITY is. Some of the scariest people I know close and personally are, presisely, bigots convinced that intense religiousness automatically makes you a good person. They are, simultaneously, some of the loneliest and most pity-inspiring people I know.
See my comments on this post: Hell AND Salvation come strictly from within US.
But enough metaphysics, I'm starting to get redundophobic.
Eolake,
Now that you make me think of it...
Alas, YES.
I should explain something to y'all. Arab mentality is characterized by a few intense specificities. Self-righteous religiousness, as I said, is one. Osama BinLaden is absolutely CERTAIN that he's the muslim equivalent of a living saint, a Templar Night, a divine soldier. I've had it confirmed by the testimonials of some people who've met him. They said enough for my established talent as character judge to be positive. He doesn't snicker in private at "all those fools who think I'm really pious". No, he's the genuine fanatic zealot stuff. If captured and executed, he'd probably die with a gleeful fit of laughter, believing to be getting the perfect martyr's end.
Another peculiarity of Arabs (and those culturally related people like Iranians or us Phoenicians), is the spirit of SPITE. "Anybody who annoys somebody I hate, I find sympathetic." Many people around me, and unfortunately I'm pretty sure they are a majority, would proudly tell you they'll readily support and applause the vilest person on Earth, if this person gives them payback against somebody they deeply resent. And it so happens that anti-americanism has been very intense (in fact, a social norm) in these parts ever since the creation of Israel on "a land vilely stolen from an innocent arab-muslim people, our Palestinian brethren". Never was it more intense than after the G.W.Bush administration and their little "expedition" against Iraq.
Sure, Saddam and Arafat & Co are essentially "our Brothers" when it comes to identifying with their misfortune, and fearing to get through the same. The Arab League has never so much as reached any sort of consensus beyond sempiternal VERBAL solidarity towards the Palestinians.
Even here in Lebanon, where the PLO was at the very heart of the war that half-destroyed our homeland, resentment for "the American Satan" and "the Zionist Enemy" often clouds all sensible memory of what their annoyers put US through...
A tragic illustration of how right I am (how I wish I could be wrong), is Gaza. Arafat and his Fatah were the emblem of "the resistance against the Zionist Enemy". But... two major flaws emerged.
1-Arafat gave up all-out fighting, the quintessential attitude of arabian spite, to (gasp!) negociate.
2-The Fatah administration got corrupted to the bone.
Don't ask me which blemish was the worst, I wouldn't know.
Thus, spite turned against these "worthless spineless turncoats", and when George W. Einstein imposed democratic legislative elections in Gaza, Hamas won. Those pious holy warriors. Naturally.
And, naturally also, encouraged by the apparent popular approval, they completed the seizing of all political power with a very genuine military coup. Now the masters of the Cursed Sardines Strip, they've led to the latest -and still ongoing- humanitarian catastrophe.
All because true-blooded Arabs would sooner die under a hailstorm of hardened lead and fire than reconsider their stubborn narrow-minded mentalities. Hello, Darwin Awards...
Sure, there ARE people who know WAY better. Like that Palestinian doctor (I'm ashamed to confess I've forgotten his name), who's always worked at bringing both people together, and is a gynaecologist in an israeli hospital (ain't nobody in whom you put more trust than your gynaecologist, especially in the Middle East!). Well, during the December offensive, his house was hit, and he lost three of his daughters. In the full shock of grief, when you'd excuse an anger-mad man for saying nasty things he doesn't truly mean, what was he saying? Only calls for the hate and war to end, for both sides to find sense in their hearts.
That guy amazes me. What a fantastic soul.
And, like a diamond in the mud, I found him in one of the most extremism-favouring places in the world.
Sin hasn't won yet. Not with mahatmas such as Dr Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish (thank you, Internet search engines).
Mahatma, in hindi, means "great soul". Was Gandhi's nickname.
It's all about the willingness to awaken to Love.
This man is after my own heart: he knows that his true enemy is not the one waging war, but the spirit of war itself, which is everybody's enemy.
I'll conclude with a quote from another wise man I deeply respect, my father:
"The populas mass is hopelessly stupid."
I think this sums up quite nicely the vox populi paradigm.
Or, to rip off one of Domai's recent daily quotes:
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." -- George Bernard Shaw
We Arabs aren't ready for Democracy yet. We'd be better off with an "enlightened tyrant" à la Mustapha Kemal Atatürk.
P.S.: Talk about an aptonym: "Ezzeldeen Abu al-Aish" literally translates as "The pride of the religion, father of living good".
Thanks, Allah, but I didn't really need the hint.
Thanks for the ref, Neeraj. :-)
About the "functional stupidity" of religious fanatics, the Iraq war recently confirmed just that. The several muslim rebellions (or "resistances"), fighting among each other AND often against the Coalition, typically use guerilla methods against the latter. These are in fact inherited from their centuries-old bedouin traditional fightings, especially the razzia, or ghazwa, know to the westerners as the raid. Hit-and-run, and grab what you can but fast.
Well, it so happens that guerilla tactics are PRECISELY what can hold a very powerful and determined army at bay, as illustrated in Afghanistan when the Soviets had to eventually pull out. Same in Southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah drove Israel to withdrawal from its long-standing occupation. It's the glass jaw of "conventional warfare". The hornet vs the lion.
But what happenned in Iraq? In the city of Najaf (if I recall correctly), the rebellion felt so confident from the success of their hounding of the coalition, that they became overconfident. They decided the time had come to strike a big blow, gathered their forces, and attacked the Coalition in classic, face-to-face military confrontation, brawn against brawn. The city was ravaged in the process, but the guerillas also got laminated.
They never realized (at least until then) that their tactical advantage was from the specificity of their method. It just happened to work for them, out of luck, not smarts.
I guess that, in both aforementioned cases of bonehead religious fanatics, natural selection favored over the centuries an efficient method that became tradition or common procedure in people too stupid to understand WHY. So they declare it to be God's sign that they are right(eous).
It's actually written in the Koran: "If Allah gives you victory then none shall defeat you". (Well, d'uh!)
Today Iraq has returned to a hounding style of guerilla and car bombings and terrorizing the populations. Which works. But there's nothing that says those leading this conflict will have learned that "taking it up a notch" is intrinsically doomed to fail. They usually don't have the brains. By definition.
To quote Frederic Dard, "that's how you spot fools: they're so predictable in doing something foolish".
Which is a great trump for the intelligent and sensible people.
He added: "But watch out, fools are like trains: there might be another one coming behind the first, so always look both ways."
Thank God, Evil is stupid. In its very ESSENCE. Vishnu be praised.
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