Entropy isn't what it used to be. - PhoebeKnowsAll
Captain Cynic Guides
Administrative Contact
Talk Talk
Philosophy Forum
Religion Forum
Psychology Forum
Science & Technology Forum
Politics & Current Events Forum
Health & Wellness Forum
Sexuality & Intimacy Forum
Product Reviews
Stories & Poetry Forum
Art Forum
Movie/TV Reviews
Jokes & Games
Photos, Videos & Music Forum

Views on sex(ladies reply please)

User Thread
 36yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that Ancient is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Views on sex(ladies reply please)
Through recent experiences it has come to my attention that my views upon sex compared to others is showing quite a contrast. Naiveity I know lol. My general concept was that you had men who sex was just another need to met along with the other extreme with the sweethearted ones and of course those in between. This I still hold to be true. On the flip side I understood women to mostly see it as a bonding and emotional exprience, of course not every one is the same so there were pleanty who it was just another human act. But recently I have become slightly confused because a girl I held in high respects and thought to be honest and loyal put out while she had a relationship with another male. I thought it was just a fling so I was ok with it. But the next day she said not again and she felt bad about it and that what we did was just for fun and her boyfriend was something she wanted to keep. I took it to mean atleast a little more than fun. I'm not really mad at her or anything I just feel that if we were in a relationship I couldn't trust her yet she seems to be morally and ethically sound. Shes even christian and it seems I hold sex to be more sacred than she does. I could never had sex with a girl I didn't feel atleast a good amount of compassion and friendship for along with an attraction. Which is where my confusion sets in! So I'm posting this in hopes of women giving me their opinions on sex.

Is it just for fun?
Does it mean something to you?
Do you feel it is to some degree sacred?

| Permalink
"Dark and silent and complete."
 35yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that Xaej is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
What did you just tell me?

| Permalink
"I'm just a normal boy, that sank when I went overboard"
 42yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that CodeWarrior is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
The guaranteed in a thread about sex, replies will come thick and fast as opposed to any other normal thread. The 2nd given is that in a thread specifically asking for female response the vast majority of responders will be male. Such is the way of the internet.

Now it just so happens that the majority of my male friends do view sex a sacred bonding act. The most promiscuous people I know are young women. Not that I believe that there is such a thing as no strings attached sex but I have more female friends professing that view than male. But then most of these friends are in or just coming out of their teens.

| Permalink
 40yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that Wyote is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
I did some asking around, because there are basically no women on captaincynic. The answer I concluded to all three of your questions - supposidly from a woman's perspective - is "sometimes."

Ain't that a bitch.

| Permalink
"A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge. - Thomas Carlyle"
 36yrs • M
A CTL of 1 means that awakendwraith is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Women are like men, but with vaginas instead of penises.

| Permalink
"Why cry for those that often cry? Instead, help them smile, and smile for those that smile."
 36yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that Ancient is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Decius, do you honostly believe that whole heartedly and of nothing else?

Codewarrior, I have to agree with the gist of your post... it seems that teenaged females, for a good portion it, are more promiscuous than many young males of the same age. It brings many questions to mind. Such as:
Has it always been this way?
Are men generally less emotional about sex than women?
If so is it because they were tought by their teenaged female partners such?
Lastely, did the "Fred Flentstone" kind of man get it right by not being emotional and open with women?
I mean there are all these Dr. Phills and Oprahs out there that think they know how to have a good relationship but tell me your views.

Wyote, thanks for the effort and yes that is a bitch. But hey I knew that was the overall perspective just hoping to get some females in here to defend their gender or something....

| Permalink
"Dark and silent and complete."
 42yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that CodeWarrior is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
Actually I don't know that many young men (teenage) so I can only expire my own experience at that age which was that when ever I thought or fantasied of sex it was almost exclusively in the context of a loving relationship. Generally these were thoughts centred around a crush. If there was some sexual excitement or kinkiness it was generally included in the context of how a potential lover might react and be excited by such an act (or visa versa) and not considered apart from such a lover. If there was an attraction to a fictional character it was my habit to write my self in to their world and affections or they in to mine in order to make the fantasy of a sexual relationship more satisfying.

Now I am the sort of blunt person who will plainly ask his friends of the opposite sex questions about their sexual behaviour and thinking. When I questioned my teenaged female friends regarding their first sexual acts they mostly seemed to have done it almost out of duty. One said she'd got to the stage in a relationship where sex was considered the normally done thing so had sex knowing she didn't really love the guy. Another simply said she started having oral sex because her boy friend asked her to and it didn't seem like a big deal.

Of course if you are referring to young teens that mens hormones generally tend to kick in latter could be a factor.

As for Fred flintstone i can't imagine that sort of relationship being very satisfying to me personally so i certainly would want that.

quote:
Women are like men, but with vaginas instead of penises.


Underneath it all I think that's essentially true but try to remember that that all is in fact a whopping big factor. that being the sum total of their experience of gender differences in society around them as well as variations in their upbringing due to gender.

| Permalink
 37yrs • F •
A CTL of 1 means that Attolia is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
And here I come to defend my sex.

My answer to all three questions would be, "Depends."

| Permalink
"How can we be just in a world without mercy and merciful in a world without justice?"
 38yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that summit is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
The answers within a normally distributed population will be:

Is it just for fun? depends on the relationship at a specific time
Does it mean something to you? for most, yes
Do you feel it is to some degree sacred? for many, yes.

Sex has no intrinsic Meaning.

Almost everyone wishes it did.

The desire to give sex meaning is an understandable, important enterprise. Honestly approached, it can be a valuable exercise; disguised as the righteous desire to simply appreciate the meaning sex has, or as the pursuit of restoring sex's "true" meaning, it is a common source of conflict for both individuals and society.

Sex only has meaning insofar as we experience it. Its meaning is emergent, not objective. We discover the meaning of sex each time we are sexual, meaning that only resides in our experience. The meaning of sex changes--is reinvented--each time we are sexual.

Most people need sex to have meaning because the alternative is too frightening: being sexual in an existential vacuum. Sex without meaning would require participants to float freely in sexual experience, rather than being snugly anchored in a cognitive framework.

This is scary because of our indoctrination that sex is bad. We learn that we need protection from our sexuality: its non-linear, open-ended nature, its cacophony of impulses and feelings, its transcendent possibility of taking us away from ourselves. We might not, after all, make it back.

Because sex is ultimately grounded in the body, it is a right-brain, non-linear experience, not a left-brain, cognitive one. Of course, sex can be analyzed, evaluated, and so on, but not as part of the experience. Having sex and understanding sex are two separate activities, much like eating and understanding nutrition are two separate activities. Trying to understand nutrition or digestion while eating undermines the sensuality and enjoyment offered by the experience of dining.

"Sex" is not limited to intercourse; not even limited, in fact, to genital activities. In reality, "sex" describes a huge range of activities. This is half of a dialectic: many things can be sex because sex has whatever meaning we experience moment by moment; and sex has an infinite range of meanings because the scope of activities that can properly be called sexual is so vast.

People who believe they know the objective meaning of sex can easily say what sex is and what it isn't. Their dichotomy is clear, the sexual side predictably narrow. That's one reason such people can be so self-righteous about what humans should and should not do sexually.

"Intimacy," for example, is a common rallying point for people who need sex to have Meaning. "Intimacy" (which, of course, means radically different things to different people) is fine. But setting it up as a standard for "healthy" sexuality creates a hierarchy of sexual experiences, downplaying or even excluding many of its most important aspects.

This must be true regardless of the particular meaning people decide sex "really" has. In this sense, Christianity and other sex-negative institutions are not the only source of sexual repression in our culture. Rigidity about sexual experience, meaning, and decision-making is the true culprit.

Organized Humanism, for example, stands opposed to religious concepts of sex being inherently evil. But to the extent that Humanism is attempting to discover some secular "true meaning" of sex, it colludes with society's conceptual rigidity. Ultimately, it is different from other sexual dogmas only in content.

With the perspective that sex has only emergent meaning, we can experience a huge range of sexual feelings and meanings. With a different perspective, much of this range is either invisible, or worse, repugnant and, by definition, excluded.

Sexuality, for example, has a dark side. One can deal with this in many ways, but an experience-based model of sexuality does not judge this fact. Instead it accepts it, makes room for it, plays with it or not, but always respects it.

If, however, one believes sex has a revealed meaning--say, it must always "nurture a relationship"--then there's no room in the model for sex to have a dark side. One has to deny that it's there, and say it reflects a perverse mind, weed it out, destroy it--because its existence threatens the model of what sex should be. This is a primary source of censorship and other repressive movements.

The fact that sex has no intrinsic meaning is, actually, its ultimate positive quality. It gives us the opportunity to discover an
infinite number of meanings in sex, and to use sex as a vehicle for self-exploration. And it gives us the chance to play, in the purest sense of the word.

But the fact that sex has no meaning is scary. It means that every time you're sexual you're adrift. It means you have to take responsibility for your choices and experiences. If you believe that sex is dangerous, of course, or if you believe that sex is so powerful that it can destroy you, this is a terrifying prospect.

Sex's lack of meaning is also scary because it means partners are not subject to our control, or accountable to objective criteria. It means we have no authority to tell a partner, "you're obviously wrong for what you like or do sexually, so you should want what I want--sex the 'right way.'"

Sex having no meaning requires that we trust ourselves when being sexual. First, it means making choices from a vast array of options. Will we make good choices? Choices that reveal things about us we're defended against? This is far worse than simply being exposed as having lust in your heart. Will we be attracted to activities that "good people" are not? Will our choices hurt our partner, our family, our country?

Second, we have to trust sex. Will it take us so far out that we can't come back? Will we have our eyes put out by its brightness or darkness? It's like reaching into the back of a cave without knowing what's back there. It takes courage.

Third, we have to trust our partner. Can s/he handle whatever we create sexually? Can s/he go to new sexual vistas with us as we invent them, or will we find ourselves alone? Will s/he go further or faster than we do, also leaving us feeling alone? In reality, sex is almost always an experience of oscillation: of partners being alone and then finding each other, again and again. Can we tolerate being parallel and then coming together, then splitting up again moments later, trusting that we'll find our way back toward each other?

Finally, we have to trust that we're adequate--that is, that our body will respond to whatever challenge sex presents. In reality, that's redundant, because sex only exists in the body, and so it can't present challenges our body can't handle. In this sense, losing an erection, for example, is a perfect response to whatever is going on at the moment. Only if we have a particular, arbitrary standard for our body's behavior is a lost erection problematic.

Many troubling behaviors reflect how badly people wish sex to have meaning. To sustain the illusion that it does, for example, society is willing to persecute some members through laws regulating consensual sexual behavior or preventing sex education. This is why people are invested in others' sexuality--because it feels dangerous to have alternative models of
sexuality floating around. In this sense, the desire for sex to have meaning makes society a theocracy, with the government, organized religion, and media its priesthood.

This wish for sexual meaning is also behind the common desire for special rules to govern sexual behavior and decision-making. This is an example of the wish, as Fromm called it, to escape from freedom: to avoid taking responsibility for the complex and (it feels) dangerous richness of our sexuality.

Ecstatic sexuality--that is, body-centered instead of mind-controlled--is possible only if we let go of socially-constructed,
allegedly ontological boundaries of sex. People fear this is the same thing as letting go of ethical boundaries, which is not true. Ethical boundaries regarding sexuality do not require some arbitrary, objective ontological boundaries being imposed on the sexual body and mind.

Progressive people should be vigorously developing a dialogue that addresses sexuality's ecstatic nature through a non-moralistic, non-dogmatic exploration. We should be helping people understand sexuality in its mysterious yet non-mystical, meaningful (emergent) yet not Meaningful (objective), sacred yet non-Religious grandeur.

Ironically, the sanctified meaning that people want sex to have blocks access to the very transcendent qualities they claim they desire. By confronting this personal and social reification, we could give people a chance to have the profound sexual experiences whose possibilities are wired into both the human body and the mind's capacity to bond with others.

So is sex meaningless? Yes and no. It is meaningless in the objective or philosophic sense. But it is meaningful on the personal, experiential level. One reason that people engage in sex is to be periodically renewed, nourished in their experience of whatever kind of meaning they expect--whether that meaning involves intimacy, closeness, pleasure, creativity, bodily perfection, or the promise that life is OK.

The desire to pretend that sex has meaning is understandable. It indicates a desire to be grounded, to depend on something. But developmentally, we all have to get off the floor and walk, even though it seems so terribly high up there, and the floor seems so terribly hard, and falling is so terribly scary.

As with all fears, how we respond to this one is a clear statement of where we are. Pretending we don't have this fear is immature, and it prevents us from moving forward. Acknowledging this fear is a prerequisite for constructing a mature universe.

So we need to deal with this fear by confronting it: by looking sex straight in the eye of its deep, black maw, and walking straight in--whistling a happy tune, if necessary --trusting sex and ourselves, knowing that the worst thing that can happen is merely that we'll have an experience we don't want to repeat.



Because we can't learn to walk without falling a few times. The question is, what's more important--learning how to walk, or preventing a few bumps along the way? Marty Klein, Ph.D.

| Permalink
"The summit is just a halfway point"
 42yrs • M •
A CTL of 1 means that CodeWarrior is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
quote:
If, however, one believes sex has a revealed meaning--say, it must always "nurture a relationship"--then there's no room in the model for sex to have a dark side. One has to deny that it's there, and say it reflects a perverse mind, weed it out, destroy it--because its existence threatens the model of what sex should be. This is a primary source of censorship and other repressive movements.


quote:
Ecstatic sexuality--that is, body-centered instead of mind-controlled--is possible only if we let go of socially-constructed,
allegedly ontological boundaries of sex. People fear this is the same thing as letting go of ethical boundaries, which is not true. Ethical boundaries regarding sexuality do not require some arbitrary, objective ontological boundaries being imposed on the sexual body and mind.

Progressive people should be vigorously developing a dialogue that addresses sexuality's ecstatic nature through a non-moralistic, non-dogmatic exploration. We should be helping people understand sexuality in its mysterious yet non-mystical, meaningful (emergent) yet not Meaningful (objective), sacred yet non-Religious grandeur.


It seems to me you are advocating some sort of sexual Nietzsche like philosophy. I mean if sex is meaningless then what is to prevent pedophilia (assuming the child consents). Is consent even important? If we deny any meaning for sex what has a rape victim lost? If his or her sexual integrity is imagined and the only thing that ultimately matters is enriching experience for ourselves, if we permit and even embrace sexes dark side, why should we (humanity) not simply exercise our dark impulses. If sex's meaning is subjective we have no need to respect it's meaning for others. If we define sex's value and morality in the pleasure it gives us the logical extension of the concept is that we are completely unrestrained in our sexual behaviour including how it impinges upon others. Indeed we might even define it in terms of the pleasure of others in which case we might argue rape is acceptable provided the raped party is compelled to enjoy the experience on a physical level.

It seems clear to me the inevitable effect of completely divorcing sex from morality would be the permissively of serious sex crimes as sexual consent is an inherently moral concept. If on the other hand you hold the consent has some special objective moral standing you must justify why it should be so (it seems a some what non obvious so I do not think you can argue it as an axiom) and if it is so why should there not be other moral factors with application to sex.

quote:
And here I come to defend my sex.

My answer to all three questions would be, "Depends."


Bit of a cop out don't you think?

| Permalink
 45yrs • F •
A CTL of 1 means that Digital_Kitten is a contributing member of Captain Cynic.
I think from a female perspective, as well as (although I can't speak for the opposite gender I can only presume), as for males, there are lots of meaning and non-meaning involved with sex. Similar to how people approach religion, sex is very personal, and it's one of those experiences that you get out of it what you bring to it type things. Some people could superficially believe in something they call Faith to save face, some people have sex to look good in the public eye (i.e. to show off and feed their own ego). Some people practice and believe in religion because it heals them, some people have sex to heal a wound. So, I guess you're trying to find if there is a gender divide when it comes to approach and outlook in life, maybe there is... and maybe there isn't. I think it really depends on the social atmosphere you find yourself circulating yourself in, don't you think? There are proud 30 year old something women that live for sex, and there are prim and proper 30-year old virgins. So, who is to say? If you are thinking specifically of your own personal scenario and what her view about sex is, why don't you just ask her straight up, "Hey missy, what does our sex mean to you?"

| Permalink
"Don't tell me there is only black and white."
Views on sex(ladies reply please)
  1  
About Captain Cynic
Common FAQ's
Captain Cynic Guides
Contact Us
Terms of Use
Privacy Policy
General Forum Rules
Cynic Trust Levels
Administrative Contact Forum
Registration
Lost Password
General Discussion
Philosophy Forums
Psychology Forums
Health Forums
Quote Submissions
Promotions & Links
 Captain Cynic on Facebook
 Captain Cynic on Twitter
 Captain Cynic RSS Feed
 Daily Tasker
Copyright © 2011 Captain Cynic All Rights Reserved.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy