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Why is sex such a biggie?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by William1, Mar 19, 2007.

  1. William1

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    Like why do grown-ups get so paranoid about sex? If you talk about anything sexy, you get severe looks, and if you ask about sex, they get all embarrassed.

    Like you can talk about food and eating (but not shitting :icon_bigg) and other stuff to do with bodies, but you can't talk about sex. Why?

    And like they go right off the planet if they catch you 'wanking'. Like once, when I was little, I wasn't wanking but I was just touching it, and my nanny went right off the planet. :redface:

    Again, why??? :confused:
     
  2. Sleepless

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    I guess it has to do with their ages. I assume most people on this forum are ages 12-30 (i'm 23), with the occaisional elder or middle-aged person. There, that sounded diplomatic.

    I'm sure it's no suprise that older people around this day and age are widely more conservative than us younger folks, due to the upbringing in the 1940's and 50's, and only a little less with those brought up in the 60's, 70's, and maybe the 80's. Heck, homosexuality - or even open dsiplays of heterosexuality for that matter - hasn't really been 'mainstream' and out there but maybe 10-20 years at the most. People back then just didn't talk about such things, and I suppose most of them are still coping with these new civil rights movements poping up around the world. A lot of people have not gotten used to the 60's african american civil rights movements, really. With time it will be commonplace, maybe when we are all 40 and 50 years old.

    Again, most people on these forums probably grew up with sex ads on TV, open displays of kissing in public, and similar situations.
     
  3. Proud1p4

    Proud1p4 Guest

    One word..

    Christianity.

    The whole "no-baby-making, no-love-making" policy or simplifed "no-snotty-nosed-brat, no-pleasure" which really that last bit goes for both. I point my finger at religion for this problem. I think if it were another religion that took the majority, things would be alot more open when it comes to sex. After all, why deny pleasure, so what a few less kids CAN be born, doesn't mean they won't. I mean you can masturbate from age 12 - 32 and still have enough sperm/eggs left to add yet another little brat to the population(in case you can't tell, i don't like kids).
     
  4. GuitarGirl1350

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    I know some branches or christians consider masturbating a sin because it's like killing a child. (Because you kill the sperm)
    Yet another of many many reasons I left my old church...
     
  5. Proud1p4

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    But of course you don't see "thou shalt not own a hot tub" (super hot water is not exactly pro-sperm creating conditions). Noooooo it has to be something pleasurable. I'm absolute Catholicism and the like are trying to suck fun out of life.

    *imitating crabby B.C. monk who probably wrote the bible while intoxicated and bitter*
    *kid giggles*
    "WAS THAT A SMILE?!?! YOUR GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL!! YOU, YOU VILE SINNER!!" :tantrum:

    (Going to stop now before i can be held accountable for religious intolerance)
     
  6. Jamie

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    Without trying to go too far off topic here, i'd have to say that the main reasons are as follows:

    1) Religion and the whole belief that sex before marriage was wrong and sex was for procreative reasons only. So no BJs for you, as you can't have babies from a BJ!!! I have however, found from my A level Ethics and Philosophy lessons a way of thinking that suggests that homosexuality is ok with the christian way of thinking.. and after a nice little essay i'm sure my teacher knew I was gay - lol. Unfortunately, people such as the pope and the prior archbishop of canterbury, etc were all very conservative and did not wish to sway to the ideas that homosexuality could become part of life.

    2) Different life style. Things change with time and back in the day you would notice that very few people swore, whereas today you can manage to rattle out two or three swear words in a casual sentence.. with no mallace meant.

    3) Lack of education, sexual education has only properly been taught for a decade or two now. So before rolled out in to mainstream society it was completely up to parents to educate their young. So whereas it used to be taught behind closed doors, whole class rooms full of youngsters learn about it, making it more relaxed and social than before.
     
  7. Sleepless

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    Ditto
     
  8. Micah

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    ......

    You can't blame EVERYTHING on the christians, proud :tongue:

    Well I have a few questions back, which I think relate to why we don't talk about these sort of things as freely as we would 'every day' actions:

    Why do you close the door when you're on the toilet or in the shower?

    Why do you (mostly) have sex in a private room?

    Why don't you masturbate on the side of the road?
     
  9. Jamie

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    I guess that just comes down to society norms Dave. OK the toilet has a hygiene part too, but in General it's teachings which have gone back hundreds of years which ensure that we only do these things in public.

    Granted, the religious element does help this. Since the end of Roman orgies then the human body has been seen as something which is private, something that is divine and should only be shared with those you have married. As for masturbating by the side of the road.. a) we don't do it because it's illegal, it's not acceptable by mainstream society b) there's still the stigma in alot of circles that masturbation is a sin and that it's wrong c) it can get really cold out :wink:


    I guess there's some norms that will change over time, but there are still alot of people who like their privacy (me included) and so wouldn't necessarily do these things in public. Hence why we will always have some quarms about showing off intimate parts of the body.
     
  10. Proud1p4

    Proud1p4 Guest

    *sounding stubbornly ignorant*
    And why the heck not *eyebrow twitching*?


    Heh, riigghtt most people do close the door when showering don't they.:icon_redf
    I guess i just have alot of trust in my mom that she won't pull the shower curtain back.

    Because i don't want my friends harshing my mellow (and in turn the sex) by screaming "oh god please don't need to see my friend naked, put your clothes on!!" :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

    :icon_sad: Oops.


    :lol: TOTALLY JOKING

    But there are some mighty cold temperatures where im from, not to mention downtown is crawling with old lady hobos who probably have had as much sex as showers, which isnt saying much. Don't want to provoke them.
     
  11. GuitarGirl1350

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    AHH WHY CAN'T WE BLAME THEM ALL?!
    Haha I'm just kidding.
    But they do contribute.

    1. I happen to know people who HAVE masturbated on the side of the road, thankyouverymuch. As well as on a public bus.
    2. I happen to know people who don't have sex in private rooms.
    3. So the water doesn't go all over the bathroom. ;]
     
  12. Qu_

    Qu_ Guest


    I've totally walked in on one of my friends having sex with her boyfriend while fetching my other friend a tampon from her purse...it was really awkward cause it was like -bam- friend having sex right there.
     
  13. Micah

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    I also know of people who talk about sex openly :wink: There are always exceptions to the rule.

    Hehe - my point was that thats just how things are. Those actions are seen to be private (for whatever reason). Its not necessarily that they're viewed as "wrong" or "indecent"...just not something everyone needs to see.
     
  14. Paul_UK

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    I think for many people sex is seen as a private expression of love between two people. It is an intimate time together and not the sort of thing you want to share with anyone else. So because it is done in private, the tendency is to regard discussions about it as equally private.

    I don't talk about what me and my partner do in the privacy of our bedroom in public, for that reason and because it really is nobody else's business. Nothing to do with being ashamed or embarrassed, and certainly nothing to do with religion. It is our private time together, and should remain that way.

    In fact I probably say more about sex here than anywhere else. But discussions here are general and not specific to what we do or don't do, personally.
     
  15. Miaplacidus

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    They are of another, more "conservative" generation.

    Personally I talk about sex in exactly the same way as I talk about the time of day. In fact I like the subject.
     
  16. Half-Light

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    I dont think parents are worried because of christianity...i'm sorry, but its a bunch of bull. I am christian (yes ironic isnt it? get over it...lol). My mom is like super christian. I think parents are just worried because they might know from past experiences that stuff can go wrong or whatever...but on the topic of masturbation, I dont know why...
     
  17. Half-Light

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    and when i say stuff might go wrong, i mean like when ur a child/minor...and then when ur past 18 you can do whatever the hell you want...i dont know
     
  18. joeyconnick

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    I can't believe no one's pointed out the obvious: they (adults) freak out when kids/young people/teens/youth/whatever talk about or engage in sex because they have been programmed (by religion, sure, but by a lot more than just religion) to view sex as dirty, and children as innocent, and therefore the whole notion of adolescent (let alone prepubescent) sexuality is about the most horrifying thing a lot of people can imagine... which is the real driving force behind age of consent laws; even though they're always framed as "child protection," it has a lot more to do with protecting their own (often wholly inaccurate) notions of childhood "innocence."

    Just in case nobody realises this, "childhood" and "adolescence" as these sort of separate, interim states before adulthood are completely modern constructions... before the 1900s (and indeed a lot of the time well into the 1900s) people were considered "adults" as soon as they could physically procreate and this notion that children were "lesser" and needed to be "protected" would have been laughed at. Hence the reason women were married off at 12, 13, and 14 back in the day.

    And adolescence, this kind of grey zone between physical childhood and modern legal age of majority, is an even more recent construction, basically dating back to the 1920s or so. And in both cases these developmental "stages" came into being in affluent, mainly white families who actually had the resources and luxury of treating children like, well, children. Even today in societies who are a lot poorer than the ones we're all coming from, children don't stay "children" for very long, and attempts to prolong some sort of period of infantilised existence would be considered very, very odd. Childhood and adolescence are luxuries of Western liberal democracies, not inherent states that have been around since the dawn of humanity or anything like that.
     
  19. joeyconnick

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    "That's just how things are" is always code for "that's just how we want you to believe things are because we're promoting these ideas as eternal and unchanging and 'natural' and you will get in trouble if you challenge us on them."

    People consider going to the toilet and sex as "private" because we've been taught to believe they are private, not because anything about those acts REQUIRES them to be private. It's entirely something we're socialised into.

    And funny how you chose to talk about shitting/pissing and sex in the same example, huh? Gosh it's weird how those two things get linked up time and time again... I wonder why that is?
     
  20. joeyconnick

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    OF COURSE it is totally about shame and embarrassment--you many not be specifically ashamed of what you and your partner do in bed but you are most definitely following along with 99% of the population in being generally ashamed about talking about sex in public. The entire reason we consider sex "private" is because we've been taught to view it as only appropriate in a private context. If we'd been raised to talk about sex openly and to not necessarily view it as a private thing between (only) 2 individuals, you can bet we would treat it differently and we wouldn't say things like "it's our private time together and should remain that way" [emphasis mine]. I mean really, why should it remain that way? Because it wouldn't be proper for it to be any other way? Okay, so why wouldn't it be proper? It's just not something one talks about in mixed company? Okay but why? Because you don't talk about sex in front of youth? Okay, but again--why?

    Why: because we are completely sanctioned for breaking this particular taboo, and in particular breaking this taboo with the "innocent" i.e. children/youth/teens/under18s/under21s/etc.

    I really began to think about the taboo nature of talking about sex when I was in my early 20s and going to a gay youth group. I would be quite open in talking to people about who I was sexually into and what I might like to do with those people. As a result, certain people decided that that made me a slut--even though (and here's the kicker) in terms of actual sexual ACTIVITY, I was a hell of a lot more chaste than most if not all of the people doing the labelling. But they didn't get sanctioned because they didn't "kiss and tell" as it were--or rather, they out and out lied about their activities a lot of the time, so even though I was having rather tame or sometimes no sexual escapades whatever, certain people decided that everyone else needed to be "warned" about me.

    After I got over wanting to kill the little bastards, I totally began to understand that (a) a lot of people are lying shitheads but really more than that (b) people are HUGELY (and I mean HUGELY) punished in our society for being sexually frank, let alone talking in any way which indicates any degree whatsoever of unabashed/unfettered sexual desire (read: "promiscuity"). And this was in the GAY YOUTH COMMUNITY, which was then (and still is) hardly a chaste, pure, innocent community unfamiliar with sex and sexual desire (given that the fundamental nature of gay youth as a group is some sort of awareness of sexual desire).

    Yes, so the moral of this latest quasi-sociological treatise is: "sex = bad" in most modern liberal democracies, so talking openly about sex is punished, and further sex itself is defined as something "private"--not because anything about sex fundamentally requires privacy but because the powers that be have decided that sex is something that is only appropriate in the private sphere.

    And you can swear all you want that you think sex should be a private matter between two people because that's your honest and deeply-felt and integral FEELINGS about sex... but those feelings came from somewhere external to you--they came from being taught from Day One that that's what sex was about, and we were all taught the same thing by the same source: society and all its myriad institutions. We were taught that by our families, our schools, our churches, our laws, our government, our media, etc etc etc.