Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

"casual sex", eg, the "One night stands, sex just for sex, or otherwise with total strangers is perfectly OK and normal" angle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casual_sex


"Sex between romantically involved persons" is not casual sex, by definition.

[Max™]

Nevermind, I don't care.

[Kagus]

I do not have religious reasons for the "Should not be recreational" stance.  It comes directly from biology, and the lies people tell themselves.

Um... No.

Animals outside of humans do not engage in sex with the intention of producing offspring. Or even the comprehension that such a consequence could happen. They do it because it is fun and they want to do it. The potential for procreation is a side effect of that drive.

Monogamy is vanishingly rare in the animal kingdom. Casual sex, even among non-procreating partners, is far more the norm.


Unless you mean biology in the sense of "there is a biological chance that this can lead to reproduction", in which case... Okay.

[wierd]

No-

Biology, in that "In humans, the sexual act is well documented to be associated with the olfactory bulb and the lmbic system, and coordinates with the release of oxytocin and dopamine to cement pairbonds between participants, which were evolved to care for resulting offspring."

Not, Whatever the fuck you just rattled off.

[ChairmanPoo]

I have to disagree. Things are not that simple in human beings.  I think nonreproductive sex is a feature rather than a bug

[wierd]

It's terrifyingly amusing that you gave a wiki link to casual sex, thank you for that.

There clearly needed to be disambiguation.  Given that the term is "informal use", the majority of definitions for it come from places like Urban Dictionary, which are not suitable for this discussion.

Wikipedia gives an acceptable springboard of sources for justifying its definition, and my linking there disambiguates what I meant by the term.

EG, "Casual Sex", as in the established terminology, as opposed to 'casual sex', "having sex with a regular partner without much intensive cogitation over the matter-- a casual matter"

I mean the former, not the latter.

[wierd]

I have to disagree. Things are not that simple in human beings.  I think nonreproductive sex is a feature rather than a bug

who said anything to that effect?  If anything, I have been championing for MORE non-reproductive sex.

Just that such sex needs to be undertaken with full knowledge that sex is not "without consequences" (other than pregnancy or STD), and --as such-- should not be engaged in as "casual sex" "recreational activity."

[scriver]

I don't see abortion as meaningfully different from turning off a braindead person's life support. They're alive in the sense that cells are still doing things, and there may be bodily functions going on, but there's no actual person there, and the person or mind or whatever you want to call it is the part that actually has value, not the bodily functions. Until there's a functioning brain there's nothing to give rights to, and once the brain stops working there's nothing to take rights from.

Hell, based on my knowledge of child development and experience with the various babies in my extended family I'd say a baby has less meaningful qualities of personhood than a gerbil for the first several weeks or even months of their life.

I feel this line of reasoning falters due to the circumstances than one is in that state because it is damaged beyond repair, and the other is in that state due to it not yet being developed enough. So they're not really alike at all, only superficially.

Consider two metaphorical cars. One is a totalled car that can't be repaired. We junk it and move on. The other is a not fully assembled car. We don't junk that; we sell it for parts. Therefore, trade with infant body organs should be allowed

[martinuzz]

Oxytocin and dopamin are also released when you hug someone.  Is hugging an unhealthy form of pair bonding too?
Our close relatives the bonobos use casual sex as a means of group bonding and conflict avoidance...

[wierd]

Bonobos dont live 70+ years, and have extended matriarchs in the family structure, or a number of distinctly human adaptations.


Also, the pair bonding breakdown problem was reported in primates too. Just so you know.


And ever had a creepy hug?  Yeah. Hugging is known to not be "consequence free", and respected as such-- at least by conscientious people anyway.

The pathways that open up and turn on during orgasm are like hoover damn opening up, compared to the small tributary of a hug though.  The neurochemistry involved is damned elaborate and complicated.  If anything, the same reasons why you don't just go hug on random strangers is why you dont just go fucking random strangers. (or at least, why you shouldnt be), turned up to 11.


This whole conversation is reminding me of a The Oatmeal comic from yesteryear.


A person who does not experience sexual attraction gives you a cerebral rundown of why you shouldnt engage in a certain sexual activity--- backs it up with citations out the ass---  The chorus is "DONT BELEIEVE!! NOO! DONT WANT!"

Why? Because "(Because I really like that kind of sexual activity and dont want to consider it differently!)"

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Actually, it's because you're obsessively repeating a demand that there be "consequences" while using the same rhetoric used by incels and Christian zealots about sexuality. Which, given that this conversation was at one point about abortion, is pretty weird, wierd.

So there's only really two possibilities: you really are genuinely concerned about sexual health education, or you aren't and this is political pathology. If the former, then stop tying yourself in knots about "THERE WILL BE C O N S E Q U E N C E S" since a liberated sexual politic could only help education. If the latter, well, just know that some people do read the link when you post a behavioral study about prairie voles which makes a mild postulation that humans might not like repeatedly losing their romantic interests and then wildly extrapolate it to try and say having multiple sex partners gives humans brain damage.

[wierd]

no, that is a core belief being brought up from your mind.

I said that pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex-- regardless of using protection (because protection is not 100% effective.)

That is a demonstrable fact.

the "YOU *SHOULD SUFFER* you filthy whore, for having sex all the damn time! MUAHAHAHAH!" (twirls moustache)  exists only inside your mind.

[martinuzz]

I have never had a one-night stand.  Like i said, I think sex is just fine as a recreational activity if both actors consent and go about it in a responsible way (use protection and screen yourself for STD before engaging in it).  Picking someone up in a bar while drunk isn't going about it in a responsible way.
Nothing wrong with friends with benefits though, in a world where more and more people are single.
And indeed, hugging is not consequence free. It makes people feel good.

No hugs / no physical contact is known to lead to depression and various other ailments.
And no I am not hugging total strangers, that's a reductio ad absurdum.

I said that pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex-- regardless of using protection (because protection is not 100% effective.)

That is a demonstrable fact.

Which is why it's good to have abortion available to those who want it. Nothing in life is 100% predictable.  At least people who use protection did their very best to not get (someone) pregnant, without resorting to the utter extreme of sterilization, which also is ethically dubious, if only because doctors will need to ignore their Hippocratic oath for it (first, do no harm).

[ChairmanPoo]

Tbh I agree with wierd at least in part because  casual sex has a greater inherent risk of contagion. Its fairly self-evident: close contact and bodily fluid exchange has a greater inherent risk. Barrier protections can fail. And if you're sleeping around odds are the other party is sleeping around as well, and so on. Greater chances that diseases will enter your *ahem* social circle.

I said that pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex-- regardless of using protection (because protection is not 100% effective)

Nonvaginal intercouse is 100% effective, though 🤫

[da_nang]

Abortion is such a philosophical conundrum.

Fetuses are biologically human, biologically alive, and thus should have a right to life.

A woman also cannot be forced to donate her body for it.

(Except in all the ways the state already does force people *cough*parental responsibility*cough*child support*cough*)

Let's look at it from a practical matter, though. Is banning all abortion feasible? No, of course not. People will find a way as they had before, with disastrous results. Is allowing all abortions feasible? Well tossing late-term infants into dumpsters seems harsh and cruel, and by that point you ought to have already decided whether to keep it or not, barring physical health risks to the mother or infant.

So we need to draw a line somewhere. An arbitrary line of personhood is a rabbit hole (and being legally consequent even more so). There's no universal consensus and there is little science to "detect" personhood.

What we can do is let technology answer it for us: how soon can you take out a fetus and put it in the latest artificial "womb" and expect it to survive to term? And how early can a mother reasonably detect with certainty a pregnancy with the current technology?

We have two scenarios: regular and irregular pregnancies.

Irregular pregnancies are all the pregnancies where there is a risk to the mother's physical health by X standard deviations above the mean, or where the fetus is already dead or is sick enough that survival is unlikely.

Abortion of these ones should be always be allowed, and all efforts should be taken to rescue the aborted fetus, if possible.

Regular pregnancies are all the others, including rape (regular from a biological standpoint) and incest (barring sickly fetus). Abortion of these ones concern more about the consent of pregnancy than anything else.

This is where technology comes in. Abortion for any reason should be allowed if the decision to abort is made before the abortion deadline, and all efforts should be taken to rescue the fetus, if possible. That deadline is 30 days (or whatever is standard for a legal document sent to court) after the earliest possible time that the fetus can be put in an artificial womb, or 30 days after the earliest possible time a mother can reasonably detect with certainty a pregnancy with current technology. Whichever date is later is the deadline and is updated every Y years following a technological assessment.

This is less a philosophical and more a practical and future-proof version of abortion law. As technology develops, the deadline creeps closer to conception + 30 days. Which is just fine since that technology gives you enough information in time for you to make up your mind on whether you want to keep the baby or not. Naturally, the law should ensure that access to said technology is possible for everyone at little cost.