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Comment by erdevs | Hacker News Reader

It has been interesting to watch US sex culture evolve the past several decades. Widely taboo in the 50s and before, partially romanticized in the 60s and 70s, more censorious in the 80s, then celebrated and promoted in the mid-90s through to today.

I'm glad that sex and sexuality are no longer as repressed. I think, though, that the pendulum now may have swung too far toward near cultural obsession and proactive promotion in recent years.

I'll be glad if we settle in a spot where sex is just a thing-- an experience with many variations just as with most of life. Neither censored nor overexposed. No real fuss, no real shock value, no special forbiddenness or "cool" factor. It feels like we're getting closer to that, which seems healthy.

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I agree and I also hope that sex will stop being separated from love/affection/intimacy and treated as a purely physiological act/transaction. This "pragmatic" approach may be an Anglo-saxon thing, though, I think they are still pretty romantic in Italy and France (and other countries) :-)

Well, the only way to let it be just a thing, is to not have it censored. The current taboo aspect of some parts of sex is harmful to this goal. If you want it to just be another experience, and not special (For any reason) or different, then you have to treat it exactly like you would any other experience.

This is all very perplexing. I don't understand any of this internal logic. I can't see how you can "treat [sex] exactly like you would any other experience" because we treat all experiences differently. We don't treat riding a bike like eating. We don't treat gardening like watching a movie. So how can we treat sex like gardening, watching a movie, biking, and eating? Likewise, I don't see how making sex "just another experience" makes it "not special." I hope that most of our experiences in life are special. I'm sure I've completely missed the point. Sorry if that's the case.

I think they are just saying that until we can treat sex like the things you mentioned, biking, gardening or watching a movie, then it will be viewed differently.

And we are not going to do that any time soon. You're right any experience can be special. But they are saying special treatment, we handle sex differently as a society. And while I think openness and education about sex is great I don't want my kid to walk down the street and see people having intercourse.

I think it's like how we sexualize breasts. Other cultures do not to the extent we do because they are just treated like another part of the body. They are not covered, they are always there. We hide them and show them off to get a glimpse, but for the most part they are censored in most situations in the U.S. That makes them not "just another experience". It drives curiosity.

You are right to point out the differences but you are missing an important point. Let me see if I can help you out in the reasoning: when the people say "treat [sex] exactly like you would any other experience" they actually mean to say this "treat [sex] in a more abstract but practical manner exactly like you would any other experience".

So the treatment of sex should be similar to other experiences at a more abstract level than at the experiences level.

To go the other way, we can say that even the different instances of various experiences are not equal. e.g. one eating experience is not exactly equal to other eating experience in one's life.

So what they are trying to say and seems like you might have missed is: the way our society treats other experiences, it must also treat the experience of sex and our society should not treat sex in an extremely special way the way we treat the experiences like murders.

Hope it helps.

It's not about making it 'not special', it's about putting it in the category of the other experiences you mentioned.

I doubt people feel uncomfortable or anxious when talking with their parents about eating -- or at least, if they do something is deeply wrong with the parent/offspring relationship. Nobody should feel embarrassed to talk about the bike trip they went on. People shouldn't hide the secateurs under the bed for fear their parents will find out that they want to start gardening.

Thus it can be seen that we treat sex more differently than we do any of the experiences you listed. That does not mean making it less special, or dulling the experience in any way -- rather removing the taboo aspect of it, and allowing people to talk about it freely.

This allows young people to get a better idea of what 'safe sex' is, and makes them more likely to speak up if they have questions or have been assaulted.

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