Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crankylinuxuser | Hacker News Reader

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crankylinuxuser

Most of the time, I see the puritanical christians going the route of "sex is evil". It's the unsaid thing as well, but they are also the ones pushing for "abstinence-only training". This is literally dumbing down discourse to students at an age who sorely needs it.

I'd also be willing to bet that this family has no compunctions about letting the son watch extreme violent TV shows and movies. People being tortured, maimed, and killed is usually OK. Show a nipple, and people lose their shit.

EDIT: In the end, this article is flagged for what amounts to Christian Moralization vs Non-Christian Moralization. I need only read "traditional morality", "psalms chaper#:verse# one of", or citing netnanny as an authoritative source to understand what the real problem is here.

This is what would be classified as a straight up religious conflict, and "teenagers, online porn, sexuality" are one of the major battlegrounds in this culture war.

It's ugly indeed.

The puritanical attitude is wrong. Sex is an amazing and great part of life, just like roller coasters or having 3 beers. Life is meant to be enjoyed. But over-doing it, or using something in a way it wasn't meant to be used, can ruin that joy. Nothing is wrong with sex within a healthy relationship. But nobody who goes to a hooker really believes afterwards that they found true happiness there.

We also avoid movies like Saw not only for our older children but even ourselves. Why fill out bellies with filthy water when there's plenty of fresh water all around us, free for the taking? Only people who convince themselves that there's no fresh water, or that it's not good enough for their belly, will look for filthy polluted water and convince themselves it's their only hope.

> The puritanical attitude is wrong. Sex is an amazing and great part of life, just like roller coasters or having 3 beers. Life is meant to be enjoyed. But over-doing it, or using something in a way it wasn't meant to be used, can ruin that joy. Nothing is wrong with sex within a healthy relationship. But nobody who goes to a hooker really believes afterwards that they found true happiness there.

But that's what I'm taking about. There's no (supernatural, physical, legal) law that states for everything fun and good, I have to suffer equal amounts. That's just moralization in the puritanical strain, which I reject.

And I would also like to call out the sentence: " Nothing is wrong with sex within a healthy relationship."

Nothing is wrong with consensual sex, period. I needen't be in a marriage or relationship with them. I don't care if it's vanilla, scat, bdsm, cuckolding, or whatever. We have more than enough science and technology that people can have sex with little fear. It's only when governments want to inflict their "morals" on people do people really start to hurt. They do this by keeping drugs, devices, and techniques away. Thankfully, The Satanic Temple has been challenging these "moral precepts" as the religious laws enshrined into to state laws. (Seriously, who'd have thought that TST would fight for peoples' rights?!)

And I also have no issue with prostitutes. I've never procured the services of any, but I see no shame in doing so either. It's no more a temporary feel-good similar to that of a roller coaster or a concert. It's just "bad" because of the puritanical beliefs that all sex is bad, outside a marriage (later turned to relationship).

And regarding SAW, the show was meh. It's a slasher for slasher's sake.

>Nothing is wrong with consensual sex, period.

Is that entirely true? If I say "nothing is wrong with eating Big Macs, period" that's right in one sense. But you and I can see with our own eyes what an unrestrained diet of Big Macs might do, and it's bad, if not legally wrong.

You might say the problem with unrestrained eating is the desire or relationship with food, not the object (the Big Mac), but in that case traditional morality is also saying something about the focus of 'healthy' desire, not the sex act.

Even if you strip away the "wrong," the way people incorporate sex into their relationships and ethics will make lives better or worse.

> But nobody who goes to a hooker really believes afterwards that they found true happiness there.

There are a lot of assumptions rolled up in that sentence.

Rather than try and unpack them all here myself, I'd encourage you to talk to actual sex workers. Not people who engage the services of sex workers, but the people actually doing the sex work themselves. Ask them about the work they do, why they do it, what their customers are looking for, and what role they think they're playing in their customers' lives.

I think you'd be surprised by some of what you hear.

A few months ago one posted here on HN, explaining how most of her clients were men who threw away their actual families to chase after fast-paced careers (like start-ups), and often wanted to just talk and have her role-play being a wife (including sex). I have no idea how many people here on HN fall into that category, but her clients didn't sound like they were finding that fulfillment in her services that they seem to ultimately be seeking after in life.

> A few months ago one posted here on HN, explaining how...

Yeah, to clarify, when I say "talk to actual sex workers", I'm not referring to reading comments posted on Hacker News.

the puritanical value isnt 'sex is evil'

the puritanical value is 'sex should be enjoyed in marriage, monogamously'

pornography is harmful to our brains, many studies have shown this.

plenty of studies also show that people who have fewer sexual partners are ultimately happier in their sex life.

and it doesnt take much thought to see that STDs would spread much more slowly if people were monogamous.

lots of good things come from that value. on the inverse, the 'have sex as much as you want' mentality leads to unplanned pregnancies/killing unborn babies, devaluation of the gift of sex, and spread of disease. but hey, you get to have 'lots of fun' so is it worth it?

sex and money are the greatest idols in our society, and the worship of either does not yield good things.

The truth is the puritans enjoyed sex, just within the confines of marriage. Here is a brief article dispelling some of the myths, https://nypost.com/2016/10/21/the-puritans-really-loved-havi...

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