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Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to be missing important context - prior to the mid 20th century sex had profound implications - it resulted in more babies, STDs (all diseases, really) which were much more threatening and the risks to the womans health in the event of pregnancy and/or abortions must have been a major concern. The workarounds to that were all terrible. And there was nothing in the way of social safety nets and not a lot of productive work for single mothers as I understand it.

It doesn't make sense to look at pre-1950s attitudes to sex as a religious phenomenon - or if it does it has to be acknowledged that religion wasn't working with the world we've built for ourselves today. There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around. It does seem fair to trace religious traditions on the subject but that really isn't the elephant in the room; sex had to be looked at through a different lens 100 years ago.

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> There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around.

I would add the caveat that things have not been completely worked out yet. I agree that religious customs around sex served a practical purpose.

However, easier access to sexual pleasure seems to have unintended consequences. Traditionally, a woman and her family should be damn sure that a particular man is worthy of female costs of pregnancy. So there was more pressure exerted on men to be worthy of sex. Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men.

eh. "Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men." if you mean that undesirable men are able to have sex for pleasure (without procreation) and thus don't need to better themselves in the eyes of women (i.e. in a moral and/or social sense), i doubt that's accurate. there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.

if you mean that in a biological, evolutionary sexual selection sense, then easier access to sexual pleasure _with birth control_ doesn't change the big picture at all either.

of course, if a man wants to start a family - for love, stable companionship, socially/culturally accepted and probably easily accessible sex and, finally, passing on his genes - the need for bettering himself still applies now as it did then.

> there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.

Prostitution and rape are not perfect substitutes for consensual sex. The risks are much greater, so on the margin, there are men who are not willing to partake in these, and instead choose to better themselves when faced with a lack of partners.

> if a man wants to start a family - for love, stable companionship, socially/culturally accepted and probably easily accessible sex and, finally, passing on his genes - the need for bettering himself still applies now as it did then.

bar for that is higher than ever. My ex had a entire stream of guys in her DMs trying to chat her up on instagram. its nice being top of the hill but no one stays on top forever when there's never a break from that kind of competition. thats why Im happy my current gf is not on social media at all.

This is definitely something that surprises me when talking to younger people (being fine with their partner talking to people of the opposite sex on social media) despite the pains it seems to often cause. I've talked to multiple men and women who said a relationship ended over online infidelity that started out innocently enough (they're just friends, online conversations mean nothing, I'm just passing the time). Maybe they are afraid of seeming over controlling but it's something that seems to have been normalized as "okay" yet often leads to issues.

People see social media as a disconnect from real life but in my eyes looking at it within the context of what it's replacing it seems like incredibly inappropriate behavior. No one would ever be happy knowing their partner (of either sex) is having private meetings or conversations in person at all hours of the day/night with strangers of their own opposite gender. So why do private online interactions (keeping your social media door "open" to strangers who may have romantic intent and engaging with them at all?) not raise similar red flags among people?

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