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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   29886 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 1, 2024

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Outside the church it was also a rule that young people of separate genders do not spend time alone, so the idea was not limited to that institution. Re: the church, if monks believed that they could overcome temptation, surely “avoid obvious temptation” would no longer be necessary? In any case, I think this a typical mind problem. And the problem is exacerbated as lifestyle differences and health increase between elite men and the rest. I am not like Neil Gaiman or Donald Trump but I would hazard a guess that their lifestyle is higher testosterone than the typical Twitter feminist pundit. Socially dominant people have higher testosterone, they are healthier, they are probably less likely to use pornography, they are preselected to ruthlessly pursue social rewards (including women — especially women). I think it’s impossible to conclude it can be resisted unless you’ve been there, and our ancestors who have been there and done that seem to believe it can’t be resisted — hence rules. I can imagine resisting from the comfort of my desk right now but that’s just that, imagining. I am not a tired Neil Straightman returning home from a stressful interview to find a nanny in my bath begging to be spanked (per texts). I can easily imagine that being irresistible and I have a third of their vitality, sorry.

starting from fact that fathers occasionally have daughters.

This isn’t remotely similar, humans also evolve to not find their kin attractive. I think through scent? But yeah, just don’t pull a Woody Allen. Or an Errol Musk.

What is your explanation for masturbation being taboo for most of history instead of being considered a mildly effective release valve for good Christian men who don't want to accidentally sin? After all, many observe the correlation between the sexlessness of our society and the rise of habitual porn use.

What it looks like to me is that a significant portion of "high testosterone man literally cannot resist the temptation of pussy" is male status propaganda. It's not that a powerful man alone with a woman (or a less powerful man alone with a low-status woman) fucked her because he thought/knew he could escape consequences, it's that he couldn't resist because he's just so vital. It's not that a single man wouldn't masturbate because it was low status to do something a man with pussy on tap wouldn't have to do, it's that he was too high T for it to work. And so on.

I agree that between a 60 year old man and a 20 year old woman, she has leverage. Not mind control. "He literally could not resist his ancient instincts" is fake, it's just that resisting ancient instincts is very hard and most men don't consciously want to, in a situation where they can be indulged.

I know that in the Catholic tradition, masturbation was seen as a “worse” sin than going to a prostitute because a prostitute was closer to what God intended than masturbation (which lacked the woman part of sex). Aquinas and Augustine defended the legality of prostitution because without it lust would topple society. I know the Taoists believed that if you masturbated you lost vital energy, and so did the Victorians. Not sure about other cultures.

So that’s why it was seen as wrong to masturbate. But did you mean, “why didn’t they become overwhelmed with a desire to masturbate?” Those weren’t pornographied times. You could go months without seeing a woman’s ankles. As for today, I just think high status men have a habit of not masturbating because they are instead fixated on social rewards, like the attention of women, as a primary driver of their elite behavior. If you had two Gaimans and one of them “release valves” himself every night, but the other looks forward to the attention of women acquired through his writings, the latter is going to be be motivated to write harder and faster. So top performing men in a given domain are IMO likely to just not use pornography or masturbate, though I am conjecturing here.

Re: the church, if monks believed that they could overcome temptation, surely “avoid obvious temptation” would no longer be necessary?

Monks are expected to believe that they are the worst of sinners and are unusually corruptible as a form of humility. Making rules like this for themselves is thus expected, and does not necessarily mean that the medieval or renaissance church believes men find sexual temptation impossible to resist.

Fine. How about the ever-clairvoyant Saint Bernard, that absolute dog, Dante’s final guide in the highest heaven —

To be always with a woman and not to have sexual relations with her is more difficult than to raise the dead. You cannot do the less difficult; do you think I will believe that you can do what is more difficult?

Remember that the Divine Comedy is a piece of fiction written as a political polemic by someone who was famously sexually frustrated. If Twitter existed in 14th century Italy, he would have been relentlessly mocked as an incel (yes, I know he married and had children, but that's not the way he presents himself in his work). I would take Dante's pronouncements on desire and sexual morality with a grain of salt.

I don’t know how many layers of celestial trolling we have ascended, but (1) that’s a real passage by Bernard, (2) I am situating Bernard in his historical significance, being Dante’s final guide, (3) the Comedy being a creative work does not deny its significance but heightens it, (4) the Comedy is considered one of the greatest works of Catholic writing, (5) it was not written as a political polemic, though it includes aspects of polemic, (6) he had children, ergo was not frustrated, (7) you are probably misunderstanding his relationship with a possibly fictitious Beatrice, (8) I do not care if he was a “misogynistic incel” as this would simply place him in even more legendary creative company.

Re: the church, if monks believed that they could overcome temptation, surely “avoid obvious temptation” would no longer be necessary?

You are conflating "obvious temptation" with "temptation impossible to resist". It is not the same thing.

This isn’t remotely similar

And your rule would legalize paedophilia.

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