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Notes -
Does it seem to you that her lack of enjoyment surprised her?
Does her apparent lack of enjoyment surprise you?
It surprises me that people put so much weight on her lack of enjoyment. If you asked me ahead of time if even the most sex positive person would enjoy a continuous eight hour marathon sex session, I'd say of course not, based on how physically demanding it would be if nothing else. It's also not unusual for people who are physically exhausted to become emotional.
Lots of people also have unrealistic fantasies that they derive more pleasure from the thought of than the practice. Presumably people are actually enjoying the sense of thrill when contemplating something taboo. It's also typical for people to be unaware of their own psychology in this way.
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If you watch the documentary she's pretty clear her lack of enjoyment at the end is because she feels bad that some of the guys didn't have a good time, not any regret about the act itself.
I haven't watched it yet, but this sounds like weapons-grade copium.
Put yourself in her position for a second. Actually, forget about putting yourself in her position, imagine doing the same thing as a man. If you have to have sex with a hundred women, it becomes nothing but a feat of physical endurance no matter how hot they are, and no matter whether or not you thought it was a sexy fantasy beforehand. I'll have a hard time believing you'll have any concern for anyone past participant #5, let alone for them having a good time. If you break down crying and cite your concern for others as the reason, the chances of me believing you are zero.
EDIT: I have now watched the documentary, and can confirm that it was total weapons-grade copium.
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Well, that's why I said "if she doesn't enjoy it". Surely some people do. Aella for example.
That doesn't really answer either of the questions. Sure, I can imagine that some people genuinely would enjoy it, for some definitions of "enjoy".
The Rationalists had a phrase I admired, "I notice I am confused". They realized confusion was useful, and an opportunity to seek deeper understanding. For those who hold that sex is harmless entertainment, this seems like it ought to be confusing. Why did she expect to enjoy doing this, and why didn't she enjoy it?
And this is the thing, really. Back in the 90s, the sexual revolution was unassailable, because those of us arguing against it were killjoy puritan tyrants who just wanted to spoil everyone's fun. So we were pushed out of the way, and it was declared that anything went. And that's well and good, but it turns out that there do indeed appear to be consequences, and those consequences do indeed appear to be woeful in at least some cases, and the side that won the fight has no room for either the consequences or their woefulness in its model. The license they argued for is observably making people wretched, and the only move available to them appears to be to play dumb.
@Primaprimaprima - I never had time for replies to the art discussion, but IIRC your position was that art cuts, takes away from you, is incisive, yes? Was this art, in your view? Do you think her choices have made her life better?
There's nothing intrinsic to the content or the surrounding circumstances that prevents it from being art.
I don't really have a strict criteria for separating art from non-art. It's not a problem that I consider to be very important. Probably some criteria of intentionality would be useful (so one can distinguish between say, a random urinal at your office and Duchamp's Fountain) and I don't know if the requisite intentionality was present in Philips's case. Neither the content of her act itself nor her reaction to it afterwards really help or hurt the case for it being art.
Depends on how much and what kind of attention she's getting. In the short term, I wouldn't be surprised if it was better, because the news coverage will drive traffic to her OF.
In the long term, she may have to deal with reputational damage if she tries to go into something other than porn. But I don't view that as particularly just, so it feels weird to describe it as "her choices making her life worse". That feels akin to the woke mob canceling someone for wrongthink and then asking them "do you think your choice to engage in wrongthink made your life better or worse". The "consequences" of the original choice would have been perfectly manageable if not for the wilful external interference.
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As a parallel comment already stated, there is not actually anything confusing about instances of people not enjoying something that they claim is enjoyable. There are people who overeat, people who are fed up with doing daily quests in live-action games, people who drive for 8 hours to go to an amusement park and spend their whole time there bored, people who align their whole lives to enter a profession and then are miserable from the realities of it, and even people who go halfways across the world to visit a city and break down from disappointment; yet, nobody generally takes those things as evidence that food/games/amusement parks/professional commitment/international travel need to be made exceptional and/or taboo again.
This sounds like you are confused (about the lack of visible confusion from "those who hold that sex is harmless entertainment"). What do you think could be possible reasons for this lack?
Every time someone goes viral having a bad experience from sex, conservatives like clockwork parachute in to run victory laps wearing their best told-you-so face, as if the case for the sexual revolution rested on an argument that nobody can ever possibly not enjoy sex. Have you ever seen this persuade someone - not in the way where someone already agreeing pretends to be persuaded, or someone who is in the process of joining your tribe taking notes on the ideological package they are supposed to download, but someone who actually isn't with you and isn't about to be performing a very specific update to their worldview regarding whether the sexual revolution was a good thing?
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I mean, little kids think they'll enjoy eating 100 cakes, but there's quick diminishing returns for many pleasures. I would venture a guess that psychologically, having sex twice in a single day is pretty doable, and probably still enjoyable.
I don't think there's anything special about sex as a pleasure that makes doing it 100 times much more onerous by the end. It's just like trying to force yourself to drink 20 shots of vodka, or smoking 200 cigarettes in a day. Pleasures just don't scale that way.
I notice that your choice of examples have deleterious effects on the recipient of said "pleasure" that could range in severity up to including death.
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When I was much younger, having sex several times a day -- with the same woman -- was very enjoyable for both parties. However, I think even then, 100 times would have been physically painful.
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Am I mixing you up with someone else, because I thought you'd always been a liberal until... 2008ish?
I was raised a Conservative Christian. I ditched the Conservativism in 2002/2003, and the Christianity around 2004, and went atheist and deep blue on pretty much everything but guns; I actually left the country for Canada under Bush because I was deep into blue tribe conspiracy theories about 9/11 and stolen elections, among other things. I came back to the states in the Obama years, but stayed deep blue. When the Feminist blast-wave hit my position in ~2013 IIRC, I was initially very concerned and highly engaged and all gung-ho for Social Justice. It took a couple months of actually paying attention for that bubble to pop.
"SOCIAL JUSTICE NOW!"
"Social Justice is vitally important, but some misguided people are doing it wrong, they need to stop that!"
"They aren't stopping, they need to be stopped, guys this isn't the way"
"Wait, why are all the people around me cheering the bad people on and shouting at me, this is crazy, what the fuck is going on"
"Either I'm going crazy, or 90% of my social class has gone abruptly crazy, and I can't tell which"
"Nope, it's them. They're betraying True Liberalism, which we must fight for."
That played out over about three or so months, and I came across Slate Star Codex while trying to figure out what the fuck was going on. I started limping my way back to Christianity around then, but still identified as deep Blue for another couple years, thinking that Social Justice was just a temporary aberration which could be rolled back or corrected. I spent a long time arguing against the Zunger thesis and in favor of Scott's niceness, community and civilization, until eventually I realized that I was losing those arguments because Scott was wrong and Zunger was straightforwardly correct. That destroyed what was left of my allegiance to Blue Tribe, and I've been moving Red ever since.
Thanks, I had no idea about the Early Life part, and only remembered your post-bush moving-to-canada stories.
You've been writing for a long time, is there any chance you still have like 2005 era blog comments? It would be really interesting to see old-you's perspective on events I hardly remember.
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