Premarital Sex

[Boo the Gentleman Caller]

Boo's thoughts summed up nicely:

It may have been mentioned, but I must point out that this argument of virginity could easily be applied to male's as well as female's. To assume it only applies to one gender is hilarious. And could probably be argued as sexist, hahaha... "Virginity" given as a gift isn't a one way street.

Oh, and at least it's not the view (like some religion's) that the afterlife is filled with nothing but virgins whose sole purpose is to satisfy us - continuously - with copious amounts of snoo snoo. Now that is sexist.

Did you ever notice that, oh I don't know... that we're the only species who endorse religion, and the most violent? Yes, animals can be violent, but they don't possess WMDs. Even our predecessors, Neanderthals, had no religion. You know what they did? They lived their lives doing what matters! They had sex without marriage! *gasp* They hunted their own food and clothes! *gasp* How disgraceful and un-american!

This makes me giggle. Glad to see you know how upper brain functions work! We are the only species with religion because we are the only species with the capacity to do so. Neanderthals, really, weren't much better of than monkeys. And monkeys don't have religion, they just really like eating banana's and throwing doo doo.

Crap. I'm becoming an internet arguer.

[GenesisOne]

Radical Dreamer, I hold you and Faust Wolf in the highest respects.  Really, I do.  But by saying those things about what I said about premarital sex, you’re missing the point. 

You assumed from what I said that multiple failures in a particular context (in this case, relationships) results in a slippery slope of failures that apply to all contexts in one’s life.  That’s not what I said.  I was talking about forgiveness and building trust, and not to automatically trust your feelings about something, because your feelings can betray you.

I’m sorry that you find me as arrogant and unbelievable.  If you find my views about these things to be so, then let’s talk about something else.

[Sajainta]

Wow, I leave the internet for a few days and this is what happens!  Sorry for not responding earlier--holiday traveling and all. 

The reason my original post talked about female virginity is because I have rarely, if ever, heard people discuss male virginity as being a "gift" to their spouse.  I'm sure it's been discussed, I just haven't heard it.  I grew up in a very, very Christian environment and so I had that kind of "Your body [as a female] is the ultimate gift you can give your future husband." talk surrounding me for most of my life.  Of course, the same thing can be said about men.  Men are not objects either, and the their bodies / virginity isn't the best thing they can give their spouse.  I wasn't presuming that men cannot give up their virginity.  I apologize if my original post came across as sexist or could have been read that way.

Also, GenesisOne, I never said anything about premarital sex not having any consequences.  Any kind of sex has consequences, whether it's within marriage or not.  I am neither for premarital sex or against it.  Personally, I want to be in a loving, committed relationship before I have sex (and I was / am).  That is what I believe is best for me.  However, I'm not going to call the shots for everyone else and I'm not going to condemn others for doing something else.

I don't condemn those who wait, either.  I have nothing against people who wait.  Many of my friends waited until marriage or are waiting until marriage to have sex.  Them waiting isn't my issue--my issue is the arrogance and holier-than-thou attitude that can come from people who are waiting until marriage.

Saj is saying that premarital sex is a none-issue, as far as "true love" goes. Thus she isn't for or against premarital sex, assuming I am understanding her correctly (if not, please let me know, Saj). That is all fluff to her main argument, anywho: sex is not the ultimate expression of love. Curiously, I think even most religious nutters would agree to this, even while idolizing virginity as a virtue.

If virginity/sex is the most valuable thing a woman can give in a relationship, think about what they says about the relationship. The end goal is sex. Getting to know such a woman might be a nice perk, but it isn't what the relationship is about. This perspective says that a relationship with a woman is a means to sex.

Saj's perspective seems to be that the end-goal of a relationship is, well, a relationship. You get to know a woman because she's worth knowing, not because she has a vagina.

Thought is correct in describing what I was trying to say.

[Radical_Dreamer]

Did you ever notice that, oh I don't know... that we're the only species who endorse religion, and the most violent? Yes, animals can be violent, but they don't possess WMDs. Even our predecessors, Neanderthals, had no religion. You know what they did? They lived their lives doing what matters! They had sex without marriage! *gasp* They hunted their own food and clothes! *gasp* How disgraceful and un-american!

This makes me giggle. Glad to see you know how upper brain functions work! We are the only species with religion because we are the only species with the capacity to do so. Neanderthals, really, weren't much better of than monkeys. And monkeys don't have religion, they just really like eating banana's and throwing doo doo.

Neanderthals had larger brains than homo sapiens, and performed ritual burials of their dead. While I'm obviously not going to assert that they did have religion, I would also not make a claim that they surely didn't.

You assumed from what I said that multiple failures in a particular context (in this case, relationships) results in a slippery slope of failures that apply to all contexts in one’s life.  That’s not what I said.  I was talking about forgiveness and building trust, and not to automatically trust your feelings about something, because your feelings can betray you.

Ah, so you were asserting that relationships are an exception to the larger human experience? How odd. Every experience that a person has, so long as they have the good sense and humility to learn from it, helps them grow, and makes them better prepared for similar situations in the future. This includes relationships. I have neither seen nor experienced anything to suggest that relationships are somehow an exception to this.

[desrever2]

All urges are sought to be satisfied. It's just a matter of priority. The processes of achieving these satisfactions develop into habits. These habits are what define us. I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just giving my opinion.

[Thought]

Kant's categorical imperative is a ridiculous concept

Oh foolish boy...

Your objection is that the categorical imperative necessitates a perception of equality, one that people often lack? So it is ridiculous because it is idealistic? You pointed out that people don't behave in this manner, but you haven't said much about if they should or not.

It is true that an individual’s subjective beliefs will color what they would think objective conduct would be, but it also inherently causes a person to stop making exceptions for themselves. While this might not obtain true objectivity, it decreases our subjective favor towards ourselves, allowing us to move away from what is right for us and towards what is right.

The family unit couldn't exist as we know it if we lived like other animals.

Actually the human response to visual cues of infancy (large heads, big eyes, gurgling noises, etc) is so over-the-top that not only are we biologically motivated to protect our own children, not only are we motivated to protect other human children, we are also motivated to protect a lot of cute cuddle animals as well. Family units still exist quite nicely even though we like our pets. Or perhaps you meant like-like?

... and social bonding sometimes  - oh and its fun.

The release of oxytocin is part of the chemical cocktail of orgasm. Oxytocin is a necessary part of forming social bonds and trust (if your body doesn’t produce or process it correctly, you can be prevented from forming social relationships). Sex is always about social bonding, then. We might not want it to be, but meh, too bad. That is the way our bodies respond to the stimuli. Though, to be fair, oxytocin effects and release vary by individual, so for some it is more socially bonding than for others. And of course, just because we have some chemicals swimming around in our blood, that doesn’t mean we are bound to them.

Did you get that off a Christian website? I wouldn't be surprised if so. I don't know why christianity has so many followers when one of its own beliefs is to objectify women...

Probably because that isn't one of its central tenants. Look at the Nicean Creed; most Christians hold that to be central (most, not all). You may note the lack of woman-hating in its contents. Like palliums and bishops, objectifying women is one of those time honored traditions that got added later, that many people still follow, but is not a necessary part of the faith.

It is true that the bible isn't particularly nice towards women. Even if it has absolutely no spiritual merit, it is still a historical document. Thus, having been written during periods in which women were not well respected, one should expect a significant lack of respect. Your objection, then, is essentially that the bible is old.

Did you ever notice that, oh I don't know... that we're the only species who endorse religion, and the most violent? Yes, animals can be violent, but they don't possess WMDs. Even our predecessors, Neanderthals, had no religion.

Who said Neanderthals had no religion? Honestly, I can't recall ever having heard "Neanderthal" and "religion" in the same discussion, so I would be quite curious to learn more.

Also, how does WMD make us more violent than others? In increases our capabilities for destruction, true, but how does it relate to our desire for that destruction. Give a penguin a nuke and make it understand what it is and you might find those happy feet dancing on our graves. Or not. But the tools we use speaks of our ability to make tools, not to the degree of our inclinations.

Ironic how we're considered the most intelligent species, but because someone thousands of years ago got bit in the ass by the stupid bug and decided "Hey, I got an idea! Let's personify natural occurance and worship it!" that we have a more restrictive social order than any animal.

Bees and ants have a far more restrictive social order than any humans have for the simple reason that their social order is reinforced by their biology.

Then there are those species that eat their partners after sex. Mmm, that's some good social justice, I tell you what.

The problem with using animals as a reference point for humans is that we've all evolved differently. Dogs are loyal because of their evolved social behaviors that humans have tapped into and modified. A crocodile might make a good pet until it is hungry, because they never evolved the same social behaviors that dogs did. And if a human acted in either way, we would (or should be) horrified. Why? Because humans have social behaviors, but they still aren't as well developed as those of a dog. Humans like dogs, but humans are not like dogs. Good, bad, we're the ones with the gun. We can’t look to animals to figure out how we should use it.

[Lord J Esq]

Look at the Nicean Creed; most Christians hold that to be central (most, not all). You may note the lack of woman-hating in its contents.

Are you suggesting then that bigotry by exclusion is not in fact an instance of bigotry? Or is it that you would prefer to concede bigotry but argue against the consequential presence of hatred?

[GenesisOne]

Ah, so you were asserting that relationships are an exception to the larger human experience? How odd. Every experience that a person has, so long as they have the good sense and humility to learn from it, helps them grow, and makes them better prepared for similar situations in the future. This includes relationships. I have neither seen nor experienced anything to suggest that relationships are somehow an exception to this.

I never implied that habitual failure (and in turn, learning from it) is exclusive to relationships.  I was talking about the trustworthiness of one's feelings in a relationship.  I'd like to build my relationships on how well I know such people, and not just how I feel about them, because I believe that my feelings can betray me (and they have before).  Same thing abut boyfriend/girlfriend relationships; I don't JUST want to go off of how I feel about that girl, let alone make sex be the end goal.

Anyhoo, yours (and everybody else's here) is but one drop of a lifetime experience in an ocean of lifetime experiences.  Even if you've met millions of people, that still leaves billions of people you haven't met.

[Thought]

I must confess, I am not entirely sure what you are attempting to get at, J, but hopefully this will address your question.

I am suggesting that anti-female bigotry is not a necessary component of Christianity. Not that such bigotry did not exist, nor that such bigotry was not harmful to individuals. Rather, it is like Charlie Brown's shirt. In the 50ish years of recorded Peanuts history, Charlie Brown was almost constantly accompanied by his shirt. Indeed, the black zig-zag against an orangish-yellow background is more recognizable as Charlie Brown's than the colors of most nations. But, if one objected to his shirt, one could exchange the shirt and not lose the essence of what makes Charlie Brown “Charlie Brown.”

In this analogy, Christianity (as represented in the Nicene Creed) is Charlie Brown, while anti-female bigotry is the shirt. It’s a rather nasty shirt, to be sure, but it is quite possible to remove the shirt without killing the character.

There is, admittedly, one potentially bigoted element in Nicene Creed that one might object to: gender-specific language. For example:

Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man

One might suppose that this indicates Christianity is concerned with the salvation of Y chromosomes only. Perhaps if they were more enlightened they would have used the word "mate" instead of "men," admittedly, but given that people usually refer to the entire species by the label of its masculine half (even in the modern era, and even by otherwise enlightened individuals), this seems like a poor place to complain about deep rooted and harmful bigotry. Indeed, any other word would mark the text as forgery, considering how anachronistic it would have been.

The revisions to this basic creed get a bit more curious, though. The addition of his birth by the virgin Mary, for example, could be said to nicely mark the start of the rise of Christianity's obsession with virginity (that is, it marks it as nicely as the fall of Rome marked the end of the Roman Empire).

Perhaps another analogy might illuminate what I am trying to get at. The Nicene Creed outlines what are, essentially, the "physical" beliefs of Christians. To change those would be like changing your arm into a wing. Anti-female bigotry has been present, and is still present, in Christianity, but that is a behavior. It is a bad behavior, like smoking, and it might be a behavior that is difficult to change, but it is one that can be changed.

[GenesisOne]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2006-12-19-premarital-sex_x.htm

An interesting study on the prevalence of premarital sex.

Apparently, the median age at which one engages in such has been decreasing over the last 50 years.  This would show how American society has become more permissive to premarital sex.


My thoughts on sex?

To me, sex is not just a physical act; it's a strong emotional act as well. Casual sex to me would be just scratching an itch. It satisfies the physical urge, but ignores the emotional component.

As for premarital sex?

I'd say you don't necessarily need marriage, but you definitely need a lasting commitment between two adults. If one person is committed and the other is not, that takes an emotional toll. If neither is committed, then sex is empty and can lead to feelings of worthlessness and being victimized (I'm not saying it will happen, but the likelihood is there). Sorry kids, but teens, even if they are in love, are not mature enough to handle the complexities of a sexual relationship, even if popular culture says otherwise.

Bottom line:

If you are in a long-term, deeply committed relationship, and are past the hormonal rush of adolescence, then it doesn't matter if you've made the final step of having a legal marriage unless you want children (it only takes one drop of semen and a present egg to make a baby). If you're getting married sometime soon, it doesn't hurt anything to anticipate the ceremony and remove the stress of having sex for the first time from the stress of the actual wedding. But until you have a relationship that is at least somewhat like marriage, with or without the blessings of church or state, then, yes, it can be harmful (I'm not saying it will happen, but the likelihood is there).

Update: Found this interesting book on the subject:

If You Really Love Me, by Jason Evert

I'll give it a read sometime.

[Thought]

There is, admittedly, one potentially bigoted element in Nicene Creed that one might object to: gender-specific language. For example:

Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man

To provide a bit of an update, an expert in the field just informed me that this is an inaccurate translation. Ancient Greek had a variety of words that could be translated as "men," but this is one that wasn't used for the gender but rather in a similar sense to how we might say "mankind." I really should have thought about that myself earlier. Alas. Anywho, I confirmed this information with my own, limited, knowledge of the language. Interesting stuff.

[Lord J Esq]

I was getting at the whole "Father" / "Son" thing.

[ZealKnight]

I just think it's more romantic to say your first was with your spouse. Not that I havent had my chances, it just feels like I'm proving that I love my spouse.

[Arakial]

I just think it's more romantic to say your first was with your spouse. Not that I havent had my chances, it just feels like I'm proving that I love my spouse.

My spouse and I are one of the few items that can actually claim this honestly. But this doesn't really matter, as it was more of a coincidence than a choice and I'd love her just the same if it wasn't the case. That said, sex is just an neutral act--one that we enjoy very much, but nothing more. I define love in terms of knowing one another and the support we give to each other to make the other's life more complete.

[Thought]

I was getting at the whole "Father" / "Son" thing.

Well that is a strange thing to be concerned about, though perhaps once again I am not clear on what it is that you are attempting to say? Since it is you, I can see a variety of possible interpretations of your words.

First, of course, is the silliness of saying that a specific individual's gender identity could itself be bigoted. Given that you are not complaining that George Washington was a male president, or that Caesar Augustus is a male emperor, I suspect that your objection is not so simple.

Second, I suppose you might be saying that, assuming God does not exist, the artificially assigned gender of this illusory deity supported and justified gender inequality within the religion. That, however, is almost as equally silly as the first possible interpretation of what you said. The genders of powerful beings are the exception to biases, not the cause or antidote of them. If the Christian deity had been identified as a Mother and the human/god hybrid was identified as a daughter, the gender bias of the ensuing centuries could have been no better, and possibly worse. One only needs to look to the worship of polytheistic female deities to see that the gender of the entity being worshipped did not promote gender equality. Perhaps most telling is the mystery cult of Isis, which was moving in the direction of monotheism before it was eventually abandoned. Though female, this supreme deity did not encourage social equality (though her clergy consisted of both male and female individuals); rather, it reinforced oppressive female gender-roles, such as using women to a means other than themselves (through the sympathetic magic of sex), and by reinforcing the idea that the two highest goals in a woman's life were to be a good wife and the mother of a male child.

Then there was Odin, who was ridiculed by other gods for acting the part of the woman (as magic was culturally the realm of women). Female gods could support gender-biases, and male-gods couldn't work against such biases either.

And of course, to note, Mary and the various female saints seem to have done little to affect the gender biases of the Church.

Third, perhaps you are objecting to the very concept of a deity having a gender-identity at all, regardless of male or female. However, that would be a criticism against religion in general, not Christianity in specific, and so would be a non-sequitur. Additionally, while one could argue that religion is anti-humanistic, why would a gendered deity be more oppressive to one portion of the population than another?

Fourth, are you objecting to the father/son relationship on grounds that such a relationship is in some way inherently bigoted? This doesn't make much sense to me, but then again, all the possible interpretations of what you said aren't making much sense to me either.

Possibly, as a fifth, you are objecting to the familial structure of the divine as somehow biased against women?

Anywho, I could go on, J, but I think I've made it clear that, though your response was short and to the point, I am not understanding what you are trying to say. Or maybe I am just looking into it too much.