Jow Forumsacks often recognize -- on some level of consciousness -- the challenges of sexuality for politics. Whether it's questions about what forms of sexual intercourse are legitimate (homosexuality, interracial, bestiality, pedophilia, etc), or what to do about the social problems that arise due to frustrated desire, you can find them being discussed on Jow Forums at all hours of the day.
But Jow Forums -- surprise, surprise -- rarely goes very deep into the problem of sex. How can we interpret pic related? Why is it that Christ does not grant his consent to these two consenting (and white) heterosexual adults? The obvious answer is that they are not married in a Christian wedding. But this is a superficial reading. Christ was not married, and seemed to admonish his followers to chastity as much as possible.
While all are one in the Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28), sex is fundamentally a disunity. Even when both sides consent, the act itself is always has the structure of subject and object (plus fantasy); each actor using the other partner in a pursuit of "the light at the end of the tunnel": i.e. the orgasm: a very fleeting moment of pleasure.
Instead of the humanizing connection to the other, we instead have a dehumanizing connection to the other as object. Is this not why the sex dolls are so appealing? Finally we can reduce the female to a permanent object, one that does not cease to be one as soon as the act is over? Sex, as such, destabilizes the possibility of community, making sensual desire a force that conflicts with the holy spirit, and the possibility of the Christian union.
tldr: we're all fucked because we fuck, or want to
this is a well thought out post. bump of agreement.
David Jones
No. You're wrong. Sex within the confines of marriage is (should be) the expression of love. the result of that love being expressed is children. Without that understanding of love humanity is doomed to extinction. That's why today (myself included) there are so many broken people. We've removed the purpose of sex (bearing children) and have reduced it to pleasure seeking. There's nothing wrong with enjoying sex, however, sex when sterile is simply masturbation and equivalent to homosexuality even when committed between a man and a woman.
Birth control is the worst thing to happen to humanity in the past century.
>sex is fundamentally a disunity. Even when both sides consent, the act itself is always has the structure of subject and object (plus fantasy); each actor using the other partner in a pursuit of "the light at the end of the tunnel": i.e. the orgasm: a very fleeting moment of pleasure. If you think this way, you've had very poor relationships. You can have sex without marriage if you're in a relationship, and not just seek an orgasm, because it is intimate. It's the most intimate thing you can do and can keep the relatinship at a deeper level.
Interesting post. I'm not going to disagree with your general point at the moment, but want to better understand some of your supporting claims. >sex within the confines of marriage is (should be) the expression of love so then even within marriage it is not necessarily the case, and it would seem the number of failed and unhappy marriages confirm this. So why should sex as expression of love be impossible outside of marriage?
>We've removed the purpose of sex (bearing children) and have reduced it to pleasure seeking I'm not sure this argument holds water, if you're making some sort of evolutionary argument, since other animals have sex for pleasure. Also, how likely is it that married couples will have sex only once every year (or less), and only then to conceive?
Christopher Jones
If it's not for the pleasure, why not just be intimate in other ways?
Angel Smith
>so then even within marriage it is not necessarily the case, and it would seem the number of failed and unhappy marriages confirm this. So why should sex as expression of love be impossible outside of marriage? sex outside of marriage is wrong on the grounds of destroying a persons ability to love the person that they are with.
>I'm not sure this argument holds water, if you're making some sort of evolutionary argument, since other animals have sex for pleasure. Also, how likely is it that married couples will have sex only once every year (or less), and only then to conceive? No. Reread my post. I'm saying that sex should be enjoyable. However, when sex is made sterile and you refuse your partners fertility you are denying them and yourself truly sharing in one another. If your not willing to bear children with the person you're having sex with, you shouldn't be having sex with them.
You can and do act intimate in other ways. But this is a private and close act, the two definitions of intimacy.
Camden Sanchez
Making a child together is the most intimate thing you can do.
Jack Taylor
Interesting again. >sex outside of marriage is wrong on the grounds of destroying a persons ability to love the person that they are with. I don't see why this necessarily follows. What about sex with your fiance 3 months before you get married? Why should this destroy the ability to love that person?
>If your not willing to bear children with the person you're having sex with, you shouldn't be having sex with them. But this willingness is not enough, you're saying, it must be coupled with marriage, since otherwise rapists who bear children would be okay. So your two criteria for enjoyable sex are 1) marriage; 2) willingness to bear children with your spouse. But now, these two criteria on their own still cannot be enough, since there are marriages with children that end in divorce, or that are unhappy. So there must be some other element...
Easton Hill
has the potential to be, you are arguing, but is not necessarily, correct? yes, but what separates it out from other intimate acts. is it not the climax? Isn't that what first draws us towards it? And what about when fantasy creeps in (and how do you know that the other isn't fantasizing)?
Lincoln Campbell
The marriage bed is undefiled.
Aiden Ward
Almost all marriages that end in divorce are the result of extramarital sex. You end extramarital sex and you have stronger and healthier families. This is the root problem of all intersex relationships. The casualness of sex.
>Sex with fiance
No. You must wait till marriage. What happens if you discover within those 3 months something that will cause a revokation of a desire to marry?
Correct. However, the use of birth control and other contraceptives in order to make yourself sterile removes that. So it should be without such things.
Also. When it comes to divorce, you speak of the legal sense of it. When the fact is, the people you have sex with, you are wed to in the eyes of the Lord.
Elijah Collins
>What happens if you discover within those 3 months something that will cause a revokation of a desire to marry? What happens if you discover that same thing after you're married?
>This is the root problem of all intersex relationships. The casualness of sex. Hard to disagree. People have an expectation to enjoy, feel compelled, and try to force it. So many people rely on alcohol or other drugs to make sexual encounters possible.
Another question: what happens if you don't find anyone who you'd be willing to have children with who would be willing to marry you? In other words, if the "correct" version of sex is an impossibility for you. Or, what if multiple women would be willing to have your children, and you would be willing to have children with all of them? Why not polygamy? There's nothing in your criteria which would forbid that. Also, you still haven't said what is that extra X that is not captured just by marriage and willingness to inseminate, which you agree are necessary but not sufficient conditions? What is that X that makes the sexual relationship a relationship between subjects, and not subject and object?
Connor Rivera
also, sex for procreation does have an inherent structure of subject-object, since the man uses the woman for her womb, and the woman uses the man for his semen. There may be an agreement to use each other in this way (i.e. the marriage vows), but that does not mean that there isn't an objectification occurring, and it can lead to disunity. The very fact that the vows must be eternally binding (as you pointed out) suggest that there is some element of coercion.
Sebastian Clark
Marriage is the agreement to live your life together despite all of your partners faults. While I've no moral objection to polygamy, it has huge societal repercussions as I imagine you know. (You seem like a longtimefellow).
It is the act, coupled within marriage, with the desire to show love, and possibly have children from it. To create life together, to want your partner to create life with you. Not use you as a wallet/sperm/egg donor.
Coercion, sometimes. More often I imagine it to be compromise.
>Subject-object Why do you make one of the people out to be an object? I've no doubt that this occurs. But if two people truly love one another than that view (in my eyes) is null.
Aaron Wood
Thank you for the edifying discussion. I will attempt to respond to your question, and then ask you one more, and then I will have to go, unfortunately. >Why do you make one of the people out to be an object? I mean to suggest that both are objects to the other; that there's a gap between each subject and the other that prevents the other being fully a subject during the act. We don't feel the other's pleasure or experience their desire... even if we get pleasure from hearing/seeing our partner's pleasure, this is -- I would argue -- more because it sustains a fantasy than because we're truly unified at that moment.
My question for you is, are you married? And of course you don't have to answer, but it seems like you must be.
Adrian Myers
I'll add that of course, traditionally speaking, the woman would be the more objectified of the two, since she would have been the subject of coercion more often (often with little choice in the marriage), so there would be an objective power differential over deciding when and if to copulate (and ultimately with whom), as well as a structural difference: woman as subject to her husband
