Monday, August 30, 2010

If we don't have sex, the liberals win.

I'd like to say that got me laid last night, but...Newlyweds, y'know.

One of the courses I am taking this year is Human Sexuality.  I made certain to take the course online because I didn't think I could handle a class full of 18-year-olds snickering every time someone said vagina.   It does seem as though most of the people in the class are relatively experienced, even though there's at least one person I am hoping is a former ESL student.

It's really too early to mock my classmates, so I will have to settle for mocking the book.

Did you know that conservatives have bad sex?  'Tis true:

Historically in North America the idea that procreation was the only legitimate reason for sexual activity was prevalent.  Contemporary Roman Catholic doctrine and pro-life organizations continue to hold the belief that the only moral sexual expression occurs within marriage for purposes of procreation.  For example, the American Life League maintains that people should not use contraception because "birth control leads to a state of mind that treats sexual activity as if it has nothing to do with babies" (American Life League, 2006, p.1).  In this view, when a couple has sexual intercourse, they have committed themselves to any resultant pregnancy: "The right to reproduce begins and ends with the decision to engage in intercourse."  Therefore, the only moral choice for single people is to abstain from sex, and "if you are married, be faithful to your spouse, trusting the Lord and His Will" (American Life League, 2006, p. 3).  In general, this element of the pro-life movement hopes to end the lifestyle of having sex just for pleasure.
***
Certainly penile-vaginal intercourse can be a fulfilling part of heterosexual sexual expression, but excessive emphasis on intercourse can have negative consequences...

Thinking of intercourse as "real sex" perpetuates the notions that a man's penis is the primary source of satisfaction for his partner and that her sexual response and orgasm are supposed to cocur during penetration.  Such a narrow focus places tremendous preformance pressures on both women and men and can create unrealistic expectations of coitus itself.  This view can also result in devaluing nonintercourse sexual intimacy, which is often relegated to the secondary status of foreplay [emph. in orig.] (usually considered any activity before intercourse), implying that such activity is not important in and of itself and is to be followed by the "real sex" of intercourse.
(Crooks, Robert and Baur, Karla; Our Sexuality, 6th ed, pp 9 & 10)

Raise your hand if you think sex is ONLY for procreation.

Anyone?

Bueller?  (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I mean yes, yes I do believe that intercourse is likely to lead to pregnancy.  That's because, you know, it is.  It's not some vague belief that I have, it's a matter of simple biology.  Yes, in reality a woman can only get pregnant from sex had during slightly less than one week of her cycle...But the truth is, with as many women out there who can't even spell "pregnancy" correctly, the chances of them bothering to monitor their cycles is minute, and so the "any time you have sex, you can get pregnant" meme was born.  (Mind you, Catholics and others who refuse to use hormonal birth control--myself included--are far more likely to know the realities of a woman's cycle than someone who never gets deeper than "sex is fun!")

But I  know that sex isn't only about procreation.  Or intercourse.  And so does my husband.  And so, I would bet, does every single person on my blogroll.

Saying that sex shouldn't be just for fun doesn't mean it shouldn't be for fun at all.  Acknowledging the procreative possibilities of intercourse doesn't necessarily detract from sex.  And I'll go so far as to say that folks who make a habit of artificially dividing fun sex and procreative sex are far more likely to have problems in their marriages when they start screwing just so they can reproduce.  God knows--and I verified this with my husband last night--knowing that we could make another person while we made love to each other amplified the experience.

I'm not going to go off on liberals' sex lives, mainly because I'm not one and I have never had sex with one.  It's not at all unusual that we won't be granted the same respect.  It's much easier to look at faulty "evidence" and draw conclusions to fit your own biases.  But logic is not on the side of "conservatives and pro-lifers only have sex in order to reproduce."

I mean, really.

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar have 19 kids, out of 18 pregnancies (two sets of twins, one miscarriage).  If that woman didn't like to have sex, do you think she'd have had enough of it to get pregnant every year or two for the past two decades?  Really?

8 comments:

Borepatch said...

This is a classic example of how the closed liberal bubble world that is the University makes liberals stupid. Since it's very possible for liberal academics to not know a single conservative, they lose that nagging voice in the back of their heads that leads them to correct themselves before they come out with something so blatantly idiotic.

Conservatives have a much harder time living in their own bubble world, and so generally have a much more effective BS detector to use on their own idiotic screeds.

This example seems mostly harmless; Global Warming hysteria is an example where the results will be very bad for a lot of people.

Sabra said...

While I agree that this example itself is basically harmless, it's a small part of an overarching problem: Psychology is dominated by liberals. Thus we get BS like "guns lead to more suicides" and "long-term hospitalization of schizophrenics is mean"--because, of course, sending people with poorly-controlled mental illness out into the community at large is a GREAT idea. For everyone involved.

Mike W. said...

Do it like they do on the discovery channel! Why? Because it's fun!

Dave said...

It seems like they are making the historic case for the only legitimate reason for sexual activity being procreation off of a single source, American Life League. Who is that?

I was under the impression that all conservatives got "The Word" from Fox News. Can I assume that American Life League is a division of Fox?

Albatross said...

Fox = where conservatives get their marching orders.

Fox = a really good-looking woman; a hot mama; someone you might want to have sex with just for the fun of it

It's so obvious. I'm surprised liberals haven't caught on yet.

Mike W. said...

Dave - Sarah Palin & Rush Limbaugh & Glenn Beck told us no one has sex simply for pleasure, so it MUST be true, right? :)

Charlene said...

Good lord.

I'm 59. I've never been pregnant. I have, however, been having sex for 43 years. It's ALL been about pleasure, obviously but I have never used a contraceptive either. I'm just naturally all about the pelasure. Harumpf!

I got laid last night. Also I got laid three times last week and twice on Sunday.

To blame a 1950's conservative religious attitude on liberals is reaching.

The rest of the unstated sentence on "If we don't have more sex," is "the brown people will win."

I don't care who wins. If God didn't want us to have sex it wouldn't be possible to do so with pleasure.

Sabra said...

Um, well, last I checked, if I have sex it helps the brown people win.