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Old Oct 14, 2016, 12:20 AM
Cyllya Cyllya is offline
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Member Since: Sep 2016
Location: Phoenix AZ USA
Posts: 127
I didn't watch the video (for reasons that can be summarized as "I'm too lazy") but I had some thoughts....

I definitely think there is some push throughout society to stamp out certain traits and behaviors that were considered acceptable in the recent past. Some of those traits and behaviors were associated with gender, so you could look at it as "feminizing" men and "masculinizing" women so that people are more in the middle instead of some pathological extreme. Like, it's no longer acceptable for men (or anyone) to be some kind of hyper-aggressive domineering maniac who solves problems with violence and it's frowned upon for women (or anyone) to be subservient doormats. Everyone is encouraged to be rational assertive people who can have a nice calm discussion about emotions. I agree with most of these changes. I wouldn't consider it any kind of "conspiracy" because there's no element of secrecy to it. I agree with most of these kinds of pushes.

I agree with your opinion of money. I think a no-money society is theoretically possible and probably preferable, but as it stands now, it just makes sense for most people to be highly concerned ("obsessed") with money. I think a lot of people who complain about other people being too obsessed with money are taking too much of a black-and-white viewpoint. Sometimes those folks seem to be kind of rich and out-of-touch with what other people's options actually are.

I think one source of society-wide money problems is that various circumstances cause employers to be pretty motivated to employ the smallest possible number of people and milk them for all they're worth. If you have a job that pays well, you probably don't need the amount of money that they pay you for working 40 hours per week, but they probably won't give you an option to regularly work fewer hours. Your options are 40 hours or 0 hours! (In the past, hard work and suffering were considered virtues, and I don't think society has quite shaken off that idea yet. So I wonder if some people would feel bad about working less, even if they could afford to?)

Advertisements often say or imply that you "need" their product even when that is not true. I'm not sure if there's anyone who actually believes they literally need those products just because the advertisements said so (I always took that as sort of a figure of speech), but I do know there are people who think those people exist and write condescending articles addressed to them.

It's totally okay to not like sex. It's bad/disadvantageous, albeit understandable, to be disgusted by it. I think there is probably some cultural programming (or cultural brainwashing, if you prefer) in both the disgust AND in any "you have to like sex" backlash you might be getting from other people. I think it tends to go like this: When you're a kid, your parents and the rest of society try to make you hate sex as much as possible, then when puberty kicks in, it usually makes you like sex in certain contexts enough to override that repression, but it remains disgusting in other contexts. It seems like it's actually very common for people who like sex to be disgusted by sex (or anything they perceive as sex-related) when it's not what they're into. (Not sure how common. It might look more common than it is.) But if you're not into any kind of sex (as a normal variation), it makes sense that the disgust will continue to apply to all contexts.

Meanwhile, since society in recent history was very anti-sex (and that attitude still lingers in some circles), people nowadays who are pro-sex may stereotype you as having other motivations for your sex-disliking ways. Again, a matter of black-and-white thinking. I'm optimistic that society as a whole will balance out its views on sex someday. I think the last few decades is the first time in written history where most people can actually choose how much sex they want without severe social repercussions, and we haven't really adjusted to this yet!

I don't think there's anything wrong with NOT thinking of sex as some emotional intimate bonding experience. I guess I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking that way either, but it seems potentially impractical. (Actually, many people put a lot of emotional baggage onto food, and I see some people advocate that that's a GOOD thing, but I feel like it's super-unhealthy to romanticize bodily functions like that. However, since sex is less biologically necessary than food, it's not as problematic.) I remember I used to have that kind of spiritual feeling about sex; I don't remember why I changed...

I'm a bit odd in that I don't like actually having sex but I think sex is super-interesting, i.e. a great topic for art, fiction, and song lyrics. This seems to baffle some people.

(Wow, that's a lot of text. Apparently I was feeling talkative.)
Thanks for this!
t0rtureds0ul