Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Bart Janssen,
However, getting restaurants to stop squirting that disgusting dark brown stuff over their dessert creations can be difficult.
Does it actually taste disgusting to you, or are you too off-put to touch it in the first place? I had a bunch of unfortunate-association-based food squicks as a kid, but I've pretty much overcome them all, largely because they were common enough foods that I didn't really have a choice.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Islander,
That some male bonobos offer their penis to another handed species, by way of a greeting, seems par for the course of omni-sexuality…
Right, so it's exactly what I thought it was. Which is evidence of either broad scientific knowledge or general corruption. Could be either, round here.
Yes, I can see an ancient Bhatnagar passing judgment on loud drumming disturbing the elderly, following by a youthful exodus from his clan.
There definitely would have been a bit of self-reinforcement going on there, I think, kind of like churches today - the people that stay are the ones willing to put up with the rules, who then enforce the rules because they had to follow them, while others just bugger off to see about that licentious Greece place, and stop belonging to the group.
(Yes, yes, the Old Testament pre-dates classical Greece. Whatever.)
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
I will be eternally grateful to Max for that.
He deserves some sort of analogy Nobel prize.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Emma Hart,
Have we linked to the chocolate manifesto here before?
That is a thing of beauty and wonder.
(It really is incredible how much views of women and chocolate mimic views of women and sex, though. Maybe it’s just the idea of women having pleasure in things that gets some people all upset-like.)
“Bonobo Handshake” by Vanessa Woods, Gotham Books – an absorbing read, where Handshake doesnt at all mean what you think it does…
Knowing what I do about bonobos, I'm now wondering whether this means it's really sexual or really not. I can't tell.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Lilith __,
It’s one thing to say there are evolutionary reasons for our having a sex drive and quite another to try and justify all sex acts from an evolutionary standpoint.
It's a bit like using evolution to justify chocolate. Oh, sure, evolved tastes for high-calorie foods in case of famine, positive reinforcement from stimulants, but, basically, chocolate. Mmm, chocolate.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to BenWilson,
It's the Only Good Casual Sex*.
Safe. Safe /=/ good. Safe (penetrative) sex apparently does mean less-good sex for some people. Depends how safe you want to be, vs. how important good sex is - but sex by definition involves the safety of more than one person, and often more people than the people having the immediate sex. Which is why it's complicated.
Feminists who are... struggling to describe them, here. "Non-sex-positive"?
Feminists who have trouble understanding exactly how much sexual morality has been defined by patriarchal society.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
It's not a matter of having "powerful arguments against the existence of one formulation of the Christian deity", but of no-one else having testable arguments for their particular deity. I don't see exactly how this differs from your "general scepticism and unbelief".
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, etcetera. And, again, when you keep getting asked specific questions, you're going to come up with very specific answers. Generally one doesn't have to, in Western society, go into detail on arguments for the non-existence of Shiva. I'd imagine it'd be a bit different if you went to southern India.
There's also the important distinction between atheists - people who don't believe in gods - and atheist activists, who work to secularise society and against religiously-motivated wrongs (faith healing, and so on.) The latter are what most people think of, but the former are the bulk of atheists.
And, of course, a lot of people fighting to keep general society secular are personally religious - the fight against Christian evangelism in the American Air Force is largely being waged by other varieties of Christian, Jews, and Muslims who are sick of being told by superiors that their version of religion is the wrong one.
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to James Butler,
The old "Atheism only defines itself in opposition to Christianity!!" meme is an unfortunate side-effect of living in a culture which draws so many referents from a Christian, erm, heritage. Statistically, any move suggested by Atheists towards secularism in western society is likely to be a move away from a Christian tradition, giving the haters a chance to say "Oooh, look who's defining themselves against Christianity again". Screw 'em.
There are definitely some atheists who define themselves primarily by not being Christian, but they are usually ex-Christians who live in communities where Christianity is the majority and widely considered to be the only valid religion, much as I imagine a lot of atheists in the Middle East define themselves as Not Islamic. When the question is always "Why aren't you [x religion]?" you're going to have to spend a lot of time talking about it, and this is especially true for the vocal American atheist contingent, who are only ever expected to explain why they're not Christian. OTOH, most New Zealand atheists don't even think about the whole thing very much, and certainly don't feel the need to explain why they aren't going to church.
The best response to this sort of argument is usually the "taking it one god further" logical construction (i.e. "you're an atheist when it comes to the existence of Thor, Mithras, and Demeter, and you don't have to explain why - why do I have to explain my atheism in relation to your god?")
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Up Front: It's Not Sex, and It's Not Education, in reply to Amy Gale,
Religions that prohibit condom use tend to also prohibit sex outside of marriage.
Serious question I'd like an answer to: is there any religion whose prohibitions on contraception aren't based around a view that the only legitimate type of sexual activity is procreative, within-marriage sex? Like, once you're married you should get down to the baby-making thing but outside marriage you should practice caution? I can conceive of a coherent philosophy there, but I can't think of any group that would use it.
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OnPoint: Transcription of new Rick Perry…, in reply to Steve Parks,
It’s a great system.
The ironic thing is, if you have good health insurance, it is. Americans are trained to accept stacks of paperwork as part and parcel of the healthcare experience, and high-quality care in America is very high-quality indeed. But as with taxes, the people who make the laws and have the most influence on government are thoroughly isolated from the realities of the un- and under-insured, so when they hear "America has a terrible healthcare system" they think back to their own experiences - which have probably been excellent - and decide whoever's saying that must just be stupid.
It really isn't possible to emphasize enough how much Americans can live in parallel realities from each other, and particularly, how the rich can live in parallel realities from the poor.