I think these posts above sum up pretty much all there is to say about this issue from a rational point of view. I feel like we hit a brick wall when it all turns into a matter of moral right and wrong, or a matter of sexism.
Morality is IMO the inner equivalent of society's "laws." I see it as a kind of barrier that prevents people from doing certain things. In bygone days, certain people were unwilling to rape or steal because these were considered wrong in a moral sense. Today, many people don't rape or steal just because it is against the law and if they are caught, they will be punished. I think we could say that fear of punishment is what upholds the law.
I think we could say that social laws are an outside manifestation of our inner moral code. Between the two of them they outline what is proper behavior.
I see that today, to say that something is legal (ie. not punishable by law) is tantamount to saying that it is also moral. And morality is defined by the collective consensus and not by the individual, IMO.
This is a very primitive way of keeping apes in line. I believe we are intelligent enough to stop thinking in terms of moral rights and wrongs and we certainly shouldn't allow some outside law to define our sensibilities.
So, what does this have to do with anything? I'll start at the beginning.
I was introduced to sexuality when I was thirteen. At the time I had no idea that the penis could be used for anything other than peeing, and although I knew that girls didn't have penises, I hadn't made any connections on what this might have meant. All this changed when I came into contact with one of my sister's best friends, Samantha. Sixteen or 17 years old, she was my sister's schoolmate who practically lived at our house one summer.
I'm not going to go into any detail here; suffice it to say that after Samantha, I never did anything new sexually because I already did all there was to do dozens of times with her.
For years afterwards, even though I never discussed the matter with anyone, I felt that I had been abused and violated. Whenever I thought about those days and about Sam, I felt dirty and sick. I felt like she was a monster. I just couldn't understand how anyone could derive pleasure from playing with a little kid the way she did with me. I was disgusted by the thought of her and also by myself.
I think her driving motivation was the sheer pleasure of corrupting innocence, whatever that means. This has no relevence here, just shows we're strange..
So, over the years I developed an annoying quarrel in the back of my head about how I was supposed to feel. On the one hand, my mind told me that Samantha was a despicable person and what she had done was just terrible no matter how you look at it. But on the other hand, I remembered that while she did technically trick me into kissing her private parts
-she had not forced me to do anything against my will, and I distinctly knew that I had enjoyed every moment of her company. The way I felt about her had nothing to do with my mind or thoughts. The best I can describe it is to say that my flesh craved for her. Every cell of my body
wanted her. This feeling was so powerful that everything else was cancelled out.
So, I was stuck with a schism for many years. I had no idea what to think and how to feel.
Today, I realize that through such an introduction I was taught that sex is a physical drive that can be manipulated at will for one's own pleasure and satisfaction. I was taught that it's fun to touch boobies, and that boobies like to be touched too.
At the risk of sounding extremely judgemental, I'm going to share with you what the spirit has to say about sex. Please try to keep in mind that I'm really not against sex or women, and I'm sexually attracted to practically every woman I see, and yet..
Sex is the act of creating life; or more accurately the act of bestowing life. Sex is pleasurable because this is the best and surest way for nature to trick organisms into reproducing. Think about it.
As physical machines, we human beings possess a certain finite amount of energy. This energy has been called by many names throughout the ages. I will refer to it as life force, as in the force that is life-that keeps us alive.
So, sex is basically the act of two partners giving a piece of their own life force to a new being. I believe whenever we have sex we are in effect giving away our life force, regardless of whether we are doing it for fun or for whatever.
After overcoming layer after layer of nonsense, at this point I have nothing but fond feelings for Samantha. I think she was gorgeous, and just thinking about those days brings back memories of erotic fun amid lighthearted childlike simplicity.
I don't really think I was abused anymore. Sex was for me never again as exciting and fun as it had been with her, though.
What I object to now is the way we treat sex, as a species. We completely disregard the magical nature of creating life and so we've reduced sex to a mundane and often boring act that we somehow equate with love.
In light of the spirit of sex, prostitution is absurd.
Paying someone so you can pretend to make babies with them wtf?
Karla, this really isn't a matter of my morality against yours. It is a matter of the optimal energetic configuration of the human machine. It also isn't a matter of male vs. female sexuality. To me, women are multicolored blobs of morphing geometric patterns. Incidentally, so are men.
I believe that as sophisticated machinery that works on the principle of the conservation of matter and energy, the self can be fine-tuned for optimal energetic efficiency.
I have discovered that the self has a function like Windows' Control Panel, where you can customize the way your operating system works, and looks. I would however compare the self to open source UNIX-based operating systems, where you don't just have a control panel, but you have the very source code itself at your disposal, to modify as you please.
I think the metaphorical sayings that we're estranged from god or disconnected from the spirit mean that we aren't configured to make optimal use of our resources. I believe we are all natural programmers in terms of the human "operating system." The problem is that we don't have access to our source code. We don't perceive the flow of the metaphorical 0s and 1s, we see instead the appearance of things.
The way I see it, we disregard the spirit of sex, and we manipulate it for fun, because it feels nice to rub ourselves against people. As a matter of fact, I myself lust for a woman's body, and I find this completely natural. But I think giving into this urge regularly is wrong in an absolute sense, and not in a moral sense mind you. And I don't make this statement from the viewpoint of a religious man. I make it from the standpoint of a programmer and an engineer. Self-control isn't a religious idea to me. It is the ability to override one's default settings; ie. biological imperatives.
There is of course no way for me to prove my good faith, or my genuine interest in the evolution and transcendence of humanity.
All things considered, for me not having sex isn't a matter of some stupid religious moral idea. It is my choice; to deploy my life force wisely and thoughtfully in order to stay young and strong, or to squander it aimlessly as I watch my youth pass me by.