I don't have to tell anyone anything about sex. People, especially the young crave pleasure and intimacy and love, and trust. Their hearts are in the right place but their heads are up their horns. Sex can be a form of a relationship, but so can porn, or advertizing. We have to be warry of people turned into objects before our eyes. A woman as an object of desire, on a magazine cover, or in a home is still an object. That is violence, and it results in the ultimate violence of death where a person is literally transformed into an object. Women are killed in this country, and they are killed in every country because they can be, because our cupidity is so easily turned to antipathy.[/b][/i]

Women are objects of desire. Who is not intoxicated with thoughts of sex from time to time? To deny this is hypocritical.

That being said, you don't have to treat women like objects. I certainly do not.

You can't blame murder on sex.

I completely agree, and that's my point. The perceptions of sex are social constructs, we must realize that, and not speak of them as absolute.

The only reason every society has put a morality into the act of sex is because of the consequences of it. Saying you wouldn't be here without doesn't demean any moral standard someone might have. Moralities on sex exist to protect yourself from these consequences if this is true everyone has a moral standard on sex. I come from a divorced home and can say that sex is dangerous I don't even want to be in a relationship because that mean relinquished control to some urge.

The only reason every society has put a morality into the act of sex is because of the consequences of it. Saying you wouldn't be here without doesn't demean any moral standard someone might have. Moralities on sex exist to protect yourself from these consequences if this is true everyone has a moral standard on sex. I come from a divorced home and can say that sex is dangerous I don't even want to be in a relationship because that mean relinquished control to some urge.

Many posters in this thread seem to view sexuality the way Freud did, as a horribly strong impulse that can overwhelm both the conscious mind and the conscience, is impossible to control, and causes no end of problems. On the surface, from certain perspectives, this certainly seems to be the case.

However, from a scientific standpoint, the desire to reproduce is actually less pressing than several other natural instincts, such as the desire for food and that for water. There are also several other major impulses in our species, such as a desire for social power, a drive to be in control, and the famous fight-or-flight response. However, none of these are viewed with anywhere near the horrific fascination many or even most members of modern society view sex with. The key thing about these natural impulses is that they grow stronger the longer they are denied. The longer you go without eating, the more you'd be willing to do for a Klondike Bar. The longer you go without water, the more desperate you are for a drink. The longer you go at the bottom of the social hierarchy, the more you wish you were at the top. And the longer you go without achieving sexual satisfaction, the more desperately strong that desire grows. Leaving aside psychological and biological outliers that cause things like overactive sex drives or overactive hunger, then, the main cause of desire for sex, hunger, or water is an absence of them.

With that in mind, consider the function of our society. The sex drive begins to manifest its true form anywhere between eight and thirteen years of age, most regularly at eleven or twelve. A strong majority of society (at least in my country, and probably in the world as a whole) considers it morally wrong to have a sexual experience before marriage, or with anyone other than your spouse. The mean age of first marriage in the United States is 26 for women and 27 for men. With a strictly theoretical full compliance to that supposed moral standard, that means that by the time they marry and have their first sexual experience, the average person is a full-fledged sexual maniac, such is the impact of spending fifteen years repressing a key natural desire. More realistically, the first real sexual freedom most people achieve is when they enter college. A notable minority discover frequent masturbation or have regular sexual experiences in high school, and in my experience (this should by no means be considered an exhaustive study) it is these individuals who are the least fixated on sex, for they have missed out on most of the repression. But for those who do not begin to have an active (orgasm once per week at the minimum) sex life until senior year of high school or college, a substantial portion of their adult life, the most formative part in fact, has been spent in sexual repression. Is it any wonder that sex becomes one of the focuses of life for many of these people?

The fact that sex is considered by many to be morally wrong in most situations simply adds to the complication, as does the very strictly monogamous structure of our society. This reaction to sex (historically rooted in issues of tribalism and depth of the gene pool, but based in modern times on religion) pollutes sexuality, driving many otherwise sexually healthy people into myriad problems - and of course, the sexual fringe of LGBT individuals, those involved in BDSM or non-monogamous sex, and fetishists get the short, wrapped-in-barbed-wire, electrocuting end of the stick, as usual. When one's natural desires are fundamentally at odds with one's lifelong belief system, no good can come of the situation.

The real "deal" with sex is not that people are too free about practicing it, but that people are not free enough to pursue the satisfaction of their natural desires in a healthy way.

Sorry about the weird format, the form won't process my enter key correctly.

Sexuality is involentary, you have little to no will in its presence, it can even usurp control and make you believe it is under your rational control. It has been expressed as the blind will of nature, nature wants you to reproduce, and it has a bag full of tricks to make sure you do. Many people in there later years look back at all the time consumed by this passion, the bad relationships, and wasted frustrations, and think, what if I had been free of that to fellow with a like passion something of cultural value. It is the one story that people never tire of generation after generation, pop songs and romance novels, boy chases girl ---boy gets girl--boy loses girl sounds like a country song to me. It is the strongest impluse to nature in the world. No matter how much misery creatures are subjected to, they eagerly bring on the next generation, even if there is no expectations of the fortunes of their children being any better. I think I shall leave it on that high note.

People should not be free in the expression of sexuality

Fido,

My thinking is much along the same lines as your own reguarding sexuality, sexuality is pretty raw nature, society as the container gives it shape, but, it is the will of nature and thus does not often conform naturally to the shape of society as container. Perhaps the greater tolernance of people outside what is termed the norm is only just, and the more rational approach is greater tolerance. It would be a blessing if sexuality was made safer, and more readly available so that it does not consume so much of a young persons consciousness. People would become naturally more emotionally mature. Sexual selection is the function of the female however, at least where it is not taken out of their physical control. More women should be aware of this as part of their education. Women have a power here which can effect transformation in society, they have begun doing so in earnest just in the last forty years, it is at the same time a civilizing force, and it is right in line with nature.

I'm trying to come up with words adequate to express the immorality of this view and I'm overwhelmed - there's just too much. So I'll leave it with 'wow'.

If it is worth expressing; thanks, but I was not trying to wow you, but only to express what is obvious.

Oh, and I hate to break this to you, but we *are* animals. Intelligent; yes, but animals nonetheless. Accepting this doesn't forgive unacceptable or destructive behavior, but it's a truth well worth keeping in mind.

Hrmm let's see...

... any 'freedom' bestowed can be abused; taken to extremes as to do others harm. If you consider the term 'freedom', as its used, to be absolute to any level of absurdity; then yes, I'd agree. And if this is the case, you've succeeded in stating the obvious (at least, I'd think, to the majority of *this* crowd).

Almost no 'liberty' or 'freedom' given, by any entity, on any basis and for any reason is *absolute* and without qualification. The question for the philosopher, to my way of thinking, is what limits are those? What basis for limits of personal action should there be? For sexuality, what extent of expression is OK, natural, socially acceptable, productive, healthy, etc.

Oh, and I hate to break this to you, but we *are* animals. Intelligent; yes, but animals nonetheless. Accepting this doesn't forgive unacceptable or destructive behavior, but it's a truth well worth keeping in mind.

If we are animals, we are at least an animal species that realize that we are, which makes us a special type of animals. Sexual expression although animalistic in nature must be tempered with human control unless we want people copulating like dogs in the street.