When you refer to what should be done privately and what it is okay to
do publicly you might want to consider why these thing should and okay.
I am reminded of an incident. I have said before that I used to hang out
with outlaw bikers. I never sought out outlaw bikers to hang out with.
It's just that a lot of strippers are biker women and when I hung out
with my coworkers I ended up hanging out with the bikers too. I think
the outlaw biker culture is a counterculture. That is, it is if a
counterculture is what you get when a group of people disapprove of the
surrounding mainstream culture and so just adopt other cultural
practices collectively that they do approve of. But when you are around
bikers you come to expect certain things that you would not expect in
the mainstream culture. One of them is that in almost every biker social
gathering there will be some public sex act of some kind or another. One
such case stands out for me. I think it stands out because it was so
unusually open. That is, if anyone had come down the street what was
going on would have been full view. It was a cookout in the yard of a
certain woman named Terry. It had gotten rather late at night and a lot
of people had left and I was ready to leave myself, but I had to wait on
a couple of women for whom I was their transportation. A number of
people were sitting around a picnic table and some were sitting in lawn
chairs. A casual low key conversation was going on and on the side of
the picnic table that was facing the street there was a man lying on the
bench. A certain woman named Tina was giving him fellatio. The nearest
houses were a bit in the distance, but there was a church right across
the street. The neighborhood was pretty quiet and those of us around
thepicnic table were the only people in site. However, if anyone had
come down that street they could not have missed what was going on on
that bench. Terry was expressing some worries about the possibility that
someone might actually drive by and she was afraid that it might cause
the police to be called. Finally the two women I was with were ready to
leave and we did just that. A couple of days later I was talking to Tina
and she told me that right after I left everyone moved into the house
and for the rest of the night right up until daylight she engaged in
many and varied sex acts with that guy with everyone else watching. She
said that she was kind of worn out. I can say that I did not engage in
public sex like that because I didn't have a partner handy to do it
with. But would I have done so if I had? I'll put it this way. You are
not going to catch me doing something like that in broad daylight in,
say, a downtown plaza. As much as the prudish population may vex me the
reality remains and the reality is such that they do have a lot of power
over me. That means that I would likely end up in jail and face some
extreme social ostracism. But would I have done so in the situation I
just described? Well, I would have had the same worry that Terry had.
Really, it was really open there. But if it had been suggested that it
be moved into the house would I? In a situation like that I think I just
might have. It is not just a matter of doing it around people I know
either. I actually did not know all the people at that gathering. But I
knew that everyone would have accepted it. And here is something else. I
think it would have increased my social acceptance among the bikers. It
would have made me more one of them.
___
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were
so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply
a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had
not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely,
you must realize that we created God, and that all of us together now
have killed him.” ― Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept
On 6/8/2021 1:57 PM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger,
I was referring to what should be kept private and what it is OK to do
publicly. We eat out in restaurants, but only a fraction of the population
engages in group sex.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey (Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Tuesday, June 8, 2021 12:47 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: Gratuitous Prudery
I understand the difference. If I saw someone eating an ice cream cone it is not likely that I
would mistakenly think that person was engaging in sex. But in the words of John W. Campbell, Jr.,
"A difference that makes no difference is no difference." I am reminded of a story a
certain woman told me about her father catching her masturbating. I don't know how old she was when
this happened, but she was pretty young at the time. She said that her father happened to walk in
while she was masturbating with her cabbage patch doll. She described it as the most embarrassing
thing that ever happened to her in her whole life. The trouble is that she did not really have to
be embarrassed. Her father made it embarrassing with the lecture he proceded to give her. He sat
her down and gave her a lecture about how what she was doing was normal and natural. I didn't hear
his speech, so I don't know exactly what he said, but she told me that he must have gone on for
nearly an hour telling her how normal and natural it was and ended up telling her, "Just don't
ask me to help you." She said that he sure didn't have to worry about that. Well, I am going
to have to agree with him that it is normal and natural, but he did not treat it as normal or
natural in the least bit. Eating a candy bar is normal and natural too, but if someone walks in and
catches you eating a candy bar can you expect that he will sit you down and lecture you about how
normal and natural it is for nearly the next hour? Of course not. The most likely thing he will do
is to not comment at all. If he does comment he might say that he likes that kind of candy bar too
or he might suggest another candy bar that you might like. Giving you a lecture about it, though,
is sending a very clear message that you are engaging in some kind of terrible act that is far from
normal and that you need some kind of therapy in the form of the lecture to help you get over your
perversion. So what he did was another form of prudery. If he had really acted like it was normal
and natural like he was saying it was she might not have been embarrassed at all or, if she was, it
would have been much milder.
___
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through disbelief
and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something were so! Your patient's wish to
be in God's hands is not truth. It is simply a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a
wish not to die, a wish for the eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'!
Evolutionary theory scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself
had not the courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must
realize that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” ― Irvin D.
Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept On 6/8/2021 10:08 AM, Miriam Vieni wrote:
Roger,
If you don't understand the difference, then no one can explain it to you. But
there is a difference between describing people eating together as opposed to
people being involved in sexual activity.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Monday, June 7, 2021 11:03 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Gratuitous Prudery
Since I mentioned gratuitous prudery let me express my opinion of that more
explicitly. It is obvious to me that sex is something that is a shared
experience of humanity. Having worked in some of the peripheral areas of the
sex industry I am especially aware that it is very rare that anyone gets
through life without having sex. Even the most unattractive people you can
imagine have sex. It might not be as frequent for them as it is for most
people, but they do have sex. Even the nerdiest of the nerds have sex. Prudish
old grandmothers could not have become grandmothers if they had not had sex.
Even children have sex. An example of that was a woman who was telling me about
her first sexual experience. She was eight years old when she had lesbian sex
with her nine-year-old friend. But even with examples like that about the only
people who get through life without having sex actually are children who die
before they have a chance to try it out. Now, if it is such a shared
experience, such an experience that we all have, then why do so many people get
so uptight about it? Why do so many people go to such ends to keep sex a secret
from children as if they aren't going to find out that it exists anyway? Why do
so many people have to pretend that they know nothing about sex? Why do so many
people get so offended when someone else casually admits to knowing about and
indulging in sex?
Really, if anything causes me to have a strong urge to roll my eyes it is when
someone starts some prudish self-righteous declaration of how such things
should be kept private and should never be mentioned in public and so forth
when it is such a shared experience. Really, why should we all keep such things
so secret when it is such a shared experience? Eating is a shared experience
too and no one tries to keep it a secret that they eat food. People eat food
openly in public and in social gatherings and no one is offended if someone
says that a certain dish was really enjoyable. There is no point in keeping
food consumption a secret because it is a universally shared experience. So is
sex. What is the point of prudery?
___
--
Irvin D. Yalom “Truth," Nietzsche continued, "is arrived at through
disbelief and skepticism, not through a childlike wishing something
were so! Your patient's wish to be in God's hands is not truth. It is
simply a child's wish—and nothing more! It is a wish not to die, a wish for the
eveastingly bloated nipple we have labeled 'God'! Evolutionary theory
scientifically demonstrates God's redundancy—though Darwin himself had not the
courage to follow his evidence to its true conclusion. Surely, you must realize
that we created God, and that all of us together now have killed him.” ― Irvin
D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept