This. Exactly. I'm fine with the idea that there is more to life than sex. And sex is definitely better with someone you're close to. But one need not be close to one's sex partner to have a satisfying experience. And that is what life is. A series of experiences.
The majority of the kind of porn being created and uploaded by average joes in this modern era isn't the stuff you're concerned about, as in, nobody is trying to look underage, and since it's mostly solo, nobody has the opportunity to behave badly towards a partner. I'm talking about, for example, the many, many videos that are basically just some guy whacking it and getting a lot of comments going 'wow. hot. thanks for sharing'
Strictly speaking, one does not have to care about one's partner, nor even recognize or treat them like a human being, in order have a satisfying experience. Many people clearly get by just fine this way. And all other animals.
I doubt it satisfying to the victim at Cornell. Mutual consent should always precede sex. But you don't have to be married or in a long term relationship.
I'm just saying, animalistic rutting, in a state of lust so profound that consent doesn't even come into the picture, and satisfaction is irrelevant... That's the kind of sex that's natural throughout the animal kingdom.
Seriously?
It's a proposition I'd put seriously to Poem, in the context of their arguments about the proper place of sex in the animal kingdom.
How do I say this? Sex is complicated. So yeah.
As mentioned, Stalin was the leader of his own religious cult. His acts had nothing to do with being non-religious.
I've given you my ideas (#6288), but ideas do not a curriculum make. You need experts in education and pedagogy to translate ideas into a legal, functional curriculum, and I am not one of those.
Oh, so your answer is "I haven't accidentally stumbled across porn, but I'm sure those young people have." What is your evidence that a young person's experience of the internet is fundamentally different from yours, and what changes as they age so that they no longer accidentally stumble across porn?
You said that Helen does not watch porn because she is a feminist. Helen didn't say that. Helen said "I don't watch porn. I am a feminist". Two separate and unrelated sentences that you conflated by adding a "because" in between them. The fact that she is a feminist was not stated to be the reason she does not watch porn, but you said that it was. The causal relationship is yours, not Helen's.
Ants. Bees. Termites. Naked mole rats. All have a "queen" which is the only organism in the colony that is capable of breeding. The vast majority of other individuals in the colony are not involved with reproduction at all. I'm surprised you didn't know this.
No, they aren't. I have never uploaded or propagated porn in my life, and neither have you. Neither have most people.
You act like recreational sex precludes responsibility. There are plenty of effective methods for preventing unwanted pregnancies available. This is a matter for realistic sex education. And the conservative abstinence-only method has proved to be particularly ineffective at preventing unplanned pregnancies compared to comprehensive education about birth control.
How so? By not only depicting heterosexual couples intent upon having sex to produce offspring, and not simply for the joy of sex?
It's equally clear to me that you are indoctrinated to regard sex as something that is sinful and dirty, rather than something that is beautiful and joyful for those involved when they have the emotional maturity to respect others. The problems being discussed aren't caused by pornography. The subset of pornography that depicts force, aggression, disrespect and other unhealthy attitudes and behaviors is a symptom of deeper problems within human emotional states. Pornography that depicts willing adults sharing mutual enjoyment is a far cry from that.
The rest of us are, I'm sure.
Define "the relationship". I'll be the first one to say that someone who knows that a partner believes there is a mutual expectation of monogamy, but surreptitiously has sex with someone else, is being a complete ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊, and the partner whose trust they've betrayed has every right to be angry, and even end the relationship. But not everyone is in a (nominally) permanent monogamous relationship, and some people are perfectly capable of being honest with someone about wanting sex without wanting to start a permanent, exclusive relationship.
I've often said that "cheating" in a relationship is a betrayal of trust, not a betrayal of monogamy. If you trust your partner not to have sex with other people (and that is very often an unstated assumption in a relationship) and they do, that's cheating. But if sex with other partners is an agreed part of the relationship, it isn't. That doesn't mean that the relationship which includes an agreement about sex with others is a weaker relationship. On the contrary, it is stronger, because the trust has not been broken. The desire to have sex with another person is an agreed-upon part of the relationship and taken into account, so it isn't such a big problem when it happens, unlike when it happens in an assumed-but-unstated monogamous relationship.
This is, again, absolute drivel completely contradicting what I actually said in a puerile attempt at point-scoring.
I totally agree that children should have access to "responsible and comprehensive education about sex and reproduction," and I will add that it should also be available on public service tv and on the internet. In some countries, I think it already is. In many others, it would probably be illegal.
Porn (including what you call kink) may not be "served up to children," but it's not true that they "have to go looking for it." They may stumble on it. It happened to me fairly recently when I was doing a Google search entirely unrelated to sex and porn, and several links to porn appeared at the top of the first page. It was a surprise even though, post factum, I could see how it would happen. Unfortunately I don't remember what my search words were, but it's the thing about language: Words aren't unambiguous.
In this case, it's not just Poem. Fairly recently in this thread, I pointed out that choking appears in otherwise "pretty vanilla heterosexual" porn. It's not something that "you have to go looking for," and thus it will be pretty easy for children and inexperienced young people who (think they) get their education about sex from porn to get the impression that choking is a normal part of 'vanilla' sex'. (Along with slapping, by the way.)
No, it doesn't.
What are you suggesting, that atheists have a monopoly on rationalism? Stalin was an atheist who used religious tradition to his advantage.
What is your evidence for that claim? And does it even matter: as in, if they are all pretending - then it's still a problem because substantive evidence exists that it's become normalised in real life - particularly amongst younger folk (as has been noted by dann). Here's Bangor University's (Nov 2025) take:
He's not debating. He's preaching. And his religious indoctrination includes that sex is dirty, unless it is traditional heterosexual relations inside a marriage. So pornography is against decades of that kind of upbringing.
I'm suggesting that Stalin's atheism had no more to do with his actions that his lack of golfing. The Soviet Communists used atheism as a reason to oppose rival power structures - primarily the Eastern Orthodox Church. But this was done in the name of Communism, not atheism. So a tu quoque about Stalin doesn't really apply to someone just because they're non religious.
This makes no sense, especially in the context of the previous posts on the subject. You could argue that Hitler, for example, appealed to traditional Christianity to garner the support of his followers, but can you explain how Stalin used religious tradition?