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בדיוק מה שכתוב בתיאור:

".Bullshit makes the flowers grow, and that's beautiful"
לפני 14 שנים. 3 במאי 2010 בשעה 8:51

אוקיי, אז הלילה ישבתי וכתבתי... וחשבתי וערכתי וכתבתי...

כל-כך כיף לי לכתוב ככה!!! XD

אבל על מה כתבתי?
נתקלתי בבלוג של astaro, קראתי שם להנאתי קטע מעניין וכתוב היטב, ואז, היות וביקש שם ביקורת, ביקרתי 😄
הנה קישור לפוסט המקורי:
http://www.thecage.co.il/blog/userblog.php?postid=228252&blog_id=45026
כתבתי את התגובה באנגלית מטעמי נוחיות שלי, ובעקבות זה שהקטע המקורי הוא גם באנגלית.
למי שמתעניין אבל מתקשה בשפה, קבלו את התנצלותי הכנה.

עכשיו, הנה התוצאה - מקווה שהמתעניינים יהנו:

Ok, 5th paragraph (3rd in English):
"Saying you love sex is like saying you love food, it doesn't really have meaning until you have tasted many different dishes."
I disagree, and since I feel this is an important point (in the text and in general), I'm going to be quite pedantic analyzing it. Indeed, this entire criticism revolves around this one sentence, as I will explain.

Now, to the point:

Saying "I love sex" shouldn't inherently translate into "I know from experience that I love many types of sex", which is what it seems to me you implied.

For the sake of simplicity, and because it is more than a little reasonable, throughout this text I’m going to assume that sexual experience is the only valid way to give support to the statement “I love sex”. This is as opposed to giving support through, say, thought experimentation (well, fantasies) or common sense (e.g. “I’m always horny and love having sex”, which implies basic biological support for the claim).

Rather, the problem I’ll be dealing with is the idea that one would have to have many types of sex in order to confidently say that he or she loves it.

[At this point I’ll note two things:
The first is that I am allowing myself to write a lot about this matter without first asking you for clarification on your intention. The reason is that, regardless of what you specifically may have meant (which I am certainly interested in knowing), many people in general, as well as many sexual experimenters specifically, seem to share this idea which’s validity I’ll be arguing against. As such, it already deserves to be written about.
The other is that while I was going to run a little with the food metaphor, saying “I love my mother’s cooking” in this context gave me the willies. What I would have otherwise said, but am certainly not saying right now, is that knowing I love her cooking is enough for me to know that I love food.]

There are many things “I love sex” can imply and I’ll deal with a few major cases, all of which revolve around loving more or less types of sex.
If saying "I love sex" implies "I love [many types of] sex", then you indeed needed to have had many types in order to say it factually. In this case, that original sentence is correct.
If "I love sex" implies "I love [some types]" or "[all types] of sex", then you either only needed to have tried a couple of kinds, or needed to have tried all different kinds of sex, respectively, in order to say it factually.

Since the third case ("all") is logically absurd, as trying all types of sex is realistically impossible, I'll stick to the other two as the ones usually being implied. However, this third option may be the one which makes the statement “I love sex” inherently ambiguous, as I will now try to explain. “I love sex” would, I think, be regularly taken to mean “I love all sex” if it weren’t a logical absurdity – I don’t know what would be the linguistic proof for this, but “sex” and “all sex” are both very strongly related (and since I find this to be a reasonable axiom, I’ll rest much of my argument on it). As such, most of us immediately take “I love sex” to imply something else – something still relatively close to “I love all sex” – without giving it a second thought. (Note that I didn’t write “I love all types of sex” now – this will become relevant much, much later.)

And since the statement "I love sex" is inherently ambiguous, generalizations about it are prone to be broken. Therefore, it should be asked "what do you mean by 'I love sex'?" before any judgment about the statement’s validity is made.
For example, is it wrong for a man to say "I love sex" while meaning "there is literally nothing I like better than having missionary position sex with my wife every night", despite it being the only type of sex he's had? Granted, broadening his horizons might positively or negatively affect his position on sex in general, but is it not true that he currently certainly "loves sex"? Is he less entitled to saying this than a person who has had countless different sexual experiences, while taking slightly less pleasure in them than our missionary man? As I implied, I would say the missionary man not only “loves sex”, but also happens to love sex more. Furthermore, if our missionary man said “tried doggy, was horrible, went right back to missionary”, has he lost his right to loving sex, as half the types he tried he also hated? I wouldn’t say so.

However, I am willing to assume that, by analyzing it one way or another, it can be shown that any person who has had sex more than a few times has also had at least a few types of sex. As you said, changes in position, partner, scenery, mood and what kind of day you were having all count when judging the dish. As such, I find that it is relatively easy for even the most sexually boring but active person to correctly say that he loves “some types of sex”, and by extension has more support for saying “I love sex”. What really matters might be how many times he’s had it – it simply makes for better empirical evidence.
(I am aware that your 2 sentences following the one at the center of my criticism express almost exactly the same idea as my last paragraph. However, I strongly feel that they do not stress enough how much even the most routine vanilla sex life is still a complete sex life, a fact which some of us lovable perverts often forget.)

From a different angle, an ad absurdum (because I love and can’t resist an ad absurdum 😄 ):
Let’s take the (presumably valid) example of a woman with severe OCD, who very much enjoys what sex life she has. First, would you expect that having more varied sex would help judge whether or not she loves it, rather than just making the answer less clear by mixing sex with mind-blasting lack of routine? Then, would you say that she has no way of telling at all (since she presumably can’t vary her sex life), despite her very much enjoying her very much routine sex life? Since it seems to me that having OCD doesn’t preclude being able to attest to loving sex, but may certainly preclude a varied sex life, I’d say that the ad absurdum works.
On a less ad abs side of it, I believe that many (though certainly not all) people’s feelings towards sex would only be made a little more confused, and less easily judged, by mingling them with the anxiety caused by the change of routine, i.e. spicing up their sex lives more than a little. The fact of the matter is that humans are creatures of habit.

In a quick summary of it all, I’d say that many people with routine sex lives can nevertheless be trusted to have much conclusive meaning behind the claim that they “love sex”. To support this, I’ll propose that saying “I love sex” implies not necessarily that “I love [some/many/all] types of sex”, but is rather just as likely to imply that “I love [most/all] sex I’ve had”. Now, reaching back to the beginning of this text, I’ll take the statement “I love all sex” and compare it with “I love many types of sex” and with “I love most of the sex I’ve had” – both appear to be rational statements which can be easily validated, and quite equally close to the statement they were derived from.

My conclusions? Leave the poor vanillas alone - all they said is that they were having fun… 😄

There is, of course, much more that can be written here, such as of the critical difference between saying “I love sex” and “I don’t love sex”, but this has been more than enough for me for one day.

I hope this was helpful and interesting.
Criticism is of course entirely welcome 😄

Good day 😄

astaro - its all in the difference between the objective perspective and the subjective perspective. subjectively a person could love sex from 15 years of missionary position. if they are satisfied when they look at themselves in the mirror then more power to them and they should consider not expanding their horizons.

objectively though that person has no clue what he/she is talking about. i agree with you that ultimately the expression i love sex has absolutely no meaning, it has internal meaning per person using those words and the meanings for the most part will be vastly different, for me it is the fact that i have never had a negative sexual experience no matter how freaky i got and i still have quite a few ideas going around in my head, they all seem appealing and just from my attitude towards them i am rather positive they will be good experiences.

i believe that if you where to census the population of the world you would find very high percentages of people who feel they are not satisfied with their sex lives. i believe you would find sexual experiments (love the phrase) at the high end of the scale when it comes to their personal satisfaction from their sex lives while people who have very little experience (or the willingness to acquire it) at the lower end.

if i got to the bottom of your thinking the discussion here is about weather or not ignorance is bliss. subjectively it is indeed bliss. objectively on the other hand i wouldn't trade my knowledge and experience for anything. i believe i enjoy missionary position a hell of a lot more then a person who hasn't experienced anything else for the simple fact that i realize its value and the difference between it and other positions.

this isnt criticism mind you, you started a sub discussion which was one of the things i was hoping to achieve.

thanks.
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - (מנסה משהו עם הפורמט, מקווה שיצא נכון)

[english]I did not mean to imply, at all, that ignorance is bliss. Actually, if I’d believe that were the case, I don’t think I’d have much of a reason to be here :)
I’d like you to tell me what it is I said that most convinced you I meant this, so I can try wording it differently.

Regarding the 3rd paragraph, I wouldn’t be surprised if much of what you’re saying’s true. What interests me is, if it is, which’s the cause and which the effect? Namely, are sexual experimenters (glad you liked it :) I think I actually picked it up off of a translation I did once) satisfied with their sex lives because they experiment, or do they allow themselves the freedom for experimentation because they have a greater capacity for enjoying sex in the first place?

As for objectivity, subjectivity and experience, I have a lot to say but won’t right now. It will take reconciling many differences I think we have on the matter, and don’t want it to dominate this conversation :)

What I’m interested in knowing right now is what your definition of sex is in the first place. What do you and don't you consider sex? I know that’s easier asked than answered, but I’d like it if you tried :)[/english]
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - well, i got the ignorance is bliss part from your example of a person having missionary sex and loving it, they are, experience wise ignorant (experience and knowledge are virtually impossible to differentiate). if they choose to stay where they are they are choosing ignorance over knowledge. granted said knowledge has the possible risk of creating less pleasure (though personally i don't believe in that).

i don't get into chicken and egg questions, it is impossible to know which preceded which and anything i say would be a half assed assumption (i really don't like making half assed assumptions). best answer i can offer is 50/50.

as for your last question, sex is whatever you do with your genitalia to have fun. the rest is foreplay (which is just as important if not more).
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - Nope, the so called missionary man just happened to love his sex life more than the other guy did his own, that's all :)
In the back of my head, he's the type who requires the security of a lasting monogamous relationship (without which sex is just too nerve-wrecking for him, but with which he's ecstatic), while also having an acquired aversion towards "non-traditional" sex. I think that, in practice, such people are often (though certainly not always) realistically unable to get the type of fun out of varying their sex lives that people like you get without an effort.
I regrettably say people like you, rather than people like us, for reasons I'll elaborate on another time :)
Suffice it to say that my sexual experiences to date, though they haven't been entirely discouraging, haven't been particularly pleasant either.

As far as knowledge and experience go, I think this conversation's inspiring me to write a blog post about my thoughts on epistemology, which I'll *gladly* do when I have the time :)

I don't think it's such a chicken and egg question, at least, not if you trust empirical evidence. For example, finding that people who report dissatisfaction with their sex lives are also prone to having inherently lower sexual appetites would be a step towards answering the question.
And my thoughts on half-assed assumptions go into those on epistemology :)

Oh, ok, that's simple enough :)
I recommend adding that to the beginning of your project - I think the disambiguation'll be helpful in the long run.
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - there is no contradiction between the security of a lasting monogamous relationship and kinky sex :)

how can you tell if said people report dissatisfaction because they have a lower sexual appetite or if they have a lower sexual appetite because they have experienced much dissatisfaction with sex?

it is the nature over nurture debate in my eyes.
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - I agree *entirely* that there's no contradiction whatsoever :)
And if it were only that, I agree that kinkiness wouldn't be a problem for him, as long as it's with his spouse.

I'll give my thoughts on the second part when I'm less tired... :)
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - In short, modern medicine and our understanding of genetics.

Just as we know that the learning disabled aren't "just not trying hard enough", but have brains that simply works differently from what's expected, we can, for example, figure out if for some there are genes-related deficiencies in the production of appropriate hormones (anything from dopamine to adrenaline could pose a potential issue). Such deficiencies would account well, by my book, for a lack of sexual apatite, ruling out bad former experiences as the cause and leaving them as an effect.

And, much in the way that, for a long time, the learning disabled suffered from unwarranted feelings of ineptitude and incompetence as a result of trying to change the unchangeable, it might be found that, for some, "giving up" on an exciting sex life might work wonders that trying harder won't. Either that, or taking pills.

But, again, this all depends on whether or not you trust empirical evidence, something which I don't take for granted.

BTW, for the record, I'm learning disabled, too.
It seems to be NLD (nonverbal learning disability), which is hardly recognized yet, at least in Israel.
It accounts, among other things, for just how much I like talking... :)
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - this comes for believe more then from actual evidence but as a person with a variety of learning disabilities i managed to over come all of them and be successful in my studies without any external assistance. i believe that if you truly believe something is possible about yourself then for the most part it is. even in the cases of chemical imbalances i have always thought that the brain is more effective at fixing itself then any exterior assistance you could provide it with.

i do agree that there are some cases in which the chemical imbalance is to powerful for an attitude change but i always get back to the thought that by managing to apply the right attitude one can solve just about any problem one has with his/her life.
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - Well, that's your experience. You're a dyslectic who has fewer spelling mistakes than many people without learning disabilities, and you deserve an enormous amount of credit for that :)

My experience has been quite different, and much less positive. I won’t go into details right now, because it gets long fast, so suffice it to say that I worked very, very hard, and most of what it earned me were nervous breakdowns, sleep deprivation and anxiety attacks, which, well, weren’t quite what I was aiming for :)
School went very, very badly for me.
Things are looking up nowadays and, indeed, it’s thanks to an attitude change – I finally stopped trying to fix my learning disability. Instead, I’m doing my best to circumvent it entirely, which has a lot to do with the way I nowadays perceive how people deal with learning disabilities in general.

While there’s no doubt you’ve overcome most of the problems your learning disabilities pose, are you sure you’ve literally fixed anything about them? Are you less dyslectic now than you were years ago, or do you read and write well despite still being dyslectic?
For my part, I know that it’s taking me many years to learn to socially interact, and that I’m getting better at it all the time, but it’ll likely never really come naturally to me no matter how good I get. I’ll keep using manual controls while others are on autopilot.

(And as an example for how difficult social interaction can be for me, on some days it takes me hours to write a relatively simple response like this one.)
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - the reason i have virtually no spelling mistakes in English is because the internet corrects me, Hebrew is a lot trickier.

school went very badly for me as well (high school), once i got older and more goal oriented i was able to choose a field that works with my disabilities (something i can use logic on rather then something i need to remember).

i haven't overcome any of my problems in the fixing sense, i have merely put myself in a position where they are not overly noticeable.

what part of the writing process takes you a long time?
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - I reasoned that if you said you felt more confident with your English than with your Hebrew, then your personal spelling ability's relevant.
How's Hebrew trickier?

Writing can be difficult for me for several different reasons, actually.
There's the social aspect, where I'm trying to keep my tone in line with that of the conversation (I miss social cues relatively easily, including when I'm the one giving them); clarity, where I try to keep my writing realistically readable (writing short sentences, and keeping ideas from branching out too many times); working out exactly what it is I'm talking about
(עיקר וטפל מתערבבים אצלי מאוד בקלות);
and keeping things concise (it comes naturally to me to write very long texts, which is usually both inappropriate and ineffective).
And, after I'm done writing and am fairly confident I did well, there's psyching up to actually sending it - years of difficulty have left me rather nervous when communicating, usually.
I probably also missed a step in that list, which is part of the problem :)
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - Hebrew spelling is trickier because Hebrew spell checkers are less effective then English spell checkers due to a lot of words that sound the same but are spelled differently. personally i am more confident with my English for vocabulary and expression reasons rather then spelling.

for a long time i tried to conform my communication methods to the percieved norm. it mostly resulted in being rather quiet. these days i perceive my communication methods as a filter. whoever doesn't get it will naturally stay distant so there is really no point in putting an effort into it, my communication methods will create good communication with people i find naturally interesting. seems to be working pretty well.
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - I feel that I express myself better in English, too, but I am almost entirely unsure as to why that is :)
I grew up using both languages equally.

I don't think I actually *had* a communication method until fairly recently... I mean, there was the way I happened to communicate, but it wasn't *mine*. I didn't express what I wanted to express, and I didn't understand what others were expressing. At least, I very often didn't. Far too often.
That got incredibly lonely.
Even people I was really interested in I had a hard time communicating with. And I'm too stubborn, curious and attention-starved to let that go on... :)
So I'm learning, slowly... :)
לפני 14 שנים
astaro - so far at least i really haven't seen any issues with your communication skills :)
לפני 14 שנים
SinKitty - So far I've been monitoring myself carefully. I guess that means the practice's paid off :)
לפני 14 שנים

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