bluecherry
Regulars-
Posts
1165 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
21
Everything posted by bluecherry
-
Moderator deleted posts: Policy
bluecherry replied to StrictlyLogical's topic in Website Policy and Announcements
I'm opposed to having people regularly stating moral evaluations of other participants in our forum threads. One's evaluation of somebody's character up to this point is not relevant or productive to the kinds of philosophic discussion that this forum is for. People can come to their own moral conclusions anyway just reading the facts and one need not fear people will think one supports things just because one hasn't made outright statements saying one condemns it in a particular discussion. It can serve several logical fallacy purposes also to make such statements in threads, things to try to sabotage arguments with, which I contend are bad to leave open unnecessarily. 1) Red herring. Bringing up your moral evaluation of somebody in such discussions is counter productive in that it may derail the discussion. We could go from discussing socialism (since that example was used earlier) to 10 other topics that were discussed elsewhere already all over again when people start arguing the validity of the moral conclusion about somebody that was stated and what else that conclusion was formed upon. We may take a long time then, if ever, on resuming the socialism discussion where we left off. 2) Ad hominem/poisoning the well. Even very corrupt people can be correct at times, so it's still not helpful to get arguments potentially dismissed based on the arguer even if that arguer is definitely not a great person. 3) Guilt by association/argument from intimidation. These moral evaluations may serve as threats against the self-esteem of somebody debating or somebody reading the debate, trying to get them to capitulate out of fear rather than actually being rationally convinced and possibly keeping others from seeing how the rest of the logical trains in the discussion would have played out. Additionally, saying bad things about people tends to be counterproductive to convincing them often anyway. It gets them to see you as an adversary looking to harm them, so they throw up their defenses and become less receptive to what you have to say. Either way, getting somebody to give in to your arguments from fear or resist your arguments from fear, it's bad. It's not helping spread rationality and thusly improving lives, that's for sure. Have your moral evaluations, act on them, just pick some place/context to state them where they aren't going to gum up the works like this. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
"I think the first step is just to acknowledge that these principles exist." Specify what you mean *precisely* by "these principles". "In my post, I explained that 'the standard of life qua man', and subsequently the ethical principles guiding our behavior, should include masculinity and femininity." You didn't explain, you just asserted. ". . . dominance and submissiveness, as the most essential characteristics of masculinity and femininity respectively . . ." Reason for claiming this to be so? -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
Is implies ought. Indeed. Why and how does the is of one's particular sexual organs imply the specific oughts you are in favor of though, epistemologue? All I see for that in your text is "sex is important". All that means though is the oughts involved are important, nothing about what exactly those important oughts are. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
What is this whole shebang based on anyway? We've got introspection from a few people that amounts to "sounds like what I like" which is countered by introspection from others that amounts to "doesn't sound like what I like." Not unanimous even in this small a sample pool means it would be absurdly hasty to use that alone as an argument for how pretty much all of humanity is/should be. Next argument, this one's dead. Now we have statistical claims. The statistics are not well controlled and documented and subject to all kinds of bias in sampling and recollection. However, even aside from such problems, the statistics being strongly in favor of people being some way could prove nada anyway as far as actual nature and shoulds. If most humans believed in an "afterlife", really felt like they had an immortal something in them, that doesn't make them correct or the belief good or part of human nature. If even every single last male in the world loved football but one, that in and of itself proves nothing detrimental to the life of that one guy paying no attention to football because he doesn't find it so enthralling. Next argument, this one's dead too. Now there's a little evolution maybe, but we all know evolutionary psychology is junk and it still doesn't address what would be so bad for somebody who doesn't follow its alleged conclusions. Moving on. Now there's some penis in vagina mumbo jumbo alleging aaaaaaaaall kinds of things. I've seen better bullshitting in last minute freshman English papers. This one claims to be about logic, about the law of identity. We all know why those actually matter. But the specifics of this alleged law of identity argument? Who is in control during sex, capable of influencing generation of pleasure more? Males or females, both are equally capable of this. That depends on who moves more and one can or the other can or they both can equally. Who physically moves first? Either males or females. A male can lower himself down into a female or a female can lower herself down around the male. No mention why only vaginal intercourse is discussed anyway. We know this isn't about making babies, the one unique capacity of vaginal intercourse among all sexual acts. Further, it is asserted that who is moving how, when, and how much has not only implications for that couple outside of sex, but in damn near everything a person does, especially if it involves any random members of the opposite sex and specific implications at that. "A woman can't lead men in sex (yes, she can) therefore she shouldn't lead men in other ways, at least not leading all of them as president or being leading or even on an equal footing with a male romantic partner." Why? Because sex is super important relating to our identities or something like that you say? That's nonsequitur. At best, that's point B you're giving me and we are trying to get all the way to point Z. I'm going to try to make a guess at point C from the presidency comments. Point C is there's interference with sexual functioning/psychology if a female isn't submissive to the male sexual partner. How? Sex doesn't inherently involve the male in control, but even if it did, what then? I have full confidence that if it's necessary for somebody to take charge in a particular situation where otherwise two people are on an even footing, the two can work it out fine. If there were two friends and one was a dentist and the other needed a tooth pulled, the dentist could do what he had to do and the other would let him. People are very good at recognizing and heeding different necessities of different contexts. So what then? Is the next argument, "but sex is different!"? If so, how? In what relevant way? What makes sex require leadership at all times to accept leadership during it when other stuff doesn't work like that? What's the rest of the points to get to Z? The trail runs cold. Furthermore, as a point on the weakness of the reasoning of the "intercourse implying male dominance" argument, I present the equally well supported following alternative line of reasoning: Females have more sexually sensitive areas on their body and thus are inherently more sexual by nature. Their more sexual nature makes them the proper leaders in sex. Et cetera, presidency, et cetera, et cetera. (Poor argument? Highly flawed? Yup, it is. So is the male dominance argument here, but people still keep trying to champion that one anyway, unlike this one.) -
Reblogged: Being Shamed on the Internet
bluecherry replied to dianahsieh's topic in The Objectivism Meta-Blog Discussion
Somebody put a chair on top of a treadmill to sit in and watch TV. Spelling out why something is funny sucks all the humor out of it, but it looks like there's a need for it here unfortunately. There is little that could be done to make a more perfect picture of what many people vehemently contend is a widespread trend responsible for myriad health problems. It's like something you'd see in (I'm blanking on the exact name at the moment) those news paper comics with one panel that aren't on the comics pages. Those things are an extreme that you don't actually expect to ever see in real life. But there you have this image and it actually *is* in real life. It really happened. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
So, all of this is getting to seeming like a pointless discussion of statistics at best to me. We deal with individuals, not statistics in the real world. No matter how many people of genital type whatever want something or don't want something for whatever reason, there are people among them that don't share that desire for whatever reason too. People have to live according to their own nature, not that of other people they have some commonalities with. We also have to deal with actual existents that come along which are not assured to be like most of their type in every way. This means we do ourselves no favors by just going ahead treating people on sex-based assumptions rather than checking if somebody does fit that assumption first. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
And what others are saying is vaginal intercourse is not going to cut it for most females for getting highest pleasure. Not sexy is implying the question of how then you think it will lead to an orgasm. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
The quotes are rather useless. They boil down to "who moves more" or is "on top", (which you already said this isn't about and would be thwarted anyway by the woman taking the more active role, which I already mentioned) + maybe evolutionary psychology as far as body size mentioning goes (since I know you aren't advocating actual force now and we have weapons to equalize the danger/power playing field for a very long time now anyway and women can be the larger party in sex.) Women can lower themselves onto a stationary man's penis when sex involving orifices around penises is being done. Not an uncommon thing. So, could you please provide me what else it is that makes sex inherently male-dominating? I consider that highest source of physical pleasure thing to be of *huge* importance. It's a matter of it being self-sacrificial to use sex for other purposes. I actually don't think bowling, shopping, and such are really primarily a form of physical pleasure either. Massages, roller coasters, these are more of what I had in mind as other physical pleasure sources. You could try to put limits on who you would bowl, shop and such with, but it still wouldn't be an especially integrated mind and body, whole-person pleasure experience. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
See, what I contend sets sex apart from bowling is that it is the strongest potential source of physical good feelings. That's what makes it the ideal activity to link your highest mental good feelings onto - put together you can experience the most possible good feelings as a whole person. What do you think makes sex, or even just intercourse, inherently male-dominating? If it's just who moves more, well, woman-on-top is a thing. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
Why would you think that last line? What sets sex apart from bowling, biking, and gardening isn't a dominant/submissive heavily gender influenced dynamic. That kind of dynamic can be applied to bowling etc. too. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
Strongly disagreeing with the latter part there. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
So then if orgasms were truly not tied to physical stimulation anyway, why worry about vaginal intercourse when procreation isn't the goal? Below you seem to consider it rather unnecessary too. The bolded really doesn't sound sexy at all. -
Hello and welcome. As far as goals and standards for morality go, here's a relevant quote from the end of Playboy's interview of Rand: "And if you ask me, what is greatness? -- I will answer, it is the capacity to live by the three fundamental values of John Galt: reason, purpose, self esteem. " You don't need to run a railroad or be an architect to live up to the standards of Objectivism.
-
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
I do know of cases of people who can have orgasms without physical stimulation. Do you believe that everybody has the capacity to do that? -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
Anecdote and speculation then. You stated something as a fact, but you don't nearly have proof. It's fine to have a hypothesis with this kind of info you're working with, but only as long as you recognize and treat it as such. "The clit has nerve endings that come from deeper inside the vagina." Other way around. "The same nerves connect to the g-spot." The g-spot actually is still not settled upon. This may relate to the fact that the extent of clitoral tissue/nerves varies among people (dissections have shown some of this, http://books.google.com/books?id=kqcYyk7zlHYC&pg=PA32&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false ). Some people may have enough nerves in that section of the vagina to produce orgasm while others don't. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
What is your basis for this statement? -
How many Objectivists are there?
bluecherry replied to Kristen Vamsæter's topic in Miscellaneous Topics
Boy, if 6,000 is an accurate topping out mark (sounds right to me), we really are hardly even a drop in the bucket. DX Using 6,000 and 7 billion, we're 0.00008571428571428571 of the population. -
Gender Roles In Sex: A Fresh Perspective
bluecherry replied to rameshkaimal's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
Though the quote specifies orgasm, even without going that far there is typically still more physical pleasure to be had for a female when clitoral stimulation is involved. One need not discard mental pleasure to get more physical pleasure though nor vice versa. That's the thing about sex, it's about both taken to their highest extents working synergistically. Likewise the parties involved work synergistically. Pretty much the entire point of sexually stimulating acts with other people is that somebody takes pleasure also in the pleasure of the other parties. To habitually pass up the opportunity to have more pleasure for oneself (physically in this case) in sex is to rob one's partners of pleasure derived from one's own pleasure which then means having cut out some possible (mental) pleasure for oneself habitually on top of the other pleasure being missed out on that was mentioned. You undercut one half of the sources of pleasure from sex and you undercut the other too. It's like gifts. I know a lot of people will enjoy giving gifts to loved ones and want to give them something they'll like a lot, but try to avoid having those same loved ones give them gifts and will indiscriminately praise anything they do end up taking. These people fail to appreciate that their loved ones get that same sort of enjoyment from giving them gifts and having the gifts be things that are good for that person. -
Rather than having a gender and a body that don't match up, my thought is maybe they have a set of internal "blue prints" so to speak that don't match the external "building". They have built into their brain (and maybe some of their DNA more generally) information about what their body consists of that says they have, say, female organs and such when they actually wound up getting the male set. Any notion they have of them "belonging" playing with dolls and wearing skirts or whatever ("gender") is actually deduced from the simple formula "Vagina etc. owners, I am told, belong playing with dolls" + "I am one of those people that's supposed to have one of those vaginas and such". My information this hypothesis is based on: 1) We already know people have internal schematics for their bodies. (Sobriety tests for example involving closing your eyes and touching your nose are based on this.) 2) We have other examples already too of people having internal schematics that don't match up with their external body perfectly - a) amputees still getting sensations for limbs they no longer have b ) people with healthy limbs that they always felt were like some foreign object that didn't belong there http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/nov/14/please-amputate-this-leg Now, about genital sex reassignment surgery. Why do it? As mentioned by others, it results in genitalia closer to the ones that somebody feels (maybe due to the different schematics idea I mentioned) they're supposed to have. Why not feel like everything is all great as far as the sex issue goes once that's done? Well, closer to that type of genitals, definitely, but not perfect with current technology. There's also still often other indicators remaining to varying degrees of the type of body one was born with, like (for male to female) broader shoulders, narrower hips, adam's apple, a more prominent brow and jaw and such. If somebody had unrealistic expectations for how much the surgery would change and how well, they may be disappointment. Does the amount of improvement toward the genitals matching this sex rather than that sex make the surgery worth the drawbacks (cost, time, travel, pain, risk of decreased sexual pleasure)? That depends on there not being other ways to get the results and where one's sense of their physical self being accurate falls on their value hierarchy relative to those things like money and such. Value hierarchies can properly vary from person to person. To be wrong to value the benefits of such a surgery to one's sense of their physical self being accurate higher than the cost, I think one would need to show how that order of the values on the hierarchy is detrimental to a person qua human being. Let's assume were not talking about somebody using the last of their food money or a quack surgeon or something else that could kill them so easily here. Do they have a comparison group of transgender people that wanted surgery, but (costs maybe) never got it? (I figure people that didn't want surgery anyway may gum up the works by having less difficulty living with their condition to begin with or something.)
-
I wouldn't stress too much over this if I was you. It's great that you are aiming to apply logic consistently in your life, but I think you're stressing yourself out over a train of thought that could apply to many things because you've neglected one factor of your life: time. You have a finite life span and a ton of things that you could spend that time on. Some things about a particular person may be extremely difficult and time consuming to figure out beyond "because that's who and what I am" while the practical benefits to your life of figuring them out are little to nothing. As long as you can be confidant that your preference is something which can be good for a human being, generally that's good enough, go for it. The opportunity cost here of attempting to determine why you like to pursue exercise rather than thwarting viruses, for example, for how you earn a living while they both promote the legitimate value of human health is just too steep compared to what this one answer could do to benefit you.
-
People keep defriending me for supporting Israel
bluecherry replied to Chain's topic in Activism for Reason, Rights, Reality
"If he has read what I've written . . ." That's the thing, I don't think he has. I don't think the people you are having this issue with have looked much, if at all, beyond whatever post just popped up by you that they saw on the topic. That's why I think including something like that disclaimer information in the post itself might be of some use. Eh, personally, I wouldn't make that kind of reply (although, I just wouldn't even be using facebook to begin with anyway). It just strikes me as kind of petty and useless. If I was in your shoes, I'd only consider replying to briefly correct some mistaken ideas the person seems to have about your position on this matter. -
People keep defriending me for supporting Israel
bluecherry replied to Chain's topic in Activism for Reason, Rights, Reality
Thoughts: 1 Let 'em go. Good riddance to bad rubbish. 2 Other than that one you put a picture for, have all the others you mention given you clear indication that that is why they defriended you? 3 Politics in general is just not something most people find enjoyable and they may just not like having a lot of it on something they use for pleasure. That said, three things over two weeks doesn't sound like a lot, unless you've been posting other political stuff on different topics too. 4 Why the hell is it that everywhere I turn I see *only* coverage of injuries to people in/from Gaza, not a word about anybody injured in/from Israel? Surely there have been damages on both sides, not just one. Reporting THIS badly lopsided I would say would naturally lead to extremely predictable, ill-informed sympathies with one particular party BUT how the hell does anybody with a couple brain cells to rub together not see such a glaring cherry-picking of reporting? 5 If you post anything else on the topic, just to avoid obnoxious, face-palm worthy messages like the one in the picture, I'd include a disclaimer first that you are entirely well aware of injuries to people in/from Gaza and that you hold no particular ill will toward any and all people in Gaza who do not support Hamas. -
Objectivism, Preferences, and Happiness
bluecherry replied to Kierkegaard's topic in Questions about Objectivism
It's nobody's fault that ice cream = tasty. Other kinds of things one may or may not find pleasure from due to thoughts, but this isn't one of those cases. One isn't immoral or moral for liking the flavor of that stuff consequently. So, you don't need to look for a rationale to justify finding the taste of ice cream pleasant. It just is by now. Take it as a given, like that getting poked with a stick produces unpleasant physical sensations. So, with the morality of liking it being out of the question, you're left with just the question of under what circumstances is it going to be a net harm to you or not to pursue that particular pleasure. This same question applies to everything and anything you find pleasurable for any reason, so you can treat ice cream pretty much the same way you would treat anything else in judging when/where/how much/if you can have it. -
Should everyone wish to get married?
bluecherry replied to happiness's topic in Relationships, Love, Sex, Romance
You can promise to do your best to do things to support maintaining a feeling, but that's the end of the line. Actions one can choose, feelings are not within the realm of direct choice. You can influence them indirectly at most, something which still leaves no guarantees of what results one will get. How does "marriage reflect consistency of thought and practice of Objectivist philosophy regarding one's fundamental nature as a trader"? Marriage is far from the only way to "establish long term relationships that are mutually beneficial" in romance. Furthermore, please elaborate on what is entailed by "being held accountable to" here.