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There are many ways in which the common American has the wrong idea. I think one of them is sexuality. To me, sexuality is the easiest way to find proof that objectivism knows the truth about humanity.

For example, society, history, religion, and their established 'moralities' have labeled many private acts as 'deviant'. Though society has become slightly more accepting, I think the underlying belief in 'virtue vs. perversion' is still prevalent in most people's views on sex. These views commonly cover acts which don't really hurt anyone, or affect other individual's lives. For example, Bondage, roleplaying, SM, Sub-dom, and many other fetishes, each one is labeled as a specific form of perversion. Consequently, each new label causes more people to become secretly (or overtly) interested in the fetish. As more societal 'laws' are created against something, more people are fundamentally driven to break those laws. I pose that the answer to the question, "Why do people have sex in all the 'wrong' ways?" is that it is in the nature of a human to be free, and each time a freedom is taken away, it is again in our nature to attempt to push past the bars and enjoy that freedom, as inconsequential as it may be to success or happiness.

I think that in a perfect objectivist country, while people would be free to feel and think and judge a certain way on the actions of other people, it would be far more acceptable to, say, watch pornography, engage in fetish play, and explore many aspects of sexuality. At the same time, because people would be free to do so, there would likely be far less instances of extreme fetishism, including actions which inhibit the freedom of other human beings, as in rape, kidnapping, pedophilia etc.

Does this sound objective? Does this make psychological sense to you? Are there many objectivists who agree that fetishes are 'deviance' or 'perversion'?

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You have stumbled upon the "Golden Topic" on this forum, Jackethan. There are already many long threads concerning sex, sexual fetishes, sexuality, pornography, pedophilia, rape, and the list goes on (the longest thread is on homosexuality, over 60 pages). The forum's search function isn't too bad, and you should be able to use it to find those threads. Some may not cover aspects of the topics that you wish to discuss, so be sure to bring them up in the threads after you have read through them.

As a side note, to make it easy for other users to best understand what you mean, it would help to capitalize "Objectivism" when you're talking about Rand's philosophy, and to keep "objective" lower-case when you're talking about being "objective" as such.

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I would question whether people are "fundamentally driven" to break the new laws. You'd have to define what "fundamentally driven" means. Also, there is evidence to show that most people don't want total freedom. And while legalizing everything would take away the "rebel" actors' reason to rebel, it would also make the "genuines" more comfortable doing what they want, so perhaps it would even out.

Re: what JASKN said:

While I'm certain it was unintentional, I think calling sex the Golden Topic for the site is belittling to the forum, because sex is the Golden Topic EVERYWHERE on the internet, and it lessens the emphasis on what is special about oo.net. However you're probably more likely to find rational discussions on the subject here.

That said I think the homosexuality thread has become a bit of a joke because of the level of repetition. If you cut the thread down to points that were made, without any repetitions, it might be 5-10 pages.

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While I'm certain it was unintentional, I think calling sex the Golden Topic for the site is belittling to the forum, because sex is the Golden Topic EVERYWHERE on the internet, and it lessens the emphasis on what is special about oo.net. However you're probably more likely to find rational discussions on the subject here.
No, I didn't mean to belittle the forum. Other than porn (the internet's most frequented sites are porn sites), and other than sex generally (it's very popular!) in socializing, advertising, clothing, and so on, I'm out of the loop concerning internet discussion on sex. As far as I know, this is the only place it happens. :(

But, the sex threads here have a lot to trudge through, and there are usually the same key points discussed or disputed in each one... I think their net value is less than the forum's generally.

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