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Stripping / Strippers

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TheColdTruth

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People have been arguing against hypothetical person A giving sexual pleasure (mental or physical) to person B when person A knows virtually nothing about person B.

In every instance of Rand's heroes having a sexual encounter, both of them are supremely virtuous, and both know the other is supremely virtuous, and that knowledge--that judgement--is the very basis of the sexual encounter.

"The point is not what is different, the point is what is the same."

...Yes?

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*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier topic. - sN ***

Can being a stripper be a producer?

If they use their mind to produce values, be it something as simple as taking initiative to clean the club or inventing a new kind of pole to dance around.

But maybe I'm thinking more about an erotic dancer here. :lol:

*** Mod's note: Merged with an earlier topic. - sN ***

What is the value in being a stripper or going to a strip club?

*mental image of StriperQuipster*

I'm here to lay some pipe. :pimp:

*snaps out of it*

If it caries any weight as an appeal, remember what Kira offered the pervert doctor for money.

But I admit that is only an answer to what value could be gained from it, I don't know if there is value in being one or going to one.

For as long as they do exist they are part of the complete context of my knowledge, even when the existence of their perversions are largely unimportant to me.

Knowing that a particular person holds a certain perversion could be used as a psychological indication of other things but I am not an expert.

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Why is prostitution immoral?

As long as 2 people willingly do it, I don't see what is wrong with it. If somebody satisfies his needs with a prostitute and he is happy with it, I don't see anything immoral with it.

Here in Germany prostitution is legal and a few months ago there was an article on spiegel.de about how the red-light business deals with the financial crisis and interviewed a few prostitutes.

A college girl said, that she would not want to go back to her previous job as a waitress. She worked at a high class place that was a brothel like a bathhouse so, she said, her costumers where always clean and she could turn down somebody she didn't like.. and there's probably no job that doesn'T require a certain education which pay's better than working in a high class brothel. A single mom said that she did it, because she can work from home and she enjoys sex.

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Why is prostitution immoral?

As long as 2 people willingly do it, I don't see what is wrong with it.

Not every voluntary act is moral: don't confuse morality with legality. If you don't understand why prostitution is immoral, you don't understand the nature of sex.
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Why is prostitution immoral?

As long as 2 people willingly do it, I don't see what is wrong with it. If somebody satisfies his needs with a prostitute and he is happy with it, I don't see anything immoral with it.

Here in Germany prostitution is legal and a few months ago there was an article on spiegel.de about how the red-light business deals with the financial crisis and interviewed a few prostitutes.

You're not an Objectivist though. I can't know by what standards you would decide what is and what isn't immoral, so I can't tell you what's wrong with it by those standards.

Objectivism considers immoral everything that denies our nature, and the nature of the sexual act. Sex is a celebration of values, not a sport, so engaging in sex for reasons other than because you value yourself and your partner, is a perversion, same as injecting crack, wearing a rosary or whipping yourself would be a perversion. It is not an act of rational selfishness.

That has nothing to do, of course, with the legality of it: prostitution should be legal, same as drugs and any other activity that does not violate others' rights.

A college girl said, that she would not want to go back to her previous job as a waitress. She worked at a high class place that was a brothel like a bathhouse so, she said, her costumers where always clean and she could turn down somebody she didn't like.. and there's probably no job that doesn'T require a certain education which pay's better than working in a high class brothel. A single mom said that she did it, because she can work from home and she enjoys sex.

I even doubt that prostitution gives them that much pleasure most of the time. Women who seek sex for the Hell of it do it for free, with people they pick out. So they're probably even lying about that.

And, of course, people get pleasure from all sorts of self destructive things. (like drugs) The purpose of morality is to bring long term happiness and joy, through the achievement of values, not through whatever feels good right now. There are plenty of arguments against hedonism, some of them to be found in old issues of "Playboy", and here.

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I can't know by what standards you would decide what is and what isn't immoral, so I can't tell you what's wrong with it by those standards.

There are rare circumstances where prostitution can be moral Jake Ellison. I don't know if I would still call it "prostitution" though.

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Not every voluntary act is moral: don't confuse morality with legality. If you don't understand why prostitution is immoral, you don't understand the nature of sex.

Prostitution is not always immoral as an out of context absolute. Dr. Peikoff has stated in his podcasts sex is a value even for people without partners, thus he is in some scenarios pro-prostitution and pro-masturbation.

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Objectivism considers immoral everything that denies our nature, and the nature of the sexual act. Sex is a celebration of values, not a sport, so engaging in sex for reasons other than because you value yourself and your partner, is a perversion, same as injecting crack, wearing a rosary or whipping yourself would be a perversion. It is not an act of rational selfishness.

So if you're an Objectivist and you spend many years searching for a compatible partner that you can value, but don't find one, and finally decide to have sex with someone you're just physically attracted to, you're a pervert?

I don't think so man.

And something I've never heard discussed with Objectivists are the positive health aspects of sex as well as the role hormones play in interpersonal attraction.

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Even if one were to have a legitimate need for sexual gratification, and money to spare, how could it possibly be moral to treat the woman, who is clearly not enjoying the sexual act with her clients, as an object?

If by prostitution we mean the industry: a prostitute being that person who has sex, for the most part indiscriminately with as many clients as his/her time permits, as a profession, I don't see how it could ever be moral.

If by prostitution we mean a single casual encounter in which a person gets payed by another for sex, then sure, such an encounter, in rare circumstances, can be moral.

I just assumed that prostitution is the former, not the latter.

So if you're an Objectivist and you spend many years searching for a compatible partner that you can value, but don't find one, and finally decide to have sex with someone you're just physically attracted to, you're a pervert?

Of course not. Attraction is a clear sign that you value someone. I'm talking about prostitution, indiscriminate sex with strangers, not sex without love.

Edited by Jake_Ellison
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The point is not what is different, the point is what is the same.

I don't see any similarities, hence my confusion about your statements.

In every instance of Rand's heroes having a sexual encounter, both of them are supremely virtuous, and both know the other is supremely virtuous, and that knowledge--that judgement--is the very basis of the sexual encounter.

Yes, thank you.

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Prostitution is not always immoral as an out of context absolute.
No, of course not. I was not addressing marginal cases where the only way to survive is by prostitution, etc. I'm addressing crizon's confusion of "voluntary" and "moral".
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In every instance of Rand's heroes having a sexual encounter, both of them are supremely virtuous, and both know the other is supremely virtuous, and that knowledge--that judgement--is the very basis of the sexual encounter.

Really? Roark knows Dominique is "supremely virtuous" from seeing her over look the rock quarry?

How about Roark's relationship with Vesta Dunning, the character she had to remove from the Fountainhead? (see early Ayn Rand)

You think the teenage Dagny has conscious knowledge that the boy Francisco is "supremely virtuous?" or vice versa?

Further:

Are you suggesting that somehow people need to keep themselves from feeling sexual desire until and unless they are able to make a conscious, conceptual judgment about the virtue of another person or themselves?

As I stated before:

There is a metaphysical component to sexuality; that there can be a "sense of life" / metaphysical value judgment involved with sexual attraction, like the kind discussed in Ayn Rand’s book “The Romantic Manifesto.”

Sexual desire can be and often is experienced in a pre-conceptual way, the same way one can appreciate an artwork. One can rightfully experience not only love at first sight, but also lust at first sight. (And “sight” here is not used as a metaphor.)

One can rightfully fall in love at sight, sexually desire at sight, and not conceptually validate those emotions until much later, if at all.

Sexual desire is just that a desire, i.e., an emotion, and emotions are automatic responses, and thus are amoral. (Blindly, acting on emotions can have disastrous consequences, but that is a different context.)

With regard to strippers and stripping:

In psychology, there is a concept of “psychological visibility.” (Note: Nathaniel Branden writes extensively on the subject.)

Given a certain person’s self-concept and/or self-esteem, one has certain expectations for how others will behave in regards to them. If one views themselves as highly virtuous, good, i.e., someone to be trusted and/or someone lovable; then that person would rightfully feel uncomfortable or alienated if another person reacted with horror when seeing them, coward from them, or guarded their valuables every time they came near.

In other words, the reaction received would be in contradiction to one’s own self-concept and/or self-evaluation. Thus, if we believed we were objectively important, and someone scornfully laughed at us and disrespected us, we would feel psychologically invisible to the person and/or alienated from them.

Now, in a sexual context, there are certain similar types of behavioral reactions we would expect to see from our sexual partner, given our own self-evaluation / self-concept. If we believed our self to be sexually desirable and we were in a sexual context with another, and they brushed off our advances, were bored, disinterested etc., we would experience this reaction as discordant with our views of ourselves.

For example if a man objectively believes he is a “catch” approaches a woman, and she brushes him off as if he’s a “loser?” He would feel unsettled that given the facts about himself as he has interpreted them, that woman should have acted differently. He may think/feel, is she right or am I? Or in a marriage, if the husband no longer reacts to his wife as if she’s desirable, despite the wife’s judgment of herself as being a major asset to his life, she may question her own judgment or she may question his, or look for some other factor for the discord between her self-evaluation and his behavior toward her.

Now take the case of a stripper. A stripper is paid to model sexual behavior. They are paid to act in a way that would be appropriate to their audience, under the assumption that their audience’s self-concept and self-evaluation is such, that they believe they are worthy of those kinds of behavior from the stripper. The stripper models sexual behaviors, which to a greater or lesser degree are found in normal sexual relationships. However, the behaviors any given strip club/stripper habitually models, can vary depending on their desired audience.

For example, at one time, a man may have had a girl friend who was strongly attracted to him, and he felt no discord between how she behaved with him sexually. She wanted him, and felt he deserved to be wanted. She submitted to his wishes, she did what he wanted sexually; and all of this was in accord with his objective self-evaluation.

Sometime later he gets in an accident and his face is burned. He feels the same self-evaluation, but now many women scorn him, or react with disgust towards him. His self-evaluation has not changed, yet people’s reactions contradict his judgment.

Such a man may rightfully conclude, the reactions from others he has come to expect are no longer going to come. So, instead of living in misery and alienation from a world he still believes he rightfully belongs to; he starts expending resources (time and money) to produce the kinds of accord he used to get naturally.

For example, he pays extra money in gas to start going to a support group for other people who have been disfigured in similar ways. He joins dating sites where he can try to find the kind of woman who can see past his scars. He starts joining clubs and doing activities, which interact with the same group of people over several months, so they have an opportunity to get to know him.

He sometimes suffers from a malevolent sense that things aren’t right, needing to emotionally refuel so he starts spending more time at art museums, to view his favorite works which help him experience things as they might be and ought to be, and how they once were.

Sexually, he craves having a woman react to him the way he still feels is appropriate, if only for an evening. From time to time he visits art of beautiful posed women, they are so lifelike, and he mildly experiences the women in the statues and paintings, as if they are there in the room with him. They are not disgusted by him; they look on, and model the kinds of behaviors he feels are appropriate to him.

From time to time, he goes to strip clubs and fantasizes, as a means to recapture how he once felt. He knows, it’s not fully real, but it is an analog, and it helps him experience how the world might be and ought to be.

He hires a prostitute to for the same purpose, first only to talk to him, and to touch him; but later for sex.

I’ve deliberately painted a plausible example. But I don’t think a man has to be disfigured to appreciate the same things. Nor, does he have to have a kind of heroic consciousness, which allows him to explicitly identify and name what he’s experiencing.

Edited by phibetakappa
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I’ve deliberately painted a plausible example. But I don’t think a man has to be disfigured to appreciate the same things.
Nevertheless, you seem to portray it as a "make do", a second choice. Is that what you mean; i.e. that such a choice is perfectly legitimate in a certain situation (specifically a situation where it is the best choice available)?
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Sometime later he gets in an accident and his face is burned. He feels the same self-evaluation, but now many women scorn him, or react with disgust towards him. His self-evaluation has not changed, yet people’s reactions contradict his judgment.

His self-evaluation should have changed. If you're ugly, you can't expect to be treated as if you were handsome. The accident may or may not have been his fault, so I don't necessarily judge him morally for that per se--but if he expects women to create a fake reality for him at the cost of having to evade the facts about his appearance, then he is definitely not my hero, and I find any women who volunteer to do so to be outright disgusting.

I’ve deliberately painted a plausible example. But I don’t think a man has to be disfigured to appreciate the same things.

Right--all he has to be is unattractive to women. Which, in the great majority of the cases, is not the tragic consequence of some unfortunate accident, but a direct result of the man's own failure to be worthy of women's admiration. This makes the faking involved on the prostitutes' part even worse.

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Really? Roark knows Dominique is "supremely virtuous" from seeing her over look the rock quarry?

How about Roark's relationship with Vesta Dunning, the character she had to remove from the Fountainhead? (see early Ayn Rand)

You think the teenage Dagny has conscious knowledge that the boy Francisco is "supremely virtuous?" or vice versa?

My mistake, I should not have said every encounter, and I should not have said supremely virtuous.

It is, however, virtue that attracts them to each other. Roark doesn't immediately have sex with Dominique.

I think Dagny, yes, did know that Francisco was supremely virtuous, as a teen, as far as he could've been at that time.

No, Roark did not think Dunning was supremely virtuous, but it's clear that her virtue was what he was attracted to. It was in those moments when she spoke in terms of a heroic view of man that he became interested. And it was in response to her vice that he stopped sleeping with her.

Further:

Are you suggesting that somehow people need to keep themselves from feeling sexual desire until and unless they are able to make a conscious, conceptual judgment about the virtue of another person or themselves?

I did not mean to suggest any course of action, only to point out the difference.

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It's perfectly fine to watch a stripper. Agree with Peikoff's terms though: she would have to have a colossal body and nothing less. It would also be in admirable company.

I'd like to go one day, I'm just waiting for a recommendation....

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It's perfectly fine to watch a stripper. Agree with Peikoff's terms though: she would have to have a colossal body and nothing less. It would also be in admirable company.

I'd like to go one day, I'm just waiting for a recommendation....

My recommendation is to go to a few strip clubs and enjoy looking at the women. When you find one that turns you on, let us know.

Enjoy yourself!

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I think sex as the celebration of each-others values simply does not describe reality. Having sex is an urge that is mostly important for your happiness and I can perceive through introspective that values in terms of moral standards or ideas do only play a very very minor role.

Wanting to have sex in humans results foremost from physical attraction. In other words restraining yourself would be acting against your nature and therefore immoral.

Values do of course play a bigger role, when it comes to a partnership like a marriage, but sex isn't even necessary for that.

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I think sex as the celebration of each-others values simply does not describe reality.

Your reality.

Describing reality is not even the point. The normative principle, what can be and ought to be, is the point behind pronouncements like "sex is the celebration of each-others values".

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