The mind boggles ...

[westen44]

That looks interesting. Missed it completely. Guess I'll tune in for the upcoming season.

There are people not interested in it because of Seth MacFarlane and maybe that's understandable.  I'm not very familiar with him, but I think he has had some other shows that were lacking.  Also, this can be a difficult show to watch sometimes because it switches so much between the dramatic and comedic.  Overall, it's probably worth watching.  Season 2 should begin soon. 

[Granny Gremlin]

There are people not interested in it because of Seth MacFarlane and maybe that's understandable.  I'm not very familiar with him, but I think he has had some other shows that were lacking.   
[/quote

He's made a career of being politically incorrect; trolling.  I'm sure you've heard of Family guy, and the whole We Saw Her Boobs musical number at the last awards show he hosted.

Personally I'm not sure if I am OK with the schtick, but it seems that at least sometimes he was making the right point.  Nobody's perfect.

[westen44]

^^^
I like sci-fi enough to probably keep watching "The Orville" regardless of any possible flaws it may have.  Also, I still don't know enough about Seth MacFarlane to even have an opinion about him.  I've heard of the Family Guy a lot, but never watched it.  I don't even know what it's about.  Whatever he may or may not have done in the past, "The Orville" is really not too bad, especially for people who are gung-ho sci-fi fans.

[uwe]

"I can only speak for myself, but I can vividly remember reaching puberty early."

You mean you have actually grown out of it by now?  Sure had me fooled. (ducking ...)

[uwe]

And now back to serious!

Jake, it is is obvious to me that the subject stirs something up in you, it has in past threads too. I respect that (Edith has different views on some of these subjects too and tells me I lack empathy).

"Sorry bud, but that is the daftest statement I have ever heard.  Also, a large part of the problem of why male survivors have such a hard time coming forward for help nevermind justice. It's a self-fiullfilling prophecy, and Uwe (as a lawyer well versed in the rules of logic/rhetoric), can tell you exactly what logical phallusy [sic] that is."

Oh, the drama! "Survivors"!!! Auschwitz had survivors. Gene Simmons' mom is a survivor. People whose parents starved to death in the Sahel Desert are survivors. A victim of a violent rape is a survivor. A late Senator and fine man was a survivor of an airplane crash and subsequent Hanoi Hilton imprisonment. Having received a blowjob you regret for whatever reason doesn't make you a "survivor". Inflationary use of language, let's not get carried away. The statistics of people dead from received blow jobs are insignificant - and there are likely to be worse deaths while we're at it.

"Not everyone, for various reasons, is ready for sex at 17, even if they think they want it, it can turn out to be problematic afterwards."

Isn't your dad a scientist? We're mammals made to mate and breed. Lots of things people want at any given time can be problematic and regrettable in the aftermath, you wanna forbid them all?

You can choose from phantom fears
And kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose free will

Neil Peart (a Canadian!)

The alleged psychological and sociological side effects of sexual acts have been blown out of all proportion IMHO, it's a primal act. If it goes together with love, so much the better. If it doesn't, people can still enjoy it. It should neither be a life- nor world-changing matter. We've built this huge cultural and moral bogus structure around it - sacrificing all reason and proportionality in the process.

"I'm also a bit mistified that Uwe seems to think that if his son did have any issues (not saying he does, mind, just if) that daddy would be the first to know.  I doubt most of us told our dads shit, especially if it made us look less strong or manly to do so."

My son - like most people - probably has all kinds of issues, some of which I am no doubt to blame for. Sexual experiences with a very much older woman as an adolescent are not among the known sources of any issues I have yet noticed with him. And yes, we have deep conversations about all aspects of life, sex included. Last I heard, we were in the 21st century, not the 19th one and I faintly remember something called the "sexual revolution" in the 60ies (when I was born) - not all of which has yet been the victim of an ideological reactionary roll-back (whether religious, conservative or feminist). So, while I might not be the first to know, I generally take enough of an interest to get to know eventually.

[westen44]

"I can only speak for myself, but I can vividly remember reaching puberty early."

You mean you have actually grown out of it by now? Sure had me fooled. (ducking ...)

All joking aside, I'm the INFP personality type.  Probably the worst of all 16 categories if you're interested in blending in with the crowd  Any time the subject of MBTI personality types is brought up, you'll usually have someone say they don't believe in that.  I wish I didn't believe in it, either.  But I do believe in it.  For many reasons, but one is because I think Carl Jung, whose ideas are what MBTI are based on, was a psychological genius  Being an INFP may be helpful if you're going to be a writer, a scientist or even to a more limited extent, a musician.  But in many other cases INFPs are probably going to spend a lot of time being misinterpreted.  On the plus side, INFPs are the personality least likely to commit mass genocide.  Sadly, though, they can also be known as the famous people who commit suicide.  Think Ian Curtis or Kurt Cobain.  Getting more directly to the point, INFPs are often known as the type more likely to connect to childlike idealism. It's something which can be an advantage in youth, but maybe not so much as time passes.  You may have a lot of INFP idealists, but maybe an unfortunate number of older cynics when all is said and done. 

On a personal note, being this way certainly can put a person deeply in touch with the emotion in music.  This may be the most advantageous thing about it.  But if you're wanting to be a "people person" who gets along with most people, just forget it.  That's unlikely to happen.  I didn't find out about MBTI until a few years ago.  But when I did, it kind of stunned me especially when I saw that some of the people I connected with the most--like John Lennon, George Orwell, and Soren Kierkegaard--had all been INFPs.  In general, INFPs often don't care what society thinks about a lot of things, but at the same time usually make an attempt to be polite about it. 

[uwe]

No worries, I like INFPs, doesn't everyone, you're a rare breed!  I have some of it in me as well. Mass genocide is not really a desirable core capability if I may say so as a German.

I'm also inherently shy - all the jester, irony/sarcasm and low pc taboo-icebreaker is a way to compensate and camouflage that, I realized that early on.

Jung is a bit too esoteric/quasi-religious to me (one of my best buddies is a glowing Jung disciple, it does give me headaches sometimes), I'm more with him here ...

[westen44]

No worries, I like INFPs, doesn't everyone, you're a rare breed!  I have some of it in me as well. Mass genocide is not really a desirable core capability if I may say so as a German.

I'm also inherently shy - all the jester, irony/sarcasm and low pc taboo-icebreaker is a way to compensate and camouflage that, I realized that early on.

Jung is a bit too esoteric/quasi-religious to me (one of my best buddies is a glowing Jung disciple, it does give me headaches sometimes), I'm more with him here ...

It turns out to be a mixed bag of things  Like I was saying, I think where being an INFP works the best is when someone is a writer.  But once someone might venture out in other things, it could get more problematic  What can be odd is that an INFP may actually relate better to someone who is more different than he is.  I know, for example, that sometimes even if an INFP female is very attractive, I may not find her very sexy.  I can think of one You Tube person whose health videos I like a lot.  She is so pretty, but I'm not sure how much I'd want to be around her in real life.  Usually, I'd rather be around someone who is my opposite. 

People can get too caught up in the MBTI thing.  After a while, I stopped bothering keeping up with it at all.  There is something about it which reminds me too much of astrology or something like that I guess.  But it did help me gain some insight into myself, although more often than not I wasn't too impressed or happy about it.  The worst part of all is being continually misunderstood.  Having a best friend for many years who is an ENFJ has been of tremendous help, though.  I had her as a friend years before I even had any idea at all what MBTi was all about. 


"People understand me so poorly that they don't even understand my complaint about them not understanding me."
---Kierkegaard

[Granny Gremlin]

Oh, the drama! "Survivors"!!! Auschwitz had survivors. Gene Simmons' mom is a survivor. People whose parents starved to death in the Sahel Desert are survivors. A victim of a violent rape is a survivor. A late Senator and fine man was a survivor of an airplane crash and subsequent Hanoi Hilton imprisonment. Having received a blowjob you regret for whatever reason doesn't make you a "survivor". Inflationary use of language, let's not get carried away. The statistics of people dead from received blow jobs are insignificant - and there are likely to be worse deaths while we're at it.

You're going to nitpick a word I used?  I used that to underscore one of the implied reasons (i.e. rape, as you mention, earlier in childhood) for why some people may not be ready or OK with this sort of thing (addressing the quoted post directly re any 17 year old would jump... BTW it is important to understand the distinction between actually being ready to jump at the opportunity and just agreeing with the guys that you would). I was NOT referring to Bennet as a survivor; whether he is or is not I have no bloody idea, in fact you'll notice I stayed the hell away from this thread until the discussion moved past that specific incident (which, I doubt any of us have enough information to pass any sort of public judgemnent on, but I digress).

I use that word to be respectful and because I refuse to use the word 'victim.'  Trust a lawyer to take advantage of a guy's better nature in the cross examination ;P

There are plenty of things worse than being dead, but ignoring that, for someone who accuses another of misplaced hyperbole, you seem to be a rather big fan of it yourself.  Nothing is wrong unless it results in death?  Are you even trying?

Isn't your dad a scientist? We're mammals made to mate and breed. Lots of things people want at any given time can be problematic and regrettable in the aftermath, you wanna forbid them all?

Are you actually falling back on the obsolete (since before your time even) theory that all behaviour, syndromes, anatomy etc can be evolutionarily traced to the survival impetus?  Come on man - next you'll tell me schizophrenics and homosexuals are a fiction as well.  There are plenty of people who exhibit psychologies and general behaviours in direct contradiction with procreation and I don't even have to resort to the easy example I already dropped of the LGBT+ community; recluses, asexuals (and demisexuals - which are the most pertinent to the discussion at hand actually), and we could go on.  Additionally, as a maturing species we have also learned to expand upon (or break through, depending on one's point of view) our programming. 

No I am not suggesting any change or ban on anything.  Again, my only purpose was to address some of the arguments being made because I find them very problematic (and they exist on both the left and the right, if in slightly different forms), and not to discuss the appropriate age of consent.  I agree that you cannot legislate away all risk, and without it, one never develops the proper helmet (to reference the colloquial phrase) to deal with what life will throw at you, much less be in a position to dive into it and seize the day.

The alleged psychological and sociological side effects of sexual acts have been blown out of all proportion IMHO, it's a primal act. If it goes together with love, so much the better. If it doesn't, people can still enjoy it. It should neither be a life- nor world-changing matter. We've built this huge cultural and moral bogus structure around it - sacrificing all reason and proportionality in the process.

You are doing the exact thing I was trying to point out; looking at your (rather charmed, by contrast to the average, you must admit) experience and extrapolating that nobody else's is significantly different.  You're neither a psychologist nor a survivor (or even friendly with survivors who have spoken about it at all to you apparently), so, what are you basing this on exactly?  Yeah, maybe, just maybe, your opinion is not entirely valid here because you have exactly zero data to work from. This is not something you have actually spent considerable time investigating (whether just from your armchair or otherwise); it's off the cuff. I used to think that too, back when I was 17, but I know better now.  These things are insidious and can sometimes not show up for years. We've made so much progress since Freud, As Western44 pointed out re Jung, but even he (Freud) knew this much (no I am not a particular fan nor do I take much of his theories seriously... though they do work well to describe his own behaviours, to bring this around to my point again; you can't base a universal theory on your own experience). Jung would not disagree on this bit either.

My son - like most people - probably has all kinds of issues, some of which I am no doubt to blame for. Sexual experiences with a very much older woman as an adolescent are not among the known sources of any issues I have yet noticed with him. And yes, we have deep conversations about all aspects of life, sex included. Last I heard, we were in the 21st century, not the 19th one and I faintly remember something called the "sexual revolution" in the 60ies (when I was born) - not all of which has yet been the victim of an ideological reactionary roll-back (whether religious, conservative or feminist). So, while I might not be the first to know, I generally take enough of an interest to get to know eventually.

A very loquacious way to seemingly dismiss the point, while actually fully acknowledging it.  You agree that you don't actually know; you just haven't detected it.  I don't doubt he's fine (nothing to detect), and that you have a good relationship; the point is if he wasn't fine about it you wouldn't necessarily be the one to know it (or to be more true to what you actually said and taking my previous paragraph into consideration, not necessarily know it yet).  This goes hand in hand with the other people, some I quoted others not, saying that they've never known this to be an issue - same thing, if it was an issue for someone you knew, their mates would not be the people they'd blab about it to. Also, I hope you realise, the fact that he mentioned that it happened to you does not preclude there being an issue (again I am not saying there is one but trying to explain that drawing conclusions from one's limited experience is usually not going to lead one to the truth, though it certainly works to reinforce the beliefs one already holds).

I get what you mean about modern times, but the opinions and machismo-based dismissals on display in this thread do not support your position.  I have made  a habit of criticising both feminists (liberals/progressives in general) and, I dunno what term to use, conservatives, I guess, as a handy catch-all, for conflating masculinity with machismo.  E.G. Masculinity is not a prison, to riff off that tired slogan (certainly no more than femininity); but machismo certainly is (and on the other hand it doesn't make me less of a man to cry or wear a skirt - if I had the influence I would love to bring back tights n tunics for men; think Luke Skywalker in A New Hope - so comfy).

The (60s) sexual revolution, in some ways, was a crock.  Personally I hardly think the 60s was either the begining or end of it.  Knowledge of the human condition means we must throw away any argument that uses as it's base the supposition that we've figured something out perfectly already (watch the video of Woodstock - there's a lot of sex but not much of it looks too healthy or fullfilling to me).  All it was was a release from, to borrow a term you like, the overwhelming prudishness of the early modern era.  It certainly did very little to address other important issues around the act, such as safety (VD etc).  I'd argue that, except for the vestiges of that prudish moral authority, overall progress has been made since then, but that's a whole other topic.

[uwe]

Ah, my favorite drummer-turned-bassist-stream-of-consciousness-scattershooting-Pol(c)a(nu)ck, I love that you're on the forum and that you still write like the angry young man you were ten years ago!!! 

You make some valid points. You always do. Just three comments:

- I'm fine with "victim", "survivor" to me is overblown. I'm relieved you don't see Bennett as a survivor or even victim of anything.

- We all have skeletons in our closets. Some people have an unfortunate tendency these days to make huge bones (pun carefully crafted) about theirs so it becomes the all-determinative thing/obsession in their life. I've had people tell me that I very likely must have been sexually molested too as a child (because we all have!), but that I'm just repressing things too well. Bullshit. I have vivid memories of my father beating the crap out of me a couple of times (for no good reason) and if he had molested me sexually I would be writing about it here. I would also not be basing all my - perceived or real - failures in life on it. And the one time a male teacher (not my teacher) tried to get in my pants when I was a youth, I just said no and left (there was no violence involved), not because I find male homosexuality repulsive, but simply because men don't turn me on. (I didn't eat any salads back then either.) I might have decided differently had he been a woman, tough luck. The experience has not made me believe that homosexuals are more prone to molestation than heterosexuals are nor do I remember it as this huge threatening scenario in my life - the guy was more the desperate lonesome type and a bit tragic. Nor am I today uncomfortable in the presence of teachers or gays.

- You're damn right that I am a dyed-in-wool-fur-feathers-scales-and-what-have-you biologist/evolutionist!!! We're animals, full stop. It doesn't mean that we always have to act like them (in animal kingdom, our brain sure is one-of-a-kind), but it is at our core and explains a lot of things. Even racism is biologically driven (which doesn't make it right, much less sensible or smart). Homosexuality and transgenderism? Follow from nature for me - homosexuality is prevalent among animals and since we are all at least half-women anyway it is sometimes just a matter of chance on which side the coin drops or whether it gets stuck in the middle. If a London zoo female monitor lizard that never saw another monitor in its whole captive existence (and was born in captivity) can lay two fertile eggs that spawn two healthy monitors (that are able to reproduce), then perhaps nature isn't so black and white about gender determination after all. In fact I find the view that homosexuality and transgenderism might be based on anything else but biological disposition far-fetched to laughable. My biologism/evolutionism is of Stalinesque proportions and unshakeable.



- I had to look up "loquacious" - danke, a new word! 

[westen44]

I suppose more often than not loquaciousness might be looked at in a slightly negative way.  However, I doubt if it would bother me much if someone accused me of that fault.  One thing is they would probably be right.  But a lot of people are loquacious.  William Faulkner was loquacious but still managed to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.