Sexual
Is the battle of the sexes over? Ummm, I think not…
A recent study suggests that, contrary to traditional beliefs, both men and women enjoy sex for primarily the same reason:
After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It’s more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.
College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex – they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.
Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”
“It’s refuted a lot of gender stereotypes … that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study’s co-author. “That’s not what I came up with in my findings.”
Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, “the more we look, the more we find similarity,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn’t part of Meston’s study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems. – [AP]
Well, as usual (I guess) somehow I didn’t find this study to be that helpful. It could just be me, but the results seemed to be a little obvious. Not to mention that the study seemed to cripple itself in the universality department.
The first issue I saw in the study was stated in the article. They were essentially studying college kids. And the vast majority of college age kids, both male and female, spend a great deal of time thinking about sex. Their primary motivation is fun, not marriage or settling down, etc. So of course, their reasons are going to primarily be lust driven. Strike one.
Next, even within the more sexually balanced middle-aged group, the claim to gender stereotypes may not particularly be culturally valid anymore. I happen to have known several men who were really pushovers, and women who were much, much worse than men in terms of sexual predation. (Think “Sex in the city.”) Strike two.
And last, but not least, even within the hormonally boosted college demographic you could still see gender differences in the attitudes towards sex, with men tending towards being more opportunistic, and women apparently doing so to please their partner. That kinda hints that the men/Mars women/Venus thing still isn’t entirely as baseless as they suggest. Strike 3. Out!
Perhaps we shouldn’t simply abandon the idea of men being from Mars and women being from Venus. Maybe we all just ought to remember that both Mars and Venus still occupy the same solar system…
This is why I’m Hawt… This is why you’re not…
Today I thought I’d indulge in an interesting study in morality…
A mysterious blonde paid a visit to a petrol station shop in the small eastern German town of Doemitz on Sunday — wearing nothing but a pair of golden stilettos and a thin gold bracelet.
The tall, slender woman strolled into the shop in the town of Doemitz on the warm afternoon and bought cigarettes, petrol station employee Ines Swoboda told Reuters on Monday. – [Yahoo/Reuters]
Now compare that with this story…
A German bus driver threatened to throw a 20-year-old sales clerk off his bus in the southern town of Lindau because he said she was too sexy, a newspaper reported Monday.
“Suddenly he stopped the bus,” the woman named Debora C. told Bild newspaper. “He opened the door and shouted at me ‘Your cleavage is distracting me every time I look into my mirror and I can’t concentrate on the traffic. If you don’t sit somewhere else, I’m going to have to throw you off the bus.’” – [Reuters]
Now these articles represent, at least to my mind, a interesting illustration of the fundamental differences between American and European views of sexuality in general. I am almost certain that had these same set of circumstances occurred here in the good old U. S. of A., the exact opposite of what happened in Europe would have occurred. The bus driver would have kept his mouth shut for fear of violating a passengers rights, and some random stick-in-the-mud would have phoned the police on the naked blond.
I believe that this behavior in Americans is also indicative of a much deeper issue. In spite of the constant “Support of Personal Freedoms” chant we hear here in the US, the truth is, it seems that we only believe in the concept of individual freedoms and unalienable rights so long as our own individual beliefs have not been offended. Not our individual rights, just our individual beliefs. There is a big difference. The fact that you believe something does not make it a right. Trust me. Or not. That is your right…
As a result of this, I believe we tend to focus too much on the wrong things. Think back to when you read the articles. Which scenario did you find more offensive? A totally nekkid, (save for a pair of gold stilettos, and a gold necklace) 30 year old, Ferrari-driving blond, at a gas station convenience store? Or a fully (relatively) clothed 20 year old on a bus whose plunging neckline was apparently so distracting as to have possibly caused an accident? And when you first answered this question in your head, did your personal moral values/beliefs take precedence, or your humanitarian instinct towards the preservation human life?
It is such irony that we seem to live in a society where, as a typical example, in any given movie, scenes depicting extreme violence, torture, dismemberment and death, are generally considered more acceptable and less socially heinous, than those with explicit sexual content. What does that say about our values as society? Methinks our moral priorities may be just a *wee bit* skewed… But then again that’s just my belief…
Nude blonde, gold stilettos and a Ferrari… – [Yahoo/Reuters]
“Too sexy for my bus,” woman told – [Reuters]
Church payout for Perverted Priests…
The LA Archdiocese has settled an ongoing sexual abuse case for a rather obscene amount of money, being the latest in a series of church settlements related to behavior unbecoming persons of the cloth:
The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the plaintiffs reached the deal Saturday, said Ray Boucher, the lead plaintiff’s attorney. The archdiocese and the plaintiffs will release a statement Sunday morning and hold a news conference Monday, he said.
An anonymous source with knowledge of the deal placed its value at $660 million, by far the largest payout in the church’s sexual abuse scandal. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the settlement had not been officially announced. – [Yahoo/AP]
Now I am certainly not one to find fault with the church, but there are a couple of questions in my mind that I think need to be asked. First, why are these people suing the church, as opposed to the specific members of the clergy that abused them? I believe that it is fairly widely accepted that the responsible parties were in fact priests, acting on their own, who were clearly not following the principles of the faith they had decided to follow. Why has the church, as a whole, been made the target of the class action suit? Shouldn’t the individual priests who committed these crimes be liable? Why not prosecute them individually?
If one person sexually assaults another, say a co-worker, in the office building where they work, the victim should file charges against the individual. Not the company where they worked. Why would it be any different for a church? It is not my intention to make light of the suffering of any rape victim, and I don’t have all of the details of any specific case, but it seems to me that suing the church instead of the accused parties is motivated by the desire to sue the party with the most money, and not the person who committed the crime. In other words, the victims greed is getting the better of them.
The fact that the criminals may have been priests does not, in this bloggers humble opinion, make the church liable. And it is has become a rather irritating fact that, in our litigious society, it has become an acceptable practice to take money when we have been wronged, in lieu of justice. This is a mistake people. We are eroding the values of our society by telling criminals they can buy their way out of a crime!
Wake up America!! having that extra money in the bank may be nice, but the only thing that will satisfy is your greed. Not your honor, not your integrity, and certainly not justice. There is no equivalent cash value for justice or honor! And if you think that these are empty words, that won’t put food on your plate, look at the sorry state of our society. Kids killing kids, rapists in our churches, trillions wasted on wars and conflicts that shouldn’t have happened, every one for themselves and at worship before the altar of the mighty dollar. You think all of that is unrelated? Think again.
Yet another point of contention for me is that, while I applaud the archdiocese for standing by their clergy, a settlement seems like an act of evasion. It doesn’t really solve anything. The ones who have been abused do not see justice done, the abusers are never punished, and the falsely accused will walk around with this incident over their heads for the rest of their lives, even though they did nothing. All that happens is that money changes hands. Again with that blasted money! It doesn’t seem right.
If you were raped, would $1 million be sufficient for you to keep your mouth shut and let your rapist walk free? May be even to rape again? And should it be any different if the rapist is a priest? We can only hope that the church is capable of discerning the innocent from the guilty, and helping the “weak of flesh” get counseling and help where needed. But considering that these events happened right under their noses, my “faith” in the church, as it were, is not particularly strong right now.
L.A. archdiocese to pay $660M for abuse – [Yahoo/AP]
Log In
My Thoughts…
Blogroll
General Info
Phyreblades Blogs
Famous Last Words
The Time Machine
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Jan | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | ||
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 |
| 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 |
| 27 | 28 | 29 | ||||
Issues
Pick your Poison:
Easy Eavesdropping.
- Phyreblade on Objective vs Subjective Reporting
- dreadrocksean on Objective vs Subjective Reporting
- phyreblade on Giving relevance to the irrelevant…
- phyreblade on Giving relevance to the irrelevant…
- shamelesslyatheist on Giving relevance to the irrelevant…