Am I Being A Prude, Or Overly Sensitive?

[Ronin]

My point was there are severe limits to "reconditioning" biologically based instincts--the difficulty of remaining on a diet is one example.

As for @FridayJones's "resources" I will admit I didn't look at them, because I assume they are people on a rationalization hamster wheel trying to feel better about their bad choices.

Except your examples on how biology works, and how anything conditioning works, are extremely poor chosen.
You're dismissing evidence of people knowledgeable in the field you want to talk about with seriousness as 'biased'? Please.
The only thing obvious in this discussion is your ignorance and hard headedness when it comes to dealing with facts, people thinking rationally, and people being so kind as to present you with multitude of ways to educate yourself.

Certainly not anyone's 'bad choices'.

 

[illusionist]

My birth mother was a prostitute, me being a product of an interaction. While she was carrying me, she met and fell in love with a man....he knew of her past, and married her a year later. I have heard of men marrying ' fallen' women since. Incidentally, from what I witnessed years later, he married someone equal to him and remained married until his death.

 

[Dana1010]

@richter scale, your input is appreciated, but wasn't your home life unhappy?

 

[illusionist]

My birth mother did the best thing she thought she could do for me and put me up for adoption. I don't judge her for it, so refuse to allow anyone else to. This happened in a different era. In today's society, It can work...and have seen it working.

Anything that happened to me was no way a fault of my birth mother. My abuses were administered by ' respectable' people...you know, the type of people who are looked up to, decent respectable people.

 

[Friday]

@FridayJonesDid you interview any men on the prospects of dating hookers for your research?

Not research, Dana. My life. The life I've lived.

That I rather naturally took an interest in, the same way I've taken an interest in PTSD. Which isn't, by the way, sexually based nor stemming from that time period. I have no shame tied up in that part of my history. Just like I have no shame tied up sending my son to Montessori preschool. I don't need to make myself feel better about my choices, much less choices I in no way regret, and haven't affected me negatively in any way.

I am sorry you have such a low opinion of men. The simple truth is that men are people. And as people we all have things we love, like, couldn't care less about one way or the other, tolerate, dislike, and can't abide.

Every single choice I've made in my life has made me undesirable to some men. And more desirable to others. That's true for all of us. Men & women alike. When I enlisted in the USMC? I became undesirable to many men. Does that make either of us wrong? No. I have as much of a right to be true to my own scale as they do. There are a lot of men who find female soldiers/sailors/marines gross and disgusting. Purely by aspect of our job. Shrug. Doesn't bother me. I don't live my life trying to make myself attractive to "men". Because "men" aren't a single entity. They're people. There are ones who can't abide female warriors, ones who actively dislike them, ones who couldn't care less one way or another, ones who like it, and ones who love it.

Replace that with anything and it's still true. Whether it's your religion (or lack thereof), your body type, your job, your voice, your character, your height, your sexual history, your race/ethnicity, your trauma, your family, your home... Hundreds of things go into the facets of our lives that make us who we are. That's what dating is all about if looking for LTRs & marriage: lining up our scales with someone else.

I don't have to interview men as to their hypothetical "would you ever" date or marry someone who worked in any of these fields/industries. I've known hundreds who have. They've dated & married my friends & colleagues. They've dated & proposed to me. And they haven't been a single "class" of men, if there even is such a thing. All kinds of men fall on the half of that have no problem with this kind of work in either preset tense, past, or both.

 

[Friday]

As for @FridayJones's "resources" I will admit I didn't look at them, because I assume they are people on a rationalization hamster wheel trying to feel better about their bad choices.

Contempt prior to investigation might could be something to work on.

You'd also be wrong.

There's some bias or bad modeling in a lot of the scholarly research, but that's always true, and largely pointed out through various sources. As I said, it's a starting off point, but there are ref & sources spanning the whole range of sex-work, from trafficking & those who fight against it to legal prostitution and those fighting for it, and everything in between.

 

[Dana1010]

I've taken an interest in PTSD. Which isn't, by the way, sexually based nor stemming from that time period.

I mean this with the utmost respect and sensitivity, but in a thread I started recently called "Doing the thing that terrifies you," you mentioned something about needing exposure therapy for a certain sex act. That was not tied to sex work?

 

[Ronin]

Why do you think you're being respectful asking people about their triggers, let alone in a sensitive area like sexuality, @Dana1010. It's none of your business.

 

[Friday]

@Dana1010

Nope. Not tied to sex work at all. My rape-history is almost entirely military. My PTSD stems from combat trauma, but I'd been out in the field many times over & already gone sideways long before being raped for the first time and having sexual & other traumas to sort out on top of combat trauma.

 

[Eleanor]

Now we're throwing out science. It's getting clearer that people here just don't like what I'm saying and will go to any lengths to get it out of their brains.

You actually should really read Kuhn. So far from throwing out science it furthers the cause of science (significantly!) by demonstrating how our interpretive frameworks (aka paradigms) can shape our perception. If I had to sum up a lot of this conversation with you, I'd say people were making attempts to try to induce you to move beyond your theory laden (aka biased) perceptions. If you could get yourself to even entertain the idea that there might be a teeny bit more to the extremely complex reality than your very limited theory allows... well, you might learn something.

So how have ubiquitous warnings about the dangers of fat and sugar consumption changed your feelings about tiramisu?

Bad example actually. Well, a poorly aimed one. It is not the warnings that make a difference. It is the experiences and the contexts that we associate (pre consciously) with those stimuli. As a matter of fact I don't like milky way bars - why? Because I once bit into one, all unknowing, that was full of ants. I have not been able to face a milky way bar with impunity since. The WORDS don't necessarily matter. And conditioning is essentially experiential. You can't TALK a person out of a phobia!

the first person whom we know of to come up with the idea of "emergent orders", Lao Tzu. I love the idea that the most printed and most translated book in the world, second only to the Christian bible, is a 2500 year old anarchist text.

Thank you for that bit! Way cool, and yes.

Strangely, (or maybe not...) Utilitarians (Bentham and Mill and many others) are really pretty limited utilitarians, just as Kant was not a very good Kantian. Authoritarianism did seem to be something not very many people in the eighteenth (and even 19th) centuries were very successful at weeding out. A consistent application of the principles - coupled with a lot of practical knowledge and investigation - I think gets one ... to anarchy if it is possible. And you are perfectly correct, bad utilitarianism can justify pretty much any damn thing you like - there is no limit on what people with no imagination can think is ok. More's the pity.

It is possible I've stretched the principle of charity in reading philosophy beyond its breaking point.. but I do like to think Mill (and Kant for that matter) would have had their minds blown (in a good way) by what has been done social justice wise since their deaths.

I see with my eyes everyday and conventional wisdom since the beginning of time.

First person evidence is good - but not sufficient as we all have very LIMITED experience and it is biased - often in ways we have a hard time noticing.
Conventional wisdom ... is worth investigating, but has so very often proven to be not only wrong but actively harmful that this kind of appeal to authority is tantamount to intellectual laziness.

I didn't look at them, because I assume they are people on a rationalization hamster wheel trying to feel better about their bad choices.

Well, I guess you did a lot better at the mind reading class than I did. I can't read the minds of people I know reliably. And I certainly can't read the minds and know the hearts and intentions of people I've never even MET. Never mind judging whatever data that they've gathered before you even know what it is. And if you are not willing to give serious consideration to contrary hypothesis your position is hardly scientific - and a lot more "faith based" than many a theologian. "It is true because I believe it" is a time worn justification, but it has always kind of sucked. It certainly doesn't do a lot of good for those who get the short end of the social stick. Plus it is disrespectful of others.

More importantly, the inability to think about one's own experiences and beliefs critically is a kind of rigidity that can be really really limiting in healing and is terribly limiting in terms of learning. It is not, in short, adaptive in the widest sense.

Every single choice I've made in my life has made me undesirable to some men. And more desirable to others. That's true for all of us. Men & women alike. When I enlisted in the USMC? I became undesirable to many men

Ditto. Get a PhD, in pretty much anything and watch guys run. Except the ones "who like smart chicks." There is clearly such a thing as physical attraction - and what triggers it or not is tremendously complex. Not everyone is attracted to everyone else. Ever. This doesn't even happen with horses and dogs for goodness sake. If that is an implication of evolutionary biology (and no one who has been mentioned so far would be so silly as to suggest it) it is plainly false, and thus evidence that counts against that model. And, it is not like evolutionary biology is univocal! It is early days in the investigations...

 

[Dana1010]

@Eleanor, you're obviously quite erudite. I think it's possible to over think some things, especially when common sense is hammering you over the head. Reminds me of a really good George Orwell quote: "Some ideas are so stupid, only intellectuals believe them."

 

[Eleanor]

But common sense (and ample evidence) is NOT hammering me over the head. Quite to the contrary, I am happy (well, not happy) to take a serious look at all the evidence, and toss or modify a theory when there is significant evidence against it - or at least admit that I can't answer the evidence. You won't even (by your own admission above) even LOOK at the evidence and persist in calling people whose experiences differ significantly from your liars or dupes or having some kind of bad intentions.

Insult is not argument.
Underthinking must be at least as bad as overthinking.

Here are some honest questions: You are VERY attached to this view. Why is that? What bad thing would happen... what would it mean if your view were... not entirely true and correct? What if the bias against sex workers was not eternally mandated (by God or evolution, same difference in practice)? What if it was something that could change? That people might hold themselves responsible for? What if your experiences were not universal? That other things really did happen?

What if all the things @FridayJones said.... were true?