A good column came out from Stephen Crowder with which I agree:
Is there anything more abnormal than being a mid-teen virgin in the year 2009? Not if you’d hear Hollywood tell it. After watching a slew of teen-movies this weekend, I feel quite pathetic. It seems that all this time, I’ve been trying to follow my convictions and make a difference in this world, when I really should have been spending my time scoring with chicks. Has anybody else out there come to this realization as of late?
In the same breath, ladies; You simply haven’t been empowering yourselves as young women unless you’ve been riding the old bone rollercoaster. Purity is for losers, don’t you know…
From TV shows aimed squarely at young dames such as “Gossip Girl” or “90210,” to hit teen films like “American Pie” or the recent “Adventureland,” the message in regards to sexuality is quite clear; If you’re still a virgin at 16, there must be something wrong with you. Sure, it would be bad enough that all of these programs are laden with super-model-turned actors having sex like banshees (the parents are never around, mind you), but Hollywood doesn’t stop there. No, the good old folks in Tinseltown feel the need to twist the knife and go out of its way to point out the abnormality of abstinence.
The truth is that even in the most liberal of statistics, over 40% of kids remain virgins through their teen years. Keep in mind that a good percentage of those poll’d in these “blind studies” are men and let’s be honest… A good 30% of them are probably lying, so you can bet that the real statistics would favor the lonely little virgins even more.
If you were an alien dropped on to planet Earth however, forced to deduce the sexuality of the human species solely from what Hollywood pumps out, you’d probably think that nobody made it past 16 without having schtupped a myriad of partners.
One would have to wonder how much different that statistic would be if Hollywood WEREN’T pressuring teenagers to engage in the horizontal mambo. If Hollywood put all of its “virginity is for suckers” energy into promoting “saving sex till marriage,” I bet we’d see a very different, much more lopsided statistic. Of course Hollywood could never do that, as they don’t believe in “forcing ones beliefs on others”… Unless of course said beliefs include situational ethics, then it’s time to preach it father, preach it!
This is utterly true:
Hollywood campaigns against the notion of 'forcing beliefs on someone' (which translates into 'holding oneself and others to higher standards of behavior') and attempts to promote viewing sex as a comedy or as a necessary act in the coming of age -- hardly an act to consummate an important and significant relationship.
Hollywood's only values are in exploiting images of what is deemed cool and promoting faddish causes taken up by pinhead celebrities. Hollywood has been trying to push its liberal agenda on the rest of the country for quite some time... And that's fine, too, because I think it is generally agreed that looking to Hollywood film for meaning is a bad move and it'd be much simpler to rent a foreign film.
American pop culture is damaging the values that had made the society great, the stoic discipline inherent in all civilizations, and likewise has eroded the sense of values that have existed in other societies in exchange for... Promoting teenage sex and Perez Hilton.
I view this as a symptom that comes from the general opulence and luxury we've achieved that gives us an arrogance and a pride and a sense of decadence... We are at a point from which we probably cannot really turn around unless there is a catalyst to promote change.
The libertines in Hollywood, from their high and mighty Beverly Hills mansions, have no interest in any concept of morality that doesn't make them look charitable.
It's odd that normal people look to abnormal aristocrats for entertainment -- but then again, it is easy to see why -- they are capable of divorcing and marrying and adopting children more than the average person adopts animals.
At the end of the day... We must take better care of our kids and remember to laugh at the portrayals that Hollywood tries to give us of our lives. I normally cannot even consume good Hollywood material because it is so shallow in general content as to produce laughter from the belly when confronted with particularly corny situations. Furthermore, the idea of any show that documents the social interactions of a bunch of rich, bored lamers experimenting with their feelings is repugnant.
People are not realizing these days that life is more than a hedonistic calling to the loins -- it is a call to build and achieve something. However, I think may people do not even know what the word achievement even means after we elect leaders who wish to build welfare states.
Our Rome is dying.
__________________
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“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous than the brutality of men in gallooned coats... Anyone who has been oppressed can get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has been equalized is physically and morally ruined." - Ernst Jünger (March 29, 1895 – February 17, 1998)
Movies are often intended to make you experience "awesome stuff" that might be difficult/dangerous to experience in real life.
Raiding tombs, blowing stuff up, shooting guns at bad guys, having random orgies with hot girls, flying in a space ship, racing cars..
All pretty cool.
Most movies don't portray an image of how Hollywood directors think life should be (i.e. you must have sex / flown a spaceship before you're 16 or you're a loser). Instead, they portray images and situations that will sell tickets, because people like to see them. Free market and all that.
Way to draw your conclusions from a person who says this:
The truth is that even in the most liberal of statistics, over 40% of kids remain virgins through their teen years. Keep in mind that a good percentage of those poll’d in these “blind studies” are men and let’s be honest… A good 30% of them are probably lying
As for naughty naughty Hollywood, there's good and there's the bad. Life is one big selection process on which parts you want to let in. I never pay attention to Paris Hilton because I consider her a bad influence. I also consider religion a bad influence but hey, freedom of choice right?
And if you don't like Hollywood forcing 'sex' onto you there's always Bollywood. Although they tend to force "synchronized dance" onto you.
- Ectezus
__________________ Sigmund Freud [1856-1939] (Austrian physician and pioneer psychoanalyst) said:
"It would be very nice if there were a God who created the world and was a benevolent providence, and if there were a moral order in the universe and an after-life; but it is a very striking fact that all this is exactly as we are bound to wish it to be."
You know, the word pornography comes from the Greek word pornagraphia. Advertising brothels or particular prostitutes utilized this form of craftsmanship. Of course, the Greeks also used erotic artwork on pottery to depict specific legends; worship of phallic images was also a common practice. Did you know that Athens still has, to this day, statues of giant penises littering the place? In American history, the Great Depression brings a set of Mom-and-Pop illustrated porn industries in the form of Tijuana Bibles, like Jack Chick tracts except a bit more tolerable.
The point? Sex as entertainment and as a leisure activity (or voyeuristic sort of endeavor) existed far before Hollywood, and prostitution is now frowned upon in the United States (not to mention the teen pregnancy rate has declined in recent years). It just gets more media coverage now.
Honestly though, you think kids didn't fool around in the 1800's or 1950's? Dude, they just got married if one got knocked up; today that is optional.
Post Script: Oh yes, please stop mentioning the great stoic supermen civilizations. They were not great and, to be frank, no Empire was built on stoicism (but rather the need for booty). If you think the pedastry practicing Spartans were great builders of a slave based civilization, I wonder how it must have felt when the 'dandy' Macedonian Kingdom undid their work and installed Athenian civilization as the Hellenic model.
Movies are often intended to make you experience "awesome stuff" that might be difficult/dangerous to experience in real life.
Raiding tombs, blowing stuff up, shooting guns at bad guys, having random orgies with hot girls, flying in a space ship, racing cars..
All pretty cool.
Most movies don't portray an image of how Hollywood directors think life should be (i.e. you must have sex / flown a spaceship before you're 16 or you're a loser). Instead, they portray images and situations that will sell tickets, because people like to see them. Free market and all that.
that is all true -- they want to make money by showing the atypical.
However, a lot of nations do this by portraying equally unrealistic things in the context of real life -- many Korean dramas deal with the notion of poverty and riches, disease and health, etc. and a lot of themes that are important.
Furthermore, exciting love stories do not need to involve teenagers having sex.
They are going for shock value and trying to stir things up -- it may be smart by free market standards but it is certainly not contributing anything morally.
Originally Posted by Ectezus
Way to draw your conclusions from a person who says this:
As for naughty naughty Hollywood, there's good and there's the bad. Life is one big selection process on which parts you want to let in. I never pay attention to Paris Hilton because I consider her a bad influence. I also consider religion a bad influence but hey, freedom of choice right?
And if you don't like Hollywood forcing 'sex' onto you there's always Bollywood. Although they tend to force "synchronized dance" onto you.
- Ectezus
I enjoyed the Bollywood reference and I am also glad that other people think of Paris Hilton similarly.
I will say, though, that the statistics could be quite accurate -- did you think that they were not?
I posted statistics a while back in some other thread concerning the instances of youth sex amongst Koreans before college age and I do say the numbers are quite desirable when compared with American or European figures.
If kids are occupied with achieving goals pertinent to education... They are better behaved.
Originally Posted by Kharak
You know, the word pornography comes from the Greek word pornagraphia. Advertising brothels or particular prostitutes utilized this form of craftsmanship. Of course, the Greeks also used erotic artwork on pottery to depict specific legends; worship of phallic images was also a common practice. Did you know that Athens still has, to this day, statues of giant penises littering the place? In American history, the Great Depression brings a set of Mom-and-Pop illustrated porn industries in the form of Tijuana Bibles, like Jack Chick tracts except a bit more tolerable.
The point? Sex as entertainment and as a leisure activity (or voyeuristic sort of endeavor) existed far before Hollywood, and prostitution is now frowned upon in the United States (not to mention the teen pregnancy rate has declined in recent years). It just gets more media coverage now.
Honestly though, you think kids didn't fool around in the 1800's or 1950's? Dude, they just got married if one got knocked up; today that is optional.
Post Script: Oh yes, please stop mentioning the great stoic supermen civilizations. They were not great and, to be frank, no Empire was built on stoicism (but rather the need for booty). If you think the pedastry practicing Spartans were great builders of a slave based civilization, I wonder how it must have felt when the 'dandy' Macedonian Kingdom undid their work and installed Athenian civilization as the Hellenic model.
I love the stoic superman civilizations -- and I also love the barbarous tribes. Both have good lessons to offer.
But... Sure. Sex is entertaining to some degree -- it feeds off of a primal urge inside of us as humans. Just as such violence is sometimes entertaining to people -- however, violence is not moral as a form of entertainment, is it?
(I admit that this has not stopped me from shelling out large amounts of money to see K-1 events whenever I can).
__________________
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“The egalitarian mania of demagogues is even more dangerous than the brutality of men in gallooned coats... Anyone who has been oppressed can get back on his feet if the oppression did not cost him his life. A man who has been equalized is physically and morally ruined." - Ernst Jünger (March 29, 1895 – February 17, 1998)
You know, the word pornography comes from the Greek word pornagraphia. Advertising brothels or particular prostitutes utilized this form of craftsmanship. Of course, the Greeks also used erotic artwork on pottery to depict specific legends; worship of phallic images was also a common practice. Did you know that Athens still has, to this day, statues of giant penises littering the place? In American history, the Great Depression brings a set of Mom-and-Pop illustrated porn industries in the form of Tijuana Bibles, like Jack Chick tracts except a bit more tolerable.
The point? Sex as entertainment and as a leisure activity (or voyeuristic sort of endeavor) existed far before Hollywood, and prostitution is now frowned upon in the United States (not to mention the teen pregnancy rate has declined in recent years). It just gets more media coverage now.
Honestly though, you think kids didn't fool around in the 1800's or 1950's? Dude, they just got married if one got knocked up; today that is optional.
Post Script: Oh yes, please stop mentioning the great stoic supermen civilizations. They were not great and, to be frank, no Empire was built on stoicism (but rather the need for booty). If you think the pedastry practicing Spartans were great builders of a slave based civilization, I wonder how it must have felt when the 'dandy' Macedonian Kingdom undid their work and installed Athenian civilization as the Hellenic model.
I agree with this. Not that I'm unconcerned by what Hollywood churns out, but you are right in that "the good old days" never really existed.
"Purity"? Who on earth had the brilliant idea to equate the suppression of one of the most fundamental drives in life with "purity"? There's nothing inherently impure about sexuality. It's joyous, life-giving, energetic, orgasmic, blissful, and has the potential to foster an intense emotional bond between those who partake in it.
So yeah, that kind of "purity" is for losers indeed. I pity them even more than the promiscuous wretches who'd waste the wonderful experience of sex on undeserving ingrates.
"Purity" - what nonsense!
If you’re still a virgin at 16, there must be something wrong with you.
Actually, even "American Pie" (mind-numbingly stupid as it was) didn't sell that message. In spite of the original wager of the boys, they all find out in one way or another that having sex is not the be-all and end-all:
One couple spends the whole night *not* sleeping with each other, and being all the more blissful nevertheless.
Another has sex, and breaks apart in the morning.
Jim is "exploited" by the band-camp nymphomaniac, and wakes up next to a toy dinosaur.
And so on and so forth.
Sure, it's not exactly an educational movie, or even an intelligent one, but to claim that it equates virginity with wrongness is ultimately false.
No, the good old folks in Tinseltown feel the need to twist the knife and go out of its way to point out the abnormality of abstinence.
Abstinence is just as asinine as the most hare-brained promiscuity - unless you *really* don't feel the need, of course. Suppressing your sexuality is absurd. Learn to use it responsibly, rather than denying it altogether.
The truth is that even in the most liberal of statistics, over 40% of kids remain virgins through their teen years. Keep in mind that a good percentage of those poll’d in these “blind studies” are men and let’s be honest… A good 30% of them are probably lying, so you can bet that the real statistics would favor the lonely little virgins even more.
I remained a virgin throughout my teens, but not due to some absurd commitment to "purity". That's a stupid reason, really.
It just worked out that way, as I always preferred the sort of "deep" relationship that most teenagers do not seem to be able to sustain.
If you were an alien dropped on to planet Earth however, forced to deduce the sexuality of the human species solely from what Hollywood pumps out, you’d probably think that nobody made it past 16 without having schtupped a myriad of partners.
And if you were an alien dropped onto planet Earth forced to deduce the aggression potential of the human species solely from what Hollywood produces, you'd think that all of us have killed at least half a dozen people by the time we are old enough to buy beer.
That is by far the worse observation of the two, wouldn't you agree?
Hollywood campaigns against the notion of 'forcing beliefs on someone' (which translates into 'holding oneself and others to higher standards of behavior') and attempts to promote viewing sex as a comedy or as a necessary act in the coming of age -- hardly an act to consummate an important and significant relationship.
Ah, but he talked about "purity" - if sex is so utterly impure, aren't you basically contaminating your partner by indulging in it? That's the way St. Augustine perceived it, and from him, Christianity decudes (part of) its sexual mores to this day.
__________________ The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do. -- Samuel P. Huntington
Fundamentalism in a Nutshell:
"[Obama] focused on health care for everybody and living wages, mostly. No comment about abortion or sodomite "marriage" or anything else that actually matters." --MatthewEV, Rapture Ready
I´m sure that back in the days when girls were married in the first half of their teen years things were much more moral and they kept their virginity until they were at least 20.
__________________
Why I call myself a „non-believer“ or „atheist“:
I can´t relate to any of the god concepts I´m familiar with so far.
Either I´m not convinced by the concept, or
– although not having a problem with the worldview itself -
I see no reason to call one of its elements „God“:
There are already more precise, more common, less loaded and less likely to be misunderstood terms for these elements.
E.g. I prefer to call nature „nature“, the universe „universe“ and everything „everything“.
The real problem is that people make a big deal about virginity, whether they're trying to keep it or lose it.
Yes I cannot fathom why people attach such importance to virginity. Except of course in the Biblical "woman as property" sense, with which understanding this whole situation becomes more clear.
Virginity is simply the state someone is in before they have had sex, nothing more nothing less. Seems of absolutely no significance to me.
I think some people are just obsessed with sex.
__________________
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Genesis 3:22 And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.
But it is also true that, though sound argument and a reasonable appreciation of the available evidence may happen sometimes to lead to false conclusions, no man who is indifferent to argument and evidence can claim to be concerned for truth...It is also true that to tolerate contradiction is similarly to be indifferent to truth. For the person who, whether directly or by implication, knowingly both asserts and denies one and the same proposition, shows by that behaviour that he does not care whether he asserts what is false, and not true, or whether he denies what is true, and not false.
- Antony Flew
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