Narratives Re: Regrets on Promiscuity

[The Nehor]

6 hours ago, DT_ said:

2 Nephi 28:14 predicts "abominations, and whoredoms" in the last days. However, recent studies show there's no "Hook-up" culture anymore.[1]  One study hypothesizes that "growing individualism and reduced sociability" [2] explains the decline.  Do you think the Sexual Revolution is going to make a comeback before the Second Coming?

Wait, what? Hookup culture died? It was when I stopped and repented isn’t it? I am so sorry I did this. Oh Grindr! You were too beautiful for this world! 😣

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, Tacenda said:

Also, my husband has a huge problem, I don't know if other LDS men have it. He looks down on women that don't remain virgins until marriage. It's almost like he believes the old adage that having sex before marriage is next to murder. If we go to a movie and there's a couple that clearly had sex and they weren't married, didn't show any R material but you just know, well, he'll ruin the entire movie for me when he says how bad they are. 

It's almost caused a divorce the way he speaks about both men and women that don't wait. it almost makes me think he's jealous or something and hides it by saying awful things when we see it, at the movies or for instance while watching The Bachelorette. We can't be in the same room with that show on, he will say awful things about them, and makes me so angry. He closely aligns peoples worth if they've broken the law of chastity. 

Gross. I imagine you don’t watch a lot of movies together.

[DT_]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

Wait, what? Hookup culture died?

Most people are not promiscuous and there are more singles now. 

https://datepsychology.com/how-many-sexual-partners-did-men-and-women-have-in-2021/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-our-unions/202208/the-rise-lonely-single-men

https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/-the-rise-of-lonely-single-men-article-sparks-online-debate-146588741917

 

 

Edited August 23, 2022 by DT_

[DT_]

14 hours ago, smac97 said:

I have recently come across two articles, both written by women, expressing regrets about buying into the generalized narrative on the Sexual Revolution.  The interesting thing is that both authors are expressing this regret from an emphatically non-religious point of view. 

Correlation isn't necessarily causation. Regret stories don't prove anything. Do ex-Mormon stories prove the Church is not true?

Edited August 23, 2022 by DT_

[DT_]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

 It was when I stopped and repented isn’t it?

I have no idea what you were doing in the 80s and 90s.

[The Nehor]

21 minutes ago, DT_ said:

Most people are not promiscuous.

https://datepsychology.com/how-many-sexual-partners-did-men-and-women-have-in-2021/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-state-our-unions/202208/the-rise-lonely-single-men

https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/-the-rise-of-lonely-single-men-article-sparks-online-debate-146588741917

So back in my sinning days I was a bigger slut than I thought.

I am strangely okay with this.

[The Nehor]

3 minutes ago, DT_ said:

I have no idea what you were doing in the 80s and 90s.

It was in the 00s.

[DT_]

18 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

It was in the 00s.

Sure, buddy! and I'm Chris Hemsworth.

[The Nehor]

49 minutes ago, DT_ said:

Sure, buddy! and I'm Chris Hemsworth.

No, I meant I was in hook up culture in the 00s and it was alive and well. It was almost ridiculously easy.

[Tacenda]

6 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Gross. I imagine you don’t watch a lot of movies together.

Only true stories because he'll say how in real life that can't happen, haha. 

He's a great guy though, I promise.  Everybody loves my husband, I do too, it's just difficult when personality's are kind of opposite. This is the only thing that causes problems, so I really lucked out. 

[jkwilliams]

16 hours ago, smac97 said:

I sure hope so.  MSGA!  "Make Sex Great Again!"

To quote Nehor: Gross. 

If sex isn't great, you're doing it wrong.

I guess MSGA might work if you had a red-hat fetish. 

Edited August 23, 2022 by jkwilliams

[smac97]

29 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Quote

I sure hope so.  MSGA!  "Make Sex Great Again!"

To quote Nehor: Gross. 

If sex isn't great, you're doing it wrong.

I guess MSGA might work if you had a red-hat fetish. 

To the extent the Church and its members have erred, it has been to (wrongly) give the impression to kids that sex is "dirty" or bad (see Calm's comments above).  While such sentiments were, I think, intended to have a deterrent effect on extramarital sexual behavior (the Church's actual teachings about sex are, I think quite good), they have done some harm that needs correction.

An example:

Quote

EX-MORMON USES TIKTOK TO ‘UNRAVEL ALL THE TRAUMA’ PURITY CULTURE CAUSED HER

Article by Katie Mather

Published on Aug 22, 2022

When Mindy was 19 years old, she lost her virginity to her husband on their wedding night. She says the first thing she felt was guilt.

“I had spent my whole life learning that if I kept myself pure and worthy for my husband, then my sex life would be great,” Mindy told In The Know. “I felt incredibly flawed and broken.”

Plenty of people have difficulty transitioning from pre-marital abstinence to post-marital sexuality.  Therapy, time, patience, communication, prayer, etc. can help in such things.

And yes, the Church can do a better job of messaging and helping young adults have a proper perspective and reasonable expectations about "sex life" after marriage.  Overall, though, the difficulties of the foregoing transition (particularly when properly mitigated and planned for) are much better than what the Sexual Revolution has to offer.

Quote

Mindy — which is not her real name but the alias she uses online and how she asked to be referred to for this story — grew up in a Mormon household. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), or, informally, the Mormon Church, is a non-Trinitarian faith under Christianity that encourages followers to remain chaste until they enter a heterosexual marriage.

“When I was taught about sex it was always in relation to men,” Mindy said. “It makes women feel selfish by desiring things for themselves.”

Mindy said she was told that the ultimate goal in life was to be a mother and wife. She was taught that she, as a woman, was to only think about sex as a way of serving her husband and fulfilling this goal.

Not sure what this is about.  

Quote

“I was going to be the best Mormon and live the perfect Mormon life,” she added. But she didn’t expect to deal with “shame and guilt and panic attacks around sex” after she got married.

Yep.  Reasonable expectations.  Proper perspective.  These are needed.

Quote

Being taught that sex was immoral caused “trauma” for Mindy that she’s still grappling with. A lot of her processing has been documented on her TikTok account, where she has almost 200,000 followers.

“I was three years old when I was first told to keep my legs together when I wear a dress so that boys wouldn’t see my underwear,” she said in one video. “I was 13 years old when I was told that boys would want sex all the time and girls are inherently less sexual — so it was my job to be the gatekeeper.”

Teaching a little girl wearing a dress to keep her legs together caused trauma?

Quote

“I was 16 the first time I kissed a boy with tongue, and felt so guilty about it, I wanted to die,” Mindy continued in her video. “I felt disgusted with my body.”

After a year of being married to her husband, Mindy said she believed God wasn’t answering her prayers as punishment for her pre-marriage sexual feelings. At 30 years old, Mindy decided to really investigate how purity culture had affected her relationship with sex and kept coming across the phrase “good girl syndrome” — which she repeatedly tried to dismiss.

A good article about "Good Girl Syndrome" here: https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-9972/

Quote

“I had read about it before but had always brushed it off because I didn’t believe that was what I was struggling with,” Mindy told In The Know. “That was the beginning of me unraveling all the trauma purity culture had caused me.”

Good girl syndrome is when a woman defines her worth and likability by how she can serve others. It’s a similar ideology to being a “perfect Mormon.”

“The Mormon ideal of perfection is more demanding than the military,” psychotherapist Donna Bevan-Lee argues. “It applies, not only to appearance, conduct and job performance, but also to thoughts and feelings, to a person’s fundamental being.”

Yep.  Reasonable expectations.  Proper perspective.  These are needed.

Thanks,

-Smac 

[jkwilliams]

11 minutes ago, smac97 said:

To the extent the Church and its members have erred, it has been to (wrongly) give the impression to kids that sex is "dirty" or bad (see Calm's comments above).  While such sentiments were, I think, intended to have a deterrent effect on extramarital sexual behavior (the Church's actual teachings about sex are, I think quite good), they have done some harm that needs correction.

An example:

Plenty of people have difficulty transitioning from pre-marital abstinence to post-marital sexuality.  Therapy, time, patience, communication, prayer, etc. can help in such things.

And yes, the Church can do a better job of messaging and helping young adults have a proper perspective and reasonable expectations about "sex life" after marriage.  Overall, though, the difficulties of the foregoing transition (particularly when properly mitigated and planned for) are much better than what the Sexual Revolution has to offer.

Not sure what this is about.  

Yep.  Reasonable expectations.  Proper perspective.  These are needed.

Teaching a little girl wearing a dress to keep her legs together caused trauma?

A good article about "Good Girl Syndrome" here: https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-9972/

Yep.  Reasonable expectations.  Proper perspective.  These are needed.

Thanks,

-Smac 

I'm not sure how any of that relates to what I said. I was not criticizing LDS teachings about sexuality at all, but noting that the insertion of a cheap political slogan into a discussion of sex made me throw up in my mouth a little.

[pogi]

12 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Personally as a woman I reject the situation where I am stuck depending on a man indefinitely. I want the type of relationship where we each know we're not stuck and we stay with each other because we want to, not because we have to. Such a dynamic, in my opinion, is far more rewarding than the model I was raised in the church to follow.

When you say that you don't want to be "stuck" to a man, are you talking about marriage in general or sealing, or both?  As a missionary, the discussion where we taught about sealing families for eternity was always one of the highlights for people that drew them to the restored gospel.  Eternal family by choice is the way I roll. 

 

[smac97]

32 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I'm not sure how any of that relates to what I said. I was not criticizing LDS teachings about sexuality at all, but noting that the insertion of a cheap political slogan into a discussion of sex made me throw up in my mouth a little.

It was an attempt at humor is all.  

[jkwilliams]

Just now, smac97 said:

It was an attempt at humor is all.  

Is that what is meant by "gross-out humor"? 🤣

[smac97]

2 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Is that what is meant by "gross-out humor"? 🤣

No.  That would've happened if I had tried to incorporate "Si, se puede!" into the discussion. 

Thanks,

-Smac

Edited August 23, 2022 by smac97

[jkwilliams]

24 minutes ago, smac97 said:

No.  That would've happened if I had tried to incorporate "Si, se puede!" into the discussion. 

Sounds like a slogan for a Viagra ad on Telemundo. Oddly appropriate.

Technically, it's "Sí, se puede," but I'm not sure why the motto of the UFW would be gross-out humor. Personally, I find Dolores Huerta to be an inspiring figure.

Edited August 23, 2022 by jkwilliams

[pogi]

15 hours ago, DT_ said:

The majority of men and women are not promiscuous. [3] 

https://datepsychology.com/how-many-sexual-partners-did-men-and-women-have-in-2021/

Yes they are, sex has just gone from analog to digital.  Sexting is the new hook up.   

13 hours ago, DT_ said:

The Sex Revolution already ended. Single and 30 is the new normal. 

No, it has just evolved.  VR hookups will become the next iteration of the revolution.   In some ways that may be better than the alternative, in other ways it may be so much worse.  

Is it just me or has something been lost in the human experience since the rise of social media?  Is humanity suffering because of it?  I think there is plenty of evidence to suggest it is with the rise of anxiety, depression, and the loneliness epidemic. 

The gospel of Jesus Christ centers around developing and maintaining human relationships.  That is really what it is all about.  Human intimacy (no I'm not just talking about sex or marriage or romantic relationships) is the greatest source of human happiness.  The superficial nature of online relationships makes it so easy to hook up, drop out, and move on.   Commitment and fidelity to relationships is a bedrock that has been eroded.     

 

 

[Amulek]

15 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

If there is such a strand (and there probably is), it seems a bit unfair to paint the entire sexual revolution with that brush.

Well, I don't know that they are completely off base. The sexual revolution coincided with second-wave feminism, and many feminist thinkers at the time most definitely believed that asserting female sexuality was a major step towards women's liberation. As such, women were encouraged to initiate sexual advances, enjoy 'sex without consequences,' experiment with new forms of sexuality, etc.

So when you said that you "don't know anyone, "sexual liberal" or otherwise, who thinks that 'what women need is the freedom to behave as men have always behaved, enjoying all the pleasures of casual sex, porn, BDSM, and indeed any other sexual delight that the human mind can dream up.'" I thought to myself, really?, cause this was definitely a thing. In fact, it was precisely the kind of thing that the women in the OP were talking about.

Now, to be fair, since the late 70s - 80s, there has been some counter movement within feminism regarding several these ideas - specifically with respect to pornography, prostitution, BDSM, etc. And I think modern feminism takes a much more individualized approach to these (and other) areas. That's probably for the best, and I believe the women in the OP would have been better served if they had gotten that message, rather than the one they did, in their youth.

 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Amulek said:

Well, I don't know that they are completely off base. The sexual revolution coincided with second-wave feminism, and many feminist thinkers at the time most definitely believed that asserting female sexuality was a major step towards women's liberation. As such, women were encouraged to initiate sexual advances, enjoy 'sex without consequences,' experiment with new forms of sexuality, etc.

So when you said that you "don't know anyone, "sexual liberal" or otherwise, who thinks that 'what women need is the freedom to behave as men have always behaved, enjoying all the pleasures of casual sex, porn, BDSM, and indeed any other sexual delight that the human mind can dream up.'" I thought to myself, really?, cause this was definitely a thing. In fact, it was precisely the kind of thing that the women in the OP were talking about.

Now, to be fair, since the late 70s - 80s, there has been some counter movement within feminism regarding several these ideas - specifically with respect to pornography, prostitution, BDSM, etc. And I think modern feminism takes a much more individualized approach to these (and other) areas. That's probably for the best, and I believe the women in the OP would have been better served if they had gotten that message, rather than the one they did, in their youth.

 

There's a difference between "asserting female sexuality" and the belief that men are pigs, so women should let them have what they want. Do I think women (as well as men) should be empowered to "initiate sexual advances, enjoy 'sex without consequences,' experiment with new forms of sexuality, etc."? Yes, if they want to. I also think they should be free to choose abstinence, marital fidelity, and so on. My wife and I chose the latter, and I don't have any regrets, though I might have chosen differently had I figured out the church earlier in my life.

My issue with smac's OP is first, that it returns to the idea that men are the natural instigators of sex, and women exist simply to accommodate or reject that instigation. Second, it does not reflect that there are different kinds of feminism and "sexual liberation," such that it's all lumped together into, for want of a better word, "slut culture." We don't have to retrench old ideas of men as horndogs and women as gatekeepers to promote healthy intimacy (and I'm not just talking about sex). In short, the cited sources seem rather disdainful of both men and women. That doesn't help.

[pogi]

46 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Do I think women (as well as men) should be empowered to "initiate sexual advances, enjoy 'sex without consequences,' experiment with new forms of sexuality, etc."? Yes, if they want to. I also think they should be free to choose abstinence, marital fidelity, and so on. 

Of course they should be free to choose.  What the article in the OP is trying to reveal, and which I agree with, is that "sex without consequences" is a myth, that "sex doesn't matter" is a myth, that "loveless sex is empowering' is a myth.  I don't find it coincidental at all that those who subscribe to these myths are also the strongest advocates for abortion rights.  That is the picture of "liberation"!

Edited August 23, 2022 by pogi

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, pogi said:

Of course they should be free to choose.  What the article in the OP is trying to reveal, and which I agree with, is that "sex without consequences" is a myth, that "sex doesn't matter" is a myth, that "loveless sex is empowering' is a myth.   

That I agree with. I just don't like the attitude that women's role in sexuality is to say yes or no to the male pigs. 

[pogi]

20 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

That I agree with. I just don't like the attitude that women's role in sexuality is to say yes or no to the male pigs. 

Can you show me the quotes where you inferred that from the article?  I must have missed that part. 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, pogi said:

Can you show me the quotes where you inferred that from the article?  I must have missed that part. 

Here you go.

Quote

 

Broadly speaking, the advantage on the male half the population (being bigger and stronger) was offset by the advantage on the female side (controlling access to sex) (I am speaking, again, broadly).

The Sexual Revolution essentially had many of its female advocates (most of which, I think, styled themselves as "feminists") saying: "Men are pigs because they are predisposed toward casual sex, buying sex, etc.  Let us women now join them in their wanton depravities.  Let's give 'em what they want.  Sex without meaning or significance."

 

That line of thinking seriously creeps me out.