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Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

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Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#201

Post by dragonwriter »

roymurdock wrote: post #69
transfire wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand what it is like to be a man then. It has nothing to do with "inequality". When it comes to sex it is woman that hold most of the cards. For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e. perfect) then they are at the mercy of women. Which means they have two choices, they either "beg" for it or try to "take" it. Both come in a variety of subtle and overt forms. In either case it…

I agree with you that women (and men for that matter) find confidence attractive. You don't have to be in a relationship to be confident. I would be careful of conflating the two. From my experience, most women are not interested in holding sex as a trump card. Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will a…

> Like you and I, they are simply looking for companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals.

transfire explicitly was addressing the condition of men seeking sex, which is not the same as mean seeking "companionship - for someone they can count on for support and non-judgement during times of crisis, but who will also push them to become better and achieve their goals".

Insofar as women are seeking that (whether or not that's like you), that would likely be a problem for men who are simply seeking sex and not to find or provide companionship.

To the extent that there are asymmetries in the degrees to which (heterosexual, for simplicity) men and women seek sex vs. mutual companionship in relationships, this will produce advantages and disadvantages to some people on both sides. For instance, to the extent the stereotypical idea that men are more prone to seek sex and women more prone to seek companionship is true (note that I'm not claiming it is), men who seek sex will have a more difficult time, as will women who seek mutual companionship (while, conversely, women who seek sex and men who seek mutual companionship will have a comparatively easy time.)

Its a simple issue of poor alignment of supply and demand (but it doesn't make it worse to be a man than a woman -- it makes it worse to be a man or woman seeking what people of your gender are most prone to seek, and people of your preferred gender are least prone to want to provide.)

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#202

Post by adriand »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #188
adriand wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the one guilty was to be stoned to death because they had committed a crime deserving the death penalty. In comparison to crimes with similar punishment today, how many would say to not judge a murderer unless you are blameless? Surely you are aware that the "crime deserving the death penalty", in this instance, was the "crime" of adultery. Based on that, I don't think your line of questioning holds up.

I don't see how our modern view of what was then a capital crime matters. When the quote was said, it was said to a group who were asking to carry out a death sentence for a capital crime. That is to say, the line of reasoning is that you should not carry out an execution for a capital crime unless you are without sin. To insist that this quote only applies to adultery and not to other actions which different societi…

I don't agree. I think that this quote expresses a more modern understanding of human transgressions such as adultery than what was present in the culture at that time. It called into question whether in fact capital punishment was appropriate for a transgression of that sort.

I'm reminded of former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's comment when he defended a bill decriminalizing homosexual acts: "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation".

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#203

Post by myko »

pjc50 wrote: post #196
myko wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, of course, that is a major goal of Google's DLF. http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2009/09/introducing-d... http://dataliberation.blogspot.com/

I can't find on either of those pages specific text relating to deletion?

"Said simply, a liberated product is one which has built-in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you'd like to take it elsewhere"

"For example, you can choose to have your data deleted — after three, six, nine or 12 months of inactivity."

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#205

Post by drzaiusapelord »

Frondo wrote: post #182
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about closeted gays and others who are forced to be deceptive? I lie about my religious views because you can't be an atheist where I'm at. etc, etc. There's so much white-lying going on that its ridiculous to hold it up to some standard or pretend it means anything. >my concern is that they're also OK lying to a customer. This is ridiculous. Do you really think the CEO's sex life translates directly to the prod…

I think very few people would consider cheating on one's spouse or partner to be a form of white lying. I also do business with a lot more people where I'm doing business with the owner themselves. If I'm looking someone in the eye and shaking their hand to do a deal, and then they turn around and lie to their spouse (someone they ostensibly owe a lot more to than me), that's hard for me to reconcile. Maybe you don't…

All the CEOs I'd consider "evil" have been faithful from what I can tell. You're making an argument you can't support for reasons that seem 100% emotionally hysterical to me.

"Look at other women?! I'm not buying his product!" This is no different than "A Hindu running a company? No thank you sir! I only go with good honest Christian men!"

In a large company the CEO does little more than attract investor money and recruit senior leadership, if that. The idea that his sex lies are going directly in your software is hilariously puritanical.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#206

Post by JohnBooty »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #192
JohnBooty wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definite gender imbalances in our society. Is someone bitter when they point out that women make less or that men die more at work? [...] I wouldn't call Clinton pointing out the wage gap as her being bitter. Those are objective facts, backed by statistics. Completely different than: For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e. perfect) then they are at the mercy of women If that does…

>Those are objective facts, backed by statistics. Completely different than Not really, considering that the gender wage gap often pointed out (the 70-something cents to the dollar) is not standardized for time worked, experience, career choice, or a number of other factors. I would say Clinton is wrong to bring up the 70-something cents to a dollar, but I wouldn't call her bitter. >If that doesn't sound bitter to yo…

Your argument is that this guy feels that women hold men at their mercy unless they meet a bunch of unrealistic criteria, and he's not bitter about it?

Oooooookay.

Sure. Maybe the guy is totally cool with his bleak, transactional view of male/female relationships.

Or maybe he's been hurt by past experiences that he views as unfair. Which is the literal definition of "bitter," by the way.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#207

Post by fab13n »

angersock wrote: post #161
fab13n wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant it as an electrical engineering metaphor, where you can string devices in parallel, or in serial one after the other, but where with a few adaptations both can lead to the same practical result. Besides, my whole point is that this behavior constitutes a variant of polygamy, not a variant of monogamy, so I stand by that term. That there's a "serial monogamy" idiom describing it (I just discovered it thanks to…

It's not a variant of polygamy, though. If you were a polygamist and only ever had one partner at a time and weren't looking and courting others then you would be, de facto , practicing monogamy. If I had a spouse, to whom I was devoted, and they were hit by a bus and killed, and then I had another spouse, who was killed by a falling meteoroid, and then a third spouse, who died of an aneurysm, and finally a fourth wh…

If you're a serial widower without being the cause of your spouses' deaths, then you're monogamous indeed. Monogamy does exist, and you can live morally monogamous lives although having several partners over your life.

But I don't think that's the topic. The original question was, will it become morally acceptable to be polygamous? And my answer was, you don't have to, of course, but you already can, in a contrieved way.

You can live the hookup culture without much stygma. You can dump your partners every 2-3 years, when novelty wears off, possibly having children with each of them. You can temporarily put up with a partner who doesn't satisfy you on some subjects, because you know there will be a next one who will fulfill those currently unmet needs.

TL;DR: polygamy isn't the only acceptable way, will probably never be, but some form of it already is a viable and non-stygmatized possibility.

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#208

Post by akshatpradhan »

smtddr wrote: post #90
transfire wrote: post #36

Anyone notice that the media is eating this up? But let me tell you the media also lent its support to this website. I was watching CNBC a few years ago and they had the CEO of Ashley Madison on and had a great time talking about their "brilliant business model", and how great the site was. No one seemed morally repulsed then. Well I was curious just from a business perspective (and curious how many people would actu…

>>I went to delete my account only to discover they wanted $80 to do so. Well, I discovered their brilliant business model. Hmm, so... did you pay? And if you did, have you verified your data is _not_ in the torrent dumps? It's been said that AM wasn't deleting as promised, even after paying, and that's a key part of a pending class-action-lawsuit.

For me, its really the company Ashley Madison that's the most horrible out of all of this. Relationships are definitely high risk because they can seriously damage personal reputation.

To have a company simply not do their due diligence in providing reasonable protection is beyond incompetence and negligence. Its gross that they didn't even honor peoples' request to have their profiles deleted.

Hackers are gonna hack.

Cheaters are gonna cheat.

Haters are gonna hate.

But damn Ashley Madison, in such a high risk game, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#209

Post by dragonwriter »

transfire wrote: post #199
Frondo wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa! That is some seriously messed-up stuff! Imperfect men can either beg for sex or attempt rape? No! Just, no! A thousand times no! I would strongly encourage you to talk to a professional mental health practitioner if that's your view on sexual relations. Something has gone seriously off the rails for you, and I hope you'll put in the effort to try and fix things up.

You seemed to have missed what I said about subtlety. When a man takes a woman on a date and pays for it, it's a subtle form of "begging". When a man is forward with a woman in hopes she will like the advances it is subtle form of "taking". You're the one reading only the extremities into what I said.

> When a man takes a woman on a date and pays for it, it's a subtle form of "begging".

That might be what you are doing when you take a woman out on a date and pay for it, but I can assure you -- as a man who has dated (now happily married) that that is not even close to universally the case.

> When a man is forward with a woman in hopes she will like the advances it is subtle form of "taking".

That doesn't seem consistent with any reasonable definition of the word "taking", differing in kind rather than degree from anything for which that word is a good fit. Its more like offering than taking -- you are putting your desire on display in the hopes that it will get a positive response; that's not anything like "taking" anything. (Unless its in a context where there is an implicit power dynamic where the expression of interest amounts to an implied threat to take, or an implied threat to impose adverse consequences if the interest isn't fulfilled. But that's a rather special case.)

Re: Here’s what Ashley Madison members have told me

#210

Post by dragonwriter »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #192
JohnBooty wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are definite gender imbalances in our society. Is someone bitter when they point out that women make less or that men die more at work? [...] I wouldn't call Clinton pointing out the wage gap as her being bitter. Those are objective facts, backed by statistics. Completely different than: For a man, unless they are handsome, wealthy and well endowed (i.e. perfect) then they are at the mercy of women If that does…

>Those are objective facts, backed by statistics. Completely different than Not really, considering that the gender wage gap often pointed out (the 70-something cents to the dollar) is not standardized for time worked, experience, career choice, or a number of other factors. I would say Clinton is wrong to bring up the 70-something cents to a dollar, but I wouldn't call her bitter. >If that doesn't sound bitter to yo…

An objective fact doesn't stop being an objective fact because one can debate whether it is the most appropriate fact for the discussion.
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