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One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

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Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#41

Post by thebigshane »

ErrantX wrote: post #12
erlanger wrote: post #4

> Males report having sexual fantasies earlier in development (average age of onset 11.5 years) I find that figure to be surprisingly high. My first dream that was definitely sexual was when I was 7 going on 8, in the second grade. > today’s Internet pornography scene, where zero is left to the imagination. I disagree. The primary psychological goal of porno seems to be for the viewer to imagine one of the actors as…

May I ask; how old are you now? (your past recall seems pretty damn good if you can remember back so far) As it stands I'd say 7/8 seems young; well, for men (it might be reasonable for women). My work is in computer forensics and we often have children's computers to examine. In my limited observation sexual interest develops around 10/11 in boys and 8/9 in girls (this is based on searches for porn or sexy pics so i…

Just a guess, but I think maybe girl's search that young to explore why society is so obsessed with beautiful/sexy women and to learn more about society's expectations of themselves.. I, perhaps naively, think that they are not searching for stimulating experiences like boys likely are.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#42

Post by ciupicri »

sev wrote: post #30
zefhous wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's quite an astute point. Easy access to porn desensitizes us sexually, and we no longer have to depend on our imaginations. It's not necessarily about FUD or a generational issue, it's something worth thinking about. I think these are important questions to consider: How does easy access to pornography affect the development of children? What are the effects of pornography and masturbation in my life? How…

The latter 3 are not too interesting IMO, because porn and masturbation have been around for centuries, and whatever effects they've had have become part of society. The first one might be an interesting one to consider. Of course this is assuming children get hold of the pornography at an earlier age than they should and continuously have easy access to it. And in my opinion, the only thing that occurs is that child…

Masturbation is as at least as old as Onan[1], but I doubt porn is a few centuries old. Maybe erotica.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#43

Post by kragen »

bkrausz wrote: post #37
kragen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what fraction of human sexual encounters are homosexual? There's the old studies the fundamentalist Christians like to trot out where 28% of the gay interviewees reported more than a thousand lifetime sexual partners, while I suspect the median number of lifetime sexual partners across the adult US population is somewhere around 10. So it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the majority of human sexual encoun…

In the modern West, major studies indicate a prevalence of homosexuality of 2% to 13% of the population[1]. On any given day 4% of the population has sex[2]. That means that in order for same-gender sex to outnumber straight sex, every day between a third and all of the homosexual population would need to have sex[3]. Somehow I doubt this is the case. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality [2] http://geograph…

The thing is, these distributions are very skewed. A non-gender-or-orientation-specific given person can go for two weeks without having sex and then have sex ten or twenty times in a weekend-long speed-fueled orgy (or so the stories go), and that still averages out to 0.7 to 1.4 times a day.

So it's kind of a sticky subject. It can be really hard to get your arms around all the issues. What's the relative frequency of Viagra and amphetamine usage among gay and straight people? Of group sex? How about among the most sexually active 20% of each group? Nobody has a fucking clue.

However, I have a strong suspicion that getting laid a couple of times a day isn't that hard if you're a gay man in a major world city, especially in the age if Grindr and iTrick.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#44

Post by ciupicri »

> a veritable online smorgasbord of real people doing things our grandparents couldn’t have dreamt up even in their wettest of dreams

Maybe our grandparents didn't even dream about it, but the ancient Greeks and Romans sure did a lot of those things.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#45

Post by petercooper »

mahmud wrote: post #22
ErrantX wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

May I ask; how old are you now? (your past recall seems pretty damn good if you can remember back so far) As it stands I'd say 7/8 seems young; well, for men (it might be reasonable for women). My work is in computer forensics and we often have children's computers to examine. In my limited observation sexual interest develops around 10/11 in boys and 8/9 in girls (this is based on searches for porn or sexy pics so i…

OT, but how far back in your youth can you remember? I ask this because I described my earliest memory to my mother and she confirmed that at that time I must have been no more than 18 months old. It was an apartment we lived in during a brief period of separation from my father, when she went AWOL with me, and she swore she never told anyone where we have been for those few weeks. I also remember a day when my broth…

FWIW, I remember almost nothing from before 6. I can remember a few extended memories aged 6, then quite a lot from about 8 onwards. The absolute earliest memory I can dredge up is age 5 but we're talking a mere snatch of an image. I have bizarre time and memory dilation issues in any case so my brain isn't quite representative of the norm!

My father, on the other hand, goes to the other extreme and claims to remember being in his pram in the garden at about 18 months old and not being able to understand the noises being made by other people around him.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#46

Post by theBobMcCormick »

ciupicri wrote: post #39
sramov wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life hacking.

Speaking of life, hacking together with someone of the opposite sex would be more productive than by yourself.

You can't always have filet mignon. Sometime you just gonna make do with a hamburger. :-)

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#47

Post by philwelch »

ciupicri wrote: post #42
sev wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latter 3 are not too interesting IMO, because porn and masturbation have been around for centuries, and whatever effects they've had have become part of society. The first one might be an interesting one to consider. Of course this is assuming children get hold of the pornography at an earlier age than they should and continuously have easy access to it. And in my opinion, the only thing that occurs is that child…

Masturbation is as at least as old as Onan[1], but I doubt porn is a few centuries old. Maybe erotica. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onan

The sin of Onan wasn't masturbation, but rather "pulling out".

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#48

Post by btilly »

thebigshane wrote: post #40
btilly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't actually what the author claims. Lots of other animals masturbate, and the author admits that monkeys are certainly prone to it. What he claims makes humans unusual is the we masturbate to orgasm . Incidentally you chose fairly poor examples for animal homosexuality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals for a list of other examples you could use. For instance I prefer to cite gir…

It seems like these examples are given to "excuse" human homosexual behavior ("See! It's perfectly natural. Look at the Giraffes!"). I don't have a strong opinion about human homosexual behavior but I do think these examples are meaningless for this intention. Giraffes are probably too dumb, too horny and too indifferent to care about gender or anything. They see a sexual opportunity and they take it. I speculate tha…

Some may do that, but I personally have no desire to excuse human homosexual behavior. If you can't accept that people have the right to do whatever they want that hurts nobody else, then I'm not going to change you.

However I take great delight in correcting bigots who make the mistake of claiming that homosexuality is a perversion that is only found in humans. And somehow I never seem to find a shortage of those.

About giraffes, you may be right. My impression is that they spend a lot of time not high enough in the hierarchy to get females, so when their sex drive leads them to fight giraffes they can beat, the only outlet for their sex drive is the fellow they just beat.

However black swans show an example of animal homosexuality where the animal has a choice, and actively chooses homosexual behavior.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#49

Post by gscott »

kragen wrote: post #35
btilly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't actually what the author claims. Lots of other animals masturbate, and the author admits that monkeys are certainly prone to it. What he claims makes humans unusual is the we masturbate to orgasm . Incidentally you chose fairly poor examples for animal homosexuality. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexual_behavior_in_animals for a list of other examples you could use. For instance I prefer to cite gir…

I wonder what fraction of human sexual encounters are homosexual? There's the old studies the fundamentalist Christians like to trot out where 28% of the gay interviewees reported more than a thousand lifetime sexual partners, while I suspect the median number of lifetime sexual partners across the adult US population is somewhere around 10. So it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the majority of human sexual encoun…

1000 sounds like a reasonable number here you have George Michael going to a park and hooking up with random people. http://www.celebitchy.com/1243/george_michael_has_sex_with_r... the guys go to the park to have sex with random guys hence how the other fellow was there too. I believe some some software offered by one of the YC companies is most used for same-sex hooking up. But I am speaking from a point of jelousy as it would be nice to have such a hetrosexual culture without a monetary exchange.

Re: One reason why humans are special and unique: We masturbate. A lot

#50

Post by ErrantX »

gscott wrote: post #49
kragen wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what fraction of human sexual encounters are homosexual? There's the old studies the fundamentalist Christians like to trot out where 28% of the gay interviewees reported more than a thousand lifetime sexual partners, while I suspect the median number of lifetime sexual partners across the adult US population is somewhere around 10. So it wouldn't be terribly surprising if the majority of human sexual encoun…

1000 sounds like a reasonable number here you have George Michael going to a park and hooking up with random people. http://www.celebitchy.com/1243/george_michael_has_sex_with_r... the guys go to the park to have sex with random guys hence how the other fellow was there too. I believe some some software offered by one of the YC companies is most used for same-sex hooking up. But I am speaking from a point of jelousy…

But I am speaking from a point of jelousy as it would be nice to have such a hetrosexual culture without a monetary exchange.

So, uh, we do. It's called dogging[1].

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogging_(sexual_slang)

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