There's an interesting video I watched recently on how "manipulative reproductive suppression" may be an evolutionary tactic to ensure the success of one's own offspring at the expense of everyone else's. If true it's probably relevant to this question if not the only factor.
The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
281–288 of 288 posts
Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're missing the distinction. I met my wife at work but any and all propositioning happened outside the office, and not at office social events either.
and how did you get access to her outside the office for this propositioning?
You can invite a group of coworkers to an event. You can attend events established by groups of coworkers. You can invite an individual to a party you're hosting that other people are attending, or sometime when she didn't pack lunch you can offer to go grab lunch with her. The important thing is to establish a social relationship before trying for a romantic or sexual one: Don't single her out, don't ask her to be in a situation where it's just you and her in something heavily date-coded (keeping her company when she grabs lunch? good! Asking her out solo for drinks/dinner? bad!) until you're a known quantity to her, until you could confidently say she considers you, if not a friend, someone she's friendly with. At that point, and AT THAT POINT ONLY, you can casually, in a low-key way, ask her on a date in a way that makes it abundantly clear it's not going to be a huge deal if she says no, and that that wasn't the whole entire point of getting to know her.
And one way to make it clear (to her and to yourself) is to have (social) relationships with other coworkers, with other women, and to have other women in your life. That way she knows (and you know) that she's not your sole focus, your only real chance, and she knows that you're able to maintain healthy, safe relationships with women that you aren't trying to date.
The really important thing is to make sure she understands that there's no pressure on her to say yes, and that saying no will not lead to an uncomfortable workplace dynamic. A lot of this is good advice for connecting with women you'd potentially like to date in other circumstances too - the reason there's a lot of generic, overly broad 'advice' floating around about "don't hit on women at the gym" "don't flirt with women at their place of work" "don't ask women out at school" "don't ask your friends out" "don't hit on women in hobby groups" is that a lot of men are terrible at not making women feel singled out and socially coerced. If you can convince yourself that you're in that situation for more reasons than looking for a date, and if you're able to create a broader social context, you're very unlikely to fall into that trap, and vastly less likely to get accused of behaving inappropriately; and if you somehow do anyway, it'll be much easier to defend yourself as having engaged in good faith. Since you obviously did.
Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
The decline of community is a very big deal. I think a lot of it has to do with the way we build our living spaces. Modern North American cities are rife with car-centric suburbs, huge driveways, front doors set back a mile from the sidewalk, long commutes to anywhere (not just work, even to get groceries). We're living in these metal-and-glass boxes and we only see other people as obstacles in the way of what we wan…
There's something about this I think is illuminating. I don't think the social issues fall into partisan politics. It's like we've abstracted away people into something like a corporate entity. Even in large residence buildings in cities, people don't know each other right next to them. That's in contrast with small villages where everyone knows each other for generations. Another example is roads and how road rage f…
I have lived in villages and cities in different continents. This abstraction you speak of isn’t limited to the US. Asian and European cities are the same. People don’t tend to socialize a lot with their neighbors in the cities as much as they did and still do in the villages.
Is this capitalism? Is it technology (I’m not talking about computers) induced narcissism? Is it because we reduce ourselves and others to metrics and then use yardsticks to incessantly measure ourselves on a broken scale?
Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#284Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#285Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Quite interesting because in my trans and poly community I have found belonging, friendship, cuddles, alcohol free spaces, and lots of very exciting and interesting consensual safer sex. I’m having (by far) the best sex of my life after being active for 20+ years. It turns out that dancing in the forest on LSD is way more fun and exciting than chugging another beer on my couch (which is exactly how I spent my 20’s).…
When you have an inexplicable and paranoid disdain for a group and blame said group for the ills of everything wrong in the world, it's because the mere existence of said group disproves your worldview. It's like a scientific discovery, a mathematical proof or evidence of a crime. The go to strategy is to get rid of that evidence, but how do you get rid of evidence if the evidence is a person?
Well they will try to ban HRT, try to ban trans access to every space they can, and if things get really bad they will turn their ICE-based kidnapping machine on trans people.
There are some very vocal right wing politicians in the US who say openly that trans people should be eliminated from society. Much like calls 20-30-40 years ago to eliminate gays from society, such an effort is impossible, but they could do great harm if they try.
Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#287Re: The share of Americans having regular sex keeps dropping
#288It's not really surprising. Hetero sexual desire has been framed negatively for well over a decade, as at best exploitative and at worst misogynistic and perverted. Men told that if you want sex you're part of society's biggest problem, and women told that if you give in to a man's sordid desires you are being taken advantage of and subjugated. All we ever talk about is the dreaded 'power imbalance'. We've removed se…
That’s an exaggeration. As an Asian who has interacted with Americans, I still see the US as one of the most sexualized places in the world. The emphasis on physical attractiveness is extreme, and the hook-up culture, pick-up culture and PUA industry have influenced not just America but Asia as well. What you’re describing sounds more like a pushback against abuse and manipulative forms of hooking up, which is a natural reaction in a society shaped by individualism. People are simply becoming more cautious. This will likely drive an even greater focus on physical and sexual
appearance as consensual hookups continue.