Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
"...Perhaps laughter will then have formed an alliance with wisdom; perhaps only 'gay science' will remain."
User ID: 342
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
23d ago
I don’t get why being a prostitute is a bad thing.
In a normal, healthy, average relationship, men trade resources and services for sex. That’s just how it goes. Prostitution simply formalizes the exchange.
I can only assume there’s some sort of deep psychic/symbolic trauma associated with the making explicit of a contractual obligation that is usually left implicit.
Primaprimaprima
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22d ago
· Edited 22d ago
I said that it was transactional. I didn't say it was purely transactional. There's a difference.
I previously shared some of my thoughts on love in general here. The most relevant bit is this:
If your love for your beloved is contingent on them possessing some particular quality, then you are liable to the charge that you don't really love the person: what you really love is that quality. You are a lover of intelligence, or humor, or beauty, but not of that particular person. But if you say that you would continue to love the person regardless of any qualities they possess whatsoever, even if they were stripped of all qualities and left only as a "bare particular", then it would seem that your choice is entirely arbitrary and without justification; for what could be motivating your choice if it is made in the absence of all qualities? And a baseless arbitrary choice cannot constitute love either. The conclusion we draw is that, if there is such a thing as "love" at all, it belongs to the domain of the unsayable.
Transactions are a reality; love is an absurdity, if not an outright impossibility. Love has value only and precisely because it is absurd.
I occasionally become impatient with people who glibly assert that they are "in love" without realizing that they are uttering an absurdity (or without realizing that, statistically speaking, their relationship probably won't last the year). This is not at all to say that people shouldn't love; it is only to say that it should be done self-consciously rather than than unconsciously.
It has long since penetrated popular consciousness that "justice" is an open and apophatic concept. Any assertion that such and such an act is "just" can be met with "ah, but what is justice? Whose justice? Is that really justice?" I am simply opening the possibility of a similar discourse on love. At least as far back as Plato's Symposium, it has been recognized that love is not (just) an emotion but a discursive concept which can and should be subject to critique (critique not in the sense of "mere" criticism, or dismissal, or negation -- but rather critique in the sense of a coming to self-consciousness, a laying bare of the groundwork and the conditions of possibility). To assume that we know love when we feel it is presumptuous. We can always interrogate whether any emotion, action, or other particular entity is an instantiation of the general concept of love, whether the conditions of instantiation of love can ever be met at all, etc.
One can feel and experience many things; but whether and how these feelings can be mapped to concepts should not be decided too hastily.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
22d ago
Given that you cannot imagine the love that a man and woman would have for one another in a relationship
A couple things:
One, I'm not sure what I said that gave you this impression. Presumably you thought my description of the typical relationship as "an exchange of resources for sex" somehow precluded the presence of love in such a relationship. But I never said that.
Two, I'm not sure how my conception of love is relevant to the task of determining what critics of prostitution find morally blameworthy about prostitution. Maybe your claim is that a prostitution transaction is devoid of love, and is thereby deficient. Ok, that may very well be true. But deficiency is not the same as blameworthiness. I don't see why the loveless prostitute should be a "predator" and a "demon" simply because she is loveless. She's not stopping you from falling in love with whoever you please! Lots of people are deficient in all sorts of things. The man who drives an old beat up car is using a deficient mode of transportation in comparison to the man who drives a new sports car, but there's nothing morally blameworthy about driving an old car. Not everyone has to own everything and experience everything, and that's ok!
Furthermore, I find the assertion that the prostitute is necessarily loveless to be rather presumptuous. I see no reason why there couldn't be someone she loves; perhaps even her clients.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
23d ago
That is not just how it goes.
It's pretty close to how it goes.
Do you believe that human emotions exist?
I should certainly think so! I'd wager I'm at least 2-sigma above the mean in terms of the intensity and variety of emotions I experience on a daily basis.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
21d ago
As I have said, you really need to reevaluate the claim that you are "2 sigma" beyond the depth and breadth of emotions that most people are experiencing.
I'm always open to evaluating new evidence to the contrary. But this claim of mine has been confirmed time and again in my experience. In particular, I'm quite confident that I'm more of a doe-eyed hopeless romantic than you are.
It appears I have been largely unsuccessful in communicating my views on love. I would recommend reading Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling if you want to understand my views on love better.
The book describes the dialectical stages of the development of Abraham's faith when he is asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. We begin at "mere" faith, a mere unreflective belief -- his mode of relation to his faith is unmediated immediacy, because this faith has not yet been subjected to critical inquiry. We proceed through doubt, despair, and resignation, until finally arriving at a faith that is identical to the faith we started with, and yet somehow not the same at all. He's back exactly where he started, and yet everything is different. His faith is now a mediated immediacy, mediated by the preceding dialectical development; he no longer believes in spite of the absurd, he believes because it is absurd to believe, the absurd is his reason for believing.
In brief: there is no such thing as authentic love until you have realized the impossibility of love.
Love is impossible. But its impossibility is what makes it beautiful. If it weren't impossible, it would have no value.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
1d ago
Seething contempt is fine if it’s expressed politely, which Turok has done imo.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
12d ago
Are autoandrophiles even a thing?
They undoubtedly exist, although they’re quite rare, partially because paraphilias in general are rare in women.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
19d ago
That being said, from my short time here it seems like most of the Christians on this site aren't that into symbolism, and tend to be more "rationalist" and materialist in their worldview.
Not entirely sure I follow your usage of the word "symbolism" here, but I do think I know what you're getting at.
I'm an atheist, but I have a religious disposition. A religious "personality type" if you will. Conversely, I've interacted with Christians here and elsewhere who believe in a literal God, but don't seem to possess the religious mindset at all.
Funny how things work out like that.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
21d ago
I'm not blowing you off; I just don't have the time in the day to keep responding to everyone for now. I may take some select points here and respond to them in a future top level post.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
22d ago
You continue to misinterpret my claims.
Love, if it exists, is a miracle. But did I ever say, at any point in this conversation, that you shouldn't believe in miracles? I've said no such thing.
I, along with perhaps billions of other people will tell you that
Regardless of what claims you think I'm making, this would not constitute a legitimate criticism of any of them.
You could almost say that it's the business of philosophical reflection to produce claims (or, plausible sounding arguments for claims, at any rate) that almost everyone rejects. It has variously been claimed by different parties in the history of philosophy that cars and buildings and animals are not real, that conscious experience is not real, that 1+1 does not equal 2, that there exist sentences which can be both true and false at the same time. Almost all humans reject these claims; but this is not taken to be any major impediment. Truth is not subject to democratic rule. The philosopher simply carries on with his business; he is well aware that other people will think he is in the grip of some kind of psychosis. When the propositions of "common sense" are finally subjected to long-overdue critique, the results will unavoidably be counterintuitive.
the harm that people like Aella have done to society is to convince people of the incorrect, unhealthy, anti social framework of understanding that you are presenting here.
I mean, you will certainly believe that some people are incorrect and unhealthy and anti-social, but we still all have to try to get along, y'know? Tomorrow it could be you who's getting called incorrect and anti-social.
You, nor Aella, nor the red pill people, nor the pickup artist people before them
I don't agree with the TRP/PUA people at all! I've done a terrible job of explaining my positions if that's what you took away from it.
I'm less familiar with Aella, but I'd probably find points of significant disagreement with her as well.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
22d ago
"A typical relationship is an exchange of resources for sex" shouldn't be taken to entail anything more than what it says on the tin. It doesn't imply there's no such thing as love, it doesn't imply that there's nothing beyond commodification, etc. (There are many complexities here that would have to be addressed, but I probably don't hold the views that you think I do on these questions.)
As I argued in another post, I don't think that the deficiency of prostitution (deficient in love, bonding, companionship, whatever the claim is) entails the moral blameworthiness of prostitution. People seem to think that prostitutes are bad, in some particularly unique way. We're trying to figure out why they think that.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
25d ago
If you want to talk to an AI, there's already a place where you can do that.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Final Fantasy
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
4d ago
OP’s a woman
Yes but this is a topic that comes up with some frequency and there are certain male posters who have strong opinions on it as well.
they’re more upset that the women aren’t being promiscuous with them
Yes but the point is that they care about it at all, regardless of their motivations. (The motivations are at least somewhat complex and multilayered. Yes at the end of the day it’s really about “all the women should belong to me” but I think there’s at least some genuine pro-social concern mixed in as well.)
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
7d ago
Well, the problem is that some people have the exact opposite intuition! They can’t see why qualia should pose a problem for physicalism at all. Thus the debate carries on interminably.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8d ago
· Edited 8d ago
But I quoted your passage upthread, re: male sexual desire conferring an aura of importance and seriousness on its object, because that seems interestingly different.
Yes, you're correct about all this. There is something qualitatively different about male sexual impulses (their "seriousness", and all the downstream effects thereof that you mention) that sets them apart from other basic biological drives.
I think this seriousness stems from the fact that a man's sexual impulses (and the fulfillment thereof) are closely tied to his sense of self-worth and self-actualization, in the same way that a career or other major life project might be. When he has sex with an attractive woman, he gets more than just the raw physical pleasure of the act: he gets a sense of holistic contentment, he feels that everything must actually be going quite swimmingly right now, he feels like he's exactly where he needs to be. Threatening the fulfillment of his sexual impulses is the same as threatening the fulfillment of his life project as a whole. This extends, albeit in a limited or distorted sense, even to fetishes that are shameful or harmful. The crossdresser might be ashamed of his crossdressing and try to hide it, but he still feels like he's expressing something vital by crossdressing, he's exploring an integral part of himself that might otherwise remain obscure. Asking him to give up his crossdressing is the same as asking him to give up part of his soul, even if it's a part of his soul that he's ambivalent about.
Now you might reasonably ask: can't you see, in a moment of sober reflection, that this is all a bit silly? Can't you see that there are plenty of other sources of meaning in life (friends and family, career, creative projects, etc) that obviate the need for this obsessive sexual drive? And the answer is, well... no. No matter how much I reflect on it, I can't disavow the importance that men place on sex and their particular sexual fetishes. Perhaps that's just the testosterone-induced delusion that I can never extricate myself from (it's a bit like saying "I've shown that love is just a chemical reaction, so now you can discard love as nothing but a useless illusion, yes?" -- the biology is whatever, but the feeling remains real regardless). But from a certain perspective, it also kind of just makes sense. Objectively speaking (not subjectively/psychologically), it's more difficult for men to reproduce than it is for women. Significantly more women than men throughout evolutionary history have reproduced. He's competing against an army of other men who are all offering large quantities of the same commodity (sperm cells) at very cheap rates. If he's able to enter into a normal and healthy (not talking about extreme fetishes here) sexual relationship with a woman, where she gives herself not just willingly but enthusiastically, then that is an accomplishment that he should objectively feel proud of.
Evolution had to instill men with a strong drive towards sexual competition (complete with that whole "all reward centers firing at once, total-soul-actualization" feeling) because otherwise they would be out-competed by other men. And the extreme fetishes that you bring up (necrophilia, self-mutilation, etc) are a result of this basic drive going haywire and becoming misdirected. The drive is, by necessity, strong enough and all-encompassing enough that its behavior becomes unpredictable.
It’s all a bit difficult to talk about because there are multiple types of sexual impulses (everything from “normal” relationships to extreme harmful fetishes) directed at different types of objects, and multiple levels of explanation (objective “marketplace” dynamics, biologically-mediated instincts, and the internal-phenomenological experience) all interacting with each other.
I'm absolutely not saying that men are crazy
No worries! Those were my words, not yours. I really do think that men are crazy (for good and for ill).
But I'd also be curious if this resonates, if testosterone-based sexual desire feels to most men as it does to the hand-freezing-off guy
On the one hand, a desire that extreme (plus the will to actually act on it) is foreign to my own experience, so in some sense I can only speculate. But on the other hand, I think I can say that, yes, I do get it. At least on a theoretical level. I could see a path where, if you kept turning up the dials on my currently existing sexuality, I could end up in a place like that. It's just that the vast majority of men don't have the dials turned up that high.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Well feelings are always important. They aren't always "valid", if "valid" means, they should be unconditionally affirmed, or that a person's interpretation of their own feelings is always correct. But they're certainly always important -- as symptoms, as signposts, as signifiers. There's no accurate model of any interpersonal interaction that excludes feelings.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
5d ago
It’s not going to work in the US because the ship has simply sailed. We’re in far too deep.
The most we can do is try to give the US a smooth controlled landing and encourage European countries to not go down the same path.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
8d ago
I obviously don't know my own level of testosterone or how that compares to other men.
A shy, quiet, intellectually-inclined friend of mine got his T levels checked and he was dead center average (by male standards).
Obviously there's something important going on with sex hormones and how they affect cognitive and personality traits, but it's not as simple as "number go up = big manly man, number go down = beta nerd".
Primaprimaprima
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15d ago
9 and 10 are hyper GOAT status for me, some of the best games ever made across any genre.
7’s alright, but even back when I played it for the first time as a kid I thought it was overrated.
I enjoyed 8 quite a bit more than you did, but that was probably just due to the spectacle of how much of a fever dream it was, rather than it being a “good game” in the traditional sense.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
19d ago
· Edited 19d ago
but then never got around to Umineko, which at that time seemed to me like just more of the same, but as a "normal" murder mystery.
Yeah it's kinda the opposite. Higurashi is amazing too but ultimately it's "just" a good murder mystery story. Umineko is capital-A Art.
You really do have to play the video game version. If it's been ported to phones that's fine too. I've never watched the anime or read the manga but I've been told the anime is awful. Apparently the manga is pretty good, but no matter how good it is, the video game version does some things that really work best in a digital medium. Plus it just has an amazing soundtrack, it's an integral part of the experience.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
21d ago
Sex (or, to generalize and be more precise, "access to a woman's body" - this includes sexual contact in general and childbearing in particular) is important to men. To the point that it's a necessary component of romantic relationships. Not the only component, but a necessary one. I know this from my own experience of being a man, from my experience of having male friends, from the fact that dating advice (TRP, PUA, etc) and dating apps are a multi-million dollar industry with a mostly male clientele, and just in general, from everything that's ever happened to me in my life. Sex is what men are seeking.
Female bodies are more valuable than male bodies. Women are acutely aware of how in-demand their bodies are. She knows that merely being granted access to your body is not adequate compensation for her granting you access to her body. So she typically wants something else from you as well. Thus the very generalized heading of "goods and services". (To be clear, relatively abstract things like "personality" and "companionship" could also be considered "goods and services").
This does not cover every possible configuration of human interactions. I was careful to qualify that this is only a typical and average type of exchange.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
23d ago
I agree with you that my initial formulation was an oversimplification, although I don't think any of this has much bearing on what makes prostitution in particular morally problematic. You could reasonably argue that prostitution is inferior to a long-term committed exclusive relationship based on certain metrics; but as I pointed out in my reply to KMC, many other heterosexual relationships would be judged inferior on the same metrics. Being single would also be judged inferior on the same metrics. But no one thinks that being single, or having a series of different monogamous partners, is morally blameworthy in the same way that prostitution is.
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
2d ago
Mostly trolls whose names I've forgotten. That guy who keeps making alt accounts here to post WN articles and then delete them is kinda like that.
Apparently darwin was kinda like that, although I never interacted with darwin personally.
But people (non-prostitute people) break all of these conditions all the time.
People date without getting permission, they have sex without procreating, they break up, they date new people. That's a very common course for a relationship to take in 2025, and no one thinks that's as bad as prostitution.
There are trads who disapprove of this sort of arrangement of course, but even they don't compare it with prostitution afaik.
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