22-01-16 Never stoop that low

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KittyHat
Posts: 213
Joined: Fri Mar 06, 2015 1:57 pm

Re: 22-01-16 Never stoop that low

Post by KittyHat »

Spidrift wrote:Specific hang-ups about sex (get married in church first, don't screw your cousin, pretend that gay sex doesn't exist) are doubtless cultural, because culture determines how biological impulses are expressed. But the emotional weight attached to them likely comes from biology, not culture.
You seem awfully certain about that. I wonder how much evidence there is of such cultural taboos before Judeo-Christian influence and the influences of similar religions?

Homosexuality, after all, has also been widely and for a long time subject to taboo in many cultures throughout the world, so if we are going to take your logic at face value, shall we assume that we are also biologically predisposed to object to it? I propose that there is a "third variable" problem (religion) you're ignoring in favor of the conclusion you favor.

OldBrit
Posts: 164
Joined: Sat Sep 08, 2012 8:37 pm

Re: 22-01-16 Never stoop that low

Post by OldBrit »

KittyHat wrote:
OldBrit wrote:I was paid for my brain, not my body.
Your brain is a part of your body, as much as every other part of you. To say, "I was paid for my brain, not my body" is a nonsensical statement, akin to saying, "I was paid for my skin, not my body."
I should have said mind (which is non-corporeal), but went with the alliteration.
KittyHat wrote: And yes, I realize you're not selling your actual brain in the sense of allowing it to be extracted from your skull and passed about as a commodity, but you're still selling access to the fruits of its labor ... which is not materially different from selling access to the fruits of the labor of any other part of your body in anything except arbitrary cultural taboo.
But without the cultural taboo, nearly everybody being a prostitute is not an ugly little secret.
KittyHat wrote:The ugly little secret is that everyone who works for someone else is essentially a prostitute (for all meaningful intents and purposes, if not by strict dictionary definition).
So without the cultural taboo, your whole argument becomes meaningless, with it you're stretching definitions waaaay beyond reasonableness.

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Moruno
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Joined: Fri Jan 22, 2016 12:56 pm

Re: 22-01-16 Never stoop that low

Post by Moruno »

You know, ethology textbooks give us info about a thing called sexual selection. It is one of the mechanisms of natural selection crucial to species as a whole. And this thing is the actual reason for masculinity and femininity (it is not culture, mind you), while also being a foundation of love between man and woman (another foundation is father-daughter incest, for historical reasons).
The point is, the mechanisms of that selection are based on instincts. And prostitutes*, who ignore that mechanism of selection altogether, are instinctually viewed by other people as broken, incomplete, or improper. And it isn't due to some learned taboo, it's due to them going against instinctual program of the species.

By the way, the reason male homosexuality is instinctively viewed worse than female homosexualiy** is partially due to the same reason, and partially is due to the fact that homosexual intercourse is also a very old hierarchial ritual in primates for "showing that bitch his place" (sorry for harsh language, but that ritual precedes language and its emotional tone is somewhere along these lines).

* Note that female prostitutes are both more common and more ostracised, because their role in selection is the role of "savepoint" of sorts, and their choice is what the quality of the offspring depends on, since it's the males whose genes bear that quality.

** Human females are bisexual by default for historical reasons (see hidden ovulation and its mechanism).
Last edited by Moruno on Tue Jan 26, 2016 1:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Spidrift
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Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2012 6:11 pm

Re: 22-01-16 Never stoop that low

Post by Spidrift »

KittyHat wrote:You seem awfully certain about that. I wonder how much evidence there is of such cultural taboos before Judeo-Christian influence and the influences of similar religions?
Look up something like, say, the treatment of married women in classical Greece (where it was also illegal for prostitutes to get married). You can't blame everything on Judeo-Christian religion.
Homosexuality, after all, has also been widely and for a long time subject to taboo in many cultures throughout the world, so if we are going to take your logic at face value, shall we assume that we are also biologically predisposed to object to it?
It gets treated all sorts of ways, good, bad, and very weird by our standards. That's a complex topic.
I propose that there is a "third variable" problem (religion) you're ignoring in favor of the conclusion you favor.
Given how entangled religion is with culture in any pre-modern society, good luck in disentangling those possible influences.

That aside, I'll hand this one off to Moruno for now.
---------
Spidrift
"Brevior vita est quam pro futumentibus negotium agendo."
-- Motto of Hogshead Publishing of fond memory, and wise words to set your Foes List by.
Avatar misappropriated from the wonderful XKCD.

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