mind-control (was: Male or Female authors)
Jonathan Hendry
Dan Swartzendruber wrote in message ...
>In article <sjgllg...@corp.supernews.com>, pau...@digital.net
>says...
>>
>> "Brenda" wrote
>> > Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
>> > > > Asthetic appreciation, yes. Actual sexual thoughts, no.
>> > >
>> > > Don't read too much into this. As I recall, according to the study I
>> > > read about, a "sexual thought" just doesn't have to be a hot sexual
>> > > fantasy or anything - just awareness. I'm not sure that "aesthetic
>> > > appreciation" wouldn't qualify.
>> >
>> > Oh, good grief. If it's at the 'aesthetic appreciation' level, then women
>> > are just as far in as men. (Why do you think Fabio is on all those
romance
>> > novel covers, eh? And female writers spend a lot of time working on Things
>> > to do to their heroes for a reason.)
>
>By aesthetic appreciation, I didn't mean to decouple any sexual aspect.
>Just less so (or milder or whatever).
Let's just say that it doesn't cause men to go *spung*.
Mark Atwood
>
> Hm. What if the mind control were limited to make women's
> nipples go *spung*?
(I can't believe no one has invoked this SF story yet, but...)
How about just make their irises dialate?
--
Mark Atwood | It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that
m...@pobox.com | just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else
| might. <http://www.friesian.com/rifkin.htm>
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Richard Horton
On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 00:00:04 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
wrote:
>You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
>wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
>another. I just don't call that wanting.
This is neat. The communication is working.
That's part of it, yeah. I "want" stuff, that I know is objectively
not good for me (in that, a) it will mess up my marriage, which is
much more important to me (long term) than any instant gratification,
and b) it may involve entanglements that I really don't "want" (long
term)). So, I tell myself, with complete success, that much as I
might "want" something, I'm not going there.
But I still "want" it. In the sense that, if I could be convinced
that it wouldn't affect my marriage, and woulnd't haunt me in any
other way, yeah, I'd go for it.
Is that shallow? I guess so.
> What do I call it? Um,
>admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
It's more than just "admiring" or "fantasy". It is, at some level,
"desire", but it's desire you know you have to (and will) control.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Mark Atwood
> have of making that happen involves him being dishonest, putting on some
> "act" and/or twisting himself into mental knots trying to please someone
> else. (Some of who, not all, but some, at least appear to take great
^^^^ ^^^^
> delight in seeing just what they can make the "petitioner" do or otherwise
> enjoy their power.)
At the teenage level, you misspelled "many". :) :/
> In the same vein, rape and domestic violence are not about sex. They are
> about power and control. Power and control over sex perhaps, but
> nonetheless power and control.
Men idolize power and pretent to project it because, for some of the
most important things, they don't have it.
Richard Horton
On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 18:32:59 -0400, "Gary J. Weiner"
<webm...@hatrack.net> wrote:
>Clinton exercised poor judgment. You'd hope for better willpower from
>the leader of our country. But weird? He seems dead normal to me.
But, going back to his Arkansas days, he did so again and again and
again.
Richard Horton
On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 09:46:19 -0400, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>Except that she didn't go far. Where she is, I don't think a lot of women want
>to be -- a figure of fun, a staple of Leno and Letterman and political cartoons,
>an ugly footnote in history books (the stained dress!), desperately trying to
>work off the mega lawyer bills. Suddenly the midlist looks wonderful.
I doubt that, really. I don't think Monica will have to worry about
money, the rest of her life.
Respect, maybe she has to worry about that. But she's got it made,
permanently, as far as finances go.
(I'm not trying to imply that that was her motivation, at all. I do
believe that her motivation was attraction to a powerful man, with no
serious thought about her financial future.)
Richard Horton
On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 20:27:39 -0400, Brenda <clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>I always make an effort at cons, because I'm part of a cabal which is trying to raise the
>sartorial level of the genre. And, should I ever be on the final ballot for a major award,
>I do have a Defcon Five outfit all ready to go.
Wouldn't it make more sense to wear this before the con? After all,
by then the votes are already in.
Richard Horton
On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 00:10:09 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
wrote:
>I'm sorry, while I do respect the trauma that boys go through
>during puberty (spending my days around them as I do, poor dears),
>I really can't say that the changes to their bodies are more
>extensive than the changes to women's bodies. Really I can't.
Here I have to agree with Lucy. I mean, actual bleeding! Come on!
(To say nothing about the lumps appearing on your chest. Hair was a
bit of a change, yes, I agree, and I have the beard to prove it, but
breasts plus menstruation beat that all hollow.)
Bill Snyder
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On 02 Jun 2000 11:28:22 GMT, smg...@aol.com (Stevie Gamble) wrote:
>
>>Er, just who do you think is having sex with four or five different male
>>Trobriand adolescents in a week? Crustaceans fleeing from Pete McCutchen's
>>advances?
>
>Contrary to some rumors, I have never had sex with a crustacean.
>
>Crustaceans may flee when they see me coming, but that's because
>they're scared that I'm going to eat them.
Hmmm, wouldn't that mean that you *did* have sex with them, but they
didn't have sex with you? (And what is the definition of "is,"
anyhow?)
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Bill Snyder
Schiffer) wrote:
>In article <3938496...@enews.newsguy.com>, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) wrote:
>
>>I'm noticing that some of the men here are calling it "wanting"
>>when I wouldn't -- stuff I _want_ is stuff I'll go out and get, or
>>stuff I would go out and get if I were able, not stuff that I
>>think is real nice and I think I would like it if I could have it.
>
>>You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
>>wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
>>another. I just don't call that wanting. What do I call it? Um,
>>admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
>
>If you were on Nantucket when it went off in the sea of time, odds are
>you could never have chocolate again. (Unless they get access to it in
>the third book which I haven't read. If so, or if there's some other
>food which you really, really like, feel free to substitute.) Now, you
>don't _need_ chocolate to survive, of course. And you may well live a
>perfectly happy life enjoying other foods and other activities than
>eating chocolate. It is, of course, impossible for you to have
>chocolate. But is it reasonable to say that you don't desire chocolate
>because you can't have it? Even if you're distracted, multiple times a
>day, by vivid thoughts of unwrapping that thin, delicate foil and
>tasting a Godiva truffle, or a Lindt bar, or even just a plain. familiar
>Hershey bar with almonds? Or all three at once! Oh, yeah, baby! Yeah!
>
But the big questions are: do you _relate_ to the chocolate bar, or
are you just _using_ it? Will you still respect it in the morning?
Zara Bee
>> Zara Bee
>
>>Would you still want "basketball game" sex if women felt different about sex
>than we do?
>
>-- yes. Take a look at the way gay men relate a lot of the time.
>
You know, it's not a bad counter example, but I think it's also kind
of a red herring. I know a -lot- of gay men, but it's only a subset of
gay men that relate in the way you keep suggesting they do, and often
only for a relatively short period of their lives. I have no idea of
percentages (although if you have any recommended studies, I'd be keen
to hear 'em), and I don't know what emotional back-patting they get
from each other, either.
I was specifically asking about heterosexual men =) I'll assume your
answer works for them too though.
( I know a few dykes who bemoan the lack of anonymous sex in lesbian
culture too, which provides another counter example... and the
infamous "lesbian bed death" )
Zara
--
Currently reading _A Secret History: the book of Ash #1_ by Mary Gentle and _Assassins Apprentice_, by Robin Hobb
Just read Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson, _Sewer,Gas, Electric_ by Matt Ruff
Next on list: ...no idea!
Zara Bee
>joats...@aol.com (JoatSimeon) writes:
>> As a thought experiment for the women present, accept the
>> hypothesis, and tell us how would it affect your perception of
>> males.
>
>Oh, this'll either be good, or else get no response at all.
>
>Remember ladies, if you run this by your hubby/SO/bf/guyfriends, odds
>are better than good he's going to either deny most of it, or change
>the subject.
My partner and I talk about it, I've accepted it, I tease him about
it. Then again, I'm no lady, so the above doesn't apply ;)
It hasn't affected my perception of males, but I'm much more aware of
my affect on them and how they are reacting to me. It's possibly made
my body language more conservative, but I get a high "hit-on" rate
anyway, and can't seem to prevent it.
Joe Mason
>
>
>Ian Montgomerie wrote:
>
>> The sheriff in the example passage starts off viewing the woman as a "piece
>> of meat", then she becomes a "human being". That's what I might term
>> essentially a fallacy of casual sex. Some guys may view women as "pieces of
>> meat" in some meaningful sense at some point, but that isn't even vaguely
>> necessary to be physically attracted to them, enjoy casual sex (or the idea
>> of it), or whatever.
>
>So physical attractiveness is -not- important, for this 'ka-ching' reaction?
I don't see how that relates. Did you snip the wrong line or something?
Joe
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>>Keith Morrison kei...@polarnet.ca
>
>>We *do* want it translated into reality, but the thought isn't overwhelming
>except in the limited sentence that it can't be stopped from coming up
>
>-- yeah.
>
>It's so... _external_, in a funny sort of way. Like a part of you was talking
>to _you_, saying "Hey! Try it on!"
>
>And you have to keep saying: "No, don't be ridiculous!"
>
>Sort of tiresome, actually.
I was thinking about this today. What I'm thinking is that
there's another one of those differences like the one Steve was
mentioning with the definitions of arousal.
I'm noticing that some of the men here are calling it "wanting"
when I wouldn't -- stuff I _want_ is stuff I'll go out and get, or
stuff I would go out and get if I were able, not stuff that I
think is real nice and I think I would like it if I could have it.
You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
another. I just don't call that wanting. What do I call it? Um,
admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
Lucy Kemnitzer
jab...@my-deja.com
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <39377B79...@popd.ix.netcom.com>,
> Bill Woods <wwo...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> >
> > 'Late last year in Atlanta at a Linux convention, which
> > was impressively organized by an ad-hoc group of Linux fans,
> > Eric Raymond, the open-source guru, elaborated on his notion
> > of prestige as a motivating force. "None of my peers are
> > impressed by what kind of car I have," he said with twinkling
> > eyes. "They're impressed when I have a T-1 line in my house.
> > This all goes back to evolutionary biology where we're all
> > competing for prestige because we think it will get us babes."
> >
> > There was a pause, as the almost entirely male audience --
> > some of whom looked as if they hadn't started shaving --
> > considered the obvious implications of this observation.
> > Finally, someone called out: "Is it working for anyone?"
> > There came the resounding unanimous reply: "Nooo!"
> >
> > But maybe the word just has yet to get out.'
> >
> > --"The Rebel Code" The New York Times, 2/21/1999
> >
> This reminds me of my distinctions between knights and troubadors.
> Knights try to attract women by competing with other men. Troubadors
> try to attract women by pleasing women. When troubadors succeed,
> knights think it's very unfair.
>
----The thing is, after a while the purpose of competition is forgotten
and becomes its own end. And for many men is enjoyable solely for its own
sake - perhaps more enjoyable than impressing women, who then have to be
dealt with in all their complicated glory.
> --
> Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
>
> The calligraphic button website is up!
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Todd Larason
>And I think Todd was making a joke. (You see, the main character
>didn't think about jumping the bones of the old lady in the Winnebago
>... therefore QED he must not be male ... that was a joke, too.)
Yes, I was. I was more or less agreeing with the original statement,
taken to an extreme - I was so convinced the character was female (for
whatever reason), that I either didn't notice the clue that revealed
him to be male, or actually convinced myself it was a mistake and
dismissed it.
I'd have to reread it to see why I thought he was a she.
Joe Mason
>In article <tmSZ4.142243$55.29...@news2.rdc1.on.home.com>,
>Joe Mason <jcm...@uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>I'd just like you all to know that I went out to a club last night, and
>>instead of relaxing and enjoying myself, I spent the entire evening
>>psychoanalyzing myself.
>>
>>Thank you, thread from Hell.
>
>You're welcome. Did you learn anything interesting?
All sorts of things, actually.
Among other things, my reaction to a pretty girl is much more purely aesthetic
and less sexual than I had previously thought. (This particular club was a
real meat market, too, so you would expect more explicit thoughts than in
other settings, what with all the gyrating going on.) I don't know if paying
closer attention actually changed my attitude or just made it more clear,
though. The Uncertainty Principle strikes again.
Joe
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>>Lucy Kemnitzer)
>
>> Puberty is a pretty drastic thing, no matter who's going through it, and one
>of its characteristics is that you do miss things.
>
>-- puberty changes both sexes considerably; the changes to the male are more
>extensive, or at least more visible.
I'm sorry, while I do respect the trauma that boys go through
during puberty (spending my days around them as I do, poor dears),
I really can't say that the changes to their bodies are more
extensive than the changes to women's bodies. Really I can't.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Michael S. Schiffer
> Do, do check out the oxytocin site, referenced somewhere
>upthread. (www.biopsychiatry.com/oxytocin) Bunch of linked abstracts,
>not just the first. I knew gals had some testosterone, but I didn't
>think about guys having oxytocin too, nor what it did for them. Should
>have guessed it, though. Among other things, there's a biochemical clue
>as to why, and how, being happily married helps men live longer. The
>implications proliferate madly.
Just a point-- www.biopsychiatry.com appears to be an advocacy page
(basically, advocating that we use current and future biochemical
technology to promote people's pleasure and happiness). The mission
statement elsewhere on the site describes the sponsors, BLTC Research,
as having been "founded in 1995 to promote paradise-engineering". That
doesn't mean that the facts they're giving are necessarily wrong (hey,
who doesn't want paradise? :-) ), but I'd want to see other views of,
e.g., oxytocin (or at least cites to the specific research they're
basing their claims on) before taking everything they say about it at
face value. (Oddly, the oxytocin page itself seems to be gone for the
moment, so I can't check if they're citing to anything themselves.)
Mike
--
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
ms...@mediaone.net
msch...@condor.depaul.edu
Andrea Leistra
Lee Ann Rucker <lru...@aruba.apple.com> wrote:
>In article <slrn8je12...@nano.priv.molehill.org>, j...@molehill.org
>(Todd Larason) wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 31 May 2000 19:43:52 -0700, Lee Ann Rucker wrote:
>>>"Last of the Winnebagos" sticks in my mind for precisely that reason -
>>>midway through the viewpoint character is revealed to be male. I had to
>>>start over, and I still just didn't buy it.
>>
>>You're kidding, right?
>>
>>I've read that at least twice, and it's very clearly a woman.
>>
>>Any textual evidence to the contrary is a typo and/or editing mistake.
>
>Don't think so. Read it in Analog ages ago. It's the one where dogs are
>extinct.
I've read it twice as well, and *both* times was absolutely
convinced the protagonist was a woman until it was made obvious
that it was a man; while the plot and setting stuck in my mind,
as did other aspects of the character, I managed to remember
him as a woman (and probably still would, if this thread hadn't
jarred my memory.)
This seems to be a common effect.
--
Andrea Leistra
Danny Sichel
> ( I know a few dykes who bemoan the lack of anonymous sex in lesbian
> culture too, which provides another counter example... and the
> infamous "lesbian bed death" )
The what?
--
"Hello, kitty! You're a pretty kitty, yes you are! How did you get into
my house?"
"Through your front door, which you routinely leave unlocked! Are you
insane?!?"
".... apparently so."
Michael S. Schiffer
>Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
>> While I think it's a considerable exaggeration, I also think that a lot
>> of women believe two falsehoods about men:
>...
>> Attracting men is almost impossible.
>....where do they get this one from? These are the same women who complain
>about being continually hit on by men, yes?
First, of course, not all women are hit on by men, continually or even
occasionally. Women who don't show up on most guys' radar for reasons
of age or looks or whatever have the same needs and desires as anyone
else, and being a lonely woman is no more fun for most people than being
a lonely man is, even if the specific complaints may be
different.
Second, when women talk about wanting to attract men, most of them
usually mean for a relationship that's not purely or primarily sexual.
Being hit on by guys who only want a quick game of basketball may
sometimes be briefly pleasing if they consider the guy attractive, but
the books about How To Get Men or How To Live Without A Man aren't
framed primarily in terms of sex. Similarly, in romantic stories in
which two men vie for a woman's affections, the men are not generally
just after sex (or if one turns out to be, it's because he's the villain
who will be eliminated in favor of the hero). Mileage varies, of
course, and there are certainly some women, some times, who are looking
for one night stands or brief flings. But those at least tend not to be
the same women who complain that attracting men is impossible.
(Attracting the particular man they want, perhaps...)
Danny Sichel
> I think fear is a major inhibiting factor for women, not so much
> that the experience might be painful in itself but that a man
> one doesn't know well might be dangerous. Let's face it, MOST
> men are decent, law-abiding, ethical folks, but if I went down
> to the local pub to pick one up it would be just my luck to end
> up with the guy who likes to collect ears.
<homer.simpson>
Mmmmm..... ears.
</homer.simpson>
--
"Six foot six and a hundred tons
The undisputed King of the Slums"
Danny Sichel
>> I was actually thinking of much more long-range and
>> emotionally subtle events, like breast-feeding (what, did you guys think
>> those nipples went *spung* just to entertain *you*?) Can't remember if
>> it was pitocin or oxytocin or what that was the endogenous drug of
>> choice, here, but speaking of mind-control, that one's right up there.
> The reason you're having trouble figuring out which is that
> pitocin is artificial oxytocin: they're essentially the same
> thing.
I'm pretty sure you can get oxytocin by brewing raspberry leaves,
incidentally.
Michael S. Schiffer
>I'm noticing that some of the men here are calling it "wanting"
>when I wouldn't -- stuff I _want_ is stuff I'll go out and get, or
>stuff I would go out and get if I were able, not stuff that I
>think is real nice and I think I would like it if I could have it.
>You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
>wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
>another. I just don't call that wanting. What do I call it? Um,
>admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
If you were on Nantucket when it went off in the sea of time, odds are
you could never have chocolate again. (Unless they get access to it in
the third book which I haven't read. If so, or if there's some other
food which you really, really like, feel free to substitute.) Now, you
don't _need_ chocolate to survive, of course. And you may well live a
perfectly happy life enjoying other foods and other activities than
eating chocolate. It is, of course, impossible for you to have
chocolate. But is it reasonable to say that you don't desire chocolate
because you can't have it? Even if you're distracted, multiple times a
day, by vivid thoughts of unwrapping that thin, delicate foil and
tasting a Godiva truffle, or a Lindt bar, or even just a plain. familiar
Hershey bar with almonds? Or all three at once! Oh, yeah, baby! Yeah!
Er. Ahem. What was I saying ? :-)
Or come at it from another direction: I really, really want to live
forever. The evidence, let us say, strongly suggests that I won't.
There are all kinds of excellent arguments against immortality's being
desirable from a species standpoint and all sorts of cautionary tales
against it. I suspect those latter are sour grapes, but stipulate
for the moment that they're correct. Nonetheless, regardless of its
impossibility or the problems it might cause, I wouldn't say that I
"admire" immortality. I strongly desire it.
(Note that what most of the men here are talking about wanting--
frequent, consequence-free sex with a substantial fraction of
the attractive women they see, _without_ hurting anyone
else or jeopardizing their own health, their relationships with the
people that they love, and their own integrity is pretty much as
impossible as the above.)
Michael S. Schiffer
>Oh, and something else I thought of. If you can control any mind in the
>world, doesn't that logically imply you can control yours as well? Why stop
>at just making *other* people's bad habits go away? If you're afraid you
>can't be trusted with the power, you could try to change yourself into
>someone who *could*...
At which point it becomes a Greg Egan story. :-)
Michael S. Schiffer
>Jonathan W Hendry <jhe...@ux1.depaul.edu> writes:
>> If you're at the Printer's Row Book Fair this weekend, and
>> see a guy with Sendak Wild Thing tattoos on his leg, say hi.
>> If you're lucky I'll show you my 17" SGI flat panel monitor.
>Now THAT is an unfair advantage!
Though in my experience, men care more about monitor size than women do.
Joe Mason
>replete and content. The constant haze of frustration and
^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^^^^
>horndogginess can then become a thing of the past,
>unregretted. It is a whole lot easier to be indifferent to
>female pulchritude that passes by, too.
Why does "frustration" keep being brought into this? We're saying that we're
almost always thinking about sex - we're not saying that we're always
*frustrated* about it.
Joe
JoatSimeon
>Did you ever, like, walk into a Toronto bookstore and sign random books, or
did some joker decide to have some fun?
-- I signed them on request. I usually sign that way, since my cursive
signature is indecipherable.
-- S.M. Stirling
Todd Larason
>Pete McCutchen wrote:
>>
>> j...@molehill.org (Todd Larason) wrote:
>> >
>> >The thing is, they didn't *assume* it. They thought they had a valid
>> >test case, and that it showed that even a non-ambiguous XY person
>> >could grow up as a healthy happy girl. Given that, assigning gender
>> >soon after birth for ambiguously sexed people seems downright reasonable.
>> >
>
>A whole medical philosophy, based on a survey of *one* test case, seems
>"downright reasonable"??
I'm afraid we may be getting into an argument when we more-or-less
agree, here: I certainly agree that, given what is now known, the best
recommendation in the case of an ambiguously sexed infant is to leave
it[1] alone until it's old enough to make a decision.
That being said, I don't think most of the doctors who recommended or
performed sex assignment surgery before the true data were made public
deserve condemnation.
It wasn't a matter of basing a 'whole medical philosophy' on 'one test
case' as it was of recommending the best possible treatment in a
rather bad situation, on the basis of the best available information,
part of which was one *very good* test case.
There aren't a whole lot of cases where normally-sexed twins are born
and exactly one of them undergo some horrible trauma making gender
reassignment a somewhat reasonable option. It's not a test case
ethical doctors can easily replicate, and it *is* a good test case -
assuming the data is reported accurately.
The fact that Dr. Money apparently let his own views and possibly an
overactive desire to protect his own reputation cloud his reporting
shouldn't be held against unrelated doctors trusting his information,
I don't think.
[1] What *is* the proper pronoun for an ambiguously sexed person?
>> Which is _why_ it was so irresponsible for publications such as the
>> _New England Journal of Medicine_ to turn the article repudiating this
>> "test case" down.
>
>Any idea why they turned it down?
I would very much like to know the answer to that, myself.
--
"Ayn's vision is _Russian_ libertarianism, in the same sense that
Leninism is Russian Marxism." -- Joshua W Burton
Del Cotter
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>Andrew Maizels <and...@one.net.au> wrote:
>>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>> And the similar phenomenon, where young men say abusive things to
>>> women (I don't mean crudely teasing or bad flirting things, that's
>>> another thing), commenting on their putative unattractive
>>> characteristics, like weight, or features, or size of breasts or
>>> other shape things. Is it defending themselves against their own
>>> attraction to people they think they shouldn't be attracted to
>>
>>I think you may be over-analysing the problem, and the real reason is
>>that they're mindless jerks.
>
>That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that particular
>way.
>
>I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
>"shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
>with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
You and Lucy do need to watch out for observer effects, but. Groups of
young girls wouldn't taunt you in the street (not like that, anyway), so
you could wind up thinking that's something only boys do.
In general, if you're a heterosexual woman, you'll be two-timed by men
and not women, you'll be dumped by men and not women, you'll be turned
down by men and not women (unless you never make a move, in which case
it will be male, not female, losers who hit on you, and baldwins who
ignore you, not babes).
It's very easy that way to acquire a low opinion of the opposite sex
while keeping your illusions about your own intact.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
PS What I find amazing about this thread is not so much its size as its
*age*. If it's this big after only a couple of days, can you imagine
what it's going to be like after a month? Good-natured though, isn't it?
JoatSimeon
>I'm noticing that some of the men here are calling it "wanting" when I
wouldn't
-- that relates back to something I said at the beginning of the thread, about
the impersonal nature of the male libido.
It is a desire; it's sharp and specific, like hunger. In fact, it's quite
similar to hunger -- sort of a mindless nagging craving, in many ways exterior
to the part of "you" that one thinks of as "you".
Quite different from, say, romantic love -- that has a much more "integrated"
feeling.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>and the infamous "lesbian bed death" )
>
>???? Apparently not infamous enough...
-- tendency for long-established lesbian couples to gradually stop having sex.
I've heard complaints about that, too.
-- S.M. Stirling
JoatSimeon
>Let us all sincerely hope that this [universal DNA ID] never comes to pass.
-- it probably will, given the importance in things like heritable genetic
diseases, and the rapid progress in identifying and (potentially) eliminating
same.
I'd be surprised if it didn't eventually end up in everyone's
birth-certificate.
>
--
-- S.M. Stirling
Michael S. Schiffer
jam...@morse.uwaterloo.ca (James Nicoll) wrote:
>In article <20000602021643...@ng-bd1.aol.com>,
>JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>>-- females have fewer changes at puberty.
>>(Eg., males grow more hair, their voices change more, their muscle-mass
> changes
>>drastically, etc.)
> I know I think every morning "Those lucky women. All they have
>to deal with as a result of puberty is fripperies like periods, cramps
>and pregnancies. Men have to -shave- and learn new ranges for singing.
>Oh the burden which is maleness."
And don't forget that (at least in a broad swath of US culture) women
start having to shave, too. Personally, I'd rather run a shaver over my
face than have to deal with legs and underarms-- and growing a beard is
more socially acceptable than leg and underarm hair tend to be for
women. (And then there are the various things which involve _pulling_
hairs out with hot wax or mechanical devices, but let's not even get
into that.)
Which pretty much brings it down to muscle mass, hair which can be
mostly left alone, the new vocal ranges and shaving more often than most
women do. Sure, I miss being able to sing without people wincing, but
the rest of it doesn't seem as drastic as the overall change in body
_shape_ women go through, leaving aside the changes in function. Men
look much more like big boys (especially in sillouhette) than women look
like large girls.
jab...@my-deja.com
----I thought Steve Stirling's original point worked if you consider that
women's voices and faces don't change as much at puberty as men's do.
Wasn't that what he was driving at? I'm getting this in mid-thread (damn
Deja anyway) so I'm not sure WHY he was making it, but it does make
sense. After all, a boy can play a pretty convincing attractive woman,
as in Shakespeare's time but a grwon man usually comes off appearing
hellish whatever drag queens would like to think.
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
Scott A. Taylor
jam...@morse.uwaterloo.ca (James Nicoll) wrote:
> In article <izzylobo-3408ED.22524301062000@news-server>,
> Scott A. Taylor <izzy...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> >In article <m3g0qyn...@flash.localdomain>, Mark Atwood
> ><m...@pobox.com> wrote:
> >
> >> "Scott A. Taylor" <izzy...@rochester.rr.com> writes:
> >> >
> >> > That whole missing sock and pen thing... oh, and the one where you
> >> > throw
> >> > out all of those nasty wire hangers, and go back to the closet a
> >> > month
> >> > later, and some asshole has put more wire hangers in your closet.
> >>
> >> Then he must be taking them from mine, because I buy a new bundle of
> >> hangers from WalMart about once a year, and I'm ALWAYS short one or
> >> two when doing laundry.
> >
> >
> >Why would you *want* wire hangers?
> >
> >I mean, the plastic ones are great, or wooden ones if you can get one (a
> >friend of mine had hangers with the arm bar thingie made of cedar
> >wood... astounding). But wire hangers?
> >
> They are very useful for popping car doors when customers lock their
> keys in their cars.
But you only need *one* for that, it's safely in the car (or under the
counter), and it doesn't actually have to be used as a hanger... it just
needs to be propped up in a corner.
--
Scott Taylor
Freelancer for Hire
Have Powerbook, Will Travel
Michael S. Schiffer
>Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
>> In article <3938343D...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com says...
>> > Well, it is sad for all you frustrated males out there, but I am not
> saddened by it.
>> > In other words, expect no personal action from me or mine to relieve your
> angst. You
>> > may, if it helps, adore me from afar.
>> Only if you're wearing an outfit at Defcon Two or higher.
>I always make an effort at cons, because I'm part of a cabal which is trying to
> raise the
>sartorial level of the genre. And, should I ever be on the final ballot for a
> major award,
>I do have a Defcon Five outfit all ready to go.
Am I misunderstanding the usage here? I had thought (from that
infallible source of information regarding our strategic defenses, the
movie "Wargames"), that Defcons counted _down_, with Defcon One being
nuclear war. No? (Or are you just refusing to unethically, er, stack
the deck by using a higher powered outfit?)
Scott A. Taylor
<p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> On 02 Jun 2000 11:28:22 GMT, smg...@aol.com (Stevie Gamble) wrote:
>
> >Er, just who do you think is having sex with four or five different male
> >Trobriand adolescents in a week? Crustaceans fleeing from Pete
> >McCutchen's
> >advances?
>
> Contrary to some rumors, I have never had sex with a crustacean.
>
> Crustaceans may flee when they see me coming, but that's because
> they're scared that I'm going to eat them.
It's pretty well established, Pete, that oral sex is...
oh.
That's just *mean*...
:-)
Lucy Kemnitzer
<eds...@umoncton.ca> wrote:
>Zara Bee wrote:
>
>> ( I know a few dykes who bemoan the lack of anonymous sex in lesbian
>> culture too, which provides another counter example... and the
>> infamous "lesbian bed death" )
>
>The what?
When a couple is passionately in love, and after a while they
don't have sex very often anymore. I don't actually see that this
is a specifically lesbian problem, other than that specific
lesbians are complaining about it.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Chris Wesling
>
> "Scott A. Taylor" <izzy...@rochester.rr.com> writes:
> >
> > That whole missing sock and pen thing... oh, and the one where you
> > throw out all of those nasty wire hangers, and go back to the
> > closet a month later, and some asshole has put more wire hangers
> > in your closet.
>
> Then he must be taking them from mine, because I buy a new bundle of
> hangers from WalMart about once a year, and I'm ALWAYS short one or
> two when doing laundry.
You don't take anything to a dry cleaner very often, do you?
That's where most people's wire hangers come from, I'm convinced.
None of the clothes are on hangers when you take them to the dry
cleaner, but they all come back on these wire hangers. Then you put
them on your own hangers when you hang them up, and all the wire
hangers just keep accumulating...
Chris W.
--
Remove spam to email me.
"You can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how
many apples are in the seed." - Ken Kesey
Chris Wesling
>
> Thinking more about the general case I do think that nurture
> exaggerates whatever diffrences nature has saddled the genders
> with in this area. In fact going by what the G-F has told me
> about *female* locker-room talk I'd say that women generally
> like, and talk about, sex, in the context of a relationship,
> quite a bit more than the image that is generally held to be
> true by men. The old joke about men getting married to have
> sex and women to stop having sex? Very, very wrong.
Never been married, I see... 8-}
Chris W.
--
Remove spam to email me.
"Now there sits a man with an open mind. You can feel the draft
from here." - Groucho Marx, on Chico Marx
J. B. Moreno
> J. B. Moreno wrote:
>
> > (I wish I could find it in the used book stores, because I don't think
> > this increases the believability, I wouldn't expect his thoughts to go
> > far enough down the path to forcing the 14 year old for it to trigger
> > any "what if she was my daughter" thought).
>
> I cheated again (you understand that the godlike powers of the author are
> in the control of coincidence and circumstance), and supplied the girl
> with a number of stuffed toys.
My problem with this isn't that the girl somehow reminded him that he
had a kid and what would he think if it was his daughter, but rather:
(a) unless this is the first female that he has bumped into it's not
going to be the first time he's thought of it,
and
(b) he's not going to /need/ the reminder -- by the time it's
developed enough to be "I can use my powers to make her want to have sex
with me" and certainly by the time it's reached "I will make her want to
have sex with me", your non-perverts are going to have moved on to
someone other than a 14 year old kid. So, unless the toys are what
brings her age to his attention, it just doesn't ring true.
(BTW -- something that I haven't seen really said in this thread is that
[if I'm in any way typical in this respect, always questionable] is that
most of these "sexual" thoughts hardly qualify as "thoughts" they are
flashes of lust, a female/sex/iwant gestalt, and not a scripted fantasy
of actions. If it gets that far it's under at least partial conscious
control).
--
John B. Moreno
Lynn Calvin
wrote:
>In article <393bcb35....@nntp.interaccess.com>,
>lca...@interaccess.com says...
>> On Wed, 31 May 2000 17:47:08 -0400, Dan Swartzendruber
>> <dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> >Same here (just anecdotal). On the other hand, I find it hard to believe
>> >there's no reason that most straight porn has at least one lesbian scene,
>> >whereas I've never heard of a straight porn film having any male/male
>> >scenes.
>>
>> Read some Black Lace books.
>
>Apparently those are some sort of unusual series? I was talking about
>standard fare.
I think the confusion is between male oriented heterosexual porn (Blue
Moon, Nexus, etc) and female oriented heterosexual porn (Black Lace and a
few others). As opposed to the lines that are oriented toward lesbians (I
don't know the name of the publisher but the have a rose on the spine) and
gay males (which have a tiny picture or this dangerous looking guy on the
spine).
Lynn Calvin
lca...@interaccess.com
UU Discussion also available on:
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Holding Rich Puchalsky in my thoughts.
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
> >
> >By aesthetic appreciation, I didn't mean to decouple any sexual aspect.
> >Just less so (or milder or whatever).
>
> Let's just say that it doesn't cause men to go *spung*.
I like that.
Michael S. Schiffer
>Michael S. Schiffer <ms...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>> In article <m3og5jv...@flash.localdomain>, Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com>
>>>> If you're at the Printer's Row Book Fair this weekend, and
>>>> see a guy with Sendak Wild Thing tattoos on his leg, say hi.
>>>> If you're lucky I'll show you my 17" SGI flat panel monitor.
>>>Now THAT is an unfair advantage!
>> Though in my experience, men care more about monitor size than women do.
>Do women care about the refresh rate?
I don't know about women, but I'd certainly rather have a smaller
monitor with a fast refresh rate than a big display that just can't
perform satisfactorily. (And, of course, I envy those who have flat
panel displays which don't need to refresh at all.)
Kristopher/EOS
>
> In article <3937DE...@mn.uswest.net>,
> Lois McMaster Bujold <lmbu...@mn.uswest.net> wrote:
>
>> Do, do check out the oxytocin site, referenced somewhere
>> upthread. (www.biopsychiatry.com/oxytocin) Bunch of
>> linked abstracts, not just the first. I knew gals had
>> some testosterone, but I didn't think about guys having
>> oxytocin too, nor what it did for them. Should have
>> guessed it, though. Among other things, there's a
>> biochemical clue as to why, and how, being happily
>> married helps men live longer. The implications
>> proliferate madly.
>
> Just a point-- www.biopsychiatry.com appears to be an
> advocacy page (basically, advocating that we use current
> and future biochemical technology to promote people's
> pleasure and happiness). The mission statement elsewhere
> on the site describes the sponsors, BLTC Research, as
> having been "founded in 1995 to promote paradise-
> engineering". That doesn't mean that the facts they're
> giving are necessarily wrong (hey, who doesn't want
> paradise? :-) ),
Me.
> but I'd want to see other views of, e.g., oxytocin (or at
> least cites to the specific research they're basing their
> claims on) before taking everything they say about it at
> face value. (Oddly, the oxytocin page itself seems to be
> gone for the moment, so I can't check if they're citing to
> anything themselves.)
Oh, drat. It was the first decent-looking page I found on
the subject, and it looked legit too. Now I'm worried that
I've pointed everyone towards kooksville, possibly.
At least the idea of an organization trying to promote
Huxley-esque happiness through chemicals has some story
potential.
Kristopher/EOS
Joe Mason
>JoatSimeon wrote:
>>
>> -- unless DNA testing _for other reasons_ becomes routine.
>>
>> When everyone's DNA is in a memory bank, perhaps the
>> computer will automatically add: "And oh, the father
>> of record isn't the source of the DNA here."
>
>Let us all sincerely hope that this never comes to pass.
Once there was a salesman for a large and successful computer company.
This company had developped a marvellous new data-mining process which they
intended to sell by subscription. This salesman was demonstrating it for a
potential buyer, so he brought a simple laptop computer to the client's home
and asked permission to connect it up to the phone line. Then he started the
client program and, after demonstrating how easy it was to navigate around the
user interface, dropped his bombshell.
"Okay," he said. "Ask it any question you want. It will send the question to
our server, and you will get a complete and accurate response in under 15
minutes!"
So the client types in, "Where is my father?"
A dialog box reading "Query in progress..." opens. While they're waiting, the
salesman proceeds to demonstrate some other features of the software.
Suddenly, the computer beeps, and a dialog box opens up saying, "Your father is
fishing in Canada."
"HA!" says the client. "It just so happens that my father has been dead for
fifteen years!"
The salesman is taken aback for a moment, and then says, "Oh, I see the
problem. You just have to ask your question using more precise language."
He turns to the computer and types, "Where is this man's mother's husband?"
This answer takes much less time: in under five minutes, the computer beeps,
and a dialog box opens up saying, "This man's mother's husband has been dead
for fifteen years. His father is fishing in Canada."
The sale was a success.
Joe
(The version of this joke which I first read mentioned punch cards. I updated
it a little.)
Ian Montgomerie
wrote:
>Then I'd move on to the lesser stuff like making all of the gun control
>freaks in congress be honest and start a movement to repeal the 2nd
>amendment.
Or you could start a movement to make all the anti-gun-control freaks read
the actual court decisions throughout US history about the meaning of the
2nd amendment.
Ian Montgomerie
>
>
>Ian Montgomerie wrote:
>
>> The sheriff in the example passage starts off viewing the woman as a "piece
>> of meat", then she becomes a "human being". That's what I might term
>> essentially a fallacy of casual sex. Some guys may view women as "pieces of
>> meat" in some meaningful sense at some point, but that isn't even vaguely
>> necessary to be physically attracted to them, enjoy casual sex (or the idea
>> of it), or whatever.
>
>So physical attractiveness is -not- important, for this 'ka-ching' reaction?
Excuse me?
Of course sexual attractiveness is important. But being sexually attracted
to someone does not imply viewing them as a "piece of meat" rather than as a
"human being".
Ian Montgomerie
>You know, it's not a bad counter example, but I think it's also kind
>of a red herring. I know a -lot- of gay men, but it's only a subset of
>gay men that relate in the way you keep suggesting they do, and often
>only for a relatively short period of their lives. I have no idea of
>percentages (although if you have any recommended studies, I'd be keen
>to hear 'em), and I don't know what emotional back-patting they get
>from each other, either.
The stereotype of gay guys as having primarily casual sex and ultra-short
relationships is not entirely accurate, according to several gay guys I
know. They like love and companionship as much as the next guy, and guys do
like it a significant amount. But all too often, they are able to get
casual sex but when it comes to relationships society has placed lots of
barriers in their way. I don't mean just the absence of legal benefits and
the absence of kids unless they really go to lengths, but also the simple
fact that widespread social disapproval of their relationships if exposed,
and the lack of social support for their relationships if secret, tend to
make the payoff from staying together artificially low.
Thus, the relationship styles of gay males are biased significantly toward
more casual sex and fewer long term relationships than the straight male
average in a society would be if male sexuality dominated.
HOWEVER, this doesn't mean that gay relationships don't point to substantial
differences between male and female mating styles that can be extrapolated
to heterosexuals. This is because lesbians have approximately as much
societal bias against serious relationships as gay guys do - but despite
that, there is a fair-background-in-reality stereotype of lesbian
relationships as very serious, prolonged, and emotional.
Ian Montgomerie
>I was thinking about this today. What I'm thinking is that
>there's another one of those differences like the one Steve was
>mentioning with the definitions of arousal.
>
>I'm noticing that some of the men here are calling it "wanting"
>when I wouldn't -- stuff I _want_ is stuff I'll go out and get, or
>stuff I would go out and get if I were able, not stuff that I
>think is real nice and I think I would like it if I could have it.
>
>You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
>wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
>another. I just don't call that wanting. What do I call it? Um,
>admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
Well, in my typical usage:
To want is to desire, an emotion. I am entirely capable of overriding my
emotional desires using my intellect - but that doesn't make them go away.
Desires may also come into conflict, but the fact that the conflict may be
resolved does not mean that one or both do not exist. Just as I can fear
but not run, be amused but not laugh, be hungry but presently unable or
unwilling to eat.
P. Wezeman
----snip----
> "Once I heard that the Internet was destined to go the way of
> the CB radio. I do wish that it'd be about it, and quick."
That's a big 10-4, good buddy!
Peter Wezeman, anti-social Darwinist
"Carpe Cyprinidae"
Ian Montgomerie
wrote:
>>I always make an effort at cons, because I'm part of a cabal which is trying to
>> raise the
>>sartorial level of the genre. And, should I ever be on the final ballot for a
>> major award,
>>I do have a Defcon Five outfit all ready to go.
>
>Am I misunderstanding the usage here? I had thought (from that
>infallible source of information regarding our strategic defenses, the
>movie "Wargames"), that Defcons counted _down_, with Defcon One being
>nuclear war. No? (Or are you just refusing to unethically, er, stack
>the deck by using a higher powered outfit?)
You are correct, they count down.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<j_he...@ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> (I think) Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>
>> I was actually thinking of much more long-range and
>> emotionally subtle events, like breast-feeding (what, did you guys think
>> those nipples went *spung* just to entertain *you
>
>Hm. What if the mind control were limited to make women's
>nipples go *spung*?
No, Lois wrote that. I wrote, in answer to a question about it,
that some women's nipples go spung and some don't (I'm tired of
asterisks, you'll have to provide your own).
Since spunging is possible without arousal or desire, you might
find this kind of a limited superpower.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
<dsw...@druber.com> wrote:
>In article <39386f3f...@enews.newsguy.com>, rit...@cruzio.com
>says...
>I think the theory was (right or wrong) that two lesbians will tend to
>the other end of the spectrum from two gay men.
>
Except that gay men complain about it too -- and some of them say
this is why they go to the baths.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
<d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, in rec.arts.sf.written,
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
>>Andrew Maizels <and...@one.net.au> wrote:
>>>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>>> And the similar phenomenon, where young men say abusive things to
>>>> women (I don't mean crudely teasing or bad flirting things, that's
>>>> another thing), commenting on their putative unattractive
>>>> characteristics, like weight, or features, or size of breasts or
>>>> other shape things. Is it defending themselves against their own
>>>> attraction to people they think they shouldn't be attracted to
>>>
>>>I think you may be over-analysing the problem, and the real reason is
>>>that they're mindless jerks.
>>
>>That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that particular
>>way.
>>
>>I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
>>"shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
>>with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
>
>You and Lucy do need to watch out for observer effects, but. Groups of
>young girls wouldn't taunt you in the street (not like that, anyway), so
>you could wind up thinking that's something only boys do.
I don't know and didn't say only boys do it: I said I had observed
this behavior in boys (and men, though not very old ones). I was
trying to see whether it was related in any way to some of the
other things we've been talking about here, especially since I'd
seen a repetition of the sentiment that most men would be happy to
have spontaneous sex with "paper-bag ugly" women, if they were
only available: it seemed like there was something about these two
things, and I didn't know what. Counterexamples to each other? Or
a more complicated relationship?
>
>In general, if you're a heterosexual woman, you'll be two-timed by men
>and not women, you'll be dumped by men and not women, you'll be turned
>down by men and not women (unless you never make a move, in which case
>it will be male, not female, losers who hit on you, and baldwins who
>ignore you, not babes).
>
>It's very easy that way to acquire a low opinion of the opposite sex
>while keeping your illusions about your own intact.
>
I don't have a low opinion of men in general. I think men are
just ducky. The men I actually know are interesting, friendly,
cooperative, complicated, thoughtful, and generally fun to be
around. I like to hear them talk (though endless Warhammer and
Weekend in Flames and basketball talk can get wearing, and you
can't always kick them over into the subjects you want), I like to
watch them walk around, I like to do things with them. I like
certain aspects of masculine culture -- like when two guys at the
lumber yard are talking about how you could take and slap that
plate up on the stud like that, and throw up some nails and Bob's
your uncle. Women hardly ever talk like that, and when they do,
it's astonishing and wonderful because it's a man thing usually.
I could go on all day about how wonderful men are. But I expect
and don't need explanations for that.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
<rrho...@prodigy.net> wrote:
>
>On Sat, 03 Jun 2000 00:00:04 GMT, rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer)
>wrote:
>
>>You seem to say that among the stuff you want is stuff you
>>wouldn't go get, even if you could, because of some constraint or
>>another. I just don't call that wanting.
>
>This is neat. The communication is working.
>
>That's part of it, yeah. I "want" stuff, that I know is objectively
>not good for me (in that, a) it will mess up my marriage, which is
>much more important to me (long term) than any instant gratification,
>and b) it may involve entanglements that I really don't "want" (long
>term)). So, I tell myself, with complete success, that much as I
>might "want" something, I'm not going there.
>
>But I still "want" it. In the sense that, if I could be convinced
>that it wouldn't affect my marriage, and woulnd't haunt me in any
>other way, yeah, I'd go for it.
>
>Is that shallow? I guess so.
>
>> What do I call it? Um,
>>admiring? Fantasy? Not desire.
>
>It's more than just "admiring" or "fantasy". It is, at some level,
>"desire", but it's desire you know you have to (and will) control.
This is tremendously interesting. I want some things I can never
have, but nothing I wouldn't go get if the reason I couldn't have
it was removed. I enjoy contemplating and thinking about and
pretending about and what-iffing about things I wouldn't go get if
I could, but I don't call it "wanting."
I was going to post examples, but I'm shy about the real ones and
not as good as Keith at coming up with hypotheticals that closely
match the real ones.
Anyway, I think that this is probably just like that thing about
arousal that Steve reported.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
No, Steve just said women have less drastic changes at puberty
than men do.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Bill Westfield
> it's-been-a-week-and-I'm-going-crazy mode that an unattached
> young man spends a fair amount of time in.
I suppose you can add a "when do they masturbate?" question to go with
"when do they go to the bathroom?" (probably the same time, of course.
Highly efficient.)
BillW
--
(remove spam food from return address)
Bill Westfield
bit of a change, yes, I agree, and I have the beard to prove it, but
breasts plus menstruation beat that all hollow.)
Indeed. The differences in muscle/body structure seem to be applicable to
both sexes as well. Look at the troubles Nadia Comeneci (sp?) went through
at puberty.
Besides, women get hair too. Just not on their face. And they
have to shave a good deal more of it off to be "sexually attractive."
:-)
Bill Westfield
were mostly the way men "want" them to be - ready to jump in the sack
for some quick fun, anytime. Then - do all men live happilly ever
after, or do they make themselves just as frustrated as they are now
standing in line waiting for the Christy Brinkleys of the world to get
to them. I mean, even now, you can find SOME woman who will have sex
with you (money involved, if necessary), but few men (?) make use of
that availability - despite frustrations, they want a woman who meets
their standards. If you increase the availability, does anything
actually change, or do the standards just go up...
Derek Peschel
>It would tie in with womens' greater neoteny, though. Human beings are
>neotenous compared to other primates, and women are neotenous compared to men.
ObSF: _The Celestial Steam Locomotive_ by Michael Coney. (I recommend it,
too, because of the unique spirit that pervades it.)
-- Derek
Joe Slater
>> Hm. What if the mind control were limited to make women's
>> nipples go *spung*?
Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>(I can't believe no one has invoked this SF story yet, but...)
>
>How about just make their irises dialate?
Better yet, make *your* irises dilate. They don't call it belladonna
for nothing.
jds
JoatSimeon
>To what extent is all this built up on fantasy, anyway.
-- actually, it's worse than that. Most men would like lots of available
women... but they don't want them to be available to _other_ men!
Our biology is not arranged four our own convenience... 8-).
-- S.M. Stirling
Nancy Lebovitz
Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 2 Jun 2000, in rec.arts.sf.written,
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>
>>Andrew Maizels <and...@one.net.au> wrote:
>>>Lucy Kemnitzer wrote:
>>>> And the similar phenomenon, where young men say abusive things to
>>>> women (I don't mean crudely teasing or bad flirting things, that's
>>>> another thing), commenting on their putative unattractive
>>>> characteristics, like weight, or features, or size of breasts or
>>>> other shape things. Is it defending themselves against their own
>>>> attraction to people they think they shouldn't be attracted to
>>>
>>>I think you may be over-analysing the problem, and the real reason is
>>>that they're mindless jerks.
>>
>>That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that particular
>>way.
>>
>>I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
>>"shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
>>with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
>
>You and Lucy do need to watch out for observer effects, but. Groups of
>young girls wouldn't taunt you in the street (not like that, anyway), so
>you could wind up thinking that's something only boys do.
>
usenet trolls. While I'll grant you that girls and women spend some
time going on about guys they find unattractive, I don't think they
have quite as strong a habit of insulting strangers in public for
not coming up to their standards.
>In general, if you're a heterosexual woman, you'll be two-timed by men
>and not women, you'll be dumped by men and not women, you'll be turned
>down by men and not women (unless you never make a move, in which case
>it will be male, not female, losers who hit on you, and baldwins who
>ignore you, not babes).
>
>It's very easy that way to acquire a low opinion of the opposite sex
>while keeping your illusions about your own intact.
I don't dislike men in general. I don't know how I could prove that
to you, though.
>
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
The calligraphic button website is up!
Nancy Lebovitz
JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
>>(Nancy Lebovitz)
>
>>Attracting men is absolutely essential.
>>Attracting men is almost impossible.
>
>-- depends _which_ men. There are some pretty loathsome specimines out there
>that are available at the snap of a finger. If you don't get queasy very
>easily...
>
There are quite a few reasonably cute teen-aged girls who *still* behave
as though attracting men is almost impossible--and I seriously doubt
that all they're attracting is scum.
Pete McCutchen
>I can't find the proper sub-thread to hang this off of. But
>in compliance with Steve's suggestion, I have queried my
>husband, catching him at what I judge to be a particularly
>frank and truthful moment. He is inclined to believe that
>many of the posters on this group are either very young, or
>exaggerating slightly for effect. His contention is that if a
Depends on what you're talking about. The "sex as basketball" part
isn't exaggerated at all. The "we're horny all the time" part, well,
maybe that's been exaggerated a bit. Though I think that comes more
from emphasizing on relatively minor component of one's personality,
at the expense of everything else.
>man marries wisely, he gets enough sex to keep him quite
>replete and content. The constant haze of frustration and
>horndogginess can then become a thing of the past,
>unregretted.
Oh, that part I definitely agree with. There's no constant, low-grade
frustration.
> It is a whole lot easier to be indifferent to
>female pulchritude that passes by, too.
That I disagree with. I'm not necessarily frustrated when I see a
lovely woman at the airport, but I'd find it difficult not, at least,
to be _aware_ of it. In my natural state, I'd certainly pass Mary's
test for being slug-free.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>>Yes, it would probably be a good idea. The thing is, I really didn't
>>enjoy it very much. I found it . . . tedious. By page four, it
>>seemed obvious that the two were deeply in love with one another; the
>>events designed to keep them apart seemed, well, contrived.
>
>Sounds like a pretty bad book to me. I mean, just because she's called Capulet
>and he's called Montague doesn't mean that people couldn't have reconciled
>their differences in a proactive sort of way, does it? I can see why you would
>never want to read another romance after that one, but if you want data you
>just have to steel yourself to the task. Try repeating to yourself "this is
>what separates the men from the boys" as you plod through your wife's latest
>romance of choice. Or, in particularly bad cases, several choruses of "it's a
>dirty job but someone's got to do it". I have faith in you. Any man that can
>terrorise a lobster with his teeth thrives on challenges.
Your confidence is much appreciated.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
Moreno) wrote:
>I highly recommend that you use a real newsreader, you can't do it using
>AOL's server, but there are free servers that will work just fine. All
>you have to do is get a real newsereader and AOLLink.
I thought about doing that, but it always seemed more complicated than
it ought to be.
>
>Ask Pete about the joys of switching to something else (anything else).
Oh, I concur. Absolutely. AOL sucks, as they say.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
>
>It was impossible for her to Not Get Caught, by her own dingbat actions.
>She confided in Linda Tripp, for heaven's sake! Assuming that she got
>away with it clean, what good would have accrued to her? Maybe she
>could've squeezed a better job out of Vernon Jordan, but that's not much.
You don't think that having Vernon Jordan assist in your job search is
a real boon?
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
Moreno) wrote:
>> Oh, I think that Friday and I could have a few things to say to one
>> another.
>
>Would it include mention of therapy and getting over the idea that she
>wasn't human?
Well, Taura had an interesting theory about how to prove that you
thought somebody was human, to which I'd be happy to introduce Ms.
Friday.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<iadm...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>The sheriff in the example passage starts off viewing the woman as a "piece
>of meat", then she becomes a "human being". That's what I might term
>essentially a fallacy of casual sex. Some guys may view women as "pieces of
>meat" in some meaningful sense at some point, but that isn't even vaguely
>necessary to be physically attracted to them, enjoy casual sex (or the idea
>of it), or whatever.
Absolutely right. I think what McCrumb is doing is taking a male
reaction and running it through female normative filters. That is, a
guy might actually start to lust after a fourteen-year-old, and then
mentally reclassify her as a "kid" and stop lusting. What he would be
unlikely to do, unless he'd had an Ivy League education inflicted upon
him, is to characterize this as a switch from "thinking of her as a
piece of meat" to "thinking of her as a human being."
In sum, McCrumb Just Doesn't Get It.
Which isn't terribly surprising, really.
--
Pete McCutchen
Pete McCutchen
<step...@logica.com> wrote:
>Pete McCutchen wrote:
>>
>> j...@molehill.org (Todd Larason) wrote:
>> >
>> >The thing is, they didn't *assume* it. They thought they had a valid
>> >test case, and that it showed that even a non-ambiguous XY person
>> >could grow up as a healthy happy girl. Given that, assigning gender
>> >soon after birth for ambiguously sexed people seems downright reasonable.
>> >
>
>A whole medical philosophy, based on a survey of *one* test case, seems
>"downright reasonable"??
Note that I concur. While Todd, apparently, does not.
>
>> >The fact that their test case had been misreported is definately a
>> >problem, and a tragedy, but it seems to me(tm) that most of the
>> >medical community was acting reasonably with the best data they had
>> >available.
>>
>> Which is _why_ it was so irresponsible for publications such as the
>> _New England Journal of Medicine_ to turn the article repudiating this
>> "test case" down.
>
>Any idea why they turned it down?
Because Money was a big deal, and the article was too controversial.
--
Pete McCutchen
William December Starr
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) said:
>> I think you may be over-analysing the problem, and the real reason is
>> that they're mindless jerks. [Andrew Maizels]
>
> That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that
> particular way.
>
> I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
> "shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
> with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
By making "being unattractive to me" more unpleasant for the women who
are guilty of that high crime, they discourage such wrongful behaviour
in the female of the species and thereby increase the pool of women
whose bones they'd like to jump?
-- William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
William December Starr
cam...@SPAHMTRAP.heliograph.com (Cambias) said:
> I'm not trying to toot my own horn, but I addressed some of those
> questions in a story in the April F&SF: is giving a drug which
> duplicates (on a chemical level) the effect of arousal the same as
> rape?
>
> Ultimately it seems you have to come down to intent. Giving a woman a
> drug to make her want sex is unethical if you're sneaking it into her
> drink without telling her, but if the two of you want to sit down and
> have a couple of pills together over drinks, that's your business.
>
> There's also a subtle implied turnabout: is it unethical for women to
> use the various visual/behavioral cues hardwired into the male brain
> to make men want sex? If not, what's the difference, then?
It's somewhat akin to the difference between (a) promoting your brand of
widgets with attractive four-color advertisements carefully designed to
attract customers and (b) marketing your brand of widgets in some other
widget-maker's boxes. People are aware of what advertising is and are
capable of defending themselves against its excesses ("puffery," to cite
the legal term for it) while they process and evaluate its message, but
are close to defenseless against covert fraud. Similarly, people (even
men:-) are presumed able to defend themselves against overt audiovisual
sexual lures -- at least until they _decide_ to give in -- but not
against being drugged without their knowledge.
Joe Slater
>I've read [_The Last of the Winnebagos_ by Connie WIllis]
>twice as well, and *both* times was absolutely
>convinced the protagonist was a woman until it was made obvious
>that it was a man;
[...]
>This seems to be a common effect.
Why? How is it that we decide that a particular character is masculine
and feminine? I was the person who first reported the Winnebago
syndrome, but I don't know how it works. Could it be simply that we in
the absence of direct clues we decide at random, and that half of us
guess wrong? Or that we presume that characters are of the same gender
as their creator? I said that the character's internal dialogue
sounded feminine - but how would I know? Am I just deluding myself,
rationalising a decision I had already made subconsciously?
jds
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
> In article <8h7ak0$1ct$1...@agate.berkeley.edu>,
> Katie Schwarz <k...@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote:
> >JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
[delete katie's quoted passage]
> Upon re-reading, I have decided that this passage has it exactly *wrong*.
> I have already stated my objections in an earlier post. I just realized
> that, taken together, they add up to disagreeing with the entire passage.
While I didn't entirely disagree with your disagreement, I was trying to
figure out why I had initially agreed with the quote. To use the "two
loops" metaphor, here it is (I think): when a man initially sees an
attractive (varying here) woman, only loop #1 is active (the sex one).
Afterwards, loop #2 activates (but possibly not for the psychos).
Dan Swartzendruber
p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net says...
But she came a lot closer than I would have thought. The "piece of meat"
part is a wrong turn, yes.
Del Cotter
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>>>>> And the similar phenomenon, where young men say abusive things to
>>>>> women (I don't mean crudely teasing or bad flirting things, that's
>>>>> another thing), commenting on their putative unattractive
>>>>> characteristics, like weight, or features, or size of breasts or
>>>>> other shape things. Is it defending themselves against their own
>>>>> attraction to people they think they shouldn't be attracted to
>>>>
>>>>I think you may be over-analysing the problem, and the real reason is
>>>>that they're mindless jerks.
>>>
>>>That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that particular
>>>way.
>>>
>>>I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
>>>"shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
>>>with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
>>
>>You and Lucy do need to watch out for observer effects, but. Groups of
>>young girls wouldn't taunt you in the street (not like that, anyway), so
>>you could wind up thinking that's something only boys do.
>
>I don't know and didn't say only boys do it: I said I had observed
>this behavior in boys (and men, though not very old ones).
I realise that; I was sounding a warning in case it got into "aren't
boys awful" territory, the way these threads sometimes do. (I get a bit
depressed when that happens, because of the asymmetry: you *really*
couldn't launch an "aren't girls awful" riff without sounding like
M*lc*lm)
>>It's very easy that way to acquire a low opinion of the opposite sex
>>while keeping your illusions about your own intact.
>
>I don't have a low opinion of men in general. I think men are
>just ducky.
That's obvious from what you've written in the past. I hope you don't
think I was accusing anyone of anything here; this thread is pretty low-
tension at the moment, and I'd hate to be the one to have started a
spiral of defensiveness. Sorry if I caused offence to you or Nancy.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
Mark Atwood
It worked better when we killed off most of our young men in
raiding parties.
--
Mark Atwood | It is the hardest thing for intellectuals to understand, that
m...@pobox.com | just because they haven't thought of something, somebody else
| might. <http://www.friesian.com/rifkin.htm>
http://www.pobox.com/~mra
P. Wezeman
----snip---- I like
> certain aspects of masculine culture -- like when two guys at the
> lumber yard are talking about how you could take and slap that
> plate up on the stud like that, and throw up some nails and Bob's
I thought "Bob's your uncle", was strictly a Britishism, as
I have only ever heard it on British movies and television programs.
In the midwest we would probably say "You've got it" or "There you are".
Peter Wezeman, anti-social Darwinist
"Carpe Cyprinidae"
jab...@my-deja.com
---Oh. Well, I wouldn't have said that. The changes for females seem
more drastic and much more compressed in time. For males you tend to
have two stages: initial puberty with voice change, hair growth and
sexual development and maybe a growth spurt, and then later on, muscle
development, which can take until the early 20's to occur. Physically,
I think it's easier on males. Emotionally? That's a pointless
argument I think.
>
> Lucy Kemnitzer
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Danny Sichel
>>Hm. What if the mind control were limited to make women's
>>nipples go *spung*?
> No, Lois wrote that. I wrote, in answer to a question about it,
> that some women's nipples go spung and some don't (I'm tired of
> asterisks, you'll have to provide your own).
> Since spunging is possible without arousal or desire, you might
> find this kind of a limited superpower.
Hmmmmm.
Now *that's* an interesting concept.
Telekinesis which can influence female nipples - and nothing else.
What could you do with that?
Let's broaden the range a little - live females of any mammalian
species.
Nancy Lebovitz
thought she was human. Friday wanted to convince herself that she
*is* human, a much less testable claim.
Martin Soederstroem
>On Fri, 2 Jun 2000 17:35:53 -0400, pl...@newsreaders.com (J. B. Moreno)
>wrote:
>
>>Then I'd move on to the lesser stuff like making all of the gun control
>>freaks in congress be honest and start a movement to repeal the 2nd
>>amendment.
>
>Or you could start a movement to make all the anti-gun-control freaks read
>the actual court decisions throughout US history about the meaning of the
>2nd amendment.
I would use mind-control powers to make the gun control idiots and the
anti-gun-control idiots shut up.
--
Martin
Remove NEINSPAM.INVALID to email me.
Danny Sichel
>> least cites to the specific research they're basing their
>> claims on) before taking everything they say about it at
>> face value. (Oddly, the oxytocin page itself seems to be
>> gone for the moment, so I can't check if they're citing to
>> anything themselves.)
> Oh, drat. It was the first decent-looking page I found on
> the subject, and it looked legit too. Now I'm worried that
> I've pointed everyone towards kooksville, possibly.
I thought oxytocin was the substance which induces uterine contractions,
and thus childbirth.
I remember learning about the very elegant feedback system whereby the
contractions are triggered, and I'm almost POSITIVE oxytocin was the
substance in question.
What does it have to with emotional response?
Nancy Lebovitz
Human_ as female and I don't know why.
jab...@my-deja.com
Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 01:33:13 GMT, jab...@my-deja.com wrote:
>
> >-----Depends on the guy. Depends on his age, a lot.
>
> And that's what makes Clinton so weird. Because he's in his fifties,
> but acting like a horny teenager.
>
---Well my short (and possibly unjust) answer is that he's a baby-
boomer. They have weird attitudes about sex and age. On the one hand
they produce tiresome moralists who decry the hedonism of the 70's.
Ont the other, they make sure sex is used to sell EVERYTHING. On the
one hand, they're paranoid about the sexual exploitation of youth. On
the other hand use half-clad pubescents to sell adult clothing, and
send reporters off to get the dirt on what teenagers are doing in bed
(I wish I could remember the name / author of the book in question; it
was reviewed in Salon a couple of months ago). They can't give up
adolescence.
---But to be fair, there have always been guys like Clinton.
> --
>
> Pete McCutchen
Richard Horton
On 3 Jun 2000 14:47:03 GMT, na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz)
wrote:
>I don't know, but I kept seeing the viewpoint character in _Halfway
>Human_ as female and I don't know why.
I did, too. One reason may be that the author is female. (It is a
default assumption of mine that the POV character will share gender
with the author, absent other clues.) In the case of _Halfway Human_,
to some extent the roles Tedla was assigned were "female" (though not
always, which was part of the point of the book) which also drove my
perceptions.
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
jab...@my-deja.com
na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) wrote:
> In article <20000602171940...@ng-bd1.aol.com>,
> JoatSimeon <joats...@aol.com> wrote:
> >>(Nancy Lebovitz)
> >
> >>Attracting men is absolutely essential.
> >>Attracting men is almost impossible.
> >
> >-- depends _which_ men. There are some pretty loathsome specimines
out there
> >that are available at the snap of a finger. If you don't get queasy
very
> >easily...
> >
> There are quite a few reasonably cute teen-aged girls who *still*
behave
> as though attracting men is almost impossible--and I seriously doubt
> that all they're attracting is scum.
----Teenage girls, if I remember correctly, are rather odd. They get
mortally offended if hit upon anyone but their idea of the Perfect Man,
who ironically, often appears to be a mistake of nature to the outside
eye. So I think it's possible that they do think they are attracting
only 'scum'. Plus, I have a theory that a man who admits that he is
attracted to you renders himself less attractive thereby. It's odd but
it explains why the men you referred to a couple of posts ago (claiming
that they are selective and you are not 'it') do that - it prevents
them from appearing needy in your eyes. (It's another secret of male /
female relations that arrogance often works, but that women refuse to
admit it).
>
> --
> Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
>
> The calligraphic button website is up!
>
Nancy Lebovitz
Minor irritation at worst at my end--you seemed to be answering something
I wasn't saying.
I strongly recommend labelling efforts to prevent topic shifts that
haven't happened yet.
Nancy Lebovitz
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <8h87si$k...@netaxs.com>,
>na...@unix3.netaxs.com (Nancy Lebovitz) said:
>
>>
>> That still doesn't explain why their jerkness manifests in that
>> particular way.
>>
>> I find Lucy's theory plausible, with the addendum that I'd translate
>> "shouldn't be attracted to" as "would lower their status by having sex
>> with". I'm interested in alternate theories, though.
>
>are guilty of that high crime, they discourage such wrongful behaviour
>in the female of the species and thereby increase the pool of women
>whose bones they'd like to jump?
>
the impression that those guys will settle for just not having to
see unattractive women by driving them off the streets and beaches.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Yes.
>
> What does it have to with emotional response?
It's also a substance involved in the let-down reflex in
nursing. Go figure, there *have* to be some powerful rewards for
the mother going on in the infant-mother relationship, or primitive
women everywhere would just have left those squalling inconvenient
critters behind the nearest bush to be eaten by the predators, and we
wouldn't be here.
But there may be quite a bit more, according to these folks;
they're hypothesizing that it may be an important biochemical underlying
several emotional responses, and not just the breastfeeding biofeedback
loop. Basically, it is or acts like an endorphin; in their rat
experiments, it appears to interfere interestingly with certain drug
additions. Everything we experience, including true love, must have a
physical substrate, after all, unless you are a mind-body dualist. (I
think this posited dualism is a fundamental error of early Western Civ,
by the way, deeply embedded and pervasive in our culture (we took a
wrong turn at Plato), treacherous, and overdue to be corrected. But
that's another topic.)
Anyway, read the (several) abstracts for yourself; I can't sum
them up accurately enough after one quick scan. But it also appears
oxytocin may have a role in orgasm and pair bonding in males as well as
females, as well as mother-child bonding. No question that it's an
endogenous pleasure-drug and an important brain-body messaging chemical.
Now, a study I'd like to see is one of oxytocin levels in
persons sitting under a purring cat. I am much taken by the theory that
cats parasitize our parental instincts...
Ta, Lois.
Justin Fang
>Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on Fri, 02 Jun 2000 16:03:23 GMT, Pete McCutchen <p.mcc...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>> Crustaceans no doubt have me on their equivalent of the "Ten Most
>> Wanted List."
>Now I'm getting a vision of some bad horror movie, as crustaceans
>pilot a robot disguised as an attractive woman on a quest to
>inflict a justly deserved grisly revenge on Pete.....
Crustaceans whisper stories about the fearsome risen city of Ch'cago, which
will one day sink beaneath the waves, releasing dread McCutchen from his
eons-long slumber to ravage across the ocean, devouring all in his path...
Danny Sichel
> you could never have chocolate again. (Unless they get access to it in
> the third book which I haven't read. If so, or if there's some other
> food which you really, really like, feel free to substitute.) Now, you
> don't _need_ chocolate to survive, of course. And you may well live a
> perfectly happy life enjoying other foods and other activities than
> tasting a Godiva truffle, or a Lindt bar, or even just a plain. familiar
> Hershey bar with almonds? Or all three at once! Oh, yeah, baby! Yeah!
Tangent - the Nantucketeers wouldn't have almonds, would they?
James Nicoll
Kristopher/EOS <eosl...@net-link.net> wrote:
>JoatSimeon wrote:
>>
>> -- unless DNA testing _for other reasons_ becomes routine.
>>
>> When everyone's DNA is in a memory bank, perhaps the
>> computer will automatically add: "And oh, the father
>> of record isn't the source of the DNA here."
>
>Let us all sincerely hope that this never comes to pass.
You won't be able to -look- at the DNA without paying
whatever corporation owns it, which should be a sufficent safe
guard.
--
"Sure, Len, just because something is old doesn't mean it's
engraved in stone. We know a lot more about entertainment now than they
did back then. Look at Lawrence Olivier! You think he was in any of
Shakespeare's original productions? No! They added him years later!"
Kristopher/EOS
>
>>> but I'd want to see other views of, e.g., oxytocin (or at
>>> least cites to the specific research they're basing their
>>> claims on) before taking everything they say about it at
>>> face value. (Oddly, the oxytocin page itself seems to be
>>> gone for the moment, so I can't check if they're citing to
>>> anything themselves.)
>
>> Oh, drat. It was the first decent-looking page I found on
>> the subject, and it looked legit too. Now I'm worried that
>> I've pointed everyone towards kooksville, possibly.
>
> I thought oxytocin was the substance which induces uterine
> contractions, and thus childbirth.
It is.
> I remember learning about the very elegant feedback system
> whereby the contractions are triggered, and I'm almost
> POSITIVE oxytocin was the substance in question.
>
> What does it have to with emotional response?
Because in its...wisdom, evolution used the same hormone for
multiple purposes. That's fairly common. There's one of
them involved in joint maintenance AND stomach acid control,
for example.
Kristopher/EOS
Bill Snyder
>>Lucy Kemnitzer)
>
>>and which I think I maybe see too, but I'm not at all sure) is a neotenous
>feature and might be connected with the neotenous appearance of women.
>
>-- I'm not at all sure myself; it's indicative, rather than conclusive.
>
Conditioned response _based_ on the appearance to some extent,
perhaps? Grossly oversimplifying: look more "childlike" than the
other half of the race; other half responds in a way that tends/tries
to tilt interactions toward an adult-to-child pattern; "learn" to
respond in ways that fit this pattern.
If it were earlier in the evening, or if I were less afraid of getting
flamed to death, I think I could link this in with the patriarchal
society with at least moderate plausibility.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank.]
Christopher J. Henrich
>
> On Thu, 01 Jun 2000 00:00:35 GMT, "Scott A. Taylor"
> <izzy...@rochester.rr.com> wrote:
> >
> >That whole missing sock and pen thing... oh, and the one where you throw
> >out all of those nasty wire hangers, and go back to the closet a month
> >later, and some asshole has put more wire hangers in your closet.
>
> Sock <==> Caterpillar
> Washing Machine <==> Chrysalis
> Wire Hanger <==> Butterfly
>
> Simple.
This passes the acid test for a Truly Great Insight: it generates more
questions.
1. When the hangers in my closet seem to be all tangled together, are
they mating?
2. Why don't I find baby socks all over my closet and bedroom?
Aha. The "sock" is probably the *second* instar of the larval stage.
The *first* instar is the dust-bunny.
Chris Henrich