Timewaster's Guide Archive

Cynewulf, I see you're ignoring substantive replies to your claims. If you're going to do that, you should just stop posting in the thread. No one here is interested in you using it as a pulpit instead of a discussion thread.

You are right, of course, and that was bad form. Apologies. As for people not being interested in my using this thread as a pulpit, that may certainly be the case. This thread was, however, in dire need of some balancing of the preachers present here. There does not seem to be much room for the discussion you want in an environment filled with people who can categorically state that Abraham is a historical person, and that the Exodus from Egypt happened as described. I do not think people are interested in a debate over the facts behind the stories and legends of the Jewish people, but I will certainly take that discussion, too, as I find it much more interesting than this one.

Now, for your points:

Cynewulf, I'm not sure why you used the word polemic, as the dictionary definition doesn't seem to apply to this circumstance.

Dictionary definitions should never be taken too seriously. They are hopelessly insufficient, and can not be said to provide anything other than guidelines  to the extralinguistic phenomena in the real world that words signify. If you want, I can give you a brief explanation of what I meant. You willfully distorted my argument in order to make it easier to respond to, as well as lend your argument increased credence. That relates closely enough to the dictionaty definiton of "polemic" to be a valid usage, as I see it.  Some might disagree, however.

As to your list of reasons why someone might find another person attractive: They are all fair. Still, in the context of a romantic and sexual relationship they seem like fringe factors. However, that is not the point. I never claimed that all interpersonal attraction is sexually grounded. My initial claim was in response to an obviously very young girl's claim that none of her male friends had sexual thoughts and associations toward girls to whom they were attracted. Now, please do correct me if I am wrong, but is it not common in the United States to understand "attraction" as romantic attraction in the case of a youngster referring to males being attracted to females? Is it not common usage in the United States, and indeed in the rest of the English speaking world, to understand "attracted to" as a somewhat weaker form of "in love with", in contexts such as this? Because this is the context to which I responded. Of course other forms of attraction are possible, which are not sexual in nature. However, romantic attraction is deeply rooted in the sexual, even though other, less visceral "reasons" for attraction are possible at later stages. That does not mean, as I tried to point out in my initial post, that sexual acts are a necessary and unavoidable result. If they are, however, there is nothing wrong or "dirty" or "sinful" with that, either. In my opinion.

Can't you think that members of your family are attractive? That doesn't mean you want to have sex with them. What if you think friends of your same sex are attractive? That doesn't mean you're homosexual. Don't you distinguish between cute kids and not so cute kids? Let's start calling everyone pedophiliacs.

What you are talking about is having a cognitive realisation that  certain people "are" attractive. That is by no means the same as being attracted to them, in the usage of the word specified here. It is possible to "know" that one's mother is attractive. If you are attracted to her, however, (again, for the slow of understanding, in the meaning of the word I have clarified in this context) then you are probably in some sort of trouble.

It is amusing to hear something as mundane as pre- or extramarital sex being referenced as a "risk".

And I would like to thank him for proving my point exactly. I am pressed for time at the moment, so I have to leave it at that, for now. A better response must wait for tomorrow, I think.

Let it just be said that he and others are again erroneously equating sexuality with sexual actions.

In my opinion, ryanjm was not rude or insulting at all. Little-wilson was not, in fact, stating that she does not feel her "guy-friends" are "so extreme in their thoughts about wanting sex from an attractive woman they look at". She was categorically stating that she knows for a fact that they do not have sexual thoughts about girls they are attracted to. Which, clearly, is ridiculous. When someone is attracted to someone else, that attraction is inevitably sexual in nature. One cannot say that one finds someone "attractive but not sexually attractive" in the context discussed here. Merely noting that someone is pretty is sexually motivated. Still, to find someone attractive does not, like some Americans believe, equal to having a, tacit or otherwise, desire to immediately sodomize the person in question. I must say that I am surprised at the level to which some here associate sexuality with shame and sin.

It should also be pointed out that sexuality is not the same as participating in sexual acts. One can very well be sexually attracted to someone, and not have sex with them. In that vein, Joe Schmoe saying "huh, that girl is attractive" usually means "geeze, if conditions were right, I could definitely have sex with her". For some of you, that probably translates as "if I were married to her, I could definitely have sex with her".