tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post8912514832294071903..comments2023-09-02T07:14:49.753-04:00Comments on Atheism And The City: Sexual PoliticsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-61422751396448985502013-01-16T21:56:46.631-05:002013-01-16T21:56:46.631-05:00I never said that my sexual urges are what define ...I never said that my sexual urges are what define me or what motivate my existence. This blog is really just a mere reflection on my condition at that time. I certainly know how to exercise control and I am in no way a slave to my sexual desires. The Thinkerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14303015383137218932noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7110460687773644977.post-78829972477773701682012-11-26T10:00:21.681-05:002012-11-26T10:00:21.681-05:00I take exception to this characterisation of male ...I take exception to this characterisation of male sexuality (if I were capable of being offended, perhaps I would be ;) ). Whereas I did experience precisely this for much of my adult life, I no longer do.<br /><br />I don't want to focus on the fact that the difference occurred through a spiritual encounter. That would distract us. What I would point out is that you have cited evolution as an excuse for what is basically uncontrolled (not uncontrollable) sexual urges. Our community's social norms completely support your point of view, and your assumptions, and so you have no real context in which to question it. You have, therefore, simply accepted a kind of enthralment to this paradigm of being "motivated by sex".<br /><br />Previously, I was under the control of such a paradigm in precisely the manner you describe, but I am no longer. My sexual functions now work for me, and respond to my sovereignty over them in precisely the same way that my physical hunger, pain receptors, and other primal/temporal interfaces do: I decide when those urges are gratified and when they are dismissed as inappropriate. This is not "asexual", any more than it is "anorexic". It is more like a state of being "tamed", and simultaneously having the role of "tamer". It is, simply, "self control".<br /><br />A Muslim leader actually said, on Australian national television, that a particular girl who was gang-raped should be considered the equivalent of leaving fresh meat in an alley: one cannot blame the alley cats for eating it. Your depiction of male sexuality is separated from that view only by degrees.<br /><br />One's primal urges are not axioms of one's existence. They can be brought into a healthy relationship with our moral self, as so many women demonstrate - not because their sexuality is any less powerful, but because they are given a cultural paradigm in which to comprehend their responsibility to control it. Men, by and large, are not (in our society).Kevin Bennetthttp://www.onefaithonechurch.comnoreply@blogger.com