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Whatever the direct cause, as an older person who grew up Catholic, quite literally the most surprising thing in life for me to discover: Sexual repression emph

by jrm4 11mo ago

Whatever the direct cause, as an older person who grew up Catholic, quite literally the most surprising thing in life for me to discover: Sexual repression emphatically cannot be strongly blamed on religion. And I'm not mentioning this to defend religion necessarily, I'm just surprised and almost "impressed" at how, in the absence of religious sexual repression, young people and the internet invented a whole new way of doing it.

graemep 11mo ago
Also lots of repression in countries run by atheist ideologies.
- CamperBob2 11mo ago
  Such countries are generally run by personality cults, which are not the least bit atheistic. Same mental bug, just a different exploit. Go to North Korea and try to sell them atheism, for instance. They'll send your remains home in a cardboard box.
  - graemep 11mo ago
    That is the no true Scotsman fallacy. As for North Korea, it is officially atheist.
    - CamperBob2 11mo ago
      Yes, it's officially atheist because there's only room for one god figure, who happens to be a man. Christianity and Islam are "officially atheist" in the same absurd way. In NK the one permissible exception is not called Allah or Yahweh but Kim. You know, the guy whose portrait hangs in everyone's home in the exact same spot where you'd find a crucifix in a southern American home. And no, the religious nature of personality cults is not a fallacy. If anything, No True Scotsman applies to claims that a personality cult is not a "real religion." They are absolutely indistinguishable from theistic religions, except for the minor, ignorable detail that the god is alive and walking around. Of course there's also a strong component of ancestor worship in the cult of the Kims. The portrait or other object of veneration is as likely to feature il-Sung as one of the other two. Same bug, different exploit.
kragen 11mo ago
It's possible that Roman Catholicism and then the Reformation made sexual repression a part of Western European culture in a way that survived the transition to a more secular society (although the US in particular is still mostly nominally Christian). But some kind of sexual repression seems to be a feature of every human society. Probably that's because people in every society often harm themselves and one another for sexual reasons, so people everywhere attempt to repress that. Birth control, especially barrier methods such as condoms, and modern medicine have dramatically ameliorated the degree to which people harm one another for sexual reasons. But rape, infidelity, and falling in love with harmful partners are still enormous problems, as well as some more prosaic problems mentioned in the article.
- jrm4 11mo ago
  Yeah, and I think often it's not hard to see the historical intersection with power; a lot of the Christian stuff has to do with preserving the churches power. Seems like today's stuff is in line with the combination of an extremely good and reasonable desire to protect the vulnerable, with a perhaps unhealthy dose of "protecting ones own individual feelings from any awkwardness or discomfort whatsoever?" But for whatever reason, not very "large official institution" driven?
easeout 11mo ago
Heh, if repression did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it?
elevatortrim 11mo ago
Perhaps it already existed and the religion borrowed it.
rglover 11mo ago
Repression is the hammer. The church, institution, or social circle are the carpenter. The only real difference today is that now the hammer comes standard with wi-fi.
Barrin92 11mo ago
There's a different read of this by people such as Stirner. As he pointed out, people only ever abandoned the divine subject but left the divine predicates intact, making the tyranny even worse because now even the unbeliever can't escape. They never abolished religion but simply changed the masters. I think it's worth quoting the text because it has always to me explained why so little has changed in this regard: "But, properly speaking, only the god is changed - the deus; love has remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God, to homo as Deus. Therefore man is to me - sacred. And every thing 'truly human' is to me - sacred! 'Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself. Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God? Man with a capital M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the sentence 'God is love', they say 'love is divine'; instead of 'God has become man', 'man has become God', etc. It is nothing more or less than a new - religion."
Der_Einzige 11mo ago
In America it begins with the mass mutilation of baby boys right after birth. The fact that this is hardly brought up in the debate about sexual repression shows you just how large of a mountain men need to climb to achieve anything close to “sexual liberation” similar to what women ever got.

by jrm4 11mo ago

graemep 11mo ago

Also lots of repression in countries run by atheist ideologies.

CamperBob2 11mo ago
Such countries are generally run by personality cults, which are not the least bit atheistic. Same mental bug, just a different exploit. Go to North Korea and try to sell them atheism, for instance. They'll send your remains home in a cardboard box.
- graemep 11mo ago
  That is the no true Scotsman fallacy. As for North Korea, it is officially atheist.
  - CamperBob2 11mo ago
    Yes, it's officially atheist because there's only room for one god figure, who happens to be a man. Christianity and Islam are "officially atheist" in the same absurd way. In NK the one permissible exception is not called Allah or Yahweh but Kim. You know, the guy whose portrait hangs in everyone's home in the exact same spot where you'd find a crucifix in a southern American home. And no, the religious nature of personality cults is not a fallacy. If anything, No True Scotsman applies to claims that a personality cult is not a "real religion." They are absolutely indistinguishable from theistic religions, except for the minor, ignorable detail that the god is alive and walking around. Of course there's also a strong component of ancestor worship in the cult of the Kims. The portrait or other object of veneration is as likely to feature il-Sung as one of the other two. Same bug, different exploit.

kragen 11mo ago

It's possible that Roman Catholicism and then the Reformation made sexual repression a part of Western European culture in a way that survived the transition to a more secular society (although the US in particular is still mostly nominally Christian). But some kind of sexual repression seems to be a feature of every human society. Probably that's because people in every society often harm themselves and one another for sexual reasons, so people everywhere attempt to repress that. Birth control, especially barrier methods such as condoms, and modern medicine have dramatically ameliorated the degree to which people harm one another for sexual reasons. But rape, infidelity, and falling in love with harmful partners are still enormous problems, as well as some more prosaic problems mentioned in the article.

jrm4 11mo ago
Yeah, and I think often it's not hard to see the historical intersection with power; a lot of the Christian stuff has to do with preserving the churches power. Seems like today's stuff is in line with the combination of an extremely good and reasonable desire to protect the vulnerable, with a perhaps unhealthy dose of "protecting ones own individual feelings from any awkwardness or discomfort whatsoever?" But for whatever reason, not very "large official institution" driven?

easeout 11mo ago

Heh, if repression did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it?

elevatortrim 11mo ago

Perhaps it already existed and the religion borrowed it.

rglover 11mo ago

Repression is the hammer. The church, institution, or social circle are the carpenter. The only real difference today is that now the hammer comes standard with wi-fi.

Barrin92 11mo ago

There's a different read of this by people such as Stirner. As he pointed out, people only ever abandoned the divine subject but left the divine predicates intact, making the tyranny even worse because now even the unbeliever can't escape. They never abolished religion but simply changed the masters. I think it's worth quoting the text because it has always to me explained why so little has changed in this regard: "But, properly speaking, only the god is changed - the deus; love has remained: there love to the superhuman God, here love to the human God, to homo as Deus. Therefore man is to me - sacred. And every thing 'truly human' is to me - sacred! 'Marriage is sacred of itself. And so it is with all moral relations. Friendship is and must be sacred for you, and property, and marriage, and the good of every man, but sacred in and of itself. Haven't we the priest again there? Who is his God? Man with a capital M! What is the divine? The human! Then the predicate has indeed only been changed into the subject, and, instead of the sentence 'God is love', they say 'love is divine'; instead of 'God has become man', 'man has become God', etc. It is nothing more or less than a new - religion."

Der_Einzige 11mo ago

In America it begins with the mass mutilation of baby boys right after birth. The fact that this is hardly brought up in the debate about sexual repression shows you just how large of a mountain men need to climb to achieve anything close to “sexual liberation” similar to what women ever got.