I'm kind of disappointed. I usually enjoy your thoughtful posts, but this one is just a sophisticated "I don't like what you do cuz it's different than what I do". You haven't given one reason why whatever (vague) behaviors you are referring to are inappropriate aside from the fact that you were raised to consider it so.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that promiscuity is a psychologically and socially healthy behavior. However, if it isn't, it's because of good reasons that can be expressed and not just because of some feeling that it's inappropriate.
Okay. I’ll consider doing a follow-up post, or maybe this comment will suffice. My posts differ in thoughtfulness; some, like this one, are more spur of the moment, “send it and move on”, while others undergo more rigorous editing.
I’ll admit this one took me about an hour and a half, but it’s part of a longer multi-segmented conversation that I’ve had with various people over the years.
In this post, I began by pointing to natural and powerful sexual tendencies of men. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these tendencies.
You’re right I don’t share details about the inappropriate behaviors of certain men, but you agree that gay men and straight men can be guilty of inappropriate behavior?
Certainly women are aware of this.
Here are two examples.
1. Once as a teenager, working on my basketball game I was over at a basketball mentor’s house. Turns out his offer to help me with my game wasn’t exactly free. He wanted a relationship with me and he made it pretty obvious when he opened up his photo album showing me pictures of his buddies’ naked asses, making comments about their hairy cracks, and then describing a certain woman’s less pleasing (perhaps rougher and shaven) genital area hair. This was awkward and inappropriate. There’s more, but I think you get the point. That was the last time I went to his house and pretty much avoided him after that. Unfortunately he didn’t really get it. Over the years when I would come home to visit my dad and step-mom, he would call our house and remind me that he “was in it for the relationship.” Perhaps he was hoping to score? It was awkward. Was it inappropriate of him to keep trying? I don’t know, but it was lame.
2. A number of years later, this time in college, I met a candidate landlord in the Rockridge area of Oakland. The purpose of the meeting was to walk the house and possibly sign a rental contract. As I walked in the door, he looked me up and down and said in a drawn-out effeminate voice, “Ohhh, BIG BOY.” Awkward, inappropriate, and worthy of laughing about with my housemates for years afterward.
These examples don’t stem from an anti-gay view, or an anti-male view, or a feminist view, but they are informed by the culture I was raised in. We might agree that these examples say something about the sexual desires of men and how some men deal with that desire. Agreed?
Here’s another, more complicated example.
3. About seven years ago I was chatting with someone while walking on treadmills at the Los Gatos JCC. She shared with me the story of her father. Married for approximately 50 years to her mother, and still married as far as I know; I’ve since lost touch. She described him as a father of seven children, but apparently gay, and sleeping with men for decades behind his wife’s back. Is his behavior inappropriate? I would say so.
Perhaps she was surprised when I told her I wasn’t all that surprised by her father’s secret. My mother’s twin brother was gay, and in talking with my mother about gay men she would tell me things about her brother — his promiscuity and his stories. As a boy she explained to me that some men are married to women while also sleeping in secret with men. “How do you know?” I would ask. “From my brother,” she would say.
Perhaps my Jewish friend at the JCC was a bit surprised that I had known about men like her father since I was a young boy.
Do any of these examples, in and of themselves, imply that one culture should move away from another culture? No, but I believe there are some cases where moving away from one culture is best. See my post. This has become more apparent with the rise of woke ideology and had already been the case with socialist ideology.
Perhaps the word “inappropriate” is problematic. It clearly implies a violation of some rule, but doesn’t provide details or justification. Certainly we can’t always justify or explain the reasons for certain rules, manners, morals, and norms. And I’m not certain we always have to. To some extent rules of appropriateness are emergent phenomenon; norms in one culture will clash with another. We can discuss them, but we may not understand them as well as we want to. In other words, norms can evade our understanding.
In the end we might just disagree about norms. Correct?
I can come up with better examples, but perhaps I’ll save them for another time.
I'm kind of disappointed. I usually enjoy your thoughtful posts, but this one is just a sophisticated "I don't like what you do cuz it's different than what I do". You haven't given one reason why whatever (vague) behaviors you are referring to are inappropriate aside from the fact that you were raised to consider it so.
To be clear, I'm not arguing that promiscuity is a psychologically and socially healthy behavior. However, if it isn't, it's because of good reasons that can be expressed and not just because of some feeling that it's inappropriate.
Okay. I’ll consider doing a follow-up post, or maybe this comment will suffice. My posts differ in thoughtfulness; some, like this one, are more spur of the moment, “send it and move on”, while others undergo more rigorous editing.
I’ll admit this one took me about an hour and a half, but it’s part of a longer multi-segmented conversation that I’ve had with various people over the years.
In this post, I began by pointing to natural and powerful sexual tendencies of men. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these tendencies.
You’re right I don’t share details about the inappropriate behaviors of certain men, but you agree that gay men and straight men can be guilty of inappropriate behavior?
Certainly women are aware of this.
Here are two examples.
1. Once as a teenager, working on my basketball game I was over at a basketball mentor’s house. Turns out his offer to help me with my game wasn’t exactly free. He wanted a relationship with me and he made it pretty obvious when he opened up his photo album showing me pictures of his buddies’ naked asses, making comments about their hairy cracks, and then describing a certain woman’s less pleasing (perhaps rougher and shaven) genital area hair. This was awkward and inappropriate. There’s more, but I think you get the point. That was the last time I went to his house and pretty much avoided him after that. Unfortunately he didn’t really get it. Over the years when I would come home to visit my dad and step-mom, he would call our house and remind me that he “was in it for the relationship.” Perhaps he was hoping to score? It was awkward. Was it inappropriate of him to keep trying? I don’t know, but it was lame.
2. A number of years later, this time in college, I met a candidate landlord in the Rockridge area of Oakland. The purpose of the meeting was to walk the house and possibly sign a rental contract. As I walked in the door, he looked me up and down and said in a drawn-out effeminate voice, “Ohhh, BIG BOY.” Awkward, inappropriate, and worthy of laughing about with my housemates for years afterward.
These examples don’t stem from an anti-gay view, or an anti-male view, or a feminist view, but they are informed by the culture I was raised in. We might agree that these examples say something about the sexual desires of men and how some men deal with that desire. Agreed?
Here’s another, more complicated example.
3. About seven years ago I was chatting with someone while walking on treadmills at the Los Gatos JCC. She shared with me the story of her father. Married for approximately 50 years to her mother, and still married as far as I know; I’ve since lost touch. She described him as a father of seven children, but apparently gay, and sleeping with men for decades behind his wife’s back. Is his behavior inappropriate? I would say so.
Perhaps she was surprised when I told her I wasn’t all that surprised by her father’s secret. My mother’s twin brother was gay, and in talking with my mother about gay men she would tell me things about her brother — his promiscuity and his stories. As a boy she explained to me that some men are married to women while also sleeping in secret with men. “How do you know?” I would ask. “From my brother,” she would say.
Perhaps my Jewish friend at the JCC was a bit surprised that I had known about men like her father since I was a young boy.
Do any of these examples, in and of themselves, imply that one culture should move away from another culture? No, but I believe there are some cases where moving away from one culture is best. See my post. This has become more apparent with the rise of woke ideology and had already been the case with socialist ideology.
Perhaps the word “inappropriate” is problematic. It clearly implies a violation of some rule, but doesn’t provide details or justification. Certainly we can’t always justify or explain the reasons for certain rules, manners, morals, and norms. And I’m not certain we always have to. To some extent rules of appropriateness are emergent phenomenon; norms in one culture will clash with another. We can discuss them, but we may not understand them as well as we want to. In other words, norms can evade our understanding.
In the end we might just disagree about norms. Correct?
I can come up with better examples, but perhaps I’ll save them for another time.