Is sex public or private?

So it’s a common thing to hear “Other people can’t tell you when and where you can’t have sex – society should keep their nose out of it”. I would like to problematize that with two points and argue – sex is not entirely a private act – it has a public dimension. Rather than morals having developed simply because people didn’t know how to have a good time I would rather suggest that they reflect a practical recourse for society.


So the first point is social.
If you look at sex and its subset (reproduction), it is not entirely private simply because the child is born (something like 40% born out of wedlock in USA). So that child also becomes a child of society... and every individual impacts society ... and reliable social science tells us (not exclusively but on average) children who are well parented (two parents) have certain advantages ( others tend to develop problems depressions – anti social dispositions etc etc).

So if it turns out a fact that children are affected by the parenting skill of the people who bring them up, and if such children harm society/themselves, then society has a vested interested in that.

This is not religious it is social – for instance if you pollute the river on your property and people downstream are affected you are accountable – even in a free country ... if your private acts bear a public impact, public norms are brought to bear on your life.

(BTW, I am not advocating that everything be controlled by legislation. There is always a tension to what extent customs and to what extent legislation define social norms in a society. How society should choose to deal with those facts (if they are facts) is something society has to work out on itself)


And the second point is psychological

The more people become attached to possession and enjoying something the less inclined they are to perform altruistic behaviour or consider others. Between pure altruism and pure selfishness exists an obvious schism. No prizes for guessing what tool massive consumer advertising uses to really penetrate people and arouse and stimulate in one a felt need they didn’t know they have (or intensify one they already have) in a mood of constant vanity.... .

There is the idea that it’s not good to objectify people (seeing someone as an object of your consciousness – it’s a post modern term that developed from Kant’s reasoning that one should see others as an end in themselves and not a means to your ends – shorthand = don’t use people). Each one of us is a subject of an individual but if I see you as an object of my consciousness, then what I am interested in is what can you do for me.

So, the stronger my material desires grow the more difficult it will be for me to see you as a subject.
If I am out of control greedy and if I have a product, all I see is a client. Let’s say someone really needs to use the toilet in a hurry. You can say anything you want (“Hey look at the beautiful day ...” “I would like you to meet my good friend ...”) – forget it. They do not have the luxury of thinking anything but “where do I find a toilet”.
So if a person is really, really lusty and has got a real sex thing going, .....guess what they ‘re thinking?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe
d) Waiting list
e) Must have collectable

The more people have selfish desires the less they can truly honour people as ends in their selves, the less they are going to be capable of to do what they can to help achieve another’s purposes
So in the case of real friendship, etc, stoking the fires of material desires makes it difficult.

Obviously this has implications as a society. Every society has rules or referees to keep the show on the road, and this gives us an ultimate picture of the values being cultivated. Is the ultimate purpose of these referees and rules simply to allow people to go about pursuing their selfish ends? Or can the rules be maintained in such away to enable more civil prospects? Is there a self-imposed civil glass ceiling on societies that can’t maintain a certain ethical/altruistic standard?



And just to wrap up, if we believe in some significant way the body is good in certain ways – like sex is not evil – what does this mean about ultimate thinking about reality? What does it mean about the nature of god, a spiritual realm, etc? IOW if something has a positive value under whatever circumstance then it must ultimately be connected to ultimate positive values (No, the purpose of this was not a means to despise the body).

How does it all connect?

BG 7.11 I am sex life which is not contrary to dharma

An important word here is “dharma”

Dharma – to hold, to sustain – a law that defines something because it sustains the identity of it – “liquidity is a dharma of water” (if it’s not liquid it’s not water)

So there are certain activities that sustain higher consciousness and certain activities that diminish it . IOW sex is not seen as something that comes pre-packaged with a series of instructions to condemn it or glorify it. Rather it is seen merely as one of the things one can perform in life, like so many other acts, and all these things are brought to bear to the degree that they impeach/sustain dharma, or the sustenance of quality life.

So that said, it seems quite clear to me that sex certainly is not an exclusive private act.
What about you?

 

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sex is private

 

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depends where you do it

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Australia has the highest percentage of sex in the park in the world after all

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oh pleazzz....

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and you just happen to be in Australia boasting of sexual macho.

 

actually my first sexual expriance was in a park, we were in this little grassed off area off from some bush land and well

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Anyway we think we are compleatly private because we had to bush bash to get in, so we are walking back to the car afterwards only to find this HUGE hole in the bushs which looks DIRECTLY into where we were going for it

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My first time with PB was in the back of my car in the car park for a tennis court near her parents house.

then there was the time we did it on the bonet of my car at uni

I LOVE sex in public, its so much fun

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a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe
d) Waiting list
e) Must have collectable

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This is probably too much information for one day, but i did have second-level on a bus once. Quite exciting actually.

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Not only that; there are other socially relevant effects of sex.
For one, diseases: With sex, there is also the possibility of various infectious diseases spreading. Which means deaths, lost work days, disability. A society then has to decide what to do with those terminally ill and contagious - how to medicate them if at all, whether to punish them, where to house them, what work to give them, how to protect the healthy population ... These things cost society a lot of money and energy. (And the way esp. the HIV situation is addressed in the West, it also means a lot of pollution - e.g. all those one-time use medical and other utensils made of plastic.)

A socio-economical effect of sex is the so-called "sex-industry" - films, books, magazines, establishments, utensils, jobs. There is money (and it is safe to say it is a lot of money) directly and indirectly spent on and made in this industry, and as such, this industry is a relevant factor in the economy of a society. Sex is very public in this regard.

Aside from the actual "sex industry", a lot of money is also spent on and made in relation to sex in more "ordinary" ways - such as all the money spend on and made in cosmetics (products and treatments), clothing, food, gifts etc. that people buy and sell in order to use them as an aid in their sexual pursuits (How many restaurants would go out of business if people wouldn't go out on "romantic dinners"?). Again, an important socio-economical factor that makes sex very public. To say nothing of the environmental pollution caused in the production and use of all those cosmetics etc.

And then there are more socio-economical effets connected to all this by ways of establishing government agencies for controlling the legality of these businessnes, passing laws, initiatives from the government and other organizations to deal with the various aspects of sex in society.

The act of sex itself may usually be done in private, but its effects are public.

In a society where there is no overarching, all-encompassing, all-obligating system of priorities and values, such an objectification is probably inescapable.

It is interesting to me that you say "capable", as opposed to "willing". I've read many critiques that state similar as you, but they all said that people with dominantly selfish desires aren't willing to help others achieve their purposes - implying that they could and are able to but refuse to. As if being possessed by selfish desires were something flimsy, superficial that one can turn on and off at will.
I think that the more people have selfish desires this actually disables them from helping others achieve their purposes.

I don't know whether that glass ceiling is self-imposed. But apparently, there are limits as to what is possible on planet Earth - such as pullution cannot go on indefinitely without also having adverse effects on the polluters; there are only so much natural resources; if the true nature of sex were happiness, then having more sex would lead to greater happiness - but it doesn't.

I think that anything we do or refrain from doing potentially has some direct or indirect effects on everyone and everything else, whether we are currently aware of these effects, or not.
As such, nothing is exclusively private.

 

Each person decides on where and when to have sex. In the public,1: a place accessible or visible to the public, is sometimes where a very few people decide to have sex because there could be others in the general public that will find it offensive as well as small children being able to observe this act as well. Out of RESPECT, most people refrain from engaging in a sexual act openly also because they could be preyed upon by those in society that want to do things to people who do not like to be offended by others desires that infringe upon their "common sense".

 

cosmic, i take offence to that

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its very hard to play with someone when there parents are home.

thats beside the fact that a HELL of a lot of people fuck in the park on the ourskirt of melbourne (no thats not where we were playing around) and they do it in quite a discreat way (well people who have had sex would know what they are doing but kids wouldnt)

 

There are some people here that use public rest rooms to engage in sexual acts like blow jobs. Whenever someone walks into that bathroom they are confronted by these people doing there sexual thing and are offended by that. It is right to engage in sexual acts in a public park where children play or even other adults who don't find that having sex in public is a good thing to do? Many people are very offended by this behavior and the majority of people would like to see it stopped, at least here where I live.

 

cosmic, did you read my sex IQ thread?

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Australia is Number 1 in the world when it comes to sex in public

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I don't think this is as mathematically simple as you present it. A vast rather strong 'it depends' casts a shadow on such generalizations. I say this, at least in part, because of my experience of people. And some of those who have had the strongest desires have also had the most empathy and ability to love.

I also think it is misleading because 'material desires' are hardly the most distorting and damaging. The most dangerous are mentalizations of other people. The categorizing and generalizing of people that you find in various forms of idealism, which, I am afraid, your post has hints of itself.

 

Cosmictraveler, Asguard, the title of this thread is "Is sex public or private?" and this thread is not about whether the sexual act is performed in private or in the public, as it is clear from the OP ... :bugeye:

 

True but I was only interjecting that it is up to each of us to decide what we think would be appropriate when to have sex. An example is that many public beaches are closed after the sun sets and no one is there any longer. That would be somnething to consider when you are going to have sex, if there's no one around and its in the middle of the night.

 

Sex in public is fine, so long as you carefully plan it out, and no one gets hurt. It just adds to the kinkiness, and shouldn't be taken too seriously.

 

in the context of this thread material desire basically boils down to "what you can do for me" (further explained by Kant)

 

and that is exactly the point the OP is problematizing

 

Terrible Asguard. At least stay in the car.

 

it was so much fun on the bonnet though and it was at a uni party so only over 18's were there anyway

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Oh i forgot to mention, my partner and i were both dressed as female prostitutes

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