VERY WIERD anti-A article (mentions Aven)

[Mom]

...






2013 Mod Edit: Luckily our dear AVENites below quoted the text (post #29 and #12) and made it easy for me to find a link to the article that was here before this member edited their posts out. So here's a link, and here's the text for future reference anyway:

The power of none
By Megan Gressor
July 23, 2005


Far from being the domain of the spurned or loveless, celibacy has been embraced by a pantheon of greats.

Now pay attention, because the subject is sexual perversity. What's the weirdest thing that you can think of that anyone could get up to in this respect? Auto-erotic asphyxiation? A fetish for amputees? Troilism with same-sex bears in a three-ring circus?

No, even more unthinkable: not doing it at all.

We're talking celibacy here, an option so bizarre many people can't get their heads around it, but one that's been enduringly popular over the ages, spanning a spectrum from lifelong abstinence to occasional time out from the sexual fray. Far from being the exclusive preserve of losers who can't get to first base with the opposite sex - or even the same sex - celibacy has been embraced by a surprising number of notables, including philosopher Baruch Spinoza, British prime minister Pitt the Younger, architect Antonio Gaudi, writer Simone Weil and poet Stevie Smith.

Celibacy isn't synonymous with virginity or chastity, although there are areas of overlap. For one thing, it's not necessarily forever; sportsman have long abstained on the eve of major contests, from original Olympics to the present day, in the belief that it improves their form - a throwback to the old notion of conserving semen, that mysterious life force that has to be rationed in case it runs out, dissipating its owners' energies along with it. Hence the Victorians' injunctions against masturbation; can't let all this good stuff go to waste. As Balzac lamented after a night of passion: "There goes another novel!"

Celibacy certainly frees you up for other endeavours, judging by the achievements of self-proclaimed celibates (at least pro tempore) such as actor Stephen Fry, singer Morrissey, agony aunt Irma Kurtz and novelist Beryl Bainbridge. Bainbridge gave up at 56, feeling sex was "no longer dignified". When was it ever? Even Ita Buttrose, that born again "radical celibate", went on to write bodice rippers. Those who can, do; those who won't, write about it? One way or another, they get a lot more done.

Celibacy has long been a good career choice, particularly for women; how else to get a room of your own, as Virginia Woolf put it, save by refusing to share a bed? It also worked for males, judging by the job options available to eunuchs, from those who guarded Ottoman harems to castrati (opera singers who paid the ultimate price - their testicles - for their high voices) to modern-day hijras, transgender entertainers in India and Pakistan.

Some embrace celibacy: Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I and Florence Nightingale all abstained in order to attain credibility in realms dominated by men. And, of course, the women of Athens, who, in Aristophanes's play Lysistrata, famously forced their men to abandon warfare by denying them sex ("refrain from the male altogether", as Lysistrata put it). Make love or war - you can't have both, it seems.

Others have celibacy thrust upon them - such as astronauts or explorers of the Antarctic, where taking your clothes off isn't an option and the closest member of the opposite sex is light years away. Or, closer to home, Chinese bachelors in a country whose one-child policy has ensured a shortage of women.

Celibacy is by no means reserved for singletons, however. There have been chaste lovers, such as St Francis and St Clare or Heloise and Abelard, as well as what are called "white marriages", such as that of Broadway star Carol Channing and her manager Charles Lowe (who notched up 41 years together without sex).

Some who have eschewed sex were in flight from unacceptable impulses, from Leonardo da Vinci (attracted to men) and Lewis Carroll (attracted to children) to Victorian art critic John Ruskin (terrified of naked women, he failed to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray after being traumatised by the sight of her pubic hair on their wedding night).

Then there were the broken-hearted, such as Isaac Newton, who swore off romance after losing out in love, and the just plain impotent, such as Ovid, rendered incapable by the high lead content in Roman water.

The reverence with which celibacy has traditionally been viewed is reflected in its being the state favoured by the religious through the ages, from Roman vestal virgins and priestesses who attended the Incan sun god to the Shakers, a 19th-century variant of Quakerism that promoted celibacy as a commitment to sexual equality, to the Dalai Lama and contemporary Catholic clergy.

Then there are the deities said to be chaste - not just Jesus, who led a sexless existence (until Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown came along) and his mother, Mary, about whose lifelong virginity an entire cult, Mariology, has arisen, but also the pagan goddesses Artemis, Hestia, Ishtar and many others.

Celibacy has traditionally been synonymous with purity, presumably predicated on the premise that sex is dirty - a premise that made sense in an era predating antibiotics and effective spermicides but now seems simultaneously quaint and oddly prevalent, resurfacing in the Power Virgins and the True Love Waits movements in the United States, whose adherents are determined to keep themselves nice until Mr/Ms Right shows up.

They might well wait forever, as could be the fate of self-proclaimed virgin Katie Holmes, 26, who is famously saving herself for fiance Tom Cruise, presumably unaware of the claims by Mrs Cruise No. 1, Mimi Rogers, to Playboy magazine that he prefers abstinence in order to maintain "the purity of his instrument".

Professed virgin Katie Holmes and fiance Tom Cruise.

All of this runs counter to the perceived wisdom of our Viagra age, in which frequent vigorous sex isn't just desirable but practically compulsory. Failure to engage in it is even listed as a disorder - hypoactive sexual desire, or lack of interest in sexual activity - in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, just as homosexuality used to be.

So essential is regular sex that it's had a dollar value attached to it. According to Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England, authors of Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study, frequent intercourse is so integral to wellbeing that quadrupling the bonking rate - from monthly to weekly - makes people as happy as it would to increase their income by an extra $US50,000 ($66,400) a year.

The meta message of all this? If you're not at it like rabbits night and day, something's amiss. Hence all the treatments available for so-called erectile dysfunction or female sexual dysfunction, although why intermittent loss of libido - common among animals for sound biological reasons - is such a no-no has never been made clear.

Certainly, at the most basic level, celibacy is the ultimate perversion: it makes no evolutionary sense to pass up on the prospect of procreation (even if pharmaceutical empires are built upon preventing conception, just as they are upon promoting intercourse). However, it doesn't necessarily preclude every form of sexual expression. Family planners are keen to point out the joys of "outercourse" (that is, petting), anything that turns you on short of penetration is a nifty stand-in for the real thing. As Nancy Reagan - she who coined the immortal phrase "Just say no" - would be first to agree, celibacy is the ultimate contraceptive: cheap, portable and free from rubber devices, chemicals or unpleasant side effects.

And, contrary to what the lads' mags would have you believe, nobody ever died of it. Abstinence has considerable advantages, according to British academic and celibacy advocate Martin Poulter, who points out that it means you don't have to worry about pregnancy, disease, impotence, frigidity or faking orgasms; nobody will be able to blackmail you with compromising photos; and if you spontaneously combust, you don't take anyone with you.

It has to be said that Poulter also notes two major disadvantages: Cliff Richard is your role model and you don't get any sex. No sex: now there's the rub. Who would willingly give up something so nice, so natural, so much better than chocolate, better than anything else with which it's regularly compared, even if it did help you win at sport, churn out novels or fast-track you to heaven?

A surprising number of people, it seems. Sex may be bigger and ruder than ever on screens small or large, from flashing on Big Brother to actual intercourse in films such as 9 Songs, yet in real life - in some quarters, at least - a sexual counter-revolution is under way. Asexuality is the new sex, according to New Scientist, which late last year reported on recent studies claiming that about 1 per cent of the population just isn't interested - ever - while a major study in the US in 1994, The Social Organisation of Sexuality by Edward Laumann et al, showed that 13 per cent of respondents hadn't had sex in a year and 2 per cent of the adult population had never had it at all. Seems we'd rather sleep than bonk nowadays.

There's even an emergent asexuality pride movement, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (www.asexuality.org), which flogs merchandise online, including G-strings sporting the logo: "It's only underwear. Get over it."

Well, as the car stickers say, if you can read that, you're too close. The network likens itself to gay lib - from the love that dare not speak its name to the love that can't be bothered. Talk about perverse: finally, after we have attained the age-old sexual Holy Grail of effective contraception and laissez faire mores, less, or even none, has become more.

Now that sex is no longer a forbidden pleasure, abstinence is regaining its appeal as the final taboo. In which case, if celibacy is inevitable, you may as well lie back and enjoy it.

[Mom]

...

[allyva]

Mom: if you remove the ?oneclick=true from the end of that URL, people won't be bugged by the registration page.

[Mom]

...

[Derp]

It's also true that homosexuality used to be in the DSM. I was a psych. student for a while, and I had to take a course in projective assessments like the Draw-A-Person test. The DAP still uses an interpretation manual that was written almost forty years ago, and includes a list of homosexuality "indicators", my favorite of which being if a person pays too much attention to drawing the person's knees. If you spend too much time on the knees, it means you're gay. Also, if there's a lot of detail in the eyes or ears (which according to the manual is more indicative of paranoia, but can also mean you're gay).

According to Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England, authors of Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study, frequent intercourse is so integral to wellbeing that quadrupling the bonking rate - from monthly to weekly - makes people as happy as it would to increase their income by an extra $US50,000 ($66,400) a year

Uhm... so, when do I get my extra $50,000?

[cait]

Uhm... so, when do I get my extra $50,000?

haha! touche!

I thought that article was interesting. So much information about people, and very little purpose to writing it. How vague. I don't quite know what the author's stance on the issue is at all! And I wouldn't worry so much about trolls. I think that the site is listed quite a ways away from where any "troll-type" would stop reading. It's a long article!

Here is one part where I was like, "what are you talking about?"

Who would willingly give up something so nice, so natural, so much better than chocolate, better than anything else with which it's regularly compared, even if it did help you win at sport, churn out novels or fast-track you to heaven?

Doesn't feel natural to me! Individuals have their own set of nature, in my opinion. I mean it's about as natural as eating worms, in my opinion. Sure, it's "natural", but it's not pleasant and it's not preferable, and in fact because of the way I have evolved it's probably not healthy for me either! That is what sex is for me. I'd rather churn out a novel any day! And what are you talking about "better than chocolate"? I can't comprehend what this means! My brain is going to explode!! "Better than chocolate"???!! Sheesh.

Also, about evolutionary advantages? Hello! World overpopulation=BAD. Less babies=more people to care for the ones that exist.

[Derp]

And what are you talking about "better than chocolate"? I can't comprehend what this means! My brain is going to explode!! "Better than chocolate"???!! Sheesh.

Couldn't agree more. As far as I'm concerned, chocolate is a food group.

[Goonie]

And what are you talking about "better than chocolate"? I can't comprehend what this means! My brain is going to explode!! "Better than chocolate"???!! Sheesh.

Couldn't agree more. As far as I'm concerned, chocolate is a food group.

you mean it isn't listed as one already?

[Hexpiral]

We should write an article criticizing those who abstain from chocolate. Or those who claim that they don't like it, since it's not possible. Nobody can dislike chocolate! Don't we all have choco-drives?

[cait]

erm ... some people are very badly allergic to it >.<

[Opel the Old]

>>http://www.smh.com.au<<

it is really an australian wrote it?!?!

what a shame (i am just saying i thought australia is fairly openminded)

[ApolloSeek]

Deconstructicons, transform and attack!

Click here for Deconstructicon MP3 Clip

~~~~~~

http://www.smh.com.au/news/people/the-powe...1539135899.html

The power of none

By Megan Gressor

July 23' date=' 2005

Far from being the domain of the spurned or loveless, celibacy has been embraced by a pantheon of greats.

Now pay attention, because the subject is sexual perversity. What's the weirdest thing that you can think of that anyone could get up to in this respect? Auto-erotic asphyxiation? A fetish for amputees? Troilism with same-sex bears in a three-ring circus?

No, even more unthinkable: not doing it at all.

[/quote']

Oh really? What's perverse is your attitude.

We're talking celibacy here' date=' an option so bizarre many people can't get their heads around it, but one that's been enduringly popular over the ages, spanning a spectrum from lifelong abstinence to occasional time out from the sexual fray. Far from being the exclusive preserve of losers who can't get to first base with the opposite sex - or even the same sex - celibacy has been embraced by a surprising number of notables, including philosopher Baruch Spinoza, British prime minister Pitt the Younger, architect Antonio Gaudi, writer Simone Weil and poet Stevie Smith.

Celibacy isn't synonymous with virginity or chastity, although there are areas of overlap. For one thing, it's not necessarily forever; sportsman have long abstained on the eve of major contests, from original Olympics to the present day, in the belief that it improves their form - a throwback to the old notion of conserving semen, that mysterious life force that has to be rationed in case it runs out, dissipating its owners' energies along with it. Hence the Victorians' injunctions against masturbation; can't let all this good stuff go to waste. As Balzac lamented after a night of passion: "There goes another novel!"

Celibacy certainly frees you up for other endeavours, judging by the achievements of self-proclaimed celibates (at least pro tempore) such as actor Stephen Fry, singer Morrissey, agony aunt Irma Kurtz and novelist Beryl Bainbridge. Bainbridge gave up at 56, feeling sex was "no longer dignified". When was it ever? Even Ita Buttrose, that born again "radical celibate", went on to write bodice rippers. Those who can, do; those who won't, write about it? One way or another, they get a lot more done.

[/quote']

Not bad, not bad

Celibacy has long been a good career choice' date=' particularly for women; how else to get a room of your own, as Virginia Woolf put it, save by refusing to share a bed?

[/quote']

How about a 2 bedroom residence?

Actaully it didn't work for Lucy and Ricky. They slept in the same room

Oh well.

It also worked for males' date=' judging by the job options available to eunuchs, from those who guarded Ottoman harems to castrati (opera singers who paid the ultimate price - their testicles - for their high voices) to modern-day hijras, transgender entertainers in India and Pakistan.

[/quote']

You seem to forget that in the US, employers are legally constrainted for

asking about such things. Therefore you advantage disappears

Boo hoo. :(

Some embrace celibacy: Joan of Arc' date=' Elizabeth I and Florence Nightingale all abstained in order to attain credibility in realms dominated by men. And, of course, the women of Athens, who, in Aristophanes's play Lysistrata, famously forced their men to abandon warfare by denying them sex ("refrain from the male altogether", as Lysistrata put it). Make love or war - you can't have both, it seems.

[/quote']

Perhaps they were too busy thinking about other things. Like in

Florence Nightingale's case, treating the sick. Or Joan of Arc needed the

time to motivate her troops.

Elizabeth I was too busy building England into a great country to mess

around w/ sex. I'll bet there are many Brits who are glad.

Others have celibacy thrust upon them - such as astronauts or explorers of the Antarctic' date=' where taking your clothes off isn't an option and the closest member of the opposite sex is light years away. Or, closer to home, Chinese bachelors in a country whose one-child policy has ensured a shortage of women.

[/quote']

Pity the poor astronaut. Cry for the explorer. We'll just have to allocate

more $$ for the Astronauts & Explorers' Sex Surrogates. Let's put sex

toys in all spacecraft. And include them in explorer's gear.

Call the Women's Higher Aphordisac and THeraputic Organization (WHAT-HO). Who knows? Maybe Jeeves's 20-something niece will

volunteer!

(Note: WHAT-HO appeared in CS Lewis sci-fi story Minstering Angels)

Yo, ho, ho and a bottle of opiated rum

Celibacy is by no means reserved for singletons' date=' however. There have been chaste lovers, such as St Francis and St Clare or Heloise and Abelard, as well as what are called "white marriages", such as that of Broadway star Carol Channing and her manager Charles Lowe (who notched up 41 years together without sex).

Some who have eschewed sex were in flight from unacceptable impulses, from Leonardo da Vinci (attracted to men) and Lewis Carroll (attracted to children) to Victorian art critic John Ruskin (terrified of naked women, he failed to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray after being traumatised by the sight of her pubic hair on their wedding night).

Then there were the broken-hearted, such as Isaac Newton, who swore off romance after losing out in love, and the just plain impotent, such as Ovid, rendered incapable by the high lead content in Roman water.

[/quote']

And you point is?

The reverence with which celibacy has traditionally been viewed is reflected in its being the state favoured by the religious through the ages' date=' from Roman vestal virgins and priestesses who attended the Incan sun god to the Shakers, a 19th-century variant of Quakerism that promoted celibacy as a commitment to sexual equality, to the Dalai Lama and contemporary Catholic clergy.

Then there are the deities said to be chaste - not just Jesus, who led a sexless existence (until Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown came along) and his mother, Mary, about whose lifelong virginity an entire cult, Mariology, has arisen, but also the pagan goddesses Artemis, Hestia, Ishtar and many others.

[/quote']

No point, no comment. What does this have to do w/anything?

Celibacy has traditionally been synonymous with purity' date=' presumably predicated on the premise that sex is dirty - a premise that made sense in an era predating antibiotics and effective spermicides but now seems simultaneously quaint and oddly prevalent, resurfacing in the Power Virgins and the True Love Waits movements in the United States, whose adherents are determined to keep themselves nice until Mr/Ms Right shows up.

[/quote']

Perhaps they are trying to avoid STD's? Perhaps they like an immune

system that works? Not having sex is the most effective way of stopping

STD's. And it costs nothing.

They might well wait forever' date=' as could be the fate of self-proclaimed virgin Katie Holmes, 26, who is famously saving herself for fiance Tom Cruise, presumably unaware of the claims by Mrs Cruise No. 1, Mimi Rogers, to Playboy magazine that he prefers abstinence in order to maintain "the purity of his instrument".

[/quote']

Katie Holmes got married to Tom Cruise. Oops. The sound of karma

stepping on dogma fills the room.

All of this runs counter to the perceived wisdom of our Viagra age' date=' in which frequent vigorous sex isn't just desirable but practically compulsory.

[/quote']

You are correct. A gold star for you!

Failure to engage in it is even listed as a disorder - hypoactive sexual desire' date=' or lack of interest in sexual activity - in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, just as homosexuality used to be.

[/quote']

Keep essays like this and you will have a mental disorder named after

you. It will be Gressor's Sex Delusional Disorder

So essential is regular sex that it's had a dollar value attached to it. According to Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England' date=' authors of Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study, frequent intercourse is so integral to wellbeing that quadrupling the bonking rate - from monthly to weekly - makes people as happy as it would to increase their income by an extra $US50,000 ($66,400) a year.

[/quote']

Interesting. Like the real correlation between hemlines and the stock market.

Repeat after me-Correlation is not causation, Correlation is not causation,

Correlation is not causation. Feels good!

The meta message of all this? If you're not at it like rabbits night and day' date=' something's amiss. Hence all the treatments available for so-called erectile dysfunction or female sexual dysfunction, although why intermittent loss of libido - common among animals for sound biological reasons - is such a no-no has never been made clear.

[/quote']

Not bad.

Certainly' date=' at the most basic level, celibacy is the ultimate perversion: it makes no evolutionary sense to pass up on the prospect of procreation (even if pharmaceutical empires are built upon preventing conception, just as they are upon promoting intercourse).

[/quote']

At the most basic level, you are an idiot. You obviously know nothing of

biology or evolution. If celibacy is such a contra-surival trait, why is it

still around? If what you said is true, why hasn't celibacy been selected

out?

However' date=' it doesn't necessarily preclude every form of sexual expression. Family planners are keen to point out the joys of "outercourse" (that is, petting), anything that turns you on short of penetration is a nifty stand-in for the real thing. As Nancy Reagan - she who coined the immortal phrase "Just say no" - would be first to agree, celibacy is the ultimate contraceptive: cheap, portable and free from rubber devices, chemicals or unpleasant side effects.

And, contrary to what the lads' mags would have you believe, nobody ever died of it. Abstinence has considerable advantages, according to British academic and celibacy advocate Martin Poulter, who points out that it means you don't have to worry about pregnancy, disease, impotence, frigidity or faking orgasms; nobody will be able to blackmail you with compromising photos; and if you spontaneously combust, you don't take anyone with you.

[/quote']

You got it!

It has to be said that Poulter also notes two major disadvantages: Cliff Richard is your role model and you don't get any sex.

What's wrong with Cliff Richard? He looks like an ok guy to me. By your

logic' date=' people who don't Avril L. should not go rollerblading.

No sex: now there's the rub. Who would willingly give up something so nice, so natural, so much better than chocolate, better than anything else with which it's regularly compared, even if it did help you win at sport, churn out novels or fast-track you to heaven?

Because they want to? Duh!

What's natural is variation. People are different. So being celibate or

asexual is caused normal physiologic variation. Oh, what a sigma!

(sigma-standard symbol for variation. Note phonetic similarity between

sigma and stigma)

A surprising number of people' date=' it seems. Sex may be bigger and ruder than ever on screens small or large, from flashing on Big Brother to actual intercourse in films such as 9 Songs, yet in real life - in some quarters, at least - a sexual counter-revolution is under way. Asexuality is the new sex, according to New Scientist, which late last year reported on recent studies claiming that about 1 per cent of the population just isn't interested - ever - while a major study in the US in 1994, The Social Organisation of Sexuality by Edward Laumann et al, showed that 13 per cent of respondents hadn't had sex in a year and 2 per cent of the adult population had never had it at all. Seems we'd rather sleep than bonk nowadays.

[/quote']

Perhaps we are sleepy because we are so tired of people trying to force us

to do something we don't what? Duh!

There's even an emergent asexuality pride movement' date=' the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (www.asexuality.org), which flogs merchandise online, including G-strings sporting the logo: "It's only underwear. Get over it."

[/quote']

Why don't you get over yourself?

Well' date=' as the car stickers say, if you can read that, you're too close. The network likens itself to gay lib - from the love that dare not speak its name to the love that can't be bothered. Talk about perverse: finally, after we have attained the age-old sexual Holy Grail of effective contraception and laissez faire mores, less, or even none, has become more.

Now that sex is no longer a forbidden pleasure, abstinence is regaining its appeal as the final taboo. In which case, if celibacy is inevitable, you may as well lie back and enjoy it.

[/quote']

What's perverse is you. Calling people perverse because they want to

lead a lifestyle that has no effect on you!

Are you afriad some nice asexual lady will take you husband away? Or

your daughter will marry a nice asexual male because he actually cares

about her feelings?

Oh the horror!

[Hexpiral]

erm ... some people are very badly allergic to it >.<

Um... I was just trying to be sarcastic, saying something in the same tone as the article.

[cait]

erm ... some people are very badly allergic to it >.<

Um... I was just trying to be sarcastic, saying something in the same tone as the article.

yes yes, I know very well. I was just saying.... cuz ... you know.. .I thought of it... ;p

[cait]

So...

I was re-reading the article and reading Apollo-Seeks ... attack ... which was understandable, or rather, would have been understandable if this article really was arguing any point at all. But I have come to the conclusion that this article is in fact, not arguing against celibacey or asexuality. It is not at all anti-A ... in fact, it drives no point, but makes a somewhat obscure statement about it. About just the fact that it's there and such. I see nothing more in this article. It seems a little sarcastic if anything.

...so...is this just me, or does that seem to be the case for anyone else? Because there was no bashing in the article to be found.

[Kez]

I read it yesterday, and thought 'Huh. All she seems to be doing is saying that some people are celibet, and that is isnt 'normal'.'

*shrugs*

And the SMH gets journalists to contribute articles from all over the place.

[Islander9]

I enjoyed ApolloSeek's responses - agreed the article is silly and wanders & waffles all over the shop, but Apollo does squelch whatever modicum of

argument there was in it-

[Shivers]

Failure to engage in it is even listed as a disorder - hypoactive sexual desire, or lack of interest in sexual activity - in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, just as homosexuality used to be.

(NOTE FROM MOM: IS THIS TRUE??????? Shocked )

If I'm not mistaken.... it's pard of the DSM.... IF it causes the patient distress or interferes with their life.

[Kelly]

Failure to engage in it is even listed as a disorder - hypoactive sexual desire, or lack of interest in sexual activity - in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, just as homosexuality used to be.

(NOTE FROM MOM: IS THIS TRUE??????? Shocked )

If I'm not mistaken.... it's part of the DSM.... IF it causes the patient distress or interferes with their life.

I need to get a copy of that book and see. It seems odd that not being obsessed with sex and not letting sex run your life would be considered a disorder.

But I do see in Joseph Milisitz' Ph.D Dissertation the following:

Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder

According to the DSM-IV (1994), Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder is described as a deficiency or absence of sexual fantasies and desire for sexual activity; causes marked interpersonal difficulty; is not accounted for by another Axis I disorder. The DSM-IV (1994) characterizes the diagnostic features of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder as follows:

May be global and encompass all forms of sexual expression or may be situational and limited to one partner or to a specific sexual activity (e.g., intercourse but not masturbation)…There is little motivation to seek stimuli and diminished frustration when deprived of the opportunity for sexual expression. The individual usually does not initiate sexual activity or may only engage in it reluctantly when it is initiated by the partner…because of a lack of normative age- or gender- related data on frequency or degree of sexual desire, the diagnosis must rely on clinical judgment based on the individual’s characteristics, the interpersonal determinants, the life context, and the cultural setting. (p. 497)

Important to note is that “although some individuals with low sexual desire are perfectly capable of becoming sexually aroused and having orgasms” (Retrieved from: Utexas.edu, 2000).

Associated features of Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder include medical factors (medical conditions, surgery, medications), physiological factors (hormone related), emotional factors (depression, anxiety, stress), relationship factors (conflicts, anger, lack of trust), or sexual arousal disorder (newshe.com:2002 and DSM-IV). Kaplan relates, “Our observations confirmed the findings of others, that patients with sexual desire disorders tend to have more serious underlying emotional and martial problems” (1995, p. 5).

Kelly :?

[ApolloSeek]

I enjoyed ApolloSeek's responses - agreed the article is silly and wanders & waffles all over the shop, but Apollo does squelch whatever modicum of argument there was in it-

That's the idea. To destroy the article and its weak arguments. If you allow

yourself to be abused, abuse will follow.

If people like the author of this crap are allowed to go unchallenged, more

rubbish like this will follow. Sometimes being nice doesn't work. A good

example is the recent troll invasion repelled by SpockJr. He did not "try to

understand" trolls or waste time wondering if their mommies hugged them

enough. He booted them. And guess what-we haven't had any troll trouble.

Word got around-don't mess w/ AVEN or you get PWN'd.

There are two ways to get respect. One is to win it by being nice. The

second is by either literal or metaphorical force. I prefer the first way, like

any sane person would.

Sometimes the first way doesn't work. Like in the case of this author. She

was bigoted and stupid. By being that way, she showed that the first way

of respect was not applicable to her.

So she learned respect the second way, the hard way. So she got hit with

a flock of metaphorical Deconstructicon missiles. Perhaps she'll think twice

before trying it again.

[cait]

But you cannot call a person bigotted and stupid when you've never met them, and also they weren't A-bashing!

I have nothing against you ApolloSeek, and I enjoy your deconstructions from time to time, but sometimes they are not completely objective. Like just now when you said the author was bigotted, and the article was crap. Well, perhaps this is the case, but you have not proven very thoroughly in what way. Just shooting out contradictions is not enough. You have to back it up a bit more and dig more thoroughly into the article.

As I said before, to me, this article is not trying to prove any point at all. It merely stated that not having sex seems to be considered abnormal, in spite of everything. And that even though "abstinence is taboo" celebacy is going to happen anyway. I do not think it was meant to be hateful at all.

It is not particularly well-written and it seems to serve no purpose or point. But I expect this from most written articles anyway, people don't really care what they write about most of the time (it seems to me). But it is not directed against anyone or any group. It is hardly worth directing hate towards.

So I think that in calling the author "perverse" and your use of extreme sarcasm is a bit intense and unnecessary. I think that the original use of "Talk about perverse" was a bit sarcastic to begin with anyway. I felt your reply was really subjective, and taking the article too personally without really reflecting on the content.

Besides, I don't think they would know that you were countering their argument anyway, just writing it out in a webforum like this.

Now, trolls are a different matter. But in this case, your argument is weak, and it is up against an argument that was never an argument to begin with.

But I hope you are taking my criticisms objectively too. Well, if not ... *prepares for flames* >.<

[ApolloSeek]

But you cannot call a person bigotted and stupid when you've never met them, and also they weren't A-bashing!

I have nothing against you ApolloSeek, and I enjoy your deconstructions from time to time, but sometimes they are not completely objective. Like just now when you said the author was bigotted, and the article was crap. Well, perhaps this is the case, but you have not proven very thoroughly in what way. Just shooting out contradictions is not enough. You have to back it up a bit more and dig more thoroughly into the article.

As I said before, to me, this article is not trying to prove any point at all. It merely stated that not having sex seems to be considered abnormal, in spite of everything. And that even though "abstinence is taboo" celebacy is going to happen anyway. I do not think it was meant to be hateful at all.

It is not particularly well-written and it seems to serve no purpose or point. But I expect this from most written articles anyway, people don't really care what they write about most of the time (it seems to me). But it is not directed against anyone or any group. It is hardly worth directing hate towards.

So I think that in calling the author "perverse" and your use of extreme sarcasm is a bit intense and unnecessary. I think that the original use of "Talk about perverse" was a bit sarcastic to begin with anyway. I felt your reply was really subjective, and taking the article too personally without really reflecting on the content.

Besides, I don't think they would know that you were countering their argument anyway, just writing it out in a webforum like this.

Now, trolls are a different matter. But in this case, your argument is weak, and it is up against an argument that was never an argument to begin with.

But I hope you are taking my criticisms objectively too. Well, if not ... *prepares for flames* >.<

You are not worth flaming.

[cait]

pfft, so much for striking up a conversation. oh well.

I fail at life.

[Peix]

To be honest, as far as I can see the author is being a little perverse. I agree that the article isn't really making any real points, and I don't think it's worth getting worked up about or directing any real hate towards, but as a commentary it does suggest that the author didn't bother to find out very much about what asexuality actually is. Gressor does seem rather dismissive of asexuality, which to many people will cause some offence, and some of the things she says do smack of misinformation, and therefore lack of respect.

I did enjoy ApolloSeek's deconstruction, myself. Frankly, I don't think the article merited really serious criticism, and I found it amusing to see it mocked. I found Hex's comment about chocolate funny for the same reason.

[Derp]

Where'd the article go? :?

[Shivers]

Mom decided to delete all her posts.

[allyva]

Thanks, cait. You said that much more diplomatically than I thought to.

[McBuh]

frequent intercourse is so integral to wellbeing that quadrupling the bonking rate - from monthly to weekly - makes people as happy as it would to increase their income by an extra $US50,000 ($66,400) a year.

This puts a monetary value on an instance of intercourse (about US$1390, if I calculate correctly.)

As such it could be used in an argument that all sex is equivalent to prostitution and therefore should be illegal. Sounds pretty pro-A to me.

[Kez]

Here is the article, spotted in a Newspaper in NZ, and in the Sydney Morning Herald.

The power of none

By Megan Gressor

July 23, 2005

Far from being the domain of the spurned or loveless, celibacy has been embraced by a pantheon of greats.

Now pay attention, because the subject is sexual perversity. What's the weirdest thing that you can think of that anyone could get up to in this respect? Auto-erotic asphyxiation? A fetish for amputees? Troilism with same-sex bears in a three-ring circus?

No, even more unthinkable: not doing it at all.

We're talking celibacy here, an option so bizarre many people can't get their heads around it, but one that's been enduringly popular over the ages, spanning a spectrum from lifelong abstinence to occasional time out from the sexual fray. Far from being the exclusive preserve of losers who can't get to first base with the opposite sex - or even the same sex - celibacy has been embraced by a surprising number of notables, including philosopher Baruch Spinoza, British prime minister Pitt the Younger, architect Antonio Gaudi, writer Simone Weil and poet Stevie Smith.

Celibacy isn't synonymous with virginity or chastity, although there are areas of overlap. For one thing, it's not necessarily forever; sportsman have long abstained on the eve of major contests, from original Olympics to the present day, in the belief that it improves their form - a throwback to the old notion of conserving semen, that mysterious life force that has to be rationed in case it runs out, dissipating its owners' energies along with it. Hence the Victorians' injunctions against masturbation; can't let all this good stuff go to waste. As Balzac lamented after a night of passion: "There goes another novel!"

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Celibacy certainly frees you up for other endeavours, judging by the achievements of self-proclaimed celibates (at least pro tempore) such as actor Stephen Fry, singer Morrissey, agony aunt Irma Kurtz and novelist Beryl Bainbridge. Bainbridge gave up at 56, feeling sex was "no longer dignified". When was it ever? Even Ita Buttrose, that born again "radical celibate", went on to write bodice rippers. Those who can, do; those who won't, write about it? One way or another, they get a lot more done.

Celibacy has long been a good career choice, particularly for women; how else to get a room of your own, as Virginia Woolf put it, save by refusing to share a bed? It also worked for males, judging by the job options available to eunuchs, from those who guarded Ottoman harems to castrati (opera singers who paid the ultimate price - their testicles - for their high voices) to modern-day hijras, transgender entertainers in India and Pakistan.

Some embrace celibacy: Joan of Arc, Elizabeth I and Florence Nightingale all abstained in order to attain credibility in realms dominated by men. And, of course, the women of Athens, who, in Aristophanes's play Lysistrata, famously forced their men to abandon warfare by denying them sex ("refrain from the male altogether", as Lysistrata put it). Make love or war - you can't have both, it seems.

Others have celibacy thrust upon them - such as astronauts or explorers of the Antarctic, where taking your clothes off isn't an option and the closest member of the opposite sex is light years away. Or, closer to home, Chinese bachelors in a country whose one-child policy has ensured a shortage of women.

Celibacy is by no means reserved for singletons, however. There have been chaste lovers, such as St Francis and St Clare or Heloise and Abelard, as well as what are called "white marriages", such as that of Broadway star Carol Channing and her manager Charles Lowe (who notched up 41 years together without sex).

Some who have eschewed sex were in flight from unacceptable impulses, from Leonardo da Vinci (attracted to men) and Lewis Carroll (attracted to children) to Victorian art critic John Ruskin (terrified of naked women, he failed to consummate his marriage to Effie Gray after being traumatised by the sight of her pubic hair on their wedding night).

Then there were the broken-hearted, such as Isaac Newton, who swore off romance after losing out in love, and the just plain impotent, such as Ovid, rendered incapable by the high lead content in Roman water.

The reverence with which celibacy has traditionally been viewed is reflected in its being the state favoured by the religious through the ages, from Roman vestal virgins and priestesses who attended the Incan sun god to the Shakers, a 19th-century variant of Quakerism that promoted celibacy as a commitment to sexual equality, to the Dalai Lama and contemporary Catholic clergy.

Then there are the deities said to be chaste - not just Jesus, who led a sexless existence (until Dan "Da Vinci Code" Brown came along) and his mother, Mary, about whose lifelong virginity an entire cult, Mariology, has arisen, but also the pagan goddesses Artemis, Hestia, Ishtar and many others.

Celibacy has traditionally been synonymous with purity, presumably predicated on the premise that sex is dirty - a premise that made sense in an era predating antibiotics and effective spermicides but now seems simultaneously quaint and oddly prevalent, resurfacing in the Power Virgins and the True Love Waits movements in the United States, whose adherents are determined to keep themselves nice until Mr/Ms Right shows up.

They might well wait forever, as could be the fate of self-proclaimed virgin Katie Holmes, 26, who is famously saving herself for fiance Tom Cruise, presumably unaware of the claims by Mrs Cruise No. 1, Mimi Rogers, to Playboy magazine that he prefers abstinence in order to maintain "the purity of his instrument".

All of this runs counter to the perceived wisdom of our Viagra age, in which frequent vigorous sex isn't just desirable but practically compulsory. Failure to engage in it is even listed as a disorder - hypoactive sexual desire, or lack of interest in sexual activity - in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, just as homosexuality used to be.

So essential is regular sex that it's had a dollar value attached to it. According to Dartmouth College economist David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick in England, authors of Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical Study, frequent intercourse is so integral to wellbeing that quadrupling the bonking rate - from monthly to weekly - makes people as happy as it would to increase their income by an extra $US50,000 ($66,400) a year.

The meta message of all this? If you're not at it like rabbits night and day, something's amiss. Hence all the treatments available for so-called erectile dysfunction or female sexual dysfunction, although why intermittent loss of libido - common among animals for sound biological reasons - is such a no-no has never been made clear.

Certainly, at the most basic level, celibacy is the ultimate perversion: it makes no evolutionary sense to pass up on the prospect of procreation (even if pharmaceutical empires are built upon preventing conception, just as they are upon promoting intercourse). However, it doesn't necessarily preclude every form of sexual expression. Family planners are keen to point out the joys of "outercourse" (that is, petting), anything that turns you on short of penetration is a nifty stand-in for the real thing. As Nancy Reagan - she who coined the immortal phrase "Just say no" - would be first to agree, celibacy is the ultimate contraceptive: cheap, portable and free from rubber devices, chemicals or unpleasant side effects.

And, contrary to what the lads' mags would have you believe, nobody ever died of it. Abstinence has considerable advantages, according to British academic and celibacy advocate Martin Poulter, who points out that it means you don't have to worry about pregnancy, disease, impotence, frigidity or faking orgasms; nobody will be able to blackmail you with compromising photos; and if you spontaneously combust, you don't take anyone with you.

It has to be said that Poulter also notes two major disadvantages: Cliff Richard is your role model and you don't get any sex. No sex: now there's the rub. Who would willingly give up something so nice, so natural, so much better than chocolate, better than anything else with which it's regularly compared, even if it did help you win at sport, churn out novels or fast-track you to heaven?

A surprising number of people, it seems. Sex may be bigger and ruder than ever on screens small or large, from flashing on Big Brother to actual intercourse in films such as 9 Songs, yet in real life - in some quarters, at least - a sexual counter-revolution is under way. Asexuality is the new sex, according to New Scientist, which late last year reported on recent studies claiming that about 1 per cent of the population just isn't interested - ever - while a major study in the US in 1994, The Social Organisation of Sexuality by Edward Laumann et al, showed that 13 per cent of respondents hadn't had sex in a year and 2 per cent of the adult population had never had it at all. Seems we'd rather sleep than bonk nowadays.

There's even an emergent asexuality pride movement, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (www.asexuality.org), which flogs merchandise online, including G-strings sporting the logo: "It's only underwear. Get over it."

Well, as the car stickers say, if you can read that, you're too close. The network likens itself to gay lib - from the love that dare not speak its name to the love that can't be bothered. Talk about perverse: finally, after we have attained the age-old sexual Holy Grail of effective contraception and laissez faire mores, less, or even none, has become more.

Now that sex is no longer a forbidden pleasure, abstinence is regaining its appeal as the final taboo. In which case, if celibacy is inevitable, you may as well lie back and enjoy it.

[Loki84]

Not getting any sex is a disadvantage?

I consider it to be an advantage of being asexual.

That said, I don't conside rmyself to be an asexual. I'm just not sure of mysexuality. I tell potentials that i'm celibate. (Since i'm not sure if i am asexual or what - I have had sexual relationships before, albeit the sex bit was uncomfortable) I have people crawling after me, looking for sex. I don't want sex.

I find the article mentioned here to be condescending. It's not like i am denying that I want sex. What i am doing is not having sex, because i don't want it. Hell, I'm not bitching over the fact that someone else turns down apple pie. "Look, you have to have apple pie. humans get hungry. We're naturally inclined to eat apple pie, so eat it." I say "But I don't like apple pie" they reply. To which i tell them that they're in denial, and that not liking apple pie is stupid and unnatural.