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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What is sex?
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Jahlove
Tied to the mast
# 10290
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Posted
I must, of course, yield to your first-hand knowledge although chaps of my acquaintance say otherwise.
This article describes what happens to sperm post-vasectomy.
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“Sing like no one's listening, love like you've never been hurt, dance like nobody's watching, and live like its heaven on earth.” - Mark Twain
Posts: 6477 | From: Alice's Restaurant (UK Franchise) | Registered: Sep 2005
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Timothy the Obscure:
I've seen some research (it was quite a few years ago and I can't recall where) that found that men actually masturbate more when they're in relationships than when they aren't.
I 'm not sure what that proves, exactly...
Probably that they are less embarrassed about talking about it when they are in a relationship.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by leo:
Confessors' manuals have defined masturbation as a sinful misuse of sex.
I have in my possession a confessors' manual which describes 'attending places where they dance' as sinful.
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Posts: 8705 | Registered: Jan 2002
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Zoey
Broken idealist
# 11152
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Posted
Where who dance? The elves or the pixies?
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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Pay no mind, I'm doing fine, I'm breathing on my own.
Posts: 3095 | From: the penultimate stop? | Registered: Mar 2006
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Louise
Shipmate
# 30
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Posted
Fascinating though the subject be,
This is Dead Equines here not TnT.
'What is sex?' we answer in this thread.
Take merely wanking somewhere else instead!
cheers
Louise
Dead Horses host
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Posts: 6918 | From: Scotland | Registered: May 2001
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Cod
Shipmate
# 2643
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Posted
Although what is generally considered sex no longer accords literally with "sexual intercourse", ie, intercourse between the sexes it is generally accepted, and I think always has been, that more than one person must be involved in the act itself.
So Johnny aged 13, in his room with only his hand and his Kleenex for company, is not having sex.
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"I fart in your general direction."
M Barnier
Posts: 4229 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Apr 2002
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by duchess:
I will say though that YEAH, I really do think like that. And I will stay on my island and wait until my ship sails by with the dude who actually wants a commitment with me before kissing. That would be so totally cool, to feel that secure. But I guess that is a girl thang.
Why do you say that? Being male doesn’t stop me from thinking that kissing someone is a serious and intimate thing, which should indicate (at the least) a willingness to make a commitment to them.
I don’t think that kissing is “sex” (in that a decision not to “have sex” would not bar me from kissing) but that doesn’t mean that I think it is always appropriate. I married the only person I ever kissed.
quote:
Originally posted by Pânts:
Is 'virtual' (ie online chat) sex actually sex?
Is phone sex actually sex?
Does that mean masturbation is actually sex?
If I said that “I didn’t have sex before marriage”, and you believed me, I don’t think you would necessarily conclude that I had never had an erotic conversation (phone/online/in person) with my fiancée. You almost certainly would not conclude that I never masturbated. I might not have, and there might be good reason for saying I ought not to have, done any of those things, but they aren’t remotely implied in the bare statement that “I didn’t have sex”, in the way that the words are usually meant.
They are examples of sexual behaviour, sure, but so is (some forms of) kissing. So are (some) embraces. That doesn’t make them “sex”.
I agree with Ken that virtual or phone sex might count as ‘cheating’ if you were in a relationship with someone else, but even then, I think that if my wife had phone sex with another man, I’d merely be very hurt and annoyed. If she “had sex” with him I’d be absolutely devastated – because sex (narrowly defined) is for me an expression of the highest commitment and intimacy.
Sex is a lot more than just one way amongst several of getting an orgasm. Orgasms aren’t really that important. As Jahlove’s observations imply, many (most?) men have had an orgasm without it even waking them up. Saying that anything that gets you off is fundamentally the same thing as sex seems to me to miss the point. The main thing about sex is that what you are doing ought to mean something, not that you get a certain physical reaction from it.
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Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
I want to hear Ken defend -- or short of that explain -- his contention that sex requires the swapping of genetic material.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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HenryT
Canadian Anglican
# 3722
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I suspect that "wet dreams" are as often an explanation for stained sheets as they are real phenomena ifyouseewhatImean.
Even in my forties (and twenty plus years married) I've been woken up by a real ejaculation during a erotic dream. YMMV.
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"Perhaps an invincible attachment to the dearest rights of man may, in these refined, enlightened days, be deemed old-fashioned" P. Henry, 1788
Posts: 7231 | From: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Registered: Dec 2002
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Gracious rebel
Rainbow warrior
# 3523
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MouseThief:
I want to hear Ken defend -- or short of that explain -- his contention that sex requires the swapping of genetic material.
Well he's a biologist isn't he? My guess is that he was using the term 'sex' in more scientific sense to that generally understood. I reckon he would therefore say that plants 'have sex' as well (well I guess he wouldn't use those actual words but you get my drift) because they exchange genetic material. If you take as a definition that 'sex is an exchange of genetic material', then obviously that excludes any activity that does not involve this, and includes other things (like plant reproduction). Its not right or wrong to see it that way, its just using a different, scientific definition.
Well that was my understanding of what he was trying to say anyway.
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Posts: 4413 | From: Suffolk UK | Registered: Nov 2002
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Henry Troup:
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I suspect that "wet dreams" are as often an explanation for stained sheets as they are real phenomena ifyouseewhatImean.
Even in my forties (and twenty plus years married) I've been woken up by a real ejaculation during a erotic dream. YMMV.
I'm a light sleeper, which unfortunately means I tend to wake up thinking "Oh BOLLOCKS!!!! I was dreaming" rather before that point.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Pants
Emergency underwear
# 999
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eliab:
I agree with Ken that virtual or phone sex might count as ‘cheating’ if you were in a relationship with someone else, but even then, I think that if my wife had phone sex with another man, I’d merely be very hurt and annoyed. If she “had sex” with him I’d be absolutely devastated – because sex (narrowly defined) is for me an expression of the highest commitment and intimacy.
Yet, as I think someone might've said before, online / phone sex can be so much more intimate. RL sex can just be a physical act, in and out. Whereas doesn't online / phone needs to have more to it?
Or you could say that 'in the heat of the moment' you got swept away by it all and had sex. But online / phone there's some premediated thought involved?
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Posts: 15217 | From: A grown up house | Registered: May 2003
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
I reckon he would therefore say that plants 'have sex' as well (well I guess he wouldn't use those actual words but you get my drift)
I would use those actual words. And so surely would just about anyone. Isn't it quite normal, for example, to talk about flowers as being the sexual organs of plants? At least in school biology lessons anyway...
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
Well he's a biologist isn't he? My guess is that he was using the term 'sex' in more scientific sense to that generally understood.
In which case I'd say it's completely irrelevant to this thread, which is about the morality of sex, not the biology thereof.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by MouseThief:
this thread, which is about the morality of sex, not the biology thereof.
Yeah, but don't you agree with
quote:
what Eliab wrote?
If I said that “I didn’t have sex before marriage”, and you believed me, I don’t think you would necessarily conclude that I had never had an erotic conversation (phone/online/in person) with my fiancée. You almost certainly would not conclude that I never masturbated. I might not have, and there might be good reason for saying I ought not to have, done any of those things, but they aren’t remotely implied in the bare statement that “I didn’t have sex”, in the way that the words are usually meant.
They are examples of sexual behaviour, sure, but so is (some forms of) kissing. So are (some) embraces. That doesn’t make them “sex”.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
Posts: 39579 | From: London | Registered: Mar 2002
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John Holding
Coffee and Cognac
# 158
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Posted
So, getting back to my previous comment, do you, Ken, think anal intercourse between two men is sex? There cannot be "sharing" of genetic material". But then there isn't exactly "sharing" in normal, missionary position sex between a man and a women either.
Or by "sharing" do you just mean partner A depositing material in partner B -- which is not how people use the term, but if biologists do inside their world, fair enough -- though it would be nice to be given a hint that you weren't using the word in the usual way.
That means that any form of "deposit" works -- providing a very wide definition of sex so long as two people are physically in the same location.
John
Posts: 5929 | From: Ottawa, Canada | Registered: May 2001
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Autenrieth Road
Shipmate
# 10509
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Gracious rebel:
I reckon he would therefore say that plants 'have sex' as well (well I guess he wouldn't use those actual words but you get my drift)
I would use those actual words. And so surely would just about anyone. Isn't it quite normal, for example, to talk about flowers as being the sexual organs of plants? At least in school biology lessons anyway...
This begs the question, in the technical sense? The discussion is about which activities done with sexual organs are encompassed by "sex".
[ 13. February 2007, 13:48: Message edited by: Autenrieth Road ]
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Truth
Posts: 9559 | From: starlight | Registered: Oct 2005
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by John Holding:
So, getting back to my previous comment, do you, Ken, think anal intercourse between two men is sex? There cannot be "sharing" of genetic material".
There almost certainly will be, in the sense that the DNA of both will end up in contact with the body of the other. Indeed, one of the problems with defining sex as 'sharing genetic material' is that it throws the net far too wide. Breathing, for example, would become a sexual activity. Perhaps we could say 'reproductive sharing of genetic material'? But then; homosexuality? Contraception? I think the best way to put a Ken-ish point would be 'sharing of genetic material is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for sex'. Not that I agree.
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mousethief
Ship's Thieving Rodent
# 953
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Divine Outlaw Dwarf:
I think the best way to put a Ken-ish point would be 'sharing of genetic material is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for sex'. Not that I agree.
Which rather leaves us where we started.
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Posts: 63536 | From: Washington | Registered: Jul 2001
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Divine Outlaw
Gin-soaked boy
# 2252
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Posted
Yes it does. The Dead Horses equivalent of a Dollis Hill loop.
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