From: williamt@athena.Eng.Sun.COM (Dances with Drums)
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory
Subject: Re: ISO Bi-Fem and Girlfriend
Date: 14 Oct 1992 14:32:53 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc., Mountain View, CA
Reply-To: williamt@athena.Eng.sun.com (Dances with Drums)
NNTP-Posting-Host: athena

In article x  muffy@remarque.berkeley.edu (Muffy Barkocy) writes:
>In article <ldllerINNi3g@exodus.Eng.Sun.COM> williamt@athena.Eng.Sun.COM (Dances with Drums) writes:
>>In article <KAYVAN.92Oct12135034@satyr.Rational.COM> kayvan@satyr.Rational.COM (Kayvan Sylvan) writes:
>>>I'm really not very flattered or turned on by someone's interest when
>>>their focus is *only* sexual (or only trait X).
>>I guess I can't help wondering why you _need_ to be flattered.
>
>Well, what we've been talking about is why people might be "turned off"
>on discovering that you're interested in them solely because of some
>characteristic.  This is why...as Kayvan says, it doesn't turn us on.
---
	Muffy, you were talking about things that turned you off.  Kayvan
restated it in terms of what was necessary for him to be turned on.  These
are two different things which is why my paragraph addresses this from
a slightly different point.

>>This topic came up in some other newsgroup some time back about
>>how fewer women were able to have sex for sex's sake than men.
>
>It may be "fewer," but most women can do this.  It's called
>"masturbation," and many of us do not feel that it is necessary to use
>an entire other person in this exercise.  Of course, if they *want* to
>watch or help, that is fine...but a lot of people find being asked to be
>a masturbatory accessory to be less than attractive.
---
	I greatly disagree that masturbation is the same as sex for sex's
sake.  You can have sex and be totally there with that other person, but
that doesn't mean that person is somehow the only person that will do.
It does mean that you are engaging in a unique act between two individuals
-- something that is not the same as masturbation.  The fact that you
view sex between two people -- with them their just to enjoy sex with
each other (not that they might not have enjoyed it with someone else)
may indicate that you don't see how sex is sharing between two people.  
For some reason, you don't see sex as something special between two
people in and of *itself*.  There has to be some 'other' stuff, like
them liking *all* of 'you' (something that never got well defined by
you).

	This is at the base of you being turned off -- and alot of women
being turned off if a man is sexually attracted to them without knowing
anything else about them: you don't regard sex as sacred.  Only in the
context of something else -- only if the sex *means something* _else_
is it sacred or special to you.

	I'm not saying that most men who want just sex are feeling it is
sacred, but they are wanting sex often for the act itself -- the joy
it brings itself.  To me, this is probably one of the few areas that men
are closer to purity than women.  The women use the sex as a lure
for something else -- they usually don't just enjoy sex for sex's sake.
This is why when a man is stupid enough to let on that he only is interested
in a sexual relation the woman is usually turned off -- she wants him
to want the 'other stuff'.  So these men, who might want to enjoy sex
for sex's sake, but aren't really ready for a long term relationship
are put into a position of having to lie or go without.  I see both types.

	Personally, I get put off by someone who puts demands on me as a
pre-requisite to sex.  I don't like to pay 'prices' up front.  If it
happens that we become friends first, and sex just happens to come later,
fine.  But if a sexual situation comes up early on, and the woman tells
me we *have* to be 'friends' first, this usually turns me off.  To me,
I can have sex with someone who is not my friend, and I can be friends with
someone I am not sexually attracted to.  They are independant.  There
are not many women who see things that way.

	There are various social factors why this is probably the case, but
that could go on for a long time.


>I enjoy it quite a lot, actually...but, once again, I can do it for
>myself.  If I'm going to do something with another person, I want to do
>it with a *person*, not a human sexual accessory.
----

	But you don't want to do it with a person, but a person who wants
you for you.  You want them because they want something other than just
sex.  You want them for something other than just the experience
and joy of sex.  This is not sex for sex's sake, but for some
other gratification.  But then I am repeating myself from above.

william
>Muffy
--
 --- "If women really earned fifty-nine cents to the dollar for the same
 work as men, what business could compete effectively by hiring men at
 any level?"    -- Dr. Warren Farrell
Newsgroups: alt.polyamory