If you knew that this body was under baggy sweats and a ballcap, would it matter whether it was tight shorts or baggy sweats, or a bare chest or a hoodie?
I mean, certainly less clothing is more scenic...but what is unseen can still be seen, if you're thinking about it.
As Lisa said; the brain is the real sexual organ. What can be imagined will be imagine, whether it be by man or woman. We men may be a trifle more visual, but we were all designed to respond to each other's (or our own gender's, for those of us hardwired that way...) bodies. As Labrys said; we may be married, or in love, or committed, but we're neither blind nor dead. We respond to those bodies as our own minds and bodies tell us we should. And that's just fine; if we are truly civilized people we can surely find ways to dealing with our desires in civilized ways.
The fact that religious zealots - whether fundamentalist Christians, ultraorthodox Jews, Wahhabi Muslims, or every other flavor of God-bothering asshole - can't seem to do that is their problem, not ours, frankly.
Otherwise?
Enjoy.
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Well, I run in a fairly secular crowd, but I have seen a lot of lives get messed up because of the inevitable drama of people's inability to control their sexual desires. This includes men, women and children. Who is sleeping with whom is not just a matter between two consenting adults, other lives always get entangled. Tears, recriminations and sometimes violence ensues.
Yes, it is part of the human condition, but I understand how some people would wish it otherwise. The carnage, especially if there is children involved, can be awful.
Control. 'You must wear this and do that, or you are responsible - not only for what you do, but for what others might do'.
Ael: No question, which is the difference between "looking" and doing - and the difference between monogamy and "serial monogamy". I'm with Dan Savage on this; if you really want to screw around, you need to admit that monogamy ain't for you and be upfront with your lover(s). And you need to be sure that you wrap that rascal so you don't end up dragging kiddies into the mixer.
And I understand how people wish it were otherwise; I, myself, wish that I was making a living watching daytime television and had the body and powers of a Greek god. Wishing ain't gonna make that happen anymore than wishing - and Scripture, and wearing garbage sacks - is gonna prevent humans from putting totem poles in donut holes they shouldn't. As I've said before; the human sex drive has destroyed empires, wrecked civilizations, ruined lives and every awful thing you can imagine. Pretending that some words on a page will change that is the height of idiocy.
My problem with that is that IMO it encourages a sort of sexual fatalism, as Barry suggests: it's not "you", it's those slutty clothes she wears, or some irresistable biological urge, or that thumping bass line, or whatever else you want to excuse your simply grabbing what you want. As grownups we should be responsible for our sexual adventures or restraint from same.
But we're NOT grownups, most of us, or all the time. There's the selfish, greedy child that we let out to play, some of us more than others. And, like a child, we tend to then stand amid the ruins bawling "It's NOT MY FAULT!"
Thank you for the pretties, Chief :)
As you say, "if we are truly civilized people we can surely find ways to dealing with our desires in civilized ways." Quite so.
I must skedaddle now, but if any further thoughts come up (*smile*) I'll be back tomorrow.
Religion, or any other codified system of right behavior, has its pros and cons, the most problematic being the foundation: the definition of "right behavior".
IMO you can't legislate morality in any pure sense of the word. You may censure or criminalize certain acts, lobotomize or medicalize the zone of thought(brain), but you will never alter the ineffable thing: the heart wants what it wants.
We human animals are very good at slotting and slaking off responsibility and vilifying the Other. Honesty is the thing most often lacking -- honesty with one's self, and the courage to form and abide by a personal code.
"...honesty with one's self, and the courage to form and abide by a personal code."
Well, Lisa...I suspect it has ever been thus, for most of us.
Think about how difficult it is for most of us to actually do this.
First of all it requires time. Time to learn and study and grow. Time to learn about things like good and evil, right and wrong, truth and untruth. Time to, then, look into oneself and find which of these and in what measure lives within you, which ones are the more powerful and which the less.
Then you need the time to actually contemplate all of that; who you are, what you believe, how that all fits into the world around you and the society that you live in (and that in itself is perhaps the most crucial element of actual successful living; loving and caring might make you a wonderful Benedictine monk, say, but a total failure as a Mongol soldier!).
You'd need tremendous powers of induction and deduction, too, to see and understand all this. And ruthless candor, to set aside all the pleasant falsehoods and likeable pretenses we maintain to hold off the frightful possibility that we might be and oftan can be a vicious, selfish asshole or a brutal boor or an ignorant slut.
And then...after all that; after we'd synthesized all these ideas and traits and expectations...we'd have to formulate some sort of consistent code of ethics. And then apply it to our behavior, 24/7/365, regardless of our circumstances and situation and external pressures.
So...is it any wonder that most of us stumble through life with some sort of half-assed sense of trying-to-act-decently-to-others and a half-formed notion of personal rectitude?
Frankly, it's kind of amazing to me how many people seem to live as honestly and kindly and decent-to-others-and-themselves as do.
Could we do better? Sure. But given the circumstances most of us live under? I think that people, by-and-large, do fairly well...
You need the time to actually contemplate all of that ...
Precisely, and that is one commodity almost all lack. I wonder if our incessant pecking away at our various e-devices isn't compensation, a sort of half-arsed "understanding" of the self via uploading the fragments which one ingathers. As you suggest, these tidbits are only representative of one's environmental exposure (but that knowledge may be what matters most to the individual.)
Like you, I am amazed when I do see kindness and decency. Perhaps the impulse often springs from the desire to feel better about oneself, but never matter -- the effect is to lighten someone else's load, a good thing.
I appreciate your considered thoughts, which lead me back momentarily to the chap's photo that prompted this.
While he's lovely, true, my taste runs to the rugged non-pretty boy, the one who is also not ashamed of his sensitive aspect. It is through this that he loves women, but desires to love a woman. Eloquence and wit would merely be the cherry on an already delectable cake ;)
And just like that? I think soccer and football should be played in get-ups similar to what the cast of "The 300" wore, lol.
I utterly control my sexual desires. I also utterly control what I look at....to me? Sex is like food. I eat at home, but I sure look at the cheesecake in the bakery window long and hard!
Lisa: Bocanegra may be pretty, but I wouldn't call him a "pretty boy"; he's a fairly hard-nosed defender who earned his physique playing in some tough places. What kind of person he is, I have no idea. But that's kind of the point of eye-candy, no? It's a purely sensual pleasure.
Labrys: It would certainly draw a wider audience!
And I'd like to think that if we want to be thought of as anything like "civilized" that we can all enjoy the sight of the delicious cheese (or beef) cake and yet sate our appetites in a considerate and whole-hearted way, with someone whose delight is as important to us as our own, and whose mind and soul are as desired by us as their body...
(We can) sate our appetites in a considerate and whole-hearted way, with someone whose delight is as important to us as our own, and whose mind and soul are as desired by us as their body...
--nicely-expressed.
When I read "whole-hearted", which is how it should be -- with gusto -- I also thought, is too-often "hole-hearted," that is, people bring their baggage and damage and hold back or actually simply can't go forward.
Loving incompletely is as bad as loving indiscreetly or any of the litany of other abuses we commit in the name of love.
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