Posted: Mar 23, 2011 2:48 pm
Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:Mr.Samsa wrote:I agree. In New Zealand this is what is happening since it has been legalised. They advertise it like any other job and they carry on with normal lives. Whether people want to date someone in that line of work is up to their own individual preferences - personally I wouldn't care, but I know some people would. But we have to keep in mind that this doesn't just apply to prostitution - there are people who refuse to date people in the army, tax collectors, etc., so there's nothing significant about choosing not to date someone who has a job that disagrees with your own principles.
So these jobs and advertisements etc are in similar numbers for both sexes?
Or is it still a service almost always provided by women to men?
Should we not work to open it up to men, like is done with traditional 'men's' jobs?
It is open to men too, and it is fairly equal - probably about 60:40 women to men. And if we were to include similar professions, like strippers and escorts, then I imagine it would be practically 50:50.
So this is male prostitutes for female clients make up 40% of prostitutes?
No.
I've been trying to find figures but it is not easy.
The first male for females prostitute in a Nevada brothel quit after two months as he only got ten clients.
Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:There have been studies too that show women more consistently have orgasms in long-term, secure relationships.
Connected to this there is this study Genetic influences on variation in female orgasmic function: a twin study:One in three women (32%) reported never or infrequently achieving orgasm during intercourse, with a corresponding figure of 21% during masturbation. A significant genetic influence was seen with an estimated heritability for difficulty reaching orgasm during intercourse of 34% (95% confidence interval 27–40%) and 45% (95% confidence interval 38–52%) for orgasm during masturbation. These results show that the wide variation in orgasmic dysfunction in females has a genetic basis and cannot be attributed solely to cultural influences. These results should stimulate further research into the biological and perhaps evolutionary processes governing female sexual function.
Sure - and now demonstrate that this is an evolved trait. Remember our discussion about how biological functions can be appropriated by learning mechanisms?
The usual view is that the female orgasm is a by-product of selection for orgasms in males. So the female orgasm but not the male, would particularly fit your 'learning' view in that women have it as a by-product, it is unreliable, but it can be improved by learning.
I think this is too quick a conclusion.
Some have tried to demonstrate the 'upsuck' of sperm during orgasms as a sperm choice mechanism.
I'm not so sure about 'up-suck'.
If female orgasm was an adaptation we would expect it to occur more at mid-cycle and with more attractive males.
This former has much evidence and the latter has some.
Human female orgasm is noisy. The copulation calls of other primates is a signal to others - either the male involved in the copulation or other near-by individuals for varied reasons.
Barbary macaque males do not ejaculate unless the female gives a copulation call.
In bonobos the females give them when they are mating with higher status males or G-G rubbing with high status females.
Mr.Samsa wrote:All anecdotal though. I've heard the opposite - that most female prostitutes think that their clients are generally sweet and they do what they can to make them happy and comfortable because they care about them, to some degree. Whereas the male prostitutes tend to dislike their work more because they are usually lumped with uglier, older women. Unless we have any evidence to suggest which is right (if either), then the position is moot.
So what makes the older and uglier women unattractive to men, and the men find it hard to care about them, while often older and ugly men are not experienced in the same way by women?
That sounds like a significant difference - and still one that fits what we have always seen as a difference between the sexes.
Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:
So you are saying that the highest grossing industry we have has been so successful in a market that does not exist?
No, I'm saying that it's not representative of males in general. We also have to remember that one of the biggest earners in the porn industry is that aimed at women, so it would be odd not to apply the same arguments to women.
The 'women-friendly' is actually, so far, very much less than that aimed at men. I know.
Perhaps you can provide the evidence that this is not so.
(And if you just mean that soft crap where we don't get to see the erected male bits, that's one big error of thinking and it is men who prefer to not see that, not women.)Mr.Samsa wrote:sprite wrote:I do think that (non-religious) men need to be a lot more vocal and visible about their 'anti-porn', 'anti-casual sex' 'anti-promiscuity' etc etc. I think it would make a massively positive impact on relations between the sexes.
Perhaps, but you have to remember that it's incredibly difficult for men to do so given the current cultural demands. If a man notes that he doesn't watch porn or masturbate, what happens? He gets laughed at and called a liar. A man says that he doesn't approve of sleeping around? He's suddenly a "faggot" (and, depending on the idiocy of the company he keeps, he gets his ass kicked for his troubles).
You should like this, then.
The AntiPornMenProject
Mr.Samsa wrote:Your arguments are ridiculous. Are you seriously suggesting that if I got a group of chihuahuas and poodles, then taught the chihuahuas to jump up and down when I ring a bell, and taught the poodles to roll over when I ring a bell, that observing the differences in their behavior after ringing a bell demonstrates a biological difference between the two groups?
No. I'm saying that if you got male dogs and female dogs and put them together you would get differences between the males and the females and differences between males and females exist across all species.
With wolves we get the alpha female mating with the alpha male and the pack comprises their offspring. Offspring can be seduced to mate by outside novel individuals to start off their own packs. The male offspring sometimes overthrow their father. Females have a single breeding season per year. The pack all provision the pups.
When humans selected from these wolves behaviours that suited their own use this also changed their reproductive environment - females had two mating seasons, the male-female alpha pair-bonding disappeared and males stopped provisioning young.
The selective pressures changed, the physical traits changed, and the behaviour changed - including the reproductive behaviour.
The adaptiveness of traits, ie what led to more offspring than others of the same sex in the changing environment, changed.
Reproductively adaptive traits are in all species different for the two sexes unless there is (more or less) true monogamy.
If promiscuity leads to females having more offspring than monogamy then whatever aspects of it are heritable will spread and so will the behaviour.
It will depend on the enviornment, which also includes what other females are doing (as well as males), so we can also get different strategies being successful in different environments, different numbers of individuals using different strategies being successful, and individuals using different strategies at different time of life also being successful. (Evolutionary Stable Strategies)
See eg
Mating strategies
Though a lot of the literature has been more about the alternative strategies of males, females have situation dependent sexual behaviours which is what I've been pointing out such as with the females evolving to mate outside of oestrus. When a novel trait came about that meant that this behaviour in certain circumstance led to greater reproductive fitness then the heritable part of the trait spreads and will be expressed in the appropriate environment.
And with humans, in one environment women will have greater reproductive fitness through monogamous behaviour, in another through more promiscuous behaviour.
For fuck's sake. No that's not my definition of fucking learning. What is it then?
You said:
Mr.Samsa wrote:
I don't know whether the behavior is evolved or not because I haven't read enough about them to know, but how the hell does your second sentence have any relevance at all? Are you saying that if sexual behaviors weren't evolved, then organisms would never learn to have sex?
Yes if we are talking about evolved traits for egg and sperm to meet.
Perhaps think of a sponge-ike ancestor for simplicity. When we got multi-celled organisms (that developed from a diploid cell and the job of producing haploid cells was the job of a section of the sponge's cells) they had some ancestral inheritance that meant a necessary return to haploid cells as part of the life-cycle (haploid cells being the ancestral state). Just when the eggs or sperm are produced and released will have evolved according to some environmental factor connected to the presence of gametes of the other type being in the environment. Some sort of cues. From the beginning the meeting of two haploids was connected to some chemical cues from those cells, so we expect environmental chemical cues from the other gametes or the other sex.
Any animal that did not produce these cells would be a dead-end as would any that realeased them at the wrong time or could not read the right cues et etc. Those that did all this the best produced the most offspring.
Any adaptation that improved on what the others of the same sex were doing would spread.
Of course adaptations evolve in particular environments, including that of members of the same species, of the same sex, and of the other sex. Genes expressed in one individual affect what happens in another.
So what do you mean by learning - some sort of reinforcement of behaviour?
The reinforcement of, say, the appropriate time to release the cells is differential reproductive success ie variation in the organisms in the way they do this which is a result of variation in their genes means those that are better at getting it 'right' have more offspring and spread their variation.
Mr.Samsa wrote:Indeed, so in this scenario the "exploring" behavior would not be an instinct - it would be a learnt response to a number of factors, including the avoidance of incest. Just in case you don't understand the distinction here, look at it this way: pain is a biological response, and arguably we could say that the retraction from pain is an "instinct". Now suppose I taught my dog to run around a ridiculous obstacle course including see saws, slalom poles, and a part where it has to roll over, shake paw, and yodel to the latest country singing sensation, and I did all this using the pain "instinct". Undeniably, these behaviors are learnt and no one would argue that the yodelling to Garth Brooks is an instinct in the dog.
And in the ancestral females, say, there would have been the variation in behaviour and those that stayed in their natal group would have had far poorer reproductive fitness than those who left. So over time the genes connected to leaving rather than staying would have spread and been expressed in daughters but not sons.
The 'pain' that shaped those behaviours was the dead-end for the genes that led to traits that did not lead to dispersing.
And the 'incest' avoidance is also connected to 'rape' and the female aversion to it.
In an imaginary ancestral population where mating is random the females who had the most offspring would be those that did not mate with close male relatives. Any variation in females that made them able to not mate with close male relatives would be selected. And this extends to other aspects of female choice and avoiding poor quality matings.
These are adaptations. How they will or will not be expressed will depend on the environment.
Mr.Samsa wrote:Of course women across cultures and situations will consistently hate it - it's a horrible experience. Why would we want to teach them to accept it?!
Well in lots of societies women do not get a choice about whom they have sex with, husband etc etc. Though this is not officially 'rape' it does boil down to the same thing.
In the first example above it is the soon to be husband's 'brothers' who carry out the gang rape. I presume it is some sort of way they try to rid themsleves of sexual interest in a 'brother's' wife immediately prior to the marriage.
In the latter example they have some ritual promiscuity which girls have to be involved in whether they want to or not. Those that don't are taught to accept it in this way.
Mr.Samsa wrote:Obviously these figures are even more difficult to judge than female rape statistics because there are even more societal pressures which prevent a man from reporting rape (estimated that less than 10% of male rape is reported). The only statistic I can find is that 4% of rapes are done by women - however this obviously doesn't tell us whether there is any difference in the number of rapists (i.e. it could be that there are equal numbers but men are simply more prolific).
So obviously your statement above is flat-out, completely and dangerously wrong. Even if we accept that it happens "relatively rarely" (a claim that is disputed in the literature on the subject), this doesn't change the fact that your ridiculous belief that men aren't raped by women to be absolutely bogus.
gawd, you really are desperate to argue for the sexes being the same.
Mr.Samsa wrote:Except this isn't the only factor for marriage, and what people report is usually very different from their actual behaviors (hence why self-reported data is generally pretty useless). Given that vast amounts of men apparently prefer experienced women compared to virgins in Western society, I'd imagine that prostitutes would have no problem finding a husband.
Yes, they're quite the catch these days. Perhaps we need some of those match-making websites for high status attractive men to meet prostitutes for marriage.
Mr.Samsa wrote:What do you mean "men's encouragement of their promiscuity"? It seems to me that the biggest promoters of women's right to have sex with whomever they want, whenever they want is coming from the women themselves - particularly the feminists.
Women of course want that, but that includes being able to say no to sex, it does not mean saying yes more. It has meant being able to say no in marriage and other relationships, about being able to say no and not be raped, about being able to say no to enforced sex-work (including the poor life experiences that pushes young girls into sex work).
Why do you assume female choice is about saying 'yes' and not 'no'?
Mr.Samsa wrote:Where the subjects were asked "Have you ever regretted engaging in a sexual activity?". The interesting part is that the results completely contradict your idea about men "always being up for it". And furthermore, the males scores are higher in all of the columns except for "Never", where women are overrepresented...
and......
The only significant sex difference was that women reported regret due to feeling pressured by a partner more often than men.
Mr.Samsa wrote:Exactly - the law is based on 'innocent until proven guilty', so if there is only a witness testimony and no other evidence, then the court can't prosecute. So your interpretation early is clearly wrong.
Which makes our system little different from the Islamic one which people here often rant against where the three witnesses are needed. Three witnesses needed or not needed makes little or no difference after all.
Mr.Samsa wrote: You're making claims like women have a natural aversion to rape - given that such aversion is completely different from every single innate behavior (of the class you're talking about), then we can either conclude that it isn't an adaptation, or it is an incredibly unique form of adaptation that you'd require massive amounts of evidence to support.
No, it is a simple adaptation which is one of many which come under 'female choice'.