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I think the point that the DA was to trying to make, I think, was basically that we are sexual beings, biologically, and men are just made to mate, chemically speaking. It is evolution or creation’s fault that our chemical makeup makes males prone to sexual behavior. GOD MADE US THIS WAY! And then we have society that has decided that individuals need to wait until marriage, or at least until latter teens/twenties before they become sexual activity because their brains aren’t developed yet — but the problem is, there bodies ARE. Females at suppose to mate starting, what 11-12 years of age, and males at 13-16 years of age, according to our biological evolution. I sure as hell don’t want them mating, I really don’t want them mb-ing necessarily either, but if I have to choose – well that is an easy choice. I would be just as pleases as punch if my kids were able to be “masters of their domain.” But if they decide not to, and it helps them meet their biological drive and avoid sexual intimacy before marriage – so be it.
I also feel the same way about it during marriage as well. MODERATION IN ALL THINGS! right Orson!
I will certainly not encourage it, but I’m not going to “discourage” it necessarily either.
cwald wrote:I think the point that the DA was to trying to make, I think, was basically that we are sexual beings, biologically, and men are just made to mate, chemically speaking.
It is evolution or creation’s fault that our chemical makeup makes males prone to sexual behavior. GOD MADE US THIS WAY!And then we have society that has decided that individuals need to wait until marriage, or at least until latter teens/twenties… LaLaLove wrote:Men=Visual and Women=Relationship .. or however people categorize the sexes still
doesn’t mean that an individual does not have a choice in what they act on or look at…I still stick with M – Healthy. Porn – Doesn’t do a whole lot of good for an individual or future generations as a whole but nevertheless is an option for those that decide to use it. I wanted to add that I don’t believe Porn should be illegal .. or that ultimatums should be made surrounding it – People should have the choice. All choices have baggage no matter how small.When I said that many men can’t help it that they are this way what I meant was that they can’t help it if they like porn whether they want to admit it or not (probably not due to the stigma surrounding it). Sure they can choose to avoid it anyway but my point is that this choice is not necessarily as easy and obvious in many cases as some people like to assume especially if they are women that already don’t have as much natural interest in it or older men that grew up when it wasn’t nearly as popular and commonly available as it is now so maybe they never even looked at it themselves.
I really don’t want to derail this topic too much from the original post but these two things are directly related in many cases and to be honest I’m surprised to see people acting like one is good, natural, and healthy but the other is bad, abnormal, and shameful when so many young men will inevitably get caught up in both habits at the same time without really wanting to do anything bad or hurt anyone but it just happens that way. If we simply insist that the choice is always supposed to be that absolutely no porn is ever allowed then the end result in many cases will actually be that many men will just hide it and get in the habit of being deceptive.
The way I see it, the general zero tolerance policy mostly just compounds the situation and will inevitably result in a lot of unnecessary heartache and even divorces in some cases especially now that porn is so easy to access on the internet. I’m not trying to say it is actually good or right for people to look at porn, I just think we need to be a little more realistic about the fact that this is a lot more common than people like to admit and I doubt that acting like it’s the worst thing in the world is really going to help anything over the long run.
Interesting topic. This and other topics like this are discussed in detail and ad naseum in LdsSexuality.com
http://www.ldssexuality.com/forum/index.php I’ve heard that joke Cwald mentioned several times and with different endings, so I kind of think it’s probably just something we all WISH we’d said in a bishop’s interview.
A different response that I’ve also heard told: (interviewee looking around nervously) “No, Bishop… go right ahead.”
I liked Bridget’s story of the counselor in TR interview who suggested that she just keep it to herself or not mention it again to anyone. I like that.
I think many Bishops make this M molehill a huge mountain of unnecessary guilt and anxiety in many young men.
And speaking of huge… SamBee, if this is an “elephant in the room” for you, maybe you should consider another line of work.
Star in an unrated version of the “Elephant Man”? “Have Trunk Will Travel”? “Tusk”?
Okay, bad joke. I’m Sorry.
Perhaps this should be the subject of another post, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It seems to me that the primary tool that the church uses to discourage/prevent this ‘problem’, along with most other ‘transgressions’ is serious and unrelenting guilt built into your psyche from a very young age. I understand why they do this, but my observation now later is life is that guilt does NOT WORKas a prevention tool. I am really sick over how many fine young men, who otherwise have everything else together in their lives, get to spend their adult lives feeling terrible about themselves, because of this ‘problem’. I think it’s a huge unspoken problem.
ss, I agree that the single biggest issue with regard to this and many other issues is the way it is approached – and the use of guilt (and fear) as a motivator. Elder Holland said in the recent CHI training that we can’t use fear as a motivator – that we simply must teach. I like that, but it also gets murky when you realize that many peole who use guilt and fear as motivators don’t realize they are doing it – that they think they simply are teaching. It gets even murkier when you realize that ANY citation of future reward or “moral standard” is going to be interpreted by some as using guilt and/or fear as a motivator – and even more so when you factor in those people (and there are quite a few) who only are motivated by guilt, shame and/or fear (to some degree) when it come to some things.
When it comes to this topic, based on all my years of talking with and counseling people, I think there really is a line between what is not damaging in any way and what is damaing to some degree – but it’s hard to pin down largely because, like any other “addictive” activity, it’s an individual line. Some people can smoke a cigarette or drink alcohol and be addicted very, very quickly; others can smoke or drink in moderation and never really become addicted. What exacerbates
😯 this issue is that our Victorian culture (both the historical societal culture and the general modern Mormon culture) extends the “ban” even into marriage in many people’s minds, and that has implications FAR beyond just our youth and young adults.I was just reading this link: http://www.mormonstudies.net/pdf/mormon_masturbation.pdf Cnsl1 wrote:Interesting topic.
This and other topics like this are discussed in detail and ad naseum in LdsSexuality.com
http://www.ldssexuality.com/forum/index.php I’ve heard that joke Cwald mentioned several times and with different endings, so I kind of think it’s probably just something we all WISH we’d said in a bishop’s interview.
A different response that I’ve also heard told: (interviewee looking around nervously) “No, Bishop… go right ahead.”
I liked Bridget’s story of the counselor in TR interview who suggested that she just keep it to herself or not mention it again to anyone. I like that.
I think many Bishops make this M molehill a huge mountain of unnecessary guilt and anxiety in many young men.
And speaking of huge… SamBee, if this is an “elephant in the room” for you, maybe you should consider another line of work.
Star in an unrated version of the “Elephant Man”? “Have Trunk Will Travel”? “Tusk”?
Okay, bad joke. I’m Sorry.
No no, funny!
😆 No, for me, the two “elephants in the room” with Mormonism are sexuality and the “cult” question. I’ve raised both of these recently. Sexuality covers the m word, homosexuality (which has been done to death, and I don’t want this thread to discuss that) and polygamy (the P word?!)
It’s actually pretty difficult for single people to “lead the law of chastity”. Particularly if they’re ugly, uncharismatic, or just plain no good with women… sorry, but that’s how it is. If they’ve no libido, that’s fine and well, but their only other outlets involve other people – that’s including porn, which are even more controversial. Equating it with adultery or fornication is not helpful – in adultery you’re injuring a third party too.
silentstruggle wrote:Perhaps this should be the subject of another post, but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It seems to me that the primary tool that the church uses to discourage/prevent this ‘problem’, along with most other ‘transgressions’ is serious and unrelenting guilt built into your psyche from a very young age. I understand why they do this, but my observation now later is life is that
guilt does NOT WORKas a prevention tool. I am really sick over how many fine young men, who otherwise have everything else together in their lives, get to spend their adult lives feeling terrible about themselves, because of this ‘problem’. I think it’s a huge unspoken problem. I think fear, guilt, and shame work great as motivators in some cases like preventing theft where the risks or pain just aren’t worth the expected payoff to most reasonable people and maybe it even works to some extent here for some people. However, the problem is that the number of people where fear, guilt, and shame just doesn’t prevent the behavior in this particular case is way too high in proportion to how many it will ever deter permanently to really call it effective in any way. What’s worse is that it looks like the overall suffering caused by this approach when people simply end up doing this anyway but we continue to make such a big deal out of it far outweighs any tangible harm that would ever be caused by the behavior itself if it were simply tolerated and ignored in most cases.
Of course many Church leaders probably think it is very important as if members’ eternal salvation is at stake in some kind of epic battle between good and evil with a very narrow and exclusive definition of what exactly constitutes good. Personally, I think they really need to lighten up and focus more on the battles they might actually be able to win over the long run rather than being so dogmatic about all these strict rules of dubious origin and value.
DA – I agree with you in principle. But let me ask a fair question (I’m not about to make a habit of defending the church – that would go against my nature What do you think the church’s stance SHOULD BE? I get that we should not follow SPK, miracle of forgiveness mentality. But seriously, I don’t think it is a big deal, you don’t, but what do we expect the church to do about it? Surely we aren’t going to put something in the FTSOY manual that says, “Masturbation is not a big deal…” Can you imagine the distaster of saying that in church to a couple of million sexually suppressed LDS teenagers.
In fact, I do believe they took that term out of the pamphlet recently didn’t they?
I will wait for your response.
cwald wrote:DA – I agree with you in principle. But let me ask a fair question (I’m not about to make a habit of defending the church – that would go against my nature…
What do you think the church’s stance SHOULD BE?…what do we expect the church to do about it?Surely we aren’t going to put something in the FTSOY manual that says, “Masturbation is not a big deal…” Can you imagine the distaster of saying that in church to a couple of million sexually suppressed LDS…I will wait for your response. No, I don’t think they should come right out and say that there is nothing wrong with porn and masturbation because lots of people are doing it because in that case many conservative TBMs would freak out. My solution would simply be to just stop talking about it in any kind of official way in conference talks or lessons and especially stop suggesting that people need to confess these supposed sins to priesthood leaders in order to be forgiven.
I think this approach would work fairly well for almost everyone; people that want to believe that it’s wrong don’t need to do it (problem solved) and people that don’t think it’s that big of a deal wouldn’t be given an unnecessary guilt-trip about it anymore. Sure if two people on opposite sides of the spectrum get married to each other there could be conflicts but I doubt that the Church will really be able to do much to help resolve this situation by taking sides anyway so they might as well just stay out of it and mind their own business.
If they want to take the official stance that they think sex between married couples is the ideal situation then that would be easier to defend but I just don’t think they need to act like they have all the answers about so many details beyond that. If anyone specifically asks about these things they could just answer that it’s between you and God and if you’re worried about it then you can pray about it and do what you feel most comfortable with. Basically, I think they should just let parents teach their own children what they want to about it and let adults have their own opinions about it on an individual basis.
Okay, I have no problems with that, and agree whole-heartedly. For the record though, when Larry King asked GBH what the church’s stance was on sex, his reply was, “We believe in it.”
I chuckled when Pres. Hinckley said that – but I also appreciated it. DA, I agree that we simply should let the topic drop. It’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” solution for me.
I am so glad that this is being discussed even though it does embarrass me. 😳 This whole faith crisis made me look at this differently too and I am really glad for that. I have a son and I am sure that at some point in his future he will figure out his body. Before I was mortified FOR him for when that time would come. But now I feel like it is a natural part of growing up and I don’t intend to make him feel guilty for it.
I have also decided that sex and other such topics will happen in my house (as opposed to how I grew up and you couldn’t even mention anything that might be thought of as sexual). Kids need to know that it is normal and a normal feeling to feel these things. Otherwise you end up with someone like me who can’t even talk about my monthly cycle without blushing.
😳 AND then you get married and you are totally screwed up for anything sexual because those feelings were just “wrong” for so long and now they are suddenly right?
Yes Butters, it’s a real shame so many young people feel conflicted when they get married. They are told to flip a switch with their vows but it reality it is difficult to do. I do see some efforts in recent years to combat the issue. I went to a YSA fireside where the speaker (in part) talked about how beautiful and wonderful it was to “discover what works” with your spouse. I think he said something like “I may be a slow learner, but we have a lifetime together to figure this out.” And I distinctly remember the: “and it is sure fun to try to figure out!” I hope we can find more ways in the church to address the problem.
Quote:Yeah. I walked in on my 12 year old a couple of months ago. Wife was pretty freaked out about it – end of the world type mentality. I think I handled it much better than my Dad handled it when I got caught.
😆 OK yeah, this is why I decided to finally speak up. My husband is prone to over-exaggeration from time to time.🙄 Caught off guard is more like it. Freaked is DH, when I taught the boy all the anatomically correct words at age 2 LOL! But I’m glad he handled it and not me.
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