Culture statistics resources

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by schwhatever »

Chuma wrote:
schwhatever wrote:about your explanations for why hunting is typified as male
Just out of interest, do you happen to have any other explanations?
No, given that I largely agree with your third argument - about males having a biological edge. I'd say that it's not very clear how large the disparity is, particularly since we're talking two very large groups of people throughout the whole of human history and across countless cultures. Likewise, I think it's worth pointing out that that biological advantage isn't necessarily a sure bet - since there are a lot of women who could easily physically out match quite a lot of men.

In all, there's still a question of untangling biology from culture. Sure, the male body is better designed for a lot of physical labor, but many guys are then also expected to have athletic or martial capabilities that are rarely asked of women. Biology might give men a significant advantage, but it seems like culture might exacerbate it further.
schwhatever wrote:
Chuma wrote:Men are expendable
This only makes sense if women can comparatively easily find another sexual partner (after her previous one dies in battle), in contrast to men not so easily finding another sexual partner.
Actually, I don't think that's quite true. Suppose we have a completely promiscuous culture
Why? As comes up later, very few cultures are polyandrous or anything remotely like that. Sexuality has been, and continues to be fairly tightly regulated in the majority of known societies.
no marriages, everyone can have sex with each other. Even in that case, it is still the number of women that limits childbirth, as I said.
Not exactly. I'd say there are practical limits to how many women a man can have sex with on strictly mechanical level, before we get into issues of the emotional or political issues that usually accompany sex.
Also, as we can see from the data, most cultures are polygynous, so a woman can comparatively easily find another sexual partner.
The only survey listed in this thread that mentioned polygamous marriage patterns says that they're a minority (even if a very sizable one), with a slim majority either exclusively or predominately monogamous.

Likewise, I think you're confusing laxity regarding remarriage with acceptance (or normalcy) of polygamous marriage. That's... inaccurate in some cases, as the splinter sects from the LDS Church can demonstrate. In simpler terms, just because it's normal to have three or more members in a marriage doesn't mean entering a new marriage (or what have you) is permitted.
I'm not talking about vague things like social bonds - those would only evolve if it was beneficial. But if a woman is pregnant, at least in the later stages, she is probably not very good at chasing mammoths. And if she is breastfeeding several times per day, long hunting trips would also be a problem.
All of that makes sense, but the bit about carrying the children doesn't. As you said, men are physically stronger. Who's to say they don't carry the children?
I'm not sure what you mean by ethnocentricism. We can see that there are a total of 0 cultures where women are more likely, or even equally likely, to hunt, so the idea that hunting is a male activity is hardly ethnocentric.
Except I wasn't talking about hunting but childcare which you were talking about as a draw away from hunting. I was just pointing out that you're assuming that childcare is strongly marked as being woman's work, which it is in some cultures, but by no means all. If we're talking about a grand high theory that applies to all these different cultures, we need to have a grand high theory that applies to all these different cultures, which express connections between motherhood and childcare in various ways to varying degrees.
There is no section "Sex differences: Childcare", but I think we can guess.
Uh, no we can't. Or at least we shouldn't. Or if we do speculate we should be very careful to say that our speculations are precisely that - guesses, not necessarily fact. Also, it's probably a good idea to enumerate what our potential biases are if we're going to start guessing. You know, so we don't import our own culture's reasoning and methods for things into another cultural context, also known as ethnocentricism.
On he contrary, the idea that gender roles are strange and unnatural, that sounds like ethnocentrism to me.
When did I call gender roles "strange" or "unnatural"? Don't put words in my mouth. I said that gender roles aren't purely rooted in biology, so in that sense they're more than "natural" (meaning biological) but I clarified that I think there are biological grounds on which they're based, just pretty loosely.

Before we take this little tangent any further, you're going to have to define "unnatural" and hence "natural". Are we talking biology? That's what I've specified with and responded to your statement here as though that's what you meant (which you might not have). Or maybe you meant unnatural with the aura of "undesirable" that it's recently attained, highlighted by simultaneous use of "strange"? There are a lot of aspects of gender roles that I'm critical of, but I don't know that any of that really came out in my other post (but what did are things that suggest that I'm critical of them, hence this?).

Similarly, what's this "strange"? I read that as meaning, before anything else, unusual, and considering how we were having a discussion about gender roles involving as many human cultures and as broad an understanding of a "human reality" as possible, I have no idea where you got the idea that any one where thinks gender roles are outlandish. I think akin to that is an idea that gender roles are archaic, provincial, outdated. That is, rather than rare, they're "declassé". That's hogwash as far as I'm concerned, if you must know. If anything, the areas and groups of the world that view themselves as "beyond" gender are usually not and merely using that rhetoric as grounds to show contempt for parts of the world that haven't reformulated gender roles recently enough for the whole issue to somehow become invisible.
schwhatever wrote:
Chuma wrote:Men have a need to impress women, and killing mammoths is arguably more impressive than picking berries.
[...] a person who delivers it gets rewarded with sexy times and ends up passing their role down to their children, but it has nothing to do with gender.
And women do also try to impress men, in various ways. They might have done it by hunting too, if it hadn't been for those other reasons. But as mentioned before, their need to impress is slightly less.
Yeah, you stated that women have less need to impress men, but then everyone pointed out that the one study you cited shouldn't be assumed to speak for all women forever, for various reasons. In the particular cultural context in question, people brought up that there seem to be driving social norms for women ("Don't be a slut") that aren't really at work for guys, so there's the risk of specific culture's norms influence data that's then assumed to be cross-culturally common. Relatedly, it doesn't seem like there's enough analysis of what forces were driving people's answers, which is pretty important. You seem to be saying that different genders gave different responses because they're different. Women are more selective of sexual partners because they're women. That seems a touch tautological. Others in the thread have pointed out that there's a lot of sexual evaluation of women and I haven't seen much response about that.

Also, I don't remember you mentioning a sample size. That would be helpful.
schwhatever wrote:you mentioned that men are (we think) generally physically stronger than women
We think? If you have any evidence to the contrary, I'm very curious to see it.
See above discussion about training, education, and all those other things that probably give the average guy a heads up on the average girl. In any case, I don't deny that there's a biological advantage that men have, just that it's doing the whole thing alone.
schwhatever wrote:That is certainly true. Even pre-hunting humans probably had some sort of control of this sort of thing - if you try to rape a woman, her partner and her brothers are likely to be upset - but it was probably not unusual anyway.
Hopefully her family would have been, but the essential element that's missing here are specialized classes like the police force, lawyers, judges, and so on. No one has the time to devote themselves almost entirely to detaining the accused and evaluating the facts at hand. So even if her family's upset they might have no recourse (except vigilantism, but that's making the recourse from scratch on their own, so it's allowing revenge to become your life, which sounds pretty time consuming). In short, yes there were controls, but nothing close to what we have today.

Furthermore, since a significant number of brides were essentially stolen, or otherwise taken by agreement with her family, there's a big potential for a woman to be socially isolated from her family, leaving her with basically none of this familial backup. I'm actually reading an ethnography of a Bedouin community right now that gets into the details of how alone women who marry into the patrilocal families feel, where those that marry in stick together because they don't feel like they can trust any one else.
That is of course one reason why men need to be physically strong; it helps them defend their wives against rapists, and it helps them if they want to be rapists themselves. Wouldn't it be more effective if the woman was stronger and could defend herself? Sure, but from an evolutionary perspective it is really the husband who stands to lose the most if his wife gets raped.
Before human rights got big that was the logic behind rape laws - it was damage to a man's property (his wife), or a threat to his security (that his children were actually his).
We can get even more provocative: It might actually be good for the woman to fight back in general, because that way she can make sure that only the strong men can have sex with her. That could potentially be another reason why men are stronger than women - women who were too strong didn't get laid.
I have my doubts about this theory, I should say, but it's wonderfully provocative. :)
That assumes that most if not all sex was violent rape.
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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by Chuma »

schwhatever wrote:Biology might give men a significant advantage, but it seems like culture might exacerbate it further.
That does sound like a reasonable hypothesis. It should be possible to measure, but there's a problem of definition. What do we compare with? The state of men and women exercising equally much? That would be strange, because the more they exercise the more they might erase the effect of biology. The state of not exercising at all? That's hardly possible to achieve. If a person is better at something to begin with, he's also more likely to do it more, so it's hard to imagine any kind of neutral culture where we could test this.

I saw some kind of summary of the strength differences between men and women, which I sadly don't have a source for. It said, if I recall correctly, that an average untrained person can roughly double their strength in a couple of years, and then roughly double it again if they reach the world elite. But at each stage the ratio between men and women remained constant at about 60%. Which suggests that lots of exercise does not actually erase the gender differences.
schwhatever wrote:
Chuma wrote:Suppose we have a completely promiscuous culture
Why? As comes up later, very few cultures are polyandrous or anything remotely like that. Sexuality has been, and continues to be fairly tightly regulated in the majority of known societies.
Well, it does say that surprisingly many cultures allow women to sleep around before marriage. But mostly I was saying that as an "even if"-case.
schwhatever wrote:there are practical limits to how many women a man can have sex with on strictly mechanical level
Yes, so if 99% of the men die, there's a problem, but that's probably quite rare. A man can still have children with more partners than a woman can, that's the point.
schwhatever wrote:The only survey listed in this thread that mentioned polygamous marriage patterns says that they're a minority (even if a very sizable one), with a slim majority either exclusively or predominately monogamous.
That's if you interpret "occasional polygyny" as basically monogamous. If you interpret occasional polygyny as polygyny, you get
15% monogamy
0.3% polyandry
82% polygyny
3% unknown
It's hard to know just how occasional it is (it varies, obviously) but it sounds reasonable that a post-war situation where there is a shortage of men would be such an occasion.
schwhatever wrote:I think you're confusing laxity regarding remarriage with acceptance (or normalcy) of polygamous marriage.
Remarriage? So you're saying that many polygynous peoples would force you to marry all your wives at once?
schwhatever wrote:As you said, men are physically stronger. Who's to say they don't carry the children?
I suppose they could do that, if they don't happen to be off hunting, or carrying something else. But it does sound convenient that women do it, so they can easily breastfeed them when needed - babies aren't that heavy.
schwhatever wrote:I was just pointing out that you're assuming that childcare is strongly marked as being woman's work, which it is in some cultures, but by no means all.
Yes, I did assume that. It would be very nice to see counter-evidence to that too. Source?
schwhatever wrote:the one study you cited shouldn't be assumed to speak for all women forever, for various reasons. In the particular cultural context in question, people brought up that there seem to be driving social norms for women ("Don't be a slut") that aren't really at work for guys, so there's the risk of specific culture's norms influence data that's then assumed to be cross-culturally common.
I'm suggesting that there is good biological reason for those norms. You're right that we can't assume the results are universal, but it would of course be equally wrong to assume that different cultures are more equal. In fact, I would have guessed that modern-day Americans are more egalitarian than most traditional cultures. But by all means, if you have any sort of interesting data from other cultures, I'm listening.
schwhatever wrote:Also, I don't remember you mentioning a sample size. That would be helpful.
Chuma delivers:
http://www.elainehatfield.com/79.pdf
This seems to be the the original study, or at least it includes the data. The sample size is 48 men and 48 women, for each of two identical studies carried out in 1978 and 1982. It's not a huge sample, but I think it's enough to be reasonably reliable for this particular culture. The numbers, for those who don't want to search:

Code: Select all

Question a: "Would you go out with me tonight?"
b: "Would you come over to my apartment tonight?"
c: "Would you go to bed with me tonight?"

Male asking female  a    b    c
1978               56%   6%   0%
1982               50%   0%   0%
Female asking male
1978               50%  69%  75%
1982               50%  69%  69%

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by TomHChappell »

Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:beginning in the 1980s the existence of an established legal marriage no longer implies consent.
Another interesting thing that was recently suggested in the Swedish parliament was that sex should require explicit consent - it should not be enough to not say no, you would have to say yes. I find the idea hilarious.
I find it absurd, but not humorous; at least, not between husband and wife. Me, it just pisses off. Or, since it's Sweden, makes it less likely I'll want to visit (though maybe that's one of the reasons they did it?).
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:References would be nice
There are a couple of examples on Wikipedia, if you haven't checked it already.
Thanks! As it happened I had checked it, but it was worth checking again. Among other things I confirmed that I remembered correctly that the "line marriage" idea, which I think seems pretty reasonable, is not known to be found in real life, but only in fiction such as Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:If the USA gets rid of all its anti-homosexual feeling, will father-son, mother-daughter, brother-brother, and sister-sister sex, still disgust us?
In the parent-child case, there is also an age issue, and a responsibility issue; don't know about other countries, but around here the age of consent is higher if the adult has a position of responsibility towards the child.
Well that makes sense. In other words in several RL countries even if the same-sex thing becomes a non-issue the incest thing probably still would be.
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:... what if in a conculture that particular unlikelihood were commonplace instead of unlikely?
I guess I'm mainly talking about people in (a subculture of) my own culture, where individualism and equality are almost religion. In a conculture, it doesn't sound too strange to me.
If I understood you then I think you're right.
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:... unanimity instead of by supermajority or any other such thing as I proposed.
What I found a little peculiar was your idea of particular numbers such as a three-fifths super-majority. I would expect families to have simpler rules than that.
The smaller the simpler. With fewer than six wives and/or husbands there aren't many alternative majorities other than "unanimous", "almost unanimous (at most one exception)", and "simple majority".
Chuma wrote:If they do have, as you said above, the right to force a member to sex, it seems to me that the most likely is that they have a single leader who decides.
Well, I guess. But how would that leader be chosen, and could the family choose to make a different member leader? Anyway, I would prefer -- if I had to choose, and I not only don't have to but can't -- to live in a "you can only screw around if we all agree to let you" polymarriage rather than in a "you can only screw around if Our Dear Leader agrees to let you" polymarriage. OTOH exactly what makes one less attractive to live in might make it more attractive to set a story in.
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:For the men, for instance, it might be a matter of mutually-required defense; "your enemies are now my enemies"
Sounds very reasonable.
Now that I've thought about it, it might make more sense for every groom to marry every bride and vice-versa, but for every groom to adopt every other groom as a blood-brother and every bride to adopt every other bride as a (blood?-)sister; and also for each spouse to have some relationship to the entire corporate marital unit. For one thing that would allow the original founding couple to be same-sex without their being homosexual or bisexual or indeed having anything sexual about their relationship.

If that were the historical background, maybe that would just make it easier for homosexual couples to marry, rather than make it anything like common.
Chuma wrote:I saw some kind of summary of the strength differences between men and women, which I sadly don't have a source for. It said, if I recall correctly, that an average untrained person can roughly double their strength in a couple of years, and then roughly double it again if they reach the world elite. But at each stage the ratio between men and women remained constant at about 60%. Which suggests that lots of exercise does not actually erase the gender differences.
(I don't have a reference for it, so the person to whom you were replying probably has no more obligation to be happy with what I'm about to type than with what you said. But: )
According to what I have read, beginning at puberty an average man's upper-body strength increases to close to triple an average woman's upper-body strength.
Not co-incidentally about the time this change begins adolescent boy/men start to get really interested in working out their upper bodies. So possibly not all of that "triple" is due to the inherent sex-difference (not "gender"-difference, guys; this is biological sex we're talking about; a gender-change operation wouldn't correct this difference). But the part that's due to training seems mostly to have been triggered by and motivated by the part that's due to biological differences in sex.

(I have no doubt that the strongest ordinary women, let alone "the world elite", could kick my own personal ass without much effort. For one thing, I was not one of those boys who ever cared about working out any part at all. But I don't think anyone would think I count as average.)

There are other ways "strength" can be compared, of course. Women in general are more capable on average of working long hours than average men; average mothers, at least, if not average women, have more physical endurance and ability to withstand discomfort than average men; and the average woman's body is better at adjusting its consumption of energy to match the work she is doing than the average man's.

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by finlay »

TomHChappell wrote:
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:If the USA gets rid of all its anti-homosexual feeling, will father-son, mother-daughter, brother-brother, and sister-sister sex, still disgust us?
In the parent-child case, there is also an age issue, and a responsibility issue; don't know about other countries, but around here the age of consent is higher if the adult has a position of responsibility towards the child.
Well that makes sense. In other words in several RL countries even if the same-sex thing becomes a non-issue the incest thing probably still would be.
Some people legitimise it by thinking in terms of the fact that a child won't be produced from it making it alright.... however 99% of actual gays and lesbians are repulsed by the idea of sex with their own siblings; children are neither here nor there. You can find a lot of porn on the subject, though, especially twins.

You don't even need to think in hypotheticals here... there are quite a few countries where homos are a non-issue, or you can at least find bubbles where they are. I live in one such bubble... I don't even tend to come across homophobes somehow.pun intended :-p

FWIW, I'm quite of the opinion that what goes on between consenting adults is their own business, and i nor anyone else has any business restricting it however disgusted we may be by it... the only possible exception being incest that produces a deformed child, so the legitimising thing that I mentioned above does make an iota of sense. At the same time I can't fathom a reason why one would have sex with one's siblings or parents, although I hear that teenage boys often experiment with each other, but that's just like eugh to me.

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by TomHChappell »

finlay wrote:Some people legitimise it by thinking in terms of the fact that a child won't be produced from it making it alright.... however 99% of actual gays and lesbians are repulsed by the idea of sex with their own siblings; children are neither here nor there.
Not surprising. Thanks.
finlay wrote:You can find a lot of porn on the subject, though, especially twins.
You CAN ?!?!??!!??!! :o :? :!: :?: :o :? :!: :?:
finlay wrote:homophobes
I am as disturbed by "homophobia" being misused to mean "hatred or fear of homosexuals" instead of "hatred or fear of those like oneself", as I am confused by reading "Arab anti-Semitism" and finally realising they mean "Arabs' hating Jews" instead of "People who hate Semites noticing that that means they also hate Arabs, since Arabs are Semites".

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by Chuma »

"Homophobia" - yes, that is an annoying word, but there's probably not much to do about it. Didn't the old Sanskrit linguists have a term for that, by the way - the compound that leaves out an element as in "homo(sexual)phobia"?
Perhaps the best solution would be for English to give up its Latin fetish, and go with "gay-phobia" and "anti-jewish" or something. But then of course we might also whine about the misuse of "gay". It's peculiar, by the way, how a word for "happy" came to mean "homosexual". On the other hand we have in Swedish a word that apparently used to mean "homosexual" but now means "angry".

As for "gender" - I know, but personally I don't like the current standard usage. First, because "sex" nowadays usually refers to the activity, which can lead to confusion. Second, because the division in "sex" and "gender" clearly is an attempt by the social-causes theorists to encode their views in the language. (The opposite use of course similarly encodes the opposite view, that I don't deny.)

Your idea for group marriages as a combination of marriage and blood-brothership is nice. It seems realistic even if there is little evidence of anything similar in the real world.
My own conpeople also have a sort of group marriage, but it works like extended polygamy; one man has several wives and several servants who are also as part of the family.

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by TomHChappell »

Chuma wrote:Your idea for group marriages as a combination of marriage and blood-brothership is nice.
Thanks!
Chuma wrote:It seems realistic even if there is little evidence of anything similar in the real world.
Didn't someone above note that in a largish fraction of those cultures that allow polygyny the co-wives tend to either already be sisters before they become co-wives or to become sisters when they become co-wives? And similarly in a largish fraction of those cultures that allow polyandry the co-husbands tend to either already be brothers before they become co-husbands or to become brothers when they become co-husbands? I think the only part that maybe never happens in the real world is the combination of polyandry with polygyny in the same marriage.
Chuma wrote:My own conpeople also have a sort of group marriage, but it works like extended polygamy; one man has several wives and several servants who are also as part of the family.
Realistic, I admit.

My own desires towards conculture tend still to be towards going one step past the typical real-life example. Maybe as I "mature" I'll start feeling different about that, just as in conlanging I don't really want more than about three features that aren't plain-vanilla in any single conlang. Or maybe I'm already as "mature" as I'm ever going to get.

So that's why in my conculture marriages are always between one man and one woman, but a person doesn't have to dissolve an existing marriage in order to contract a new one -- s/he just has to get his/her current spouse's (or spouses') blessing. There's cultural pressure towards eventually contracting exactly three marriages in your life, and heavy pressure against having more than three simultaneously or more than six in a lifetime. But in my conculture, if Abraham is married to Brenda and Cecilia and Dawn, and Brenda is married to Abraham and Edward and Ferdinand, and Cecilia is married to Abraham and George and Herbert, and Dawn is married to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and Edward is married to Brenda and Karen and Linda, and Ferdinand is married to Brenda and Michelle and Nancy, then what goes on between Abraham and Brenda is also the concern of Abraham's other wives (i.e. Cecilia and Dawn) and of Brenda's other husbands (i.e. Edward and Ferdinand), but is not any business of Cecilia's and Dawn's other husbands (George, Herbert, Isaac, Jacob) nor of Edward's and Ferdinand's other wives (Karen, Linda, Michelle, Nancy). Abraham is in three marriages, each of which consists of a couple; he's the only man in any of them. Brenda is in three marriages, each of which consists of a couple; she's the only woman in any of them.

Nevertheless I'm kind of interested in group-marriages; I think I'd probably make it a part of my next conculture, which might just be the conhistorical successor of my current conculture.

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by TomHChappell »

Chuma wrote:"Homophobia" - yes, that is an annoying word, but there's probably not much to do about it. Didn't the old Sanskrit linguists have a term for that, by the way - the compound that leaves out an element as in "homo(sexual)phobia"?
Perhaps the best solution would be for English to give up its Latin fetish, and go with "gay-phobia" and "anti-jewish" or something. But then of course we might also whine about the misuse of "gay". It's peculiar, by the way, how a word for "happy" came to mean "homosexual". On the other hand we have in Swedish a word that apparently used to mean "homosexual" but now means "angry".

As for "gender" - I know, but personally I don't like the current standard usage. First, because "sex" nowadays usually refers to the activity, which can lead to confusion. Second, because the division in "sex" and "gender" clearly is an attempt by the social-causes theorists to encode their views in the language. (The opposite use of course similarly encodes the opposite view, that I don't deny.)

Your idea for group marriages as a combination of marriage and blood-brothership is nice. It seems realistic even if there is little evidence of anything similar in the real world.
My own conpeople also have a sort of group marriage, but it works like extended polygamy; one man has several wives and several servants who are also as part of the family.
Chuma wrote:Second, because the division in "sex" and "gender" clearly is an attempt by the social-causes theorists to encode their views in the language.
No; rather, they use it in such an attempt; they attempt to shanghai it into such a use. It didn't start that way. The division between "sex" and "gender" predates not only all those theorists but also their causes. Fuck'em. I follow Humpty-Dumpty's rule: "A word means what I say it means, or I won't pay it".

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by finlay »

TomHChappell wrote:
finlay wrote:Some people legitimise it by thinking in terms of the fact that a child won't be produced from it making it alright.... however 99% of actual gays and lesbians are repulsed by the idea of sex with their own siblings; children are neither here nor there.
Not surprising. Thanks.
finlay wrote:You can find a lot of porn on the subject, though, especially twins.
You CAN ?!?!??!!??!! :o :? :!: :?: :o :? :!: :?:
D'awww, you're so adorably naïve. :P I've even seen a lot of gay porn say that a guy is having sex with his 'brother' even though they're obviously not related – it brings in the google hits (Incidentally, this is a good time to mention that many many people have fantasies that they enjoy in porn but wouldn't carry out in real life. Sex without condoms is another one – most people would always wear one in real life but don't like seeing it in porn). With twins, it's quite obvious that they're related, however, since they look the same. Finding porn where they have sex is rare, but does happen. There's also a set of triplets that haven't had sex (well, on camera...) but have been photographed naked together. Written porn (erotic stories) involving twins is probably even more common.
finlay wrote:homophobes
I am as disturbed by "homophobia" being misused to mean "hatred or fear of homosexuals" instead of "hatred or fear of those like oneself", as I am confused by reading "Arab anti-Semitism" and finally realising they mean "Arabs' hating Jews" instead of "People who hate Semites noticing that that means they also hate Arabs, since Arabs are Semites".
suck it up, most people are even only bothered that 'phobia' means hatred and not fear. this is how the word is used by like, everyone ever. As for "anti-Semitism", "Semites" are basically referring to Jews here. The impression I get is that "Semitic" referring to a grouping of Arabic and Hebrew is a practice mainly exercised in Linguistics and not many other places.

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Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by su_liam »

TomHChappell wrote:
Chuma wrote:
TomHChappell wrote:If the USA gets rid of all its anti-homosexual feeling, will father-son, mother-daughter, brother-brother, and sister-sister sex, still disgust us?
In the parent-child case, there is also an age issue, and a responsibility issue; don't know about other countries, but around here the age of consent is higher if the adult has a position of responsibility towards the child.
Well that makes sense. In other words in several RL countries even if the same-sex thing becomes a non-issue the incest thing probably still would be.
Another way to look at that is to point at actual examples. The USA has already gotten rid of most of its anti-heterosexual feelings, and yet father-daughter, mother-son and sister-brother sex have not become widely accepted.

It seems conceivable that pederasty and incest aren't the same thing as homosexuality.
Go figure...
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World-building/Non-linguistic Resources

TomHChappell
Avisaru
Avisaru
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Joined: Wed Dec 28, 2005 2:58 pm

Re: Culture statistics resources

Post by TomHChappell »

finlay wrote:D'awww, you're so adorably naïve. :P
Thanks! :oops:
finlay wrote:suck it up, most people are even only bothered that 'phobia' means hatred and not fear. this is how the word is used by like, everyone ever. As for "anti-Semitism", "Semites" are basically referring to Jews here. The impression I get is that "Semitic" referring to a grouping of Arabic and Hebrew is a practice mainly exercised in Linguistics and not many other places.
Well, yes, but, they're all wrong! :P
su_liam wrote:Another way to look at that is to point at actual examples. The USA has already gotten rid of most of its anti-heterosexual feelings, and yet father-daughter, mother-son and sister-brother sex have not become widely accepted.
It seems conceivable that pederasty and incest aren't the same thing as homosexuality.
Go figure...
WYS.

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