Dislike of my native country rapidly growing...

[Nev]

Seems like the more I learn about the U.S. the less I want to be in it...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joycelyn_Elders

Surgeon General under Clinton, she advocated teaching teens about masturbation as a possible way to prevent teenage pregnancy, etc. The right wing blew up and Clinton was "prompted to ask for her resignation."

The quote from her on the Wikipedia page is: "Nobody needs to give anyone a demonstration. What we need to do is stop telling them you're going to go blind, you're going to go crazy. We need to be honest and tell them, well, it's a normal part of sexuality, and if you're going to do it, do it in private." And this made the right wing blow up? What the shit is with the right wing anyway?

[Nev]

I just had a thought...which is that the left wing (which I usually find myself leaning more towards) usually makes serious mistakes by basically trying to inflame sentiments against the right wing; the title of the book "Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot" comes to mind.

I wonder if we could try to do something like, instead of saying "You guys are wrong and you're stupid", which doesn't seem to have worked for quite some time now, we could try asking them with some real and true humility to consider opinions other than the ones they've held for so long...

Something like "We know you believe doing drugs (or masturbation, or socialism, or whatever) is evil, and that it leads people down the road to ruin. You have a right to your opinion, and no one can force you to change it. But is there any possibility you might consider an alternate viewpoint? We sincerely, truly that what we're talking about has the potential to heal a lot of human suffering. In the name of trying to help everyone live a little bit more easily, would you possibly consider thinking about something in a different way? We're not trying to convert you, and we're not closed to seeing things in a new way ourselves. If you believe you know something that we don't, we're willing to see things from your point of view as well, as long as you extend to us the same basic right: the right to our own opinions, and the right not to be forced to look at things in a particular way. We're only interesting in finding out what works. Would you be willing to try this?"

I'm quite willing to try to see things from a right-wing point of view myself - if there's a chance of a better way there - as long as I'm ultimately free to decide my own viewpoint in the end.

[SineSwiper]

Joycelyn Elders had a problem with being brash and tactless, even if she was right. She had the same problem we have with Bolton and the UN. Yes, the UN needs reforms, but the best way to do that is not to say "Well, if we blew up the top ten floors of the UN, nobody would notice."

And Elders wasn't even right. Nobody has a problem with masterbation. Nobody needs to be taught masterbation. Nobody teachs that you will go blind if you masterbate. Masterbation isn't even a valid form of teenage pregnancy. How fucking stupid a thought is that? Shit, that's just one step above teaching abstinence.

Yes, there might be a problem with women's shyness of their own body, but most of that has fade away with the sexually Puritian values we had 50 years ago. Obviously, this "advice" comes from a woman who knows nothing of male sexuality, and was probably part of the older generation of women who didn't know how to masterbate and got pissed off at the school system for not teaching her when she finally got an orgasm at the age of 50.

I was shocked that she even just used the word "masterbate" in the White House. Even Clinton was going "holy fuck, I need to fire this lady." when she said that. Such comments are so way out in left field that it just makes the right-winger cringe at the thought of what else she's going to say. It's sort like Ashcroft during his first year or so in office. He was spouting off such right field shit that Bush and his crew were going "Man, just STFU for once, you're really scaring people."

[Zeus]

Mental, don't you know, there is no such thing as a left-wing party down there. Republicans are far right and the Democrats are centre-right. The Green Party is left, but the masses down there can't compute with a third party/candidate, so it'll always be that way.

[Julius Seeker]

For the most part, masturbation is just a hell of a lot more convenient than sex anyways. When you're younger, you aren't going to find a woman who will get you off 2-6 times a day 7 days a week. When you're working and busy with school, well you don't always have a time and often you're in a rush, masturbation is just much more convenient, you don't need your girlfriend present, and it only takes a minute before a shower =)

It's not that masturbation is a substitute for sex though, and neither is sex a substitution for masturbation; they are two very different things, you just happen to get off from both of them.

For the catholics:


If celibacy is considered a virtue, then so should be insomnia.

[Agent 57]

When you're younger, you aren't going to find a woman who will get you off 2-6 times a day 7 days a week.

I don't care how young a guy is, how the hell could anyone manage that many orgasms???

I mean, I had some impressive sessions when I was 15 and alone in the house with some porn for an afternoon, but I always had to take a few days off after that - any poor kid trying to follow that schedule would be dry firing by the 4th one on the first day, and by the third day his cock would be numb and rubbed raw!

I cringe at the very thought of it. Ow!

[Nev]

It's not the number of orgasms, it's the time the erection is maintained. I find that, for me, slap-boxing the one-eyed chimp for an hour or more - assuming papa is ready to ride all that time - tends to bring the pain the next day. But having 14+ orgasms/week is quite possible if you're not hard as a puritanical, right-wing Republican alone in a sex shop for an hour each time.

In the interest of good manners, I won't quote my actual figures.

[Nev]

Mental, don't you know, there is no such thing as a left-wing party down there. Republicans are far right and the Democrats are centre-right. The Green Party is left, but the masses down there can't compute with a third party/candidate, so it'll always be that way.

Let's have another discussion about that whole moving to Canada thing, I find myself increasingly interested.

[SineSwiper]

While I can see the steps that would get this discussion this far, I didn't actually want a discussion about masterbation in general. I thought we were taking about Joycelyn Elders.